Nick Land is looking for feedback on a series of questions about the Dark Enlightenment here.
I’d like to take a stab at the “why now” question.
One of the key realizations of the Dark Enlightenment is that progressivism has been beating its opponents for centuries. This concept is difficult to grasp because 1) none of us have lived through centuries and 2) since progressives always win, they always get to write the history.
One of the necessary conditions for a Dark-Enlightenment-style movement was something like this or this.
Every neoreactionary I’ve met seems to have 1) at some point discovered the old books on mises.org and 2) studied science or engineering. Make of that what you will.
I recently listened to this set of lectures. Many of the people cited in the lectures qualify as reactionaries (in the archives I’ve reviewed many of their books). The history of conservatism seems to be: 1) develop of a set of ideas; 2) have your ideas crushed; and 3) develop a new set of ideas and apologize for the first set. Repeat forever.
At some point, once this information was all readily available for nothing, someone was bound to piece this all together – assuming such a person could consume a huge amount of information and synthesize it into something meaningful.
Foseti 
1: Discover old books.
Gasp, a couple of hundred years ago everyone was far to the right of what it thinkable today, and yet these were reasonable and decent people
2. Science and Engineering:
From Darwinism, we can deduce that people a couple of hundred years ago were correct on issues where their position is unthinkable today.
Hayek essentially ruled that socialism is a plague which is embedded in our DNA because as instinct formed in small atavistic groups of humans, centralization and uniformity had been essential to survival. Demagogues find opportunity in exploiting that instinct in the face of all learned experience to the contrary. Instinct is forever, experience never is. All progress is anti-instinctual.
The result of uniformity, politically and culturally, is Gigantism, and Gigantism precedes extinction. The solution is not another system (“Man cannot foresee his own advance.”) but many systems and winning the opportunity to throw in with them.
The U.S. must be broken up before we gag on our own propaganda. Or after. What the rest of the world does is an exercise for socialist.
Why now is definitely having to do with the Internet.
The second is truth, or at least really really good forecasting. It’s one thing to read an evil dude from 1850 trashing women’s right to vote. It’s a whole ‘nother level when you realize he was right.
It is sort of like 1984, only Emmanuel Goldstein is real. He goes by many names though; his works are sometimes called the “Great Books for Men”
I’m not sure if the science angle is important, it may simply be a marker for male traits. The Dark Enlightenment is testosterone driven. What we know as science today (as opposed to engineering which is a practical) is an Enlightenment weapon used against religion. If you go back to the start, there was pure mayhem and animal barbarism directed by “reason” against religion. I think the DE folks who are very anti-religious will eventually either convert or break away from the movement because the big truth cannot be answered by science. Roissy always likes to show how science proves XYZ, but most of the time, XYZ was common wisdom 100 years ago or can be found in the Bible. It’s an appeal to science because science has been elevated above religion as part of the progressive march. When the DE is finished, religion and common sense will prevail unless science can prove it is wrong. We will go back to science via negativa, as Taleb argues for.
At least part of “why now?” has to be the increasing degree of progressive fuckup. 100 years ago progressive ideas included things like putting iodine in salt and building giant dams to make cheap electricity and running water. Today, they want to blow up dams, not build them, and call vitamin A infused an evil capitalist plot. Sure, the progressives 100 years ago had plenty of nutty ideas as well, but at least their platform had something to offer those other than apparatchiks. Today, not so much.
woops, that should be vitamin A infused rice.
My answer precisely, Foseti. The Internet has matured; we are finally reaping the rewards.
Another important factor:
The internet allows radical freedom of association at unlimited scale, reversing the trend of the last century. Two white guys try to buy some land in North Dakota and the New York Times predictably gets enraged.
But 200,000 can read Steve Sailer or Roissy or the old GNXP or Mencius’ UR and no one can know that they are thought criminals. There is no forced busing or EEOC on the internet.
“But 200,000 can read Steve Sailer or Roissy or the old GNXP or Mencius’ UR and no one can know that they are thought criminals.”
I wouldn’t go that far. I would think the NSA knows.
Yes. We’re all on a list. There’s some software that pulls our names from the list and draws lines of various colors displaying the social links between us. What of it? Let them come.
