Richard Storey by

Triumphant Achilles dragging Hector's lifeless body in front of the Gates of Troy

A

Cattle die and kinsmen die,

thyself too soon must die,

but one thing never, I ween, will die,

fair fame of one who has earned.

— Havamal, 75

The Archetype of the Hero and the Promethean Task of Education

, Master of Laws contributing tofter Achilles had defeated Hector in battle, his chariot dragged his corpse by the heels. Such was the hubristic spirit of our Indo-European ancestors — warrior nomads who conquered and ruled peoples from Europe to Asia, millennia before anyone had heard of Alexander. But the same spirit which restlessly pursued immortality in fame and glory would not only cause their European descendants to circumnavigate the globe and conquer its poles, but map the human genome also; not only has the White man needed to tower into the skies and conquer the moon, but that spirit has searched the depths of its own soul to master itself. Achilles was visited that night by Priam, King of Troy and father of Hector, tearfully requesting to bury his son's body and reminding him of his own father. Achilles called a truce for the funeral — the honour of the magnanimous gentleman, Plato's rational self-mastery, was born. Both inwards and outwards, rationally and empirically, with brains and brawn, the spirit of the White man has continued to restlessly pursue glory, pushing whatever boundary it perceives, conceptual or physical. Like Prometheus, we would flout the gods in order to victoriously bring illumination to mankind, ever reaching into the infinite, like Faust (the Prometheus of the Renaissance), even if it will cost us our lives, like Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus).But what is it about Europeans that gives us this high 'tendency towards the infinite,' as Spengler put it? What is the source of what he called the 'Faustian' spirit of the West?Sadly, the study of genes as they relate to race differences is yet another dogmatic boundary the White man finds himself confronted with in our time, but I am far from the first one to vault it. We Europeans find ourselves on the scale of most IQ measurements residing above Africans but just under the East Asians (Japan, Korea and China). So what x factor has caused us to be overwhelmingly overrepresented in the number of great intellectual achievements of the past 3000 years? I believe the answer lies in psychopathy.Now, psychopathy does not necessarily mean antisocial, sociopathic and violent traits. In fact, Factor 1 psychopathic traits are quite desirable qualities, making moderate psychopaths the most charming and charismatic characters we know. Whites have a higher average level of psychopathy than East Asians, whose ancient despotic states have long domesticated any individualistic assertiveness out of them. Yet we are moderate when compared to the average levels of Africans which, as Prof. Richard Lynn has explained in his article,, leads to a higher average propensity to antisocial behaviour. How then does this Faustian, moderate psychopathy manifest Western civilization?Prof. Ricardo Duchesne, in his magnum opus,, has shown the origin of the Faustian spirit in the Indo-Europeans. These warlike aristocrats were only accepted as noble if they showed a willingness to sacrifice themselves in combat to achieve an immortality for their name, not necessarily any sexual conquest. Breeding for the trait to take no thought for one's own life, to the extent that naked, berserker warfare became their most noble form of combat, produced a rather psychopathic people in the Europeans. Associated with creativity, this psychopathic competition for glory and esteem, evolved men who restlessly found a way to go beyond whatever was currently considered rational or possible, inventing new concepts, abilities and technologies. So it is rather our inherited genes, which have given rise to the Faustian West in the great dance between blood and environment we call 'culture.'You can tell a lot about a people by the symbols they use; we don't need Jung to tell us that. The symbols used by the Indo-Europeans frequently involved the recurrently rising sun. Just like them and the archetype of Prometheus, we restlessly reach out into void of the unknown, contrary to nature's design, to bring back some fire, to cast its light on us and bring more abundant life. So shall we continue the quest for immortal fame, to infinity and beyond.