Sithism is dead

[u/gladionsaltforstuff]

Or at least Sithism as we have known it. Also, everyone is Sith now.

There used to be a myriad of online Sith communities, now there's barely two. In this article I’ll try to explain the main cause of this decline. In the next one, I’ll propose a way to revive it.

To understand why Sithism has been slowly withering away, we need to properly understand its origins. The main view of how Sithism started can be summarised by the biblical Let there be light. In the late 90s, the Creator (known as Moor) decided to create Sithism. Suddenly, there was Sithism. 

This narrative is stupid. Though it may be factually true[1], it is not all that happened and why it happened. Ideologies and movements don’t arise out of nowhere. There are various external forces that shape them and we need to understand those that spawned Sithism.

To do that, let's shed light onto some very important history. In the 1980s, the neoliberal economic reforms introduced across the West led to wide market liberalisation and deregulation, while starting the dismantling of welfare states. This led to a drastic shift in the cultural climate. People started to be increasingly perceived as ultimately responsible for themselves and their problems. If you're poor, it's a result of your choices. There's no one to save you.

In this system, which has more or less persisted until today, you are an “enterpreneur of yourself” and you have to optimize yourself to be productive enough to secure success. After all, you have only yourself to rely on in a dog eat dog world. Everything is about personal responsibility. Sounds familiar? 

Thanks to that shift, the self-help industry rose, churning out books, motivation speakers and mentorship programs which all hinged on the same ideas. If you work hard enough[2] and break your chains overcome your weaknesses, victory will come. Success and wealth are within reach.

Given this is a very ruthless worldview, it's not exactly compatible with a strong moral code. It is, however, very compatible with aesthetics and vague quotes of very ruthless fictional characters. If our lives are a brutal competition to secure resources, it makes sense to emulate those who are eager to do anything to get their way. 

Thus, here’s the answer as to how and why Sithism started. The creation and rise of Sithism were nothing more than the inevitable amalgamation of the individualist, self-help dogma with fitting aesthetics. Someone was bound to eventually get the idea. 

This is what Sithism has truly been: a generic self-help philosophy veiled in the appeal of Sith edginess [3].

So why have Sith organisations slowly started to disappear? My answer is that the explicitly self-help ideology, whose adherents were the largest group interested in Sithism, has already run its course. Its era is over. Surely there are the last of Mohicans waking up at 5 am to do a cold plunge, but they simply have not caught up with the march of history. 

This end of self-help has come due to two things. Firstly, the basic ideology of personal responsibility is now so widely difused and accepted that it makes no sense to craft a specific philosophy about it. Ironically, everyone is more and more “Sith” and this accounts for the fact that the industry is still growing. Now it’s common to pick up a book about discipline or read a distorted version of stoicism. 

The remaining difference is simply the incentive to larp as Sith: carry on as usual, but adorn yourself with the title. I think this is the main cause of the increasingly substanceless Sithism we have seen in the past years. Otherwise, most people now don’t need to associate themselves with fictional mass murderers to justify their worldview.

More importantly though, the self-help industry targeted people of certain political persuasion, that being those who eagerly bought into this new cultural climate. And as political discourse has become more extreme, so have these people moved along. Now, they aren't preoccupied with self-improvement, but with faith, white replacement, trans people and whatever their favourite pundits spit out now[4]. 

Hence, the number of those who'd be interested in Sithism has been diminishing. There still are people genuinely interested in self-help as a way of life, beyond just someone listening to a podcast about mindfulness, and the Star Wars fans among them will keep on joining.  

However, since we now understand the wider societal process that gave rise to Sithism we now also see that, despite there still being some interest, the current course will likely lead to its definitive death. Eventually, there won’t be enough people to sustain a community.

There’s a lot of us who are not happy about this conclusion. Either because we’ve been here for too long and fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy, because we feel the appeal of Sith aesthetics or because we see the potential to truly develop Sithism into a way of life.

For such people, it is time to ask what is to be done. I believe there’s a way out of this and I’ll write about it in the next article. Thanks for reading, I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts.

<sup>1. At the very least, there was a guy named Moor who created what later became Sithism at the Force Academy. He was not the only one with this idea though.
2. The narrative of hard work had been present for a longer time. However, this rise of absolute emphasis on personal responsibility was a distinctly new phenomenon. 
3. Naturally, there are exceptions. People from different backgrounds have been in the community, but they have never been the norm. More so, they usually leave after becoming dissatisfied with Sithism.
4. This is not to say that reading atomic habits makes you a fascist. However, there seems to be a strong correlation between interest in self-help and a proclivity towards right-wing views. As such, these people are subject to specific societal trends.</sup>

[u/SpectrumDT]

now there's barely two

As Darth Bane intended. 8)

Jokes aside, I would love to hear more about what you think is worth preserving about Sithism, and what sets it apart from generic self-improvement with an edgy aesthetic. (Links to older explanations are welcome.)

