Having read all three of these excellent pieces, I think my chief conclusion is that Nick Land is a just smart enough to be catastrophically stupid.
To harp on a particular point: the eugenicist obsession with the g intelligence metric has always been a blend of statistical idiocy mixed with motivated reasoning. Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” serves as an excellent counterblast on the topic of IQ and race science. Unfortunately, if I may riff on a popular saying: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ability to be racist depends on it.”
This essay has clarified a notion I’ve been wrangling but unable to put into words until now.
Accelerationists act as if their acceleration is like the launch of a spaceship, yielding more, everything, forever*. But acceleration is also what happens when a drunk driver collides with a telephone pole at speed. Nick Land is a strong piece of evidence that the accelerationist movements are more like the latter, and we’re stuck in the car with them.
*More Everything Forever is an excellent recent book on TESCREAL ideologies from Silicon Valley, I think you’d enjoy it if you haven’t read it yet.
Thank you! Indeed he seems to revel in provocation, and then ends up taking it seriously. There's no moral ambition, only surrender, inevitability, presented as lucidity. Any other view, of course, is just sentimentalism.
The end game is revealing: meltdown, as if we all needed to go through his own experience only to realize it was a bad idea. Oops.
I haven't read 'More Everything Forever' but from what I could read of it, it seems quite aligned with ideas I'm exploring here and elsewhere.
Again, the end game is revealing; the whole ideology reads like a pitch to give the techno-kings more power. Dystopia today, jam tomorrow.
There's a special form of gaslighting at play: anything that doesn't go their way will just hinder the progress that will (magically) solve everything they refuse to acknowledge or address today.
And yes, 'scientific' racism is more of the latter; I included some commentary in footnotes for the sake of concision.
The poorly disguised nihilism and misanthropy was fairly obvious already in his Warwick era thought if you ask me. As was the undercurrent of irresponsible elitism - given that irrespective of how seriously he believed in his bootleg Mythos voodoo it's kinda telling he thought it perfectly A-OK to basically try to summon Yog-Sothoth to eat the world without consulting the rather overwhelming majority of its inhabitants about the desirability of such an important career move.
Colour me surprised that he later slippery-sloped straight into full-fledged neofascism and eugenics. Probably skipped passing "Go" along the way.
Also those poorly disguised racists harping about the "homogeneity" of olden-day societies Fail History Forever. Before the concerted top-down identity-building programs of the 19th century pretty much everyone identified themselves in *regional* terms largely irrespective of what realm they happened to be paying taxes to at any given time - territorial borders shifted constantly anyway, the rulers and the ruled often enough had little in the way of common language, and regional dialects of the same language were routinely mutually unintelligible.
Or as the nationalist politician Massimo d'Azeglio (supposedly) quipped in the 1860s, "we have made Italy; now we have to make Italians."
These idiots are blithely projecting the rather artificially created 19th-century nation-state back into the dim mists of time as if it was some kind of timeless natural constant and on the side conveniently ignoring the minor detail that it's basically yet another bastard child of the Enlightenment thought they so revile to boot.
On another note I find it funny that he felt the PRC is the model for the kind of soi-disant progress he desires - given that regardless of how much leeway the Party mandarins in Beijing are willing to give to assorted plutocrats as long as they're useful, they make damn well sure they have a firm hold of the reins and come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on any oligarchs who step out of the line or develop delusions of grandeur.
Doesn't quite sound like the "corporate sovereignty" the Dark Enlightenment has such a hard-on for to me, and kind of an opposite of his own particular notions of unshackled acceleration too.
Imma hazard the wild guess he *actually* just liked the combination of law-of-the-jungle capitalism and totalitarian police state control.
I saw the headline that Elon is talking to CYarvin about forming his 3rd “American” political party. I’d guess as a consultant on scapegoating and twisted mythology?
I enjoyed this well-written and intelligently presented series, thanks!
