Romance?

Saugandhikāpariṇaya
(सौगन्धिकापरिणय)
By Mummadi Krishnaraja
(मुम्मादी कृष्णराज वोडेयार)

Romance?
Thursday – May 7, 2026

Romance, what is it? Well, first of all if you intend to understand "romance" you need to know that it as a concept is rather new, like most of the things that continue to bedevil the world. Apart from being something fairly new, romance is also an expression individualism: in this case the idea that a couple, read "Relationships", can somehow consist of people who have "found" each other, either because they have some kind of almost mystical "chemistry" or because they just "click", etc. All of this is, of course, absolute nonsense and the people who claim that finding a "partner", another vocabulary monster, depends on all of these different aspects of what is fundamentally individual and personal "preference" are not only wrong, but actually quite evil and manipulative, because after all this entire concept of "attraction", often in a sensual way, is predicated on the view that human beings are all interchangeable units some more suitable than others, and the defining features of all of these individual units is of course the extreme expression of substance. What makes a man attracted to a woman? Does that man have anything other than the substantive female form in mind? Besides all of these points about the sensual order, where does this concept of romance even fit in? Because it is all to easy for modern men to talk a great deal about the particulars, the individualism, of some "attractive person", but when all things are considered it seems more the case that romance is an excuse to target and pursue that animalistic impulse, but even up until quite recently people refused to admit this, and so they cloaked it all in the illusion of some kind of romance, read "My Views on Celibacy". I should also point out that romance as a concept is profoundly entrenched within nationalism, the romance of revanchism for instance: really, the entire point of romance was to encourage the modern and industrial family unit, read "Gender Roles", and to create some kind of connection with the nation, or the supposed nation imposed on the people by the temporal powers; it could also be construed that romance is or at any rate was an attempt to replace God as the unifying and overriding reason for family, and that today the uniform and corporeal ideas about lineage and duty have come to occupy this important position.

    Romance is also about egalitarianism, in this case about the idea that men and women essentially function within a relationship, read "Marriage Advice", as some kind of pair on an equal or rather corollary basis and that this supposed equality, read "Feminism", exits because the complementary nature of man and woman invariably reaches some kind of equilibrium or peace and that this state of peace can only occur if both the man and the woman are "compatible". Again, this view of relationships is deeply entrenched within individualism. Besides, again, all of these points, many modern people tend to degrade the sorry state of marriage that exists today by asserting the almost commercialized and transactional nature of this relationship; of course, these people are right in their bashing of this seemingly rather silly arrangement, but they are also wrong in their reasons for holding such views. I should also mention that romance as an idea spread rather quickly, similarly to nationalism, and yes some people would and do make the argument that romance just like the formation of "nations" into "nation-states" is or was a necessary evil and that humanity is now moving away from this stage, and again these people are party correct for it is obvious that romance is a somewhat and increasingly obsolete concept, as the idea of the relationship between a man and a woman being something entirely transactional is more and more accepted; in this regard one could view romance as a deviated yet still less deviated stage of the cyclical manifestation. Again, what is happening here is a process of "solidification" that is aimed at secularizing the entirety of the world. After all, man is only an animal and so he should not attempt to seek higher knowledge by anchoring himself to the metaphysical order of things, read "Ideological Indoctrination".

    Further still and apropos the topic of individualism: it seems that romance is also predicated on the concept of finding a partner that is perfect in every manner imaginable, a problem that will scale with more and more material lavishness, read "Addiction", just in the same way it seems harder and harder for men to grasp with even the simplest of facts about the world, read "The Case For Education". How is a man supposed to "discover" his partner if that partner can never be perfect enough? Should this problem not require that humanity reach the absolute limit of material manifestation, read "The End of History" and "Transhumanism". Indeed, these problems will only, as stated above, continue to scale and the idea of a man and a woman ever entering into a marriage will seem more and more remote as all of these material fantasies of equality and equilibrium on one hand, and transaction and perfection on the other will continue to remain contradictions without a proper solution within range of the manifested world, read "My Views on the Human Condition". Of course, there is also inherent in this conundrum a kind of selfish and almost childish attitude towards the world: if it cannot be materially and substantially wholly perfect, then away with it! In that case, I would suggest, indeed I do suggest, that most modern people embrace celibacy, linked to above. Of course, this is (celibacy that is) something that is becoming more and more common among younger people in particular, but this form of celibacy is not a truly sacred and committed celibacy based on discipline and true heroism, a kind of defeat of Satan; this kind of low and primitive, really corporeal, celibacy can only result in frustration and aggression, really the very opposite of liberation and true enlightenment.

    In the end, romance is a step towards the inevitable dissolution and disintegration of the world, read "Justice" and "Destruction!", and this is becoming more and more clear today.

Reginald Drax – May 7, 2026.