They aren't very complex in the end. So suppose you can't see color. Or lack the capacity to smell. And you are unfathomably arrogant plus lacking in imagination. You are unwilling to give credence to the subjectivity of others. You believe you are special, and superior to others.Therefore, you regard yourself as the arbiter of all that is real.
You will probably regard people marveling over the beauty of colors, or becoming intoxicated with delicious smells, as delusional. You resent their attempts to enjoy art, flowers, perfumes, foods, and even their avoidance of noxious scents and imagery as a false set of choices, that is sometimes imposed on you by inferior, deluded beings.
The NRs cannot see a fair process, or a moral choice, or a cooperative activity that results in widespread agreement as voluntarily embraced, for reasons. All the reasons of others are opaque to them as they necessarily exclude their kingship, their specialness, the fact they view all things correctly, in spite of what they fail to perceive. (which is a lot, but most essential is WHY other people are moved by the subjectivity of others).
Of course it seems like a farce. But at its heart the reaction contains a desire to shut everyone up, all those people moved by elements the neorectionary solipsist cannot see--especially our loves. The din we make from our shared loves is so irritating to them.
The mystery of what Sauron wants--a dark, dead world--it's also a world where the things he can't have can't be had by anybody. If you want power, you have to consume everything or the power of someone to have what you can never enjoy will always taunt you. Fill their minds with fear then, and the joy you are deprived of will vanish.
“The strongest, the smartest, the most capable should lead” so the tech bros think. What is strength? What is intelligence? What is capability? This theory fails in its basic assumptions, right here. Strength is a single mom showing up for her child(ren) every day as best she can. Strength is grieving the death of a loved one and deciding to live a good life anyway. Intelligence is a toddler experimenting all day long with everything available to them in their physical environment as their brains develop and they take on more and more complex tasks. Intelligence is knowing to connect meaningfully with all those we love and care about in the period we are in now. Capability is made up of too many kinds of abilities, skills, talents, awarenesses, and kinds of intelligence to detail briefly. Everyone is strong in some important way. Everyone is brilliant given the chance. Everyone is capable of something that matters.
But the people who make the rules also decide the winners, and it's them, in a way their parents maybe never showed up to tell them. We're all paying the price of that now.
I just love how they believe themselves to be the ultimately enlightened, and yet if you listen to them, you realize they’re just _slightly_ more sophisticated conspiracy theorists.
And as Aragon says: “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship....but it is not this day! This day we fight!"
But Hobbits aren’t serfs. The Shire is the closest thing to a functioning anarchist society I’ve ever encountered in fiction. When the old kingdoms fell, the Hobbits kept happily doing their own thing without interference. And as Gandalf was well aware, the Shire-folk were more resilient than anybody.
Aragorn notes how a "fat man in Bree" who lives but a day's march from foes that would destroy his little town were he not ceaselessly guarded by Rangers. This implies a force of full-time Rangers on the job 24/7 with no visible means of support. Some magic here.
Not only that but the Shire is apparently totally free of crime and mental illness since the "Shiriffs" are described more as haywards than actual police and there are only 12 for a population of more than half a million.* More magic.
There also seems to be a complete lack of ambition or greed, and yet people are at the same time industrious. A contradiction, resolved by yet more magic.
Bringing the Shire out of Fairie would require quite a bit more government than Tolkien implied.
*The Shire is half the size of England, which at the time of the Conqueror had a population of around 1.2-2 million. It expanded soon in the 4th Age suggesting more room was needed, so the Shire must have been fairly well populated.
Oh no! Good people can't exist. Has to be witchcraft! We need to police them. Protect them. *Rule* them. They MUST need it!
You say the hobbits are *magically* peaceful and free from crime, because you just can't imagine people bringing back their trolley at the supermarket when no one's watching.
Yet you think they'll *magically* be peaceful when assholes show up to colonize them?
Or maybe you just hope these weak hobbits can't put up a fight? Well guess what. They have my sword.
Dark enlightenment is an oxymoron. Yarvin and his ilk demonstrate extreme pathological narcissism. Gazing into their Palantir they see only themselves reflected back… their own stunted development in endless recursive mind loops.