The prevalence of STEM-inclined folks in neoreaction deserves some additional exploration. Thoughts?
I don’t know, but I also find it very interesting (I don’t work in the field anymore, but my background is STEM (E) as well).
I was more S&M (heh) in undergrad. Also Econ, which may be more of a fellow-traveler than a member. Life circumstances and professional opportunities led me very much elsewhere, but I miss technical thinking a great deal. I also miss working and socializing with technical people, which I find to be a stimulating experience. Technical people are naturally curious and eager to engage in speculative intellectual conversation.
I like to work on old Olympiad / Putnam problems and Mathematical-Econ puzzles as a hobby – as you’ll see in some upcoming posts on my site. I feel a certain kind of shame at being unable to immediately understand URBit.
The Libertarians are geek-heavy too. Sailer and Derb are very numbers-savvy too.
So what’s the deal?
Most STEM people are system/world builders/explorers. Given how little sense the modern system makes it’s not surprising that they would find something very wrong with it all.
The STEM-inclined are far more practical minded, and being practical minded doesn’t give as much room for being modernist as those who are less practical, such as art or English major types. If anything, continuing to be focused on art or English depends fundamentally on a modernist view, and so the individual becomes invested in the ideology whereas the practical minded person gives up less to adopt corroborated hypotheses.
Artists and personable people would not expect strangers who interact over the Internet to realise neoreaction’s ambitious aims.
Sensitive to the dominance of the expressive environment by progressives and mannerisms thereof, It would also immediately occur to artists that this attractor does not exist only because accurate beliefs about politics have not been spoken loudly or nastily enough.
That our art is crap is one of the leading indicators of civilizational decline – see the Roman Empire. One would not expect artists to be aware our art is crap.
Artists obviously seldom look at old art, therefore seldom read old books. They are also unfamiliar with Darwinism, old books and Darwinism being the primary wells of the Dark Enlightenment.
Jim says “our” art is crap. I think he means the art which is put on a pedestal is crap. Or maybe he means the standout art now does not compare to the standout art then. But there is some amazing art out there – shit tons of it. One needs to know where to look, just as one needs to know where to look to read or even know about the “Dark Enlightenment”.
As far as art detecting decline… I’m not so sure about that. But I’ll keep that in mind as time goes on.
@Foseti “One of the key realizations of the Dark Enlightenment is that progressivism has been beating its opponents for centuries.”
Only in the sense of subverting, destroying and inverting its enemies – first Christianity and now natural law (spontaneous morality).
If you actually look at what progressives *wanted* to happen, they fail and fail again – essentially progressives ‘win’ by redefining successful destruction as successful progress.
For example if you look at what some of the Old Left wanted – people like William Morris, the Fabians, or Trades Unionists, or Christian/ ‘ethical’ socialists like RH Tawney – then what we actually have is almost the opposite.
I knew (and very much liked) one of the influential Old Left – Norman Dennis, author of English Ethical Socialism – he just stayed Old Left when almost everyone else abandoned it; and ended-up mostly writing for the conservative think tank Civitas. My point is that he was a pre-1965 progressive and stayed that – and he ended up on the losing side; just as much as if he had been a conservative from the start.
So you are in error if you assume that what we have nowadays is the successful unfolding of a centuries-old ‘plan’ or strategy of progressivism. Progressivism/ Leftism is in its essence oppositional – which means winning = successful opposition = destruction.
The only plan that has successfully unfolded is Satan’s – not the plan of any group of humans.
The intent of destroying the family was perfectly clear in 1650, and if it was somewhat furtively obfuscated in 1650, it was brutally and nakedly apparent in 1810.
Zimbabwe, the Congo, and South Africa were written on the wall in 1890
And war on Christmas goes all the way back.
Recall the attack on the family in Plymouth Settlement.
That’s because their ideal is unrealizable. It’s not as if the goals of the Fabian society could even be met if they had done different things, or that their views have become “conservative” over time (because the passage of time is irrelevant for the most part).
The fact that the modern world doesn’t resemble what the Fabian society wanted is exactly why we’ve still got socialists attempting approximately the same task. Their success in the form of proliferating their ideas or now their specific solutions in the form of policy or the amassing of power will definitely result in failure because there can’t be any other result.
