I forget where, but I recently came across the fascinating idea that Soviet Communism was an attempt by the Russian bourgeoisie to re-connect with the alienated Russian peasantry.
Certainly this is the story they told themselves. The story necessarily reveals their true motives.
"Hey, I want to be your friend, but first you have to change everything about yourself." This isn't exactly an expression of affection. More of an expression of implacable hatred? "I would love to be friends with someone who is nothing like you at all."
They chose Communism as the vehicle for this hatred. It's a selection effect - if it couldn't incarnate hatred, it wouldn't have been chosen. It killed enormous numbers of Russian peasants, exactly as you would expect an apotheosis of hatred to do. Sociology is easy and they got what they wanted on the first try.
Apparently this is a real difficult point. Got some Occult Technique to share with you here. If you want to be friends with someone, walk up to them and say hi. Ask them what they're up to and how their day is going. Maybe it's not exciting, but it's fairly reliable. You do not need to upend a whole country to make friends with someone - as counterintuitive as this may seem.
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I obviously wanted to be friends, or at least 'friendly' with you, but how could I want you to 'change', when you give so few clues about who you are. I didn't care if you adored Trump, but neither does Moldbug. Moldbug you mostly love anyway, no matter what you don't like he says. You inspired me, but I don't think that mattered.
I did just come up and say hi. The problem is that I don't know who you are referring to when you're talking about 'mid-level aristos', 'high-level aristos', and 'peasants'. Nobody else talks like you in your movement.
So, in my superficiality, I suppose I just liked your writing style, and am like those Athenians who are thought to be corrupt. As an example, Nick is far more clear on who he is than you are, and so is Moldbug. The stupid commenters at UR are so unbearable that there's no point in caring who they are.
It does seem as though things are getting more huddled into tribal or ideological groups, though. I know I'm not a communist, that's about it.
I don't see how your advice on how to make friends applies to you, although I guess if I only liked you among your ideological-political group (or wasn't fascinated by the others, including the ones I once was), I guess you could call that 'implacable hatred', but of course, I don't even now know what you are talking about.
I can't explain the interest. But it certainly isn't like the communist bourgeois wanting to 'get to know their peasants'. I know plenty of people I consider peasants, so I know I definitely like some of them and some of them I don't. Or maybe I seem like a corrupt Athenian to your Plato/Socrates. In any case, I didn't think the differences mattered that much--as a centrist (or imagining myself to be, you'd probably think I didn't know what I was thinking). But it does go against the grain since NRx is so important to you, and I am unable to be convinced by it.
Well, you think 'Trump tried'. I think "I tried". You just have your life which is so different from mine, and apparently that matters. But it's true, you didn't come up to me and say hi and ask me how my day is going. At this point, I can write anything to you, because I know I won't be purposely impolite, but that I don't have anything that interests you (I thought I did last night, only to wake this morning and find out I must not have.) It may take a little time to let go completely, which this little missive proves, since I shouldn't have written it either. Since you don't publish sometimes my comments and then do but don't answer, it will just dwindle away most likely. I learned a lot from you, though. That doesn't mean I think you know everything, and some things I think I know that you don't, but I'm beginning to think those are unimportant, and we may have just finished. In any case, online 'friendships' are almost a thing, but not quite a thing. Your alliance with your movement is stronger than with a single online entity.
So I guess it follows that since you stopped replying to my comments, that sometimes you were encoding something to me, as this one. But I don't think I implacably hate you just because I don't like Moldbug. Of course, you may be offended by my feeling free to say things about Jews, which you might be, but I assumed not, since you eat pork, and I noticed all these references to bacon, which was curious.
I think I probably just thought we were good writing partners, even when we disagreed, even strongly, about some things. But it may not be a 'good look', as you say, for me to be here so often. Your fellows may accuse of things without grounds for it. I don't care what they think or say about me.
I think I thought of myself as you think of Nick Land or Moldbug--someone to learn from, and I have. But isn't it you who doesn't want to be friends? I don't exactly think you 'implacably hate' me, but you never did have (unless way way back) anybody who conversed with you regularly and didn't seem to need it. That's cool, I can get used to it, but your ideas on friendship being what you say it is is a bit typical--one can't argue with it, according to you. It would be impossible for me to think you weren't addressing me, but then I can't be of interest if I'm not NRx, even if I'm not commie. I haven't put in those thousands of hours I read about again last night, but then neither has anybody you talk to in terse messages, and very rarely.