"Clean water, vaccines, and education don’t just preserve the vulnerable. They raise the floor for everyone. Lead abatement lifted national IQs; vaccines extended workforce longevity; and education sustains shared knowledge."
I will, however, quibble with the idea that vaccines "raise the floor for everyone." Aluminum and mercury containing vaccines - which are commonplace - have the opposite effect. And there is much debate as to whether modern sanitation was the cause of reduced child mortality, not vaccines.
Since 1987 when their manufacturers were exempted from liability for the damage they can cause, children have been subjected to a dramatic increase in vaccines. From a handful to almost 80, if the schedule is followed. Incidents of autism, childhood auto-immune disease, vaccine injuries and generally reduced health have all increased dramatically, alongside the number of vaccines children have received. Independent research shows that unvaccinated children are, in fact, prone to far fewer chronic diseases, allergies and neurological disorders. We could call this coincidence. But it might be more appropriate to test vaccine safety against a genuine placebo - something that hasn't actually been done. This is something RFK Jr. has committed to doing, though it seems unlikely given how powerful the pharmaceutical lobby is and how government actually works. Children's Health Defense, the organization he led before the last US election, is a wealth of information on this topic if you're interested in broadening your information base.
I am not close enough to the topic to comment; however, replace this specific point and the argument still stands: cooperation makes us stronger, not weaker. Arguably within limits, but here the question truly is about some vs none...
It absolutely does! As I said, I appreciate the piece and as someone who is close to the topic, hope to inform those who aren't.
As you also mentioned, a strong, cooperative society is one that takes care of its weaker members rather than presuming to know what traits make for an ideal human, much less an ideal world. No one hopes for a child with Down's Syndrome, for example. But their parents will often tell you that they wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
Having read all three of these excellent pieces, I think my chief conclusion is that Nick Land is a just smart enough to be catastrophically stupid.
To harp on a particular point: the eugenicist obsession with the g intelligence metric has always been a blend of statistical idiocy mixed with motivated reasoning. Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” serves as an excellent counterblast on the topic of IQ and race science. Unfortunately, if I may riff on a popular saying: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ability to be racist depends on it.”
This essay has clarified a notion I’ve been wrangling but unable to put into words until now.
Accelerationists act as if their acceleration is like the launch of a spaceship, yielding more, everything, forever*. But acceleration is also what happens when a drunk driver collides with a telephone pole at speed. Nick Land is a strong piece of evidence that the accelerationist movements are more like the latter, and we’re stuck in the car with them.
*More Everything Forever is an excellent recent book on TESCREAL ideologies from Silicon Valley, I think you’d enjoy it if you haven’t read it yet.
Thank you! Indeed he seems to revel in provocation, and then ends up taking it seriously. There's no moral ambition, only surrender, inevitability, presented as lucidity. Any other view, of course, is just sentimentalism.
The end game is revealing: meltdown, as if we all needed to go through his own experience only to realize it was a bad idea. Oops.
I haven't read 'More Everything Forever' but from what I could read of it, it seems quite aligned with ideas I'm exploring here and elsewhere.
Again, the end game is revealing; the whole ideology reads like a pitch to give the techno-kings more power. Dystopia today, jam tomorrow.
There's a special form of gaslighting at play: anything that doesn't go their way will just hinder the progress that will (magically) solve everything they refuse to acknowledge or address today.
And yes, 'scientific' racism is more of the latter; I included some commentary in footnotes for the sake of concision.
The poorly disguised nihilism and misanthropy was fairly obvious already in his Warwick era thought if you ask me. As was the undercurrent of irresponsible elitism - given that irrespective of how seriously he believed in his bootleg Mythos voodoo it's kinda telling he thought it perfectly A-OK to basically try to summon Yog-Sothoth to eat the world without consulting the rather overwhelming majority of its inhabitants about the desirability of such an important career move.