As you wrote:
“Seeing does not mean understanding.
Knowledge does not mean wisdom.
Power does not mean legitimacy.”
The personality-disordered predators are miserable living in a system of ‘normal’ humans. They’re pine for and work toward the development of a new order in which their values and views dominate — and they bank on their prey being dupable, short of memory, and poorly-educated.
I, among myriad, look forward to these dark persistent predators self-destruction., which, based on human history, is inevitable. They’ll devour themselves. May it happen sooner rather than later.
Reminds me a bit of something I read analyzing incel forums in the 2010s. They had a "pessimistic epistemology", that something was more likely to be true the more dark and depressing it is. And everything else was cope.
For them it was the "red pill" that you had to be hot and rich to get girls, and relationships were fundamentally transactional. For Nrx it's that ideals and democracy are fake, and it's only naked power.
Yes... And the similarity I believe goes beyond a common vocabulary; incels and NRx are not completely different people with completely different live experiences (or views on women; Yarvin sees them as passive and prioritizing inclusion over competence).
I believe he was the one to popularize the "red pill" metaphor, so, credit where credit is due...
He's not an incel stricto sensu (widower, remarried, has kids), but he is in spirit.
Neocameralist cities do have mechanisms for checking power its called moving away. I joke but a lot of yarvin’s ideas can be explained by his tech-nomad mindset. (Something not dissimilar to the global citizen mindset in an aspect) He once mused that putin should have turned crimea into a tech-nomad enclave. Only a tech-nomad would think that. Location, specificity and belonging of a sort of the shire is very alien to this mindset.
City-states do allow for easier movement, and offer more options to vote with one's feet. It's not the absolute worst idea they ever had (probably because it's not theirs, they likely got it from Hoppe but Nassim Taleb is also an advocate).
But in a corporate rule like he preaches, I can't imagine there wouldn't be non-reimbursable deposits, exorbitant opt-out fees, and non-transferrable everything. We'd get a world of telecommunications providers, not merchant guilds. Prosperity for me, terms and conditions for you...
And the rootedness you mention (or lack thereof) is a great insight. Sure, I'll move easily every week if I have to, since I have no friends or community IRL anyway, and no garden to tend for... How great it must be to he a hydroponic human 😬
That was a post of of truly LOTR proportions! I did not make out to the end, so maybe the point was made somewhere in the final third: people WILL in my opinion accept order as long as it is competent, but tot take CEOs, or ‘the running of a company’ as an example of competence makes me laugh, bitterly. Total dickheads and the beauty of Tolkien’s words is wasted on them
Can't blame you, definitely one of my longer pieces. Just felt like an in-depth critique was needed, and the Tolkien references don't make it any shorter...
I would add benevolent to competent. Competence in the enslavement and extermination of hobbits won't go well with them.
And yes. Sadly, so much is lost on them... Even the irony of identifying with the losers in the story. How fitting!
The falacy in the ideology I see here, that order can prevent chaos, when chaos is the natural state of any complex system playing in a counterpush pull of order and disorder.
Order can have a creative side, nourishing supportive structures allow for creative unfolding and growing.
If order becomes too rigid, it becomes destructive, oppressive and thus brittle, because it suffocates the natural flow of life and creativity striving for higher levels of complexity.
And everything order becomes too rigid, inevitably disorder erupts to counter balance.
It might be creative disorder, disrupting with pranks, mindfucks, civil disobedience. But if necessary it will become destructive disorder in form of violent revolution.
The windows for creative disorder closes as fast as the dark elves consolidate their version of order. For a while it might seem like an efficient structure, until it stuffs out creativity and then all whats left is to challenge it with destructive disorder.
Why do you think the NRx folks support order. Most of them are libertarian or fascist (which are really the same thing just at different stages of development). They're chaotic (when was the last time you trusted a chaotic character who wasn't good). No damn good in my book.
They do have a new order in mind after tearing down the current order of things.
I don't trust them. They think as the long article here suggests, that they can create neat AI controlled systems of ressource distribution and surveillance to control their smart cities.
Corporate management instead of democracy. That's their version of order, and it will become destructive.
