A rather transparent attempt to de-legitimize the regime, no?
De-legitimizing the illegitimate is lovely of course, but the regime tends to object. The regime is hardly a stranger to violence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It would also make vote fraud a lot harder. If gang B has 1200 members, of which 5000 voted, it's very embarrassing. American voting systems are insecure on purpose. Guess who made them insecure, and guess why they would do such a thing.
"I snapped—called him a fascist. “Neighbour,” I said, “we’ve been a one-party state since your grandma was—”"
Spooky.
"though in many ways it is in effect a sadistic tyranny, it is [...] at
least, certainly not by people who think of themselves as sadistic
tyrants"
Spookier.
Though to be precise the psycho lords are well aware they cannot afford to appear to be psycho lords. Luckily this is normally not an issue since they can simply have their Pope order the peasants not to see them as psycho lords, and lo and behold their will be done. BLM has a body count in the 10,000s - and I'm talking purely Africans here - but nobody will ever see them as racist mass-murderers. Or rather, everyone who matters already sees them as exactly that, but are on board with the plan. You can tell by showing them the stats and watching them go all [invisible garage dragon]. They are not surprised, and know exactly which realities they need the chutzpah to flatly deny.
Even bigger problem I see is that he is contradicting himself.
ReplyDeleteThese couple latest posts contradict the whole edifice of political philosophy that he has been building up until now. Supposedly his "book" is founded on one idea - instrumental nihilism. And one message - political detachment. But now he is talking of organized activism. With apps! Below is my response to his most recent post.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly, you are not only discussing the opposite approach, but even proposing how it is best executed. The Nihilist Prince became the Activist Prince. Activism can work - you just need an app! What happened that suddenly transformed the idea of organized activism from intellectually retarded and instrumentally suicidal into intellectually curious and instrumentally practical? One would think that if anything, the events of the past 3 months only reinforced the original thesis of inaction and dedicated avoidance of political engagement even further. Remember this?
"Our general theory of collaboration boils down to: under the modern regime, all voluntary collective action promotes power. Anyone whose subjective intent is to act collectively, with power or against it, is objectively reinforcing power. Whichever side you’re on: it’s a trap."
Is collective action no longer a trap? Is is no longer the case that ALL collective action reinforces the regime? What changed? You discovered apps? Voting blocs? Organizing voting blocs through very cool and very exclusive apps? Queue that General Ackbar clip, please.
If you still subscribe to your original thesis of political inaction, your recent exercises in advise for overly enthusiastic wannabe-activists is actively harmful for their own goals (not to mention their personal safety, especially given recent events). And ff you no longer subscribe to that thesis I am just failing to see the logic why.
Moreover, the theory you present here (and in the political amplifier post) is nothing new. It is by now a bit cliche insofar as political science goes. The Regime is certainly aware of it (not the least because, as you note, historically it has been good at using it). This stuff has been known in one form or another for a very long time and was even formalized into an academic field of study more than half a decade ago. Some may know it as "Public Choice Theory".
But I have already read stuff like Olson's Logic of Collective Action. And obviously modern-day high-frequency telecommunications technologies provide a massive multiplier for the potential power that organized collective action can have.
But this doesn't challenge the fundamental premise upon which you based your inaction imperative. Which is that by engaging in such action you are operating within the sphere of Power. You are playing the game of Power. This is Power's domain. This is where Power sets the rules. And if there is one thing that you (anyone here) definitely are not - that thing is Power. However, by playing the Game of Power you are amplifying it. But you are its enemy. So you are simply amplifying its capacity to fuck you. Do you like getting fucked? Maybe Bronze Age Pervert has a point and you are indeed gay.
Building an exclusive hierarchical structure for the Outer Party? With a dedicated app to coordinate the actions of said Outer Party? All of this in, if not a transparently, then at least in a logically obvious hierarchical fashion? How can this even happen in a way which does not amplify the Power of the Regime? I am sorry, but this just sounds retarded. By your own standards.
"Why must generating power always reinforce the regime? A regime is a monopoly of power. Anything that generates power must run that power either through or past it; and past implies tacit permission, so it means with; and with, as the boundary between the formal state and its informal auxiliaries grows indistinct and even irrelevant, evolves into through."
