Paraphrased: "It is outrageous but getting outraged will only make you sick."
The proper Nihilist, passivist, Gnonist, rightist take on the outrages is that they are not outrages. The fact the government is doing them is proof that they can do them, which is proof they have the Mandate of Heaven to do it. All you can do is accept it or resent it.
Or: Formalist Manifesto is still Yarvin's best work.
Is it your America? Could you sell it to someone if you wanted? Can you issue executive orders? No? What USG does is none of your business. USG 'gives' you the vote, but this is exactly like handing you a flaming bag of dog poop. "Yeah...uh...thanks." Pat the poor retard on the head and quietly drop it behind your back. Whether you vote for Trump or Biden, you still vote, you still invest yourself in the system, you still validate the voting Game per se. The only correct vote is the vote to end voting, which is so far beyond the possible that it's literally more likely that aliens will ride to our rescue on unicorn pegasi.
Fun fact: leftism is obviously not entropy. What stops incremental rightism from working is that responsibility is not a winning move in the Fascism game. Leftism wins the totalitarianism game. Haven't you ever heard of consolidation? March forward, consolidate, repeat. It works. Unless there's a strong force, such as game theory, opposing the strategy.
Leftism has historically been a difficult infection because even monarchy is, at best, centrist in an absolute sense. More on this later.
Moldbug is obviously not a passivist. (See also: Scott Adams never tricked anyone about his plan to vote for Trump.) Yarvin has very particular goals for the evolution of American politics. The problem is he is completely correct about Mensheviks; they support the regime, as per Nietzsche. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
In fact, Moldbug may have convinced me that Trump is the accelerationist candidate. Biden will starve their funding? Vote Trump. Fund them as hard as possible. The Empire has a finite amount of total energy, and it will fall when it runs out. The more activated and excited they are, the better. The red star metaphor is extremely apt. Burn the fuel.
Moldbug's proposal is to overthrow the government by electing Biden. Wu Wei might be my favourite kind of (ironic?) activism, but it is still activism. Hermitix happily skewered Yarvin's central point. "If you remove the active resistance, won't they go looking for resistance?" Moldbug's Impact. If they can't get Impact for free, they will trespass. Push and push until you can't help but resist.
America is ruled by a usurper. Democracy is a coup engine.
As with all usurpers, they are a tyrant. (Perhaps say 1000 jockeying tyrants.) However, unless you're proposing a way to recruit a shadow army with which to militarily seize DC, you cannot overthrow a tyrant. That's kind of the thing with tryants. They're not democratic.
What does this mean? It means you accept your government is inherently
illegitimate, and then you put it out of your mind and go about your
day.
There are indeed specific outrages. The idea is to not have them impact you personally. Then it's particularly easy not to be outraged by them, now isn't it?
What can you do to accomplish this?
When someone's first proposal is to overthrow the government, then maaaaaybe they're not being entirely sincere. In reality they love being outraged precisely because it gives them an excuse to defect. If they ever finish defecting on the government they will find an excuse to defect on you. Ref: every revolution ever.
Proposing governmental overthrow is doubly abominated because it is unnecessary. Rescue, mythical aliens or otherwise, is unnecessary. Insulating yourself all but perfectly from the outrageous is not only possible, but I've already done it. As previously, if you're not a deviant then you think going Benedict is swell. I personally went techno-Amish. There's a disallowed list of technologies and practices, but the internet isn't on the list obviously. No car, no TV, no smartphone*, no processed foods. No beds either but that's because they don't work for me. Bagels are on the list to remind me not to take it too seriously.
If you want to propose to me that every State should be a coercive totalitarian theocracy, we can have a discussion. When you hide and obfuscate your central thesis, then I conclude you yourself don't believe in it, and are instead after ulterior motives. Naturally my first move would be to point out that coercion is deviant, thus irresponsible, thus leftist, but NRx in general likes to pretend this argument can't be proposed. Hiding is a form of surrender.
As with all Twitter rightists except Nick Land, Moldbug's actual thesis is that totalitarian theocracy (but I repeat myself) is perfectly okay, except America went with the wrong religion. When he supports various [traditional] American practices, it's about endorsing the fundamentally totalitarian nature of the government. Much as when he pretends to be a moral nihilist and then condemns lying, here he endorses totalitarianism and then plumps for Augustus' revocation of politics. As pointed out in a later podcast with Greer, totalitarianism means politicizing even drinking straw material. "The government can and should involve itself with individual lemonade stands - or gas station attendants, as the case may be, but unpolitically." Does not compute.