We shall see. Chaos has both creative and destructive properties. Right now they are tearing down, but they do have a plan to buildsomething else. Don't underestimate them.
Good article and an interesting read. Though there is a historical case that I'm not sure fits your pattern- the Indian Caste system. It existed for almost 4000 years until British colonization and while it is not currently legal under India's republic it is still a central organizing force culturally and is making a comeback under Modi.
I'm not enough of a historian to argue this seriously either way but I'm curious to see what others who are have to say.
A quick reaction is that the caste system has evolved - castes have gained and lost power, new divisions emerged - and ruling dynasties rose and fell (Maurya, Gupta, Mughal, princely states) within it.
The caste-based system wasn't static over these 4,000 years, and is not a frozen hierarchy controlled by an absolute ruler. Hierarchies can survive when they adapt--and that's not enough to make them desirable.
They aren't very complex in the end. So suppose you can't see color. Or lack the capacity to smell. And you are unfathomably arrogant plus lacking in imagination. You are unwilling to give credence to the subjectivity of others. You believe you are special, and superior to others.Therefore, you regard yourself as the arbiter of all that is real.
You will probably regard people marveling over the beauty of colors, or becoming intoxicated with delicious smells, as delusional. You resent their attempts to enjoy art, flowers, perfumes, foods, and even their avoidance of noxious scents and imagery as a false set of choices, that is sometimes imposed on you by inferior, deluded beings.
The NRs cannot see a fair process, or a moral choice, or a cooperative activity that results in widespread agreement as voluntarily embraced, for reasons. All the reasons of others are opaque to them as they necessarily exclude their kingship, their specialness, the fact they view all things correctly, in spite of what they fail to perceive. (which is a lot, but most essential is WHY other people are moved by the subjectivity of others).
Of course it seems like a farce. But at its heart the reaction contains a desire to shut everyone up, all those people moved by elements the neorectionary solipsist cannot see--especially our loves. The din we make from our shared loves is so irritating to them.
The mystery of what Sauron wants--a dark, dead world--it's also a world where the things he can't have can't be had by anybody. If you want power, you have to consume everything or the power of someone to have what you can never enjoy will always taunt you. Fill their minds with fear then, and the joy you are deprived of will vanish.
Spot on. They're afraid of this unknown subjectivity and don't want anyone to have what they can't have.
Also, great profile picture. Feels timely, too...
"Nous ne sommes pas des hommes de luxe !"
no lol. i was a good little liberal before converting to nrx. I assure you, I understand the appeal.
And what are you now? Which church did you have to convert to in order to denounce 'the Cathedral'?
And maybe more importantly, who hurt you?
“The strongest, the smartest, the most capable should lead” so the tech bros think. What is strength? What is intelligence? What is capability? This theory fails in its basic assumptions, right here. Strength is a single mom showing up for her child(ren) every day as best she can. Strength is grieving the death of a loved one and deciding to live a good life anyway. Intelligence is a toddler experimenting all day long with everything available to them in their physical environment as their brains develop and they take on more and more complex tasks. Intelligence is knowing to connect meaningfully with all those we love and care about in the period we are in now. Capability is made up of too many kinds of abilities, skills, talents, awarenesses, and kinds of intelligence to detail briefly. Everyone is strong in some important way. Everyone is brilliant given the chance. Everyone is capable of something that matters.
Aye! 10/10, no notes.
But the people who make the rules also decide the winners, and it's them, in a way their parents maybe never showed up to tell them. We're all paying the price of that now.
Of course. Historically we have all paid the price for way too much. I am horrified daily.
However…
To hold on to my own mind, my own connections, I continue to maintain my own understanding of what real power and real intelligence look like.
“Everyone is capable of something that matters”- Beautiful! That’s God-think (and hobbit think) And a great power against evil.
I just love how they believe themselves to be the ultimately enlightened, and yet if you listen to them, you realize they’re just _slightly_ more sophisticated conspiracy theorists.
Exactly.
They're also conspiracists, just for good measure. They're not against bad things; they just want them for themselves...
And as Aragon says: “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship....but it is not this day! This day we fight!"