Colour me surprised that he later slippery-sloped straight into full-fledged neofascism and eugenics. Probably skipped passing "Go" along the way.
Also those poorly disguised racists harping about the "homogeneity" of olden-day societies Fail History Forever. Before the concerted top-down identity-building programs of the 19th century pretty much everyone identified themselves in *regional* terms largely irrespective of what realm they happened to be paying taxes to at any given time - territorial borders shifted constantly anyway, the rulers and the ruled often enough had little in the way of common language, and regional dialects of the same language were routinely mutually unintelligible.
Or as the nationalist politician Massimo d'Azeglio (supposedly) quipped in the 1860s, "we have made Italy; now we have to make Italians."
These idiots are blithely projecting the rather artificially created 19th-century nation-state back into the dim mists of time as if it was some kind of timeless natural constant and on the side conveniently ignoring the minor detail that it's basically yet another bastard child of the Enlightenment thought they so revile to boot.
All great points!
Indeed, they talk of restoring a fantasized past--with hyper-modern tools birthed by this Enlightenment they abhor... Thanks for bringing it up.
This earlier cohesion / homogeneity was formed in rootedness, place, community, constraint, all things they seek to dismantle.
And yes, Land's final destination was always nihilistic. Same flavour, different flair (or lack thereof on both counts, especially the later Land).
On another note I find it funny that he felt the PRC is the model for the kind of soi-disant progress he desires - given that regardless of how much leeway the Party mandarins in Beijing are willing to give to assorted plutocrats as long as they're useful, they make damn well sure they have a firm hold of the reins and come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on any oligarchs who step out of the line or develop delusions of grandeur.
Doesn't quite sound like the "corporate sovereignty" the Dark Enlightenment has such a hard-on for to me, and kind of an opposite of his own particular notions of unshackled acceleration too.
Imma hazard the wild guess he *actually* just liked the combination of law-of-the-jungle capitalism and totalitarian police state control.
I saw the headline that Elon is talking to CYarvin about forming his 3rd “American” political party. I’d guess as a consultant on scapegoating and twisted mythology?
With some signalling sprinkled on top...
I enjoyed this well-written and intelligently presented series, thanks!
"Clean water, vaccines, and education don’t just preserve the vulnerable. They raise the floor for everyone. Lead abatement lifted national IQs; vaccines extended workforce longevity; and education sustains shared knowledge."
I will, however, quibble with the idea that vaccines "raise the floor for everyone." Aluminum and mercury containing vaccines - which are commonplace - have the opposite effect. And there is much debate as to whether modern sanitation was the cause of reduced child mortality, not vaccines.
Since 1987 when their manufacturers were exempted from liability for the damage they can cause, children have been subjected to a dramatic increase in vaccines. From a handful to almost 80, if the schedule is followed. Incidents of autism, childhood auto-immune disease, vaccine injuries and generally reduced health have all increased dramatically, alongside the number of vaccines children have received. Independent research shows that unvaccinated children are, in fact, prone to far fewer chronic diseases, allergies and neurological disorders. We could call this coincidence. But it might be more appropriate to test vaccine safety against a genuine placebo - something that hasn't actually been done. This is something RFK Jr. has committed to doing, though it seems unlikely given how powerful the pharmaceutical lobby is and how government actually works. Children's Health Defense, the organization he led before the last US election, is a wealth of information on this topic if you're interested in broadening your information base.
I am not close enough to the topic to comment; however, replace this specific point and the argument still stands: cooperation makes us stronger, not weaker. Arguably within limits, but here the question truly is about some vs none...
It absolutely does! As I said, I appreciate the piece and as someone who is close to the topic, hope to inform those who aren't.
As you also mentioned, a strong, cooperative society is one that takes care of its weaker members rather than presuming to know what traits make for an ideal human, much less an ideal world. No one hopes for a child with Down's Syndrome, for example. But their parents will often tell you that they wouldn't trade the experience for anything.