That failure isn’t going to result in a reevaluation of of their ideals. In part the project is so immense and complex that there are any number of plausible points of failure which will always be available as just-so stories to explain away that failure, and be the next thing on the leftist hit list. In larger part it’s a religion and it’s fundamentalists will never be susceptible to reason anyway. They don’t really have to redefine anything. For the most part they don’t think they’ve won and view the entire history of the world as being ruled by the forces of evil.
As a constant failure it ensures a permanent place in influencing human affairs. The destruction left in its’ wake is acceptable as these ruins are usually institutions that are on a list of plausible points of failure, and usually they aren’t seen as being sufficiently demolished. When they get bad press for some casualty, well it was the Kulaks fault anyway, and everyone agrees.
Aren’t some of our biggest opponents numbers people too though. Looking at a list of progressives a lot of them are strong mathematically and engineers.
The physics PhDs I know are largely leftists. Personally they are conservative: fiscally responsible, monogamous, sober, live in White communities. But like Kyle says, their politics is a religion: must go to church, crush Whitey, care and feed People of Color, uplift teh gay, etc.
The engineers I know are conservatives.
That’s the point though isn’t it. Is Silicon Valley not leftist? Are the universities, even the hard sciences, not leftists? Are most major businessmen and bankers not leftist?
Occasionally you get some libertarian type, which I hope we’ve already established is a leftist that doesn’t like paying taxes, and people jump all over it like they’re on our side. Meanwhile the biggest contribution libertarians ever made was fighting for the disintegration of traditional morality and an incredibly zealous belief in open borders. Does it matter if they live their personal lives differently? Their politics are what they are.
That’s a different question entirely. Handle said that P(STEM|neoreactionary) >> P(!STEM|neoreactionary). You are talking about P(STEM|!neoreactionary) which is a completely different number, and given that P(neoreactionary) << P(!neoreactionary) it is difficult to conclude anything about the former group from information about the latter, and vice versa. The sample is too narrow.
I think reaction at the bottom is the belief that (a) our civilization is actually capable of declining, and (b) it actually is. The financial crisis of 2008 has never been solved, and on most economic metrics, per capita peaks are receding further into the past. Economics stats are not the measure of everything, but they are a major source of relatively honest data. Unprincipled people can argue that higher divorce rates, out of wedlock birthrates and the like are merely reflections of natural preferences (for suffering by masochists, presumably). But people and governments alike are all trying to get rich, so it really is tough to argue that the population is poorer than their parents on purpose.
If you believe that the external future is going to be substantially worse than the external past, then you should believe that reactionary ideological victory is absolutely assured. Everyone in the former USSR who experienced the end is a reactionary more or less.
I agree with Charleton that the left isn’t achieving what it sets out to achieve.
“So you are in error if you assume that what we have nowadays is the successful unfolding of a centuries-old ‘plan’ or strategy of progressivism. Progressivism/ Leftism is in its essence oppositional – which means winning = successful opposition = destruction.
The only plan that has successfully unfolded is Satan’s – not the plan of any group of humans.”
Well said.
I think people of faith should take consolation in St. Augustine’s “City of God”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_(book)
“It was written soon after Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410.” Augustine’s advice: keep your eyes toward heaven. Actually helpful advice considering that civilization as they knew it would not appear again for 1000 years.
Bullshit. We know what their intentions are, and we know what their intentions were: The equality of slavery, famine, and destruction of the family was intended from the beginning:
As Governor Bradford said of the Puritan attempt at socialism in 1623:
That’s good stuff
The occasional Puritan socialist ideas were just little experiments that got nowhere. They got nowhere because the people then were much better than that. (That quote shows, as much as anything, how they were similarly exposed to ideas so harmful to us, but that these ideas were easily driven off by them.) As history would have it, the founding stock was austere and faithful and industries and fruited tons of strapping, awesome Americans who would build a great country. And that would continue for almost 300 years after 1623. That wasn’t the problem. America was still a seed that would yet grow into an amazing supercivilization that really was all that. Things went badly wrong much later.
For frog’s sake, stop blaming the Puritans. I’d give almost anything to have some of them around today instead of these degenerates.
Exposed from where?
Find me a seventeenth century anglosphere lefty who was not a puritan.