So--you didn't ask me how my day was going, but I'm going to tell you anyway: Not disastrous, but unpleasant, and this has made it worse, although I thought it was likely inevitable at some point. Your restrictions I've tried to follow, but it still looks bad--but that's not what you said, so you were trying to let me off gently, I suppose, without accusing me of things NRx considers off-limits. But even Ron Unz thinks pizzagate may be true, so your 'pedophile' pieces probably should bother me. Therein is the rub: I can't say why they didn't bother me except that I argued with you about them. I don't believe in QAnon, of course, and their stupid conspiracy theories. I don't know for sure about you.
But don't mind me--I'm just doing this to work through it, you needn't even read them if I write here, so I won't take much care in what I write. I guess you wrote it this way, because this is the way that 'hurts least'. And maybe I do seem to be hounding you. No, I did NOT think it mattered that we often disagreed. I refuse to be accused of 'implacable hatred' toward you because of 'wanting you to be someone else so that I could like you'. You don't think that of me either, but you do think I'm a liability, clearly.
Okay, I'm trying to stop. This is something of a shock, and saddens me a little.
Well, on second thought, it's possible I do 'implacably hate' you for sending me packing. Yes, you SHOULD be somebody other than who would do that. What am I supposed to do instead, thank you for implying I MYSELF am the kind of person 'you would like' if I were different from the person I am. You did it all backward, and I probably think a lot of these conspiracy theories are backward, so I should have expected this, but you'd give different signals--or I thought you did--so I didn't know till now. There are plenty of things you know about me that you claim to despise just by definition. I know that Nick Land is married with 2 children. I know that Moldbug is married with at least one son. I know nothing about you, you may well have a wife and 2 children as well. I'm sure they all know who you are, but I'm 'outlier', so I'm not privy.
Isn't that a betrayal of the tutelage of philosophy that is part of your study, or maybe I'm just too slow a learner? Who knows.
In the past, nobody has successfully read into my actions, and now you also haven't.
Consider it a puzzle. I have faith you can work it out, more or less.
Maybe you know that I already have. I mean, by now I can, or 'more or less'. I think it was mostly giving precedence to 'reliable' over 'exciting' that threw me. Which is ridiculously obvious, so I really am a 'corrupt Athenian'.
I worked it out all I needed to, or I think I did. You usually publish my comments overnight. There had been 4 very good ones for the below post, all about looking back over 2 years and more of your posts and when I started commenting--very joyful. Naturally I thought those were the ones when I got up, but instead there were the 4 with the math guy asking for advice. But you could have published my 4 too. You didn't.
You didn't publish those 4 good ones then (when you already had them), but you published the ones after I read this post, where you can then say I 'also don't successfully read into your actions'. These, of course, make me look bad. What your purpose in publishing the bad ones has to have something with me assuming I've got some right to hang out with you all the time. Or that's the way I'll have no choice to 'work it out, more or less', as you say.
Of course, you could have still posted the 4 good ones for the post below, but you didn't, and you know why you didn't, it's not important that I know, that I 'read successfully into your actions'.
Okay, if it was another point about private property, you're right, although from my end I was not trying to do anything vicious like that. I see what I was doing, and there's probably nobody I could have substituted for the long period in which I gave a lot of attention to someone. I never had before, never had doted on someone, but that was not on the internet, and the original is dead--that was the 'pressure' and 'stress' I was referring to in 2018 (although also almost a year before in 2017)which lasted till late October, 2019. And I've found solace elsewhere, but probably look for something like what that was automatically. The internet is no place to find it.
There's no reason that wouldn't get on your nerves for someone to do that, and I am sure now I was trying to escape from the fact that I no longer have any of that paradisical time that lasted for 15 years. But I was so used to doing it, I didn't know that that was part of what I was doing again. And no reason to think you'd not get tired of it, looking at it now. At least I have high standards, though, don't I? I'm sure you'd agree with that. I still feel the same about that.You're exceptional.
Things like this are probably too animal for you ever to have experienced them, even though you talk about 'the joy of having a physical body'. You're not supposed to be what I wanted you to be (although I liked some that are just there already, of course.) And it's true I don't know how far I'd have gone. So you had to do something. That was it, even if you weren't thinking "I'll use this strategy". Anyway, I already told you I don't care if I couldn't do what nobody else could, that's beside the point. But there was no good reason, other than that you could not see them, not to publish those happier posts. Instead, I had to look at the reality here, and I had not wanted to, despite the fact of its often already being very apparent, only to somehow be renewed into fantasy again.
I see that you have now published them while I was writing this one which is not yet published here. I'm sorry I got so frustrated and got rude.
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