What it is to be Gorean – Part 2 (Origins)

Tal everyone,

Continuing this series of posts, I believe it is important before anything else to review (and define) the origins of the Gorean Lifestyle.

Gor is a fiction world depicted in a series of books that has become the longest-running fiction series ever existed. The first book was published in 1966 and the 35th on 2019.

The author of this series is John Lange that publishes his fiction work under the alias John Norman and his non-fiction work covers philosophy, ethics and historiography.

You can learn more about John Norman and the “Books of Gor” saga in the following posts:

• John Norman
• List of Books

The “Book of Gor” saga is a crescendo of detailed stories occurring in the planet Gor, also known as “Counter Earth”. I use the word crescendo intentionally because the books start by focusing on more generic and “practical” topics and gradually evolve into a much more rich analysis of the human mindset, description of life following the “Natural Order” and interesting new ways of depicting scenarios that not only expose the fallacy of modern days society mindset, but also amazing descriptions of the natural inner conflicts, questions, doubts, etc. that we all go through in our life.

Let me say here that for me it is critical that the books are read in the order they were published! Although there is a handful of books that might be read independently without spoiling the storyline and the evolution of the narrative, only if you effectively read them all in order can you in fact gradually absorve all the concepts and principles that are implicit in Gorean life.

This is particularly relevant considering that Gorean Lifestyle is not based on rules but on principles, which is quite simple and at the same time extremely complicated. There is no list of everything you can or cannot do, there is no detailed set of actions to be performed in specific situations, etc.

Many “cultures” / “streams” (both the ones focused on “sessions” and the ones focused on 24/7 lifestyle) work with very detailed scripts and rules. This results in very elaborate and sometimes complex things like “High Protocols”/“Low Protocols”, hierarchies among slaves with specific actions/tests that have to be achieved in order for the slave to “evolve” in the “path”, etc.

This does not exist in Gor, what you have are stories from which YOU have to distill the core principles and find ways to apply them to our life! Keep in mind, the Gorean Lifestyle, as the name states quite obviously is a way of life.

This way of life is based on the description of life in the planet Gor, but this description cannot be applied directly to our life on Earth. It would be wonderful if that was possible, but unfortunately (at least for now) that is an utopia.

Why is that, you might ask?

The simple answer is that the society described in the Books lives under a set of rules and principles that abide by and enforce what is called the “Natural Order”, recognizing and enforcing slavery, etc.

These sets of rules and principles conflict in many ways with the rules, principles and laws of the societies we live in. If the conflict is with a “soft rule”, this means that we can find ways to “bend” it and live our lifestyle as ideally as we want depending only in how open we want to be about it (and if we have the structure to face occasional criticism). But when the conflict is with a “hard rule” / law, then that is a definitive limit that cannot be passed!

To give a radical example, in GOR slave life’s have no value (other that the commercial value of the property they are), so a slave can be killed if the Master so decides and no one will think twice about it. It is unthinkable for a Gorean on Earth to apply that to his Lifestyle and if anyone does try to live by that in our society, he obviously cannot be called a Gorean but suffers from serious pathological problems.

This being said, the Gorean Lifestyle is based on the Books, period! The lifestyle is based on all the principles depicted along the whole series and only by reading the books you can absorve all the concepts, all the mindsets, all the subliminal information that is passed in each story.

I will repeat it again in case I wasn’t obvious the first time: You have to read the books!!!

You have many information in the Internet that is wonderful to review details, to answer some questions, etc. and the goal of this blog is exactly to help in the process, but no blog, Wiki, FAQ or whatever can ever replace the actual reading of the books (yes, all of them and ideally in order).

In the next posts I’ll start to analyze some of the pillars that define what it is to live according to the Gorean Lifestyle. In the meanwhile, continue to read the books!!! 😉 😉 😉

List of posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Origins
• Principles
• [Female] slavery
• Master’s care
• Consensual Slavery
• “Communal” Slavery
• Sadism

I wish you well!

©2020 – Written by Azrael Phoenix

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