I am particularly amused by the idea that you can force chavs to do things for their own good, but you can't force the blue state university professor to do things (such as regime change) for their own good. "They have beliefs that benefit their own caste, often in counterintuitive ways." Wait, who am I paraphrasing here?
A genuine nihilist prince's ruling philosophy is: "I rule because I can, suck it." However, he is not totalitarian; he rules as little as possible because it's a pain in the neck. Totalitarianism is the peasant's foggy delusion of what a pure aristocrat is like. The prince doesn't have to pursue Impact because it's already well clear he's in charge. He makes it as difficult as possible for the citizens to challenge his rule. He does not allow choosing a plastic drinking straw, or importing a plastic toy from China, to be an act of sedition. He does, however, maintain lese majeste. The peasants are a bit dense and often need beating with Reality's teaching stick.
As previously, monarchy is centrist. Capitalism is rightist. Under capitalism, you can legally and openly buy your way out of whatever outrage you find outrageous, instead of having to do it on the sly. In other words democracy would be fine if you could sell your """human""" rights, and all that implies - as indeed you almost could in 1300s England. (I propose a thing that already happened.) You can spot the true aristocrat because he buys an indulgence against lese majeste, but his son inherits it because he never used it. If he wants to criticize the prince, he does it the responsible way, by making an appointment and doing it face to face.
What's wrong with capitalism? It's inhuman, so socialites (e.g. all Americans) don't like it. It rewards autists, for example. (Eww!) Yeah okay we have riots in the streets, science has stalled, our warfighting potential is in terminal decline, our daughters are whores, our crime rates are 50 times higher than necessary...but at least those damn autists know their place. That's what's important. Whew!
I repeat: as a proper nihilist I don't care whether you desire totalitarianism, or if your whim instead extends to revoking politics. However, Gnon forbids the pursuit of both at the same time.
Still, as tyrants go they're a bit lame. They want to be totalitarian but are too exhausted and cowardly to properly manage it. As I have, you can insulate yourself from the tyrant's outrages. Ensure the tyrant isn't aware of your lack of obeisance, or at least ensure they always have bigger fish to fry, and you don't have much to worry about. Keep your passport handy if it looks like they'll go full gulag, that's all. If you don't dawdle you'll have plenty of time to GTFO before they close the borders.
10 comments:
Yes, this gets emboldened what I have not only been moving toward, but essentially living inside, for quite some time, and not fully given myself credit. The combination of strength and subtlety. There's an ancient American composer who made a big deal about 'preferring strength over subtlety', that was because he hadn't the strength--oh no, he couldn't make such a pronouncement...LOL, and saw little contradiction in handing what little he had over to some Italian. I'm glad it came up, because he has probably proved to many that refinements are not necessary for anything of importance. The strength here is obvious, but you haven't left out the refinements that one might not guess you'd hold as close as I do (because I do them, if not precisely like you do, of course. For example, I saw the stupidity of voting this time, but hadn't yet gone deep enough into why I hadn't rejected enough. A lot of these things you've written up today seem quite new, and it's definitely true that I have gotten anything but sick even while reading yet more screeching.
Good reminder about the passport. A few years ago I knew I wouldn't want to travel anywhere other than LA, so I let it lapse, but will put it on my 'soon to-do list'. After not doing it at first, I simply forgot.
I was interested in all of your Spartan objects, how you chose them, which ones were the same as mine. Those last were TV, although I might turn it on very briefly, as with the election results, it was the easiest--otherwise I don't have cable, and something about the signals allows now allows me only ABC. So I know how fluent George Stephanopoulous is now--very quick...smartphone, car, surely some kinds of food, but that's what I want to ask you about.
I had no way of guessing what your things might be like, but 'no processed foods' is harder. I've heard people talking about them forever and haven't bothered to get any precise hold of the phrase. I was brought up with garden-fresh produce, meat killed on the premises, everything balanced, but not totally excluding delicious sweets (but as a child I never indulged, and preferred meat and veggies to dessert. I just thought it meant starchy, sugar-cerealed, things cheaply bad for you, so I found this just by googling: According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), processed food is defined as any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to washing, cleaning, milling, cutting, chopping, heating, pasteurizing, blanching, cooking, canning, freezing, drying, dehydrating, mixing, packaging or other procedures ... I consider myself to have always eaten healthily-- even the year I did vegetarianism: I made rich things with Camembert and watercress, English cheddar with curry, luxurious Marinaras. But it affects the mind horribly. You become somewhat silly.
