Ride the Tiger: Transcending the Unescapable And Following Your “Inner Law”

When many look at the world today, they see an existence that is fundamentally broken, corrupt, and meaningless.

We no longer have a strong center in our lives. And so many of us in modern society are driven to escape this meaningless existence in destructive ways – whether it’s overindulgences in consumerism, or drugs, or sex, or work, or fame.

In Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul, Italian philosopher Julius Evola shares this distaste for modern society and modern values. And he seeks to find a way to live in it as a free soul, while not succumbing to it.

He explains how our modern society has led to a general philosophy of nihilism. The values that exist in today’s world have failed to bring us satisfaction and happiness, thus we are motivated to throw out the idea of “values” altogether.

The metaphor to “ride the tiger” refers to how an enlightened or “differentiated man” can cope with modern society – not by running away from it, or trying to destroy it, but by getting on top of it and transcending it.

The goal isn’t to throwaway all of our values, meaning, or laws, but to stand from a more enlightened view where we can act out our own set of values and laws that resonate with us (even if they aren’t shared by the rest of society).

How does one escape modern values? How does one define their own “inner law” and ride the tiger?

Meaninglessness and anxiety in our modern world

While many in today’s world live in more comfortable and prosperous times than ever before, this has had no effect on man’s inner make-up and his search for meaning.

If anything, our comfort and prosperity only highlights the meaningless to an even greater degree. In the book, Evola describes how even the children of millionaires are drowning in a sea of meaninglessness and despair:

“One sees there rebellion, disgust, and anger manifesting not in a wretched and oppressed subproletariat but often in young people who lack nothing, even in millionaires’ children. And among other things it is a significant fact, statistically proven, that suicide is much rarer in poor countries than in rich ones, showing that the problematic life is felt more in the latter than in the former. Blank despair can occur right up to the finishing post of socioeconomic messianism, akin the musical comedy about a utopian island where they have everything, ‘fun, women, and whiskey,” but also the ever-recurrent sense of the emptiness of existence, the sense that something is still missing.”

As Evola rightfully points out, wealthier societies have higher rates of suicide. This book was originally written back in 1960, but this trend still continues today.

Similarly, in many comfortable suburban towns, young adults turn to drugs like alcohol, cannabis, heroin, and prescription pills to try and “fill the gap” of their perceived meaningless existence. This is just one of many symptoms of how disconnected we’ve become from our true nature.

Not only are we more comfortable than ever before, but we have more choices than ever before (especially with the rise of capitalism and consumerism). From an economic standpoint, this can be a very wonderful thing. From a psychological standpoint, it can often paralyze individuals.

With so many choices in today’s world, we are frequently questioning what the right choice is and rarely feeling satisfied, because there may always be something “better” out there that we’ve missed.

This “paradox of choice” can fuel our anxiety, angst, and depression.

However — we can’t turn back the hands of time and rid ourselves of this world of excess nor would we want to even if we could.

For the differentiated man, we must learn to “ride the tiger” of modernity while not falling off and becoming consumed by it. This means that running away and moving to a Tibetan cave to meditate is probably not the best solution to our problems.

We can confront our present reality and still find inner liberation.

Rediscovering your center and following your inner law

We can escape the unescapable if we discover our center in life.

When you are centered in yourself and your own values, you don’t need to look outside yourself for morality or guidance. Instead, you discover your own moral code or “inner law,” – your own way of being and acting in this world that transcends external influences.

This is how you ride the tiger.

In this sense, the nihilist is halfway toward discovering their center. They correctly recognize the futility of many societal values and norms, but they go too far when they choose to reject values and meaning in life altogether.

To discover one’s center, one must be willing to look inward and see the unconditional and unchangeable parts of one’s being – untainted by modern culture and values. It is both the source of separation with society, as well as the discovery of what one is.

“Through crises, tests, errors, destructions, and successes he has rediscovered the Self, and he is reestablished in the Self, in Being, in a calm and unshakable mode. Equally distant is the man who has learned to give a law to himself from the heights of a superior freedom, so that he can walk on that rope stretched over an abyss, of which it is said: ‘It is perilous to cross from one side to the other, perilous to find oneself in the middle, perilous to tremble or to stop.’”

The enlightened person is “equally distant” from modern society as the nihilist, but the enlightened man knows how to give a law to himself and thereby walk across the abyss without looking down or second-guessing themselves.

Unlike nihilism, which Evola sees as a passive acceptance of society’s lack of meaning and value, “transcendent confidence” is a call-to-action. It is marked by absolute decisiveness because one always sees themselves as on the right path:

“The trial through self-knowledge under the stimulus of various experiences and various encounters with reality may be associated in a sense with the maxim ‘love of fate.’ Karl Jaspers has rightly said that this is not so much a precept of passive obedience to a necessity presumed to be predetermined and knowable, as an injunction to face each experience and everything in one’s existence that is uncertain, ambiguous, and dangerous with the feeling that one will never do anything other than follow one’s own path. The essential thing in this attitude is a kind of transcendent confidence that gives security and intrepidity.”

When you “ride the tiger,” your path is the tiger’s path. Wherever it goes, you go.

When one let’s the tiger control the path, one must keep going wherever the tiger takes them. Thus, there is no question if you are going in the right direction, or making the right choice, or abandoning yourself or your nature.

Everything is in its proper place.

Inner law vs. subjective feelings

“Inner law” isn’t meant to refer to subjective feelings, instincts, wants, or desires.