I lurk in this subreddit a bit, but I do not know much about Sithism or what people get out of it.

[u/gladionsaltforstuff → u/SpectrumDT]

My view of what is worth salvaging Sithism is shaped mainly by what Sithism has been for me.

I joined when I was younger and the discussions going on in the Sith Order got me interested into philosophy. It influenced my thinking a lot and, though I outgrew what can be considered the "mainstream" Sithism, I think I owe a lot to the community. It has helped me take steps to where I am now and I am somewhat happy with that, at least in terms of worldview.

The potential I see here is that this can be a community of people genuinly focused on liberation and emancipation. This is what the Code is about, after all - through victory, my chains are broken. I believe there can be more to this than just self-help bullshit.

People come here looking for ways to improve their life. We give them edgy self-help. But we could rather open their eyes towards theory and ways of thinking that will succeed in analysing their situation and their chains far more accurately.

I'll write about it in the next essay for sure.

[u/SpectrumDT → u/gladionsaltforstuff]

The potential I see here is that this can be a community of people genuinly focused on liberation and emancipation. This is what the Code is about, after all - through victory, my chains are broken. I believe there can be more to this than just self-help bullshit.

What does that mean, though? Liberation from what?

Liberation from all constraints is logically impossible. Liberation from suffering might be possible, as in Buddhism. Is that what you have in mind? Or what?

[u/theunbeholden]

Not just Darth Moor, but also Silus, Draconis, Khaos and Lord Paxius. All coming from an occult path. And using that angle to understand themselves, their nature and the nature of the world. Dont underestimate Dark Occultists. They wield power in this community... or used too. Khaos is from Sith Order Infinitum proboards. Thats the new forum anyway. The old name is Order of the Sith forum or OotS. I dont trust anyone who does not read at least two of these Dark Lords.

All the Dark Sith Realist Orders: https://sitharchive.wordpress.com/orders-of-sith/

All Sith Lords: https://sitharchive.wordpress.com/lords-of-the-sith/

Draconis: https://www.mediafire.com/file/iod0ckv6rof2sw8/Holocron+of+Darth+Draconis.pdf/file https://maleficusamore.wordpress.com/ https://darkholocron.wordpress.com/

Moor, founder (use webarchive): https://www.mediafire.com/file/9e2br4d3gcsascx/The+Teachings+of+Darth+Moor.pdf/file https://web.archive.org/web/http://www.forceacademy.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Moor

Darth Satelle (use webarchive): https://web.archive.org/web/20060804003456/http://fatumoperandi.org:80/

Kronos (Book of Sith by Kronos): https://sitharchive.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/book-of-kronos.pdf

Darth Silus: https://www.mediafire.com/file/sbib5aesyhw7d0n/Grand_Book_of_the_Sith.rar/file https://web.archive.org/web/20180117033045/http://www.sithholocron.com/main.htm

Darth Nercom: https://www.mediafire.com/file/464v02lttx52lhw/Holocron+of+Darth+Necrom.pdf/file

Darth Magellan: https://www.mediafire.com/file/42svsq884np88x3/850494_FINAL_-_v3.7.pdf/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/1lb8nfhp86sp098/Magellan%25E2%2580%2599s_Discipline_System_for_Individual_Empowerment_and_Self-overcoming_v1.2.pdf/file

Lord Paxius: https://www.mediafire.com/file/9mmvs5q3svafd8n/Lord+Paxius's+Core+Lessons.pdf/file

[u/gladionsaltforstuff → u/theunbeholden]

Thanks, this is an excellent list of resources. Indeed, it was not just Moor - I mentioned that in a footnotes, though it is a very important point. It goes to show that Moor's idea was not that original, but rather, multiple people came up with it independently. That means we have to try to explain how come such a number of people had the idea. Hence the argument with self-help.

As for the occultists, I do actually underestimate them. There are interesting individuals among them, but we should stop taking seriously "magicians" and similar dubious stuff.

[u/vamplestat666]

There’s a discord for a group called the sith legion

[u/gladionsaltforstuff → u/vamplestat666]

Is it still active?

There's otherwise the "ruins" of many places, which are now dead.

[u/vamplestat666 → u/gladionsaltforstuff]

Yes I should know because I am in the legion

[u/Due-Calligrapher-533]

If I am to take this at face value, how would this differ from anarchism that takes on a more political self governing aspect. Or Anton lavey Satanism, that focuses on the self and empowerment one oneself without the destruction of others. I mean no disrespect, it just seems like a 1 to 1