That surely must not be what you meant, at least all of it--it even includes certain procedures the health-food and Integral Yoga types could be easily stuck with, the poor deprived things. While I mentioned loving 100% chocolate, maybe not all the time, because it's got more rich character than rich flavour, somewhat like certain intimidating Bordeaux. So then I'll have one from Lindt with Orange and Marzipan, but not the whole thing. I often eat 6 apples at night, and a large lunch-dinner of meat/veggies during the day. A yogurt often at breakfast, but one of the Greek Fage with the fruit and yogurt separate. I then read these have too much sugar. Also that anything 'fried, broiled, or grilled' is very bad for you. Not to mention pizzas almost anywhere, but coffee is very good (was glad to hear that--I drink only espresso with whole milk usually, better than cream.)
But is it *luxuries* you are most interested in leaving out, and can you leave them out all the time? I never overindulge in any of the things considered 'less healthy', but I do eat things like foie gras when I feel it to be affordable, although in small amounts. All sorts of Chinese food when I can get to the good restos in Chinatown, Thai food when available, make Roast Beef and Yorkshire better than anybody in the medieval way, all the Julia Child things full of chicken, mushrooms, cream, wine, etc. Plus every kind of non-food luxury I can get for myself to enjoy--both physical and mental. Made me think you probably don't read fiction, and I thought I'd stopped till I found Ian McEwan the other day and couldn't stop till 6 a.m. I understand how I ran into you, I could tell you were the smartest, but then we clashed, but now it's still the same but doesn't matter: I still like that luxurious music and you don't. Well, I see I'm not nearly the austere severe type you are, although I've had to be plenty tough to live here all these years and well.
Processed food is basically when they cook it for you. More or less I want 1800s-style ingredients. Stuff you have to cook yourself. Processed food is always adulterated. E.g. you can get bacon with ingredients like [pork, smoke]. If the list keeps going, it's not food. E.g. fruit juice should be just juice but Tropicana does not play well with biology. Dunno what they put in the juice but it's not something that should go into people.
Bacon is still somewhat processed and needs to be moderated. Ideally I would get raw milk too but that's too inconvenient at the moment.
USDA is being stupid. Washing? In the same category as blanching and dehydrating? Yeah, no. Probable motte/bailey. They also bring us the food pyramid. Pyramids are tombs. They want you to die.
I'm also old school about other things. I can shoot but I'm talking about bows. Barebow recurve, in other words no sights or balancers, and for choice I use arrows made of wood.
I read fiction all the time. My tolerance for trash is super high. The point of Amish restriction is to cut down on degenerate behaviour. When I go to buy groceries, it's under my own muscle power, which also happens to be dramatically cheaper. TV is entirely corporate.
I guess that's the important distinction: real food vs. corporate food. Stories can be produced by single auteurs and all the good (useful?) ones are.
Being techno-Amish is often about restricting degenerate behaviour directly. Lots of stupid things you can do on the internet. Rather than banning the carrier, I ban the behaviour.
I was judging based on only one example--an economist who was annoyed I sent him a novel I thought he'd like. He read no fiction. I don't like trashy fiction, but in this McEwan novel, a journalist who could have been big in his field (yours, in fact), spent too much time travelling and having a good time after education that it became too late, and he was not taken seriously by professors any more. But in the current part of the novel he was now writing successfully for magazines, and something about 'narrative' and saying how unimportant such things were, including fiction, compared to thermodynamics and related science things. What startled me was his commanding prose--I'd never seen one out of genre novels write this effective a page-turner, and I'm sure I will read a lot, including Atonement, and then watch the movie free online (I was surprised, and had also lost interest in movies, after seeing all I could of Catherine Deneuve's recent ones, all good except one where she does a cameo of Catherine the Great, but she got big money, I'm sure. Had to do with a particularly delicious caviar, and I just plucked out her scene; it was stupid enough, so that was all.) I don't know, I think he's better than Delillo, most of whose books I've read, and he's just got a new one I'll read.
I have to replace the OJ with Coconut Water, but the nice market doesn't have the good one, so I have to go to the BLM one, one of the last outposts of the dying Mafia. Disgusting place where I buy coffee in bulk for 1/3 the price elsewhere. There's purer OJ at my best supermarket, but it's absurdly priced. I liked the Grovestand Tropicana for coming in sweating from outside, so never drank too much at a time. I'm not too worried about it, but the coconut water I will try to replace it with. There are other prepared foods I don't think come under 'processed foods' either. This same combination cheap staples/gourmet store has fabulous Bocconcini Salads, with Mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, watercress, onions, etc., and there's now a Pesto one. I eat it all the time, and it's much less time and even money than if I made it myself. I don't have any 'principle' about 'doing it myself', I just always cooked and can cook enormous amounts of delicious things from over the years.