Find me an eighteenth century anglosphere lefty who was not puritan descended.
Find me a nineteenth century anglosphere leftist who was not Christian or Unitarian and plausibly puritan descended.
They have been undermining marriage continuously from 1600 to the present day, just as they have been suppressing Christmas from 1600 to the present day. They mostly gave up on socialist economics as a result of the famines of communism, but continued to pursue equality from 1600 to the present day in other ways, for example the War Between the States, .
The communist famines taught them the error of outright communism, but they were and are still big fans of the regulatory state, not realizing that end result of sufficient regulation is indistinguishable from communism.
The puritans for a time escaped the problems of regulation because their regulatory environment was highly localized, thus localities that strangled themselves tended to be left behind and rendered irrelevant, but the constant need to be more regulated than thou always tempted them to centralize regulation, to avoid the invidious comparison between more regulated and less regulated locales.
Copenhagen was plan for world regulation, the final result of natural selection acting on the puritan impulse to meddle.
@Foseti
This is all so silly.
Ultimately either the Left/ Progressivism is anti-Christian or pro-Christian – and anyone who believes the Left is pro-Christian is going to be immune to argument; so I am not going to argue.
The Christianity-is-Leftism meme from ‘neo-reactionaries’ is just the latest example of Leftist anti-Christianity.
Typical Leftist double-think – whereby Christianity used to be bad because it is reactionary but now it is bad because it is progressive. Either way we get you… Stalin/ Mao/ Political correctness in action.
All of which is conclusive proof that neo-reaction is Leftist – just look at the discussion on the topic? Pure Leftist mode (with a few name swaps).
The real Right – i.e. the religious Right – looks, feels and smells *completely* different!
Step one: Puritans. Holier than thou, therefore superior to the curse upon Adam. Hence socialism and female emancipation.
Step two: Holier than Jesus. Abolition of slavery, female emancipation, prohibition of alcohol. Raise the age of consent to ever higher levels as the state replaces the father.
Step three: Being holier than Jesus, Christians become transcendentalists, humanitarians, and Unitarians
Step four. Being holier than Jesus, transcendentalists become humanitarians and Unitarians, humanitarians become Unitarians, and Unitarians become militant atheists – become today’s violently anti Christianleft.
Today’s supposedly Christian Churches are generally on step two or three – See Dalrock for the horrifying details, theoretically Christian, while much holier than Jesus.
@brucecharlton
“The real Right – i.e. the religious Right – looks, feels and smells *completely* different!”
Yes, I agree. But it’s absurd to claim that that feel is most typified by Christianity.
First, it requires you to expel a huge number of Rightists? Was Robert Welch not of the Right? Nock? Etc?
Second, it requires you to ignore the fact that today’s Christian establishment is as progressive as a feminist meeting at an abortion clinic.
Finally, I think it requires you to ignore history. I’m willing to grant that Southern Christianity (pre-war) may have had something special in it (Radish has been quote R L Dabney lately and it really is good stuff). However, the New England flavor is Progressivism. When you stare into the face of political correctness and the attendant witch hunts, you stare into the face of a religious phenomenon (one that doesn’t look all that unfamiliar).
@Foseti
Take a look at this
http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/cat_intro.aspx
By analogy, *what you see* in official, mainstream Christianity i the West today is equivalent to what could be seen in official, mainstream Christianity in Russia after WWII.
Now, Russia was perhaps the most Christian country in the world pre 1917, so subverting the church entailed killing tens of bishops and thousands of priests – and imprisoning ?tens/ hundreds of thousands of faithful Christians over a couple of decades.
In the West the process has been done over a longer period by bribery, political pressure and (especially) propaganda from the mass media, ats and entertainment. The end result is very similar.
The Christianity that remains in the mainstream denominations is the consequence of decades of Leftist pressure.
The Western mainstream churches are about as Christian as was the Russian Orthodox church after Communism.
But that has nothing to do with real Christianity. Obviously!
*
All that stuff about New England puritans and the Left is American parochial nonsense – I’m afraid. Organized and theoretical communism/ socialism/ leftism/ was a British invention, and Britain was the centre of world socialism until the post WWII period. Until then, the USA was merely a sideshow – from a Leftist perspective.