But Hobbits aren’t serfs. The Shire is the closest thing to a functioning anarchist society I’ve ever encountered in fiction. When the old kingdoms fell, the Hobbits kept happily doing their own thing without interference. And as Gandalf was well aware, the Shire-folk were more resilient than anybody.
Gandalf knows... Yarvin doesn't.
You make a good point on a functioning anarchist society; maybe that's why he hates them so much.
But they are *magically* anarchist.
Aragorn notes how a "fat man in Bree" who lives but a day's march from foes that would destroy his little town were he not ceaselessly guarded by Rangers. This implies a force of full-time Rangers on the job 24/7 with no visible means of support. Some magic here.
Not only that but the Shire is apparently totally free of crime and mental illness since the "Shiriffs" are described more as haywards than actual police and there are only 12 for a population of more than half a million.* More magic.
There also seems to be a complete lack of ambition or greed, and yet people are at the same time industrious. A contradiction, resolved by yet more magic.
Bringing the Shire out of Fairie would require quite a bit more government than Tolkien implied.
*The Shire is half the size of England, which at the time of the Conqueror had a population of around 1.2-2 million. It expanded soon in the 4th Age suggesting more room was needed, so the Shire must have been fairly well populated.
Oh no! Good people can't exist. Has to be witchcraft! We need to police them. Protect them. *Rule* them. They MUST need it!
You say the hobbits are *magically* peaceful and free from crime, because you just can't imagine people bringing back their trolley at the supermarket when no one's watching.
Yet you think they'll *magically* be peaceful when assholes show up to colonize them?
Or maybe you just hope these weak hobbits can't put up a fight? Well guess what. They have my sword.
-And my bow!
-And my axe!
And at the end, we win.
Go home, Orc, you're drunk (on your own BS).
You think you'll get LOTR. But you'll get Dune.
Astutely written. Thank you.
Dark enlightenment is an oxymoron. Yarvin and his ilk demonstrate extreme pathological narcissism. Gazing into their Palantir they see only themselves reflected back… their own stunted development in endless recursive mind loops.
As you wrote:
“Seeing does not mean understanding.
Knowledge does not mean wisdom.
Power does not mean legitimacy.”
The personality-disordered predators are miserable living in a system of ‘normal’ humans. They’re pine for and work toward the development of a new order in which their values and views dominate — and they bank on their prey being dupable, short of memory, and poorly-educated.
I, among myriad, look forward to these dark persistent predators self-destruction., which, based on human history, is inevitable. They’ll devour themselves. May it happen sooner rather than later.
Thank you! Yes, they dismiss what they can't understand as 'inefficient' and take their pathologies for clairvoyance.
Sadly they may do a lot of damage--if we let them--before they (inevitably) fall.
Indeed.
I’m sure, albeit sadly, they will definitely cause much damage and suffering before they fall.
Hopefully enough of us realize how much we care for freedom *before* it's all gone
Reminds me a bit of something I read analyzing incel forums in the 2010s. They had a "pessimistic epistemology", that something was more likely to be true the more dark and depressing it is. And everything else was cope.
For them it was the "red pill" that you had to be hot and rich to get girls, and relationships were fundamentally transactional. For Nrx it's that ideals and democracy are fake, and it's only naked power.
Yes... And the similarity I believe goes beyond a common vocabulary; incels and NRx are not completely different people with completely different live experiences (or views on women; Yarvin sees them as passive and prioritizing inclusion over competence).
I believe he was the one to popularize the "red pill" metaphor, so, credit where credit is due...
He's not an incel stricto sensu (widower, remarried, has kids), but he is in spirit.
Neocameralist cities do have mechanisms for checking power its called moving away. I joke but a lot of yarvin’s ideas can be explained by his tech-nomad mindset. (Something not dissimilar to the global citizen mindset in an aspect) He once mused that putin should have turned crimea into a tech-nomad enclave. Only a tech-nomad would think that. Location, specificity and belonging of a sort of the shire is very alien to this mindset.
That's a good point!
City-states do allow for easier movement, and offer more options to vote with one's feet. It's not the absolute worst idea they ever had (probably because it's not theirs, they likely got it from Hoppe but Nassim Taleb is also an advocate).