I 'use my own muscle to shop', but this is claustrophobic urban, so if I want to just roll out the door, that's all I have to do--it was even convenient during ghostly lockdown. You must live in less density, so you want to walk longer distances. I know this need to be self-sufficient and also to know how to be alone. Someone suggested it to me when I was 18 as inevitable and I immediately began to work on it, although I am still an 'American socialite', as you hilariously term it.
Very cool about the shooting. Do you shoot rabbits and game birds like quail and dove? Those are delicious, I had as child. Or deer. Which we had, but for some reason we didn't shoot them for venison, which I love when I've had it here. Or wild boar? I've had that once, and it's sublime. I can't believe Jews refuse pork and shellfish. A lot of their laws are so ridiculous
No, I understand what you're talking about. I don't agree with the premise, just as with some of the things about the music, but I don't find it at all difficult to leave some of those things out, it's a matter of respect.
What I really started writing about was that I started noticing back around 2014, which is when I got this TV (I haven't watched TV for 30 years, maybe 3 times a year), that I'd hear these CIA guys like Mike Morell or other NSC people on Charlie Rose talk about ISIS then...and it was still the same kind of thing you were talking about the *passive Nihilist*...or it will make you sick. Tonight I read some more about the continued squabbles and media and right-wing media all doing the same thing they have been doing since 2014 (and surely before, but I never noticed they were talking about NOTHING all the time every time they'd bring up something about foreign policy, Ian Bremmer was often there doing it), and they are still doing exactly the same thing, there is no let-up, so that your prescription is exactly right, and it's the same as mine, just deeper, and so I can deepen as I mentioned. Elsewhere, all the talk is about 'some new angle', but they're all screaming and thinking somehow their angle will mean something, and it doesn't, is cancelled within the hour. I wrote at Sailer's when they talk about the 'white composers' and also Sean Connery's death, things I knew about, but if I'm not absolutely certain, I don't express opinions just for the hell of it. And pundits are really saying the same thing they said 6 years ago, just LOUDER. That's The Way We Live Now, isn't it? You do just have to 'tune it out'. I think we may have something in common in both being bachelors, although I don't know. I think the ones with children are stuck with taking it very seriously, and that includes our friend, who seems almost in mourning. 4 years ago it was laughing at 'mourning Dems', and many of us thought it would be again. YES! Just then..."go about your day". But with the responsibility for other bodies, I think it probably isn't possible.
I cannot understand your talk of 'bearing false witness against yourself' and applying it to Yarvin so much. It was your phrasing that made me think about it in the middle of something it was interrupting last night till I got your exact phrase (I'm not sure why I couldn't remember something that well-known without looking), which is, I guess, something most of hear from the Bible. 'Falsehood', 'dishonesty factor' are modern enough sounds. 'Bearing false witness against yourself' is stronger and very Judaeo-Christian. But that's not the point. And we can just leave it as you like. I mean--despite your smarts that I couldn't dream of touching in most domains, there's the plainly obvious: Why would you care so much that he 'bears false witness' but not about the 'dishonesty factor' about those who 'bear false witness' with every breath, don't know anything else? I don't personally have anything to do with Yarvin if I didn't read it before when Nick mentioned it (there was one right after Covid began that I read due to Spandrell's twitter.) You can't answer that, because I have no choice but to see what is clearly a matter of something else that it would be impossible for me to be privy to, and that I was never a part of, never wanted to be--I just saw 'talent' and braininess in some of you, as Spandrell as well (to keep it neutral.) I wouldn't have seen any of you had it not been for Nick, but his tweets by now are thoroughly desperate, mind-bogglingly so--I gather you don't find this kind of thing strange. I wonder if he considers San Francisco the capital of NRx since Moldbug is there. I saw you took out one of his tweets I pasted, but I understand that you had to.
You write marvelously, even gorgeously sometimes, have all sorts of admirable qualities. I like you--although I suppose that in itself makes me a 'socialite' in your terms--not that I have ever minded being one in the traditional sense either (when I have been.) But this one requires a leap of faith in something one doesn't actually believe (I don't have any reason at all to believe it, but even if I did want to, it would require that faith that someone who didn't believe it--but did want to--was willing to try to reach.) Anyway, I'm just sort of 'elsewhere', I suppose, and even 'normie' in some ways, despite various transgressions, for which I feel no guilt and certainly plan to continue.
