The Power of Duty

Resetting your compass in an age of nihilism

There is an epidemic of nihilistic, hopeless, disaffected young people, frustrated by an existential angst that they cannot name, but which looms like a dark shadow over their lives. Many feel they have no prospects for love, family and home, professional success… and further, that there is little point to any of these things anyway. And so they drift through life, indulging in whatever temporary sense pleasures they can afford as a hedonistic analgesic to that gnawing abyss within. 

From a Traditionalist standpoint, this despair and apathy is more than mere personal suffering— it is but one of many symptoms riddled throughout society that ultimately stems from the loss of any transcendent orientation point. We no longer have a compass that points north. 

Proposed solutions that are tantamount to simply rolling back the clock on this cycle of dissolution, whether by several decades or centuries, fail to address the central problem, which is this loss of any reference to a sacred centre. The wheel has broken from its axle. Such is the famous line of Yeats’: “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.”

What, then, is the answer? It certainly does not seem to be the further pursuit of hedonism or deeper investment in the material world. Nor do modern liberal attempts at addressing the “meaning crisis” in the West from a purely intellectual and psychological standpoint manage to come close to the heart of the matter. While cleaning one’s room is indeed good advice to get started on the path that leads out of the abyss, it unfortunately is not sufficient to bridge the chasm between the merely material and the transcendent. Neither does theistic devotional religion entirely solve the problem, though it can do so at least partially.

In the face of such severe disarray, superficial remedies have proven inadequate and addressing this crisis urgently requires more than palliative treatment. It demands a return to an orienting point that transcends the material. Julius Evola says that the answer to this is ascesis, which is a consistent theme in all of his works but most clearly expounded upon in the Doctrine of Awakening, his work on Buddhism.

By ascesis, we do not refer to the perverted, modern connotation involving mortification of the flesh or other abuses of the physical body. Rather, ascesis originally meant something like ‘discipline’ or ‘practice’. A rigorous training was implied. The corresponding word in Sanskrit is “tapas”, meaning to glow with the heat of fire. This inner fire is a fire of spiritual Victory, attained by those who are able to successfully de-condition themselves and attain an upward opening of initiatic consciousness. This is a quest for true liberation from nihilism and one that has the capacity to approach the hierarchal apex of transcendence, the ultimate stable centre.

When thinking of ascesis, the image of the meditating monk on a mountaintop may come to mind, but so too should the image of the samurai or the chivalric knight come into view. What probably does NOT come to mind, however, is the lifestyle of modern man. How could modern man ever actualise an ascetic practice that seems to have been designed for another time and place?

The way to overcome this obstacle is through detachment to the world. It may not be feasible to physically detach from the world and go live as a hermit, but one can mentally detach from the world and it is through the practice of mental detachment that modern man can become an urban monk. In fact, Evola argues that it may be easier to practice detachment in an age of dissolution and he writes in Doctrine of Awakening:

“Once detachment, viveka, is interpreted mainly in this internal sense, it appears perhaps easier to achieve it today than in a more normal and traditional civilisation. One who is still an ‘Aryan’ spirit in a large European or American city, with its skyscrapers and asphalt, with its politics and sport, with its crowds who dance and shout, with its exponents of secular culture and of soulless science and so on— among all this he may feel himself more alone and detached and nomad than he would have done in the time of the Buddha, in conditions of physical isolation and of actual wandering.” (p. 103)

The youth who are adrift and aimless may thus find their lack of attachments to this world as an asset, should they dare to pursue an ascetic path. However, we must not mistake detachment for apathy, passivity, pessimism, or inaction. Detachment is not a slide into escapism and excuses. It is simply acting without attachment to the fruits of our actions. When we act from a place of craving, where we hope for a specific outcome and will feel disappointment if that desire is not fulfilled, then we experience suffering. Those who are always yearning to reap benefits from their actions will always find themselves unsatisfied, as the pseudo-victory of satisfying one craving soon gives way to another in its place. Rather than taking an action because we hope to effect a certain favourable outcome in some way, we can instead act from a place of duty. 

Duty can be the only valid reference point for one who wishes to break out of the cycle of craving, nihilism, and ennui because to do one’s duty (dharma/dhamma) is to live in alignment with one’s cosmic purpose and thus in duty we can find our own personal transcendent orientation and recalibrate our compass. 

To those young people who have lost hope, who are just going through the motions of life, and are struggling to see the way forward in life, the one question you must ask yourself is: “What is my duty?”

Once you have identified your duty, undertake to carry it out with perfect execution, without regard for what you might gain or lose from it, an admonition that occurs repeatedly in the Bhagavad Gita. For one’s duty is linked to one’s dharma and in performing one’s duty, one fulfils his dharma, aligning himself with his own nature and the cosmic order, which is the ultimate north on the compass.

In acting with detachment and maintaining a focus on duty, in developing an understanding that what truly matters is HOW we live each individual moment and not what we achieve from it, the nihilistic fog starts to lift from our eyes. Our cravings start to seem petty and trivial. Life takes on a grander focus. Rather than desultory wanderings through the Wasteland of the Kali Yuga, one now has a clear mission.

Does it lead to happiness or material comforts? Perhaps not. But the point of life is not the pursuit of happiness, this nebulous emotional state that by its very nature will always be fleeting, nor is the point of life to increase our material comforts, minimising the physical burden of life as much as possible. Despite these being the two primary goals aimed at by the West at large, there is still a wave of misery sweeping through the population.

But what duty will offer you is an orienting point and a pathway out of the abyss of nihilism and despair. There is no longer any reason to say “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” because the answer to what you are doing with your life is and can only be… your duty.

We live in an age where the superficial allure of materialism obscures our inner compass and the cries for a profound reorientation grow ever louder. We will not find this reorientation in self-indulgent pursuits, but in the fiery crucible of ascesis, through a discipline practice of detachment and a relentless focus on duty. 

This is not only a pathway out of the existential angst and despair that plague so many, but a portal to a higher, more meaningful existence. It is a pathway for those who not only want to live, but to live well. And when you find in duty not a burdensome obligation, but a liberating force, then you will be among the ones whom Evola says will stand among the ruins. Those who fail in this will be those who are swept away, who are being swept away at this very moment, as they choose to succumb to the chaos of the age. 

But that chaos beckons not our surrender but our transcendent triumph, a call to which we must respond with courage, determination, and unyielding will, so that like the Buddha at the end of his life, we earn the right to say “done is what needed to be done.”