But in a corporate rule like he preaches, I can't imagine there wouldn't be non-reimbursable deposits, exorbitant opt-out fees, and non-transferrable everything. We'd get a world of telecommunications providers, not merchant guilds. Prosperity for me, terms and conditions for you...
And the rootedness you mention (or lack thereof) is a great insight. Sure, I'll move easily every week if I have to, since I have no friends or community IRL anyway, and no garden to tend for... How great it must be to he a hydroponic human 😬
Ya if people aren’t smart enough to vote I don’t see how they would be smart enough to understand contract law
It would look like 2077 of Communion with our corporate overlords. Or William Gibson.
wow! this was so beautifully written, thank you!
...if only the Hobbits participated in the bioregionalist ecology of democratic feminist confederalism a la Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Ocalan...
Who knows what the Shire will look like once Mordor falls! Hobbits don't seem that far from Bookchin in the first place
If you are interested in right-wing ideas, I would propose just talking to them. Most people in the sphere are very open to conversation.
Very insightful, thank you for sharing!
My pleasure!
The next piece is on Neal Stephenson, hope you'll enjoy it as well
I’ll keep an eye out, thanks again.
FINALLY something non political
That was a post of of truly LOTR proportions! I did not make out to the end, so maybe the point was made somewhere in the final third: people WILL in my opinion accept order as long as it is competent, but tot take CEOs, or ‘the running of a company’ as an example of competence makes me laugh, bitterly. Total dickheads and the beauty of Tolkien’s words is wasted on them
Can't blame you, definitely one of my longer pieces. Just felt like an in-depth critique was needed, and the Tolkien references don't make it any shorter...
I would add benevolent to competent. Competence in the enslavement and extermination of hobbits won't go well with them.
And yes. Sadly, so much is lost on them... Even the irony of identifying with the losers in the story. How fitting!
The falacy in the ideology I see here, that order can prevent chaos, when chaos is the natural state of any complex system playing in a counterpush pull of order and disorder.
Order can have a creative side, nourishing supportive structures allow for creative unfolding and growing.
If order becomes too rigid, it becomes destructive, oppressive and thus brittle, because it suffocates the natural flow of life and creativity striving for higher levels of complexity.
And everything order becomes too rigid, inevitably disorder erupts to counter balance.
It might be creative disorder, disrupting with pranks, mindfucks, civil disobedience. But if necessary it will become destructive disorder in form of violent revolution.
The windows for creative disorder closes as fast as the dark elves consolidate their version of order. For a while it might seem like an efficient structure, until it stuffs out creativity and then all whats left is to challenge it with destructive disorder.
Why do you think the NRx folks support order. Most of them are libertarian or fascist (which are really the same thing just at different stages of development). They're chaotic (when was the last time you trusted a chaotic character who wasn't good). No damn good in my book.
They do have a new order in mind after tearing down the current order of things.
I don't trust them. They think as the long article here suggests, that they can create neat AI controlled systems of ressource distribution and surveillance to control their smart cities.
Corporate management instead of democracy. That's their version of order, and it will become destructive.
10/10, no notes--except maybe for one thing: it is already destructive.
Aye... so what Game Worlds can we build to respawn in decentralized networks of care while they tear it all down and build their cyberpunk dystopia?
Well yes they want order among those they rule, but they themselves are chaotic and can build nothing as a result, only destroy.
We shall see. Chaos has both creative and destructive properties. Right now they are tearing down, but they do have a plan to buildsomething else. Don't underestimate them.
Good article and an interesting read. Though there is a historical case that I'm not sure fits your pattern- the Indian Caste system. It existed for almost 4000 years until British colonization and while it is not currently legal under India's republic it is still a central organizing force culturally and is making a comeback under Modi.
I'm not enough of a historian to argue this seriously either way but I'm curious to see what others who are have to say.
Thank you!
A quick reaction is that the caste system has evolved - castes have gained and lost power, new divisions emerged - and ruling dynasties rose and fell (Maurya, Gupta, Mughal, princely states) within it.
The caste-based system wasn't static over these 4,000 years, and is not a frozen hierarchy controlled by an absolute ruler. Hierarchies can survive when they adapt--and that's not enough to make them desirable.