I appreciate the time you've given me. You've very gentlemanly.
On Yarvin, consider the difference between an infidel and a heretic.
I don't think, at least at this juncture, I'm capable of doing anything beyond guessing anything about Yarvin. You may find it strange that I am talking to you sometimes, but I did with Nick long before he ever heard of Yarvin, and I talked to Spandrell when he did his blog, and sometimes various other ones like 'Viking', who was pretty hot with his money, bragging about ass-fucking women, cussing like crazy, very funny. There were some obviously vapid ones like 'kgaard', who was very vulgar about his status-seeking and constantly indicating that he was a 'high-status male'. He was quite ordinary, New York is full of Kgaards, and I have known them and worked with them. I was therefore amused to read him once saying he should 'move to New York because of the prestige'. I don't know how to explain that I was never interested in Yarvin myself. You and I talk across great distances, although that doesn't bother me. And you seem pretty tough, not too worried about what your friends in the movement think of your independent explorations.
I did look at my previous comment and it was not that fastidious--although you probably knew I was not talking about Nick except when I was very specifically doing so.
I can't say too much about the one who I was comparing in 'bearing false witness', except that I don't remember your saying (or, I suppose, thinking) that he was doing so, and my interest in him until very recently was exclusively concerned with suppressing *wokeness* (it was certainly obvious that he 'bore false witness to himself' quite obviously and every day, it wasn't just something msm reported, it was everywhere, you could see it--which you, for some reason, don't think is the case--I did read Yarvin say that 'he should just resign'): It had not occurred to me at all, with all the noise going on, that there would actually be an unexpected configuration of a new sort of 'checks and balances' due to the House and Senate losses by the Democrats--and even Harris was not the sort that was going to make herself look low-class by supporting such things as 'defunding the police'. I don't know of anybody who was prophesying this rather extraordinary outcome.
There will still be a lot of NOTHING on Amanpour, etc., and all the other pundits, but all I can guess about Yarvin from the early-covid piece linked by Spandrell is that he was--as you've intimated--thinking of the elections as being *real things* that matter in terms of U.S. government. I'm sure you were thinking of something serious even though you've found a good mode of existence, a freedom which allows you a lot of flexibility of thought in addition to what was already there as potential; Nick was looking for accelerationist entertainment, 'creative destruction', which he thinks is the truth, but it is only some of the time (even in a 'long view' full of light-years and planets in other galaxies, all of which are just as alive as earth, which I realized on Nova's The Planets, of all ridiculous things, etc., even though TV is corporate, as you say.) By today, things have rotted still further, and he and others are tweeting about delicious memes based on vicious Twitter alerts.
I do find it slightly strange to imagine that Trump would not rig elections for himself just as Democrats may have (but not in the way Trump claims--your 'rioting' could be part of a carefully-planned conspiracy, but not stolen votes--and there would have definitely been huge BLM and antifa riots if Trump had won, so you could point to that threat, but I doubt it influenced many--fear of Negro trashing of things.) It's so patently obvious that he was always 'confessing', as in your new post, by withholding everything from everyone looking into things it was clear they should be looking into, so it must really be the Cult of Personality that is talked about everywhere, msm and the rest. And I'm sure he was doing everything possible to rig the election in his favour--let's just momentarily say the Dems were doing all those things he says they were doing. If so (and it doesn't seem so to anywhere near that degree), eh bien? They pulled it off, he didn't, and you said that several days ago, which was a quick personal restorative. It was there, you could see that too.
I think I don't have a political philosophy like you that would make me think Yarvin is particularly important. Your 'request to consider' is, however, appropriate enough; I would do so if I had any idea I could arrive at anything accurate--but I'm sure you already know what you think and why it's important, or can answer this for me since you'll know more, of course. Yarvin as 'infidel' or 'heretic' is hard for me to know how to value as you would, since you know all his work, have been attracted to it, and I ended up finding many who had thought him charismatic to be more charismatic than he is. He brought together some interesting minds.
I think the heart of the matter was more the 'bearing of false witness' than it was Yarvin or Trump, though, now isn't it?
Trump doesn't have the machinery to rig a vote, plus he's legitimately a patriot who Believes in America. The RINOs certainly aren't going to bat for him. That's why the left was so sanguine about 2016; they knew the RNC vote-riggers were going to stay home, and figured [rigging vs. non-rigging], there's no way they would lose, right? Well, oops. In reality Trump won the popular vote too. It was an absolute landslide. Hence, this election, measure then cut.
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