@brucecharlton
If you believe this: “The Christianity that remains in the mainstream denominations is the consequence of decades of Leftist pressure,” I don’t think we’re really all that far apart.
In the US, of course, that pressure was – most importantly – from the New England establishment (ie the Puritans – a name which is informative for many reasons). It’s not just a parochial concern, since the same group basically conquered the world in the mid-20th Century. Turned on your TV in Britain recently? Perhaps I should say England (Peter Hitches book on this subject is worth a read).
What I don’t understand is why you disagree with me at all. I hold no grudge with true Christians. If you can start a mass-intensely religious movement, you have my support. From where both of us are sitting, however, mainstream Christianity is no ally.
OK – we can call it quits and I’ll be your friend again 😉 if you can assert that:
Christianity is NOT intrinsically Leftist
and
Leftism IS intrinsically anti-Christian
Go on…. say it!
I would prefer to use a different word than “Christianity” (because you’re referring to a very specific and narrow thing which is not connoted by that term) but I agree that the phenomenon you describe has those attributes.
I won’t however say that such a belief is a sufficient or necessary condition for Rightism.
The only other caveat I have is that Christianity does seem to open the door to equalitarianism. If everyone is equal before God, it doesn’t take many logical leaps to conclude that everyone is equal. That belief has got to be stamped out somehow.
Great thread.
“The only other caveat I have is that Christianity does seem to open the door to equalitarianism. If everyone is equal before God, it doesn’t take many logical leaps to conclude that everyone is equal. ”
Here is the thing: I think a true Christian couple would be quite fertile if they can be (and in most cases they will be quite fertile). Sex for carnality without procreation is quite antichristian. In a world where people must struggle to raise their own kids and provide for their families, people are too constrained by the demands of their world to go too far off the deep end.
Someone who has avoided having children of their own still has that parental urge but has little wisdom, and the proper outlet for that urge is missing. A person like that wreaks havoc. Such people have more time, energy and money than they honestly ought to. They ought to be investing those resources in raising the next generation of their own children.
I do think the Catholic Church with its unmarried priests has this problem. Even though it is male dominated, it leans left as compared to most churches.
@Foseti “The only other caveat I have is that Christianity does seem to open the door to equalitarianism. If everyone is equal before God, it doesn’t take many logical leaps to conclude that everyone is equal. That belief has got to be stamped out somehow.”
That can’t be true as a generalization – since it is only very recently in its 2000 year history that Christianity has been equalitarian.
Indeed it is only recently that mainstream Leftism has been equalitarian – and that phase only lasted a heartbeat before it moved onto a psychotic devotion to inverted inequality.
Another thing – some elements of what seem like Leftism (from the secular Right perspective) are NOT slippery slope phenomena, despite superficial appearances.
While I have said that the mainstream official Christian churches are corrupt – this does not apply to the CJCLDS – I have read thousands and thousands of products of the Mormon church and am 100 percent sure it is essentially solid.
Yet, from the idealistic/ purist neo-reactionary perspective, Mormonism was interwoven with some ‘progressive’ elements from its very origins (this is documented very well by Terryl Givens – e.g. in People of Paradox).
Thus on the one hand Mormonism is partly progressive, on the other hand it has stood solid and (although very imperfect, of course!) *essentially* uncorrupted uniquely among the large Christian denominations. *Especially* on those key and most difficult issues of the sexual revolution.
Thus this proves that *some* elements of progressivism do not preclude being strong, resistant and of the religious Right – even under extreme and sustained pressure such as the CJCLDS has always experienced.
“I won’t however say that such a belief is a sufficient or necessary condition for Rightism.”
It is necessary to be a consistent rightist (who can explain his beliefs from first principals) and for the motivation to actually pursue rightest aims when they require sacrifice.
Without it one is left with little more then a pleasant intellectual diversion that one can’t even explain consistently and has no real motivation to act on (beyond personal benefit, which can easily be co-opted by the carrots and sticks of leftism).
“The only other caveat I have is that Christianity does seem to open the door to equalitarianism.”
Well of course it does. Do you not remember what the world in which we aren’t all connected by Jesus was like? Do you remember what hierarchical societies in which the conquered and lower class were completely