You have the domain of Power and the domain of the Regime. Since the Regime is by definition a monopoly on Power, there is a perfect overlap between the two. No gaps. Straightforward Boolean logic, no? So then the project of creating and using a political amplifier for targeted political action (organized voting) is fundamentally a project of infiltration. But, as you yourself noted previously, you can successfully infiltrate only those organizations which are already moving in your own (general) political direction.
You know, I don't even know what profanity he meant after the 'grandma' thing to Fascist Neighbour, and why couldn't he write it out if he can write 'shit'? I assume you can write it here, since you write about assraped statistics and such shit all the time.
ReplyDeleteI did like the ending, although it's more abstruse and not-quite-true than it seems: It is usually safe, or at least much safer than it looks, to give anyone the opportunity to behave as if they were your caricature of them, since they usually know this caricature and reject it indignantly—so they are unlikely to see any advantage they could gain by inhabiting it; at least, inhabiting it in a direct, naked way where the caricature could not be denied.
Nice turns of phrase (not his longsuit!) and only half-true and only some of the time, but still quite original and not either too Jewish or too Marxist, although since they all admit there's no 'power' there yet, one wonders what it will mutate to once it 'gets power'.
The immediately preceding, which you quoted partially was also good: The irony of the modern regime is that, though in many ways it is in effect a sadistic tyranny, it is a sadistic tyranny which is not in general staffed by sadistic tyrants—or at least, certainly not by people who think of themselves as sadistic tyrants.
That seems a natural enough evolution, since it exists, as offering to this particular moment in the Phanerozoic Eon. Thing about concentrating on those old eons, eras, epochs and millennia is--really does work like I wrote last night. Even tight stuff with National Guard is just there, so you don't have to have *Borderline Existential Crisis* except when they're really useful--but I guess they'd need to be more 'organic' and happen without your full express permission or you might not voluntarily choose it; 'usefulness' and reward can come later upon reflection.
I read all the comments too. You're right about Hurlock being a better writer, at least better stylist. I suppose style is not all of character, but there's always going to be plenty of his style I find cacophonous.
Oh hey Hurlock. What's up? Didn't you get too smart to post on the internet?
ReplyDeleteMoldbug always sounds like he's lying when he talks passivism. Which is unfortunate, given it's actually a good idea.
If he were properly clever he would recognize he screwed up with the app thing and be all like, "See? Even I can mess it up. Passivism is hard man - like a real virtue signal if you manage it, or something weird like that." Veritasium's one good video is about doing stuff like that.
Meanwhile Nick Land sounds like a shill for defective power every time he dunks on the Benedict Option. I shouldn't have to mention this doesn't mean I give the slightest face to Dreher.
Are you gay?
Moldbug's discipline has never been good and he's obviously moved beyond what he can manage untrained. He's skipped leg day. Needs a whole of reps of set 4.
Screwed up my Veritasium link. Let's do it the easy way this time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8&t=50
ReplyDelete"Oh hey Hurlock. What's up? Didn't you get too smart to post on the internet?"
ReplyDeleteI actually didn't stop posting on the internet. I did stop posting in this space, however. I hope my abrupt exit didn't seem rude. The best part of internet spaces is how easy they are to exit.
Anyways, I have been checking what is being posted every now and then and after Moldbug returned I started doing it much more often. Unfortunately, I am not seeing much progress in terms of his ideas so far. In the end it might turn out that his most important intellectual contribution is his purely technological work. He is still very enjoyable to read, though, even if his insightfulness is not always up to par with his style.
Nick Land's disregard for the Benedict Option is odd, given his general exaltation of Exit (or maybe he means something else?). And he supposedly loves blockchains. How about a Christian coin? The Church as a Blockchain. Jesus in Cyberspace. Anyways, exit definitely still reigns supreme as the best option (if you can get it). And this is even more obvious now after the failure of the Trump experiment.
The non-public internet is in no way the internet. E.g. as searchable as telegrams.
ReplyDeleteIf Moldbug wanted to talk computer science I would have to sit down and shut up. Conquest #1. Instead he's faithfully obedient to the American Intellectual tradition of opining well beyond his expertise. It's always very impressive to those who have even less expertise. You can carefully massage everything to sound comfortable and human and not to call out any insecurities.
Does C#1 have a converse corollary? Every man is Communist about what he knows least.