To the contrary, a person who only follows their subjective feelings is often a person who lacks a firm “inner law” and inner understanding. This is what leads to reckless amounts of consumerism, drug abuse, or risky sex – a lack of foundation or base to one’s character.

Julius Evola refers to this nihilistic trap as “animalism” or “primitivism.”

When a person discovers the lack of value and meaning in today’s world, it’s common to believe that one must “go back” or regress to a more natural or primitive state. We see the flaws of modernity, so we think the correct response is to throw it all away and live like an animal instead.

However, “just do whatever you feel like” is not following your inner law. To discover one’s inner law, one must be willing to look at the world from a bigger and larger perspective:

“Rather than looking at the world from the point-of-view of the soul, we look at the soul from the point-of-view of the world. And then everything seems to us clearer, more natural, more evident, and that which is merely subjective appears to us ever more irrelevant and laughable.”

When one sees the world as it is, and sees the self as it is, there is less room for subjectivity and whim-worshipping to guide one’s conduct. The relationship between “self” and “world” becomes much clearer. And how one must respond to life’s experiences becomes more and more evident.

Often following one’s “inner law” is done independently of temporary feelings of pleasure vs. pain:

“The first of these is to act without regard to the fruits, without being affected by the chances of success or failure, victory or defeat, winning or losing, any more than by pleasure or pain, or by approval or disapproval of others. This form of action has been called ‘action without desire.’ The higher dimension, which is presumed to be present in oneself, manifests through the capacity to act not with less, but with more application than a normal type of man could bring to the ordinary forms of conditioned action. One can also speak here of ‘doing what needs to be done’ impersonally.”

When we “do what needs to be done,” we are looking at things from an objective and sober point of view that doesn’t require our individual feelings to enter the equation.

If you find your child drowning in a lake, there’s no question of jumping in and saving them, regardless of its risk to your own safety and well-being. You are simply responding to what needs to be done in the moment. There is no calculating or questioning – just pure action.

While that may be an obvious and extreme example of “what needs to be done,” the principle holds for many other situations we come across in life as well – if we are attuned to our “inner law.”

Our “inner law” comes from this objective perspective of “what needs to be done,” (or put another way, “What action is being called for in this situation?”) – not the subjective or selfish perspective of “I’ll do whatever I want.”

Inner law isn’t subjective, selfish, or individualistic. It’s a clearer understanding of what needs to be done and what one is capable of in any given moment.

Seeing the whole of nature

When one looks at modern society – with big cities, trains, and technology – it appears we have detached from our nature. This again feeds into the desire to “go back” to more natural or primitive times before civilization began.

However, according to Ride the Tiger, this is a false view of what is and isn’t nature. The enlightened man must take a broader view of nature if they want to be able to “ride the tiger” in all situations.

This includes an acceptance of our modern world as just another extension of what is “nature.” Julius Evola explains this false dichotomy of “nature” vs. “artificial” here:

“As for the ‘sentiment of nature,’ in general, the human type that concerns us must consider nature as part of a larger and more objective whole: nature for him includes countrysides, mountains, forests, and seacoasts, but also dams, turbines, and foundries, the tentacular system of ladders and cranes of a great modern port or a complex of functional skyscrapers. This is the space for a higher freedom. He remains free and self-aware before both types of nature – being no less secure in the middle of a steppe or on an alpine peak than amid Western city nightlife.” Whether one is hiking through a forest or walking through a metropolis, one must realize that these all fit under the big umbrella that is “human nature.”

This illustrates why we can’t run away from nature or civilization, but instead embrace whatever it is that lies in front of us. An enlightened man must accept that every place he finds himself isn’t truly separate from the nature of his being.

This expanded view of “nature” teaches us, again, that modern civilization isn’t something that we must run away from or avoid, but something that must be confronted face-to-face like any other experience or situation we encounter in life.

The contemplation of death

There’s one more bit of wisdom from Ride the Tiger that I really want to share with you.

This relates to the concept of death and how an enlightened man might take an attitude toward death that doesn’t throw him off the tiger – but continues to keep him centered and secure in his own being.

Here is a great insight from Evola on how an enlightened man might approach the concept of death and how it relates to his life and being as a whole:

“He can then consider a particular ‘contemplation of death’ as a positive factor, as a challenge, and as a measure of his inner strength. He can also follow the well-known ancient maxim of considering every day as the last of his individual existence: at the prospect, not only should he maintain his calm, but he should not even change anything in his thinking or acting. Here an example could be the kamikaze suicide pilots who had vowed to die; the prospect of being called at any moment to execute a mission with no return did not exclude them from ordinary occupations, training, and recreation, and was not at all weighed down by a dismal sense of tragedy, even the idea of death is a matter of surpassing an inner limit, of breaking a bond.”

I really like this example of kamikaze pilots from an existential perspective. A trained kamikaze pilot is prepared to face death at any moment, whenever the order arrives from higher up.

None of us really know when we will die, but we do know that eventually the time will come. In this way, we are no different from the kamikaze pilot, despite the kamikaze pilot having a more accepting approach of their inevitable departure from life.

“Considering every day as your last” and still living your live without changing anything is an incredibly powerful shift in perspective. It recognizes the impermanence of our life here on Earth, while still being able to “ride the tiger” of everyday life and do what is necessary.

A person who understands their death is coming soon – a kamikaze pilot, a cancer patient, or a man of old age – yet still follows their duty to the best of their ability is probably one of the best examples of what it means to “ride the tiger” – to transcend the unescapable and remain centered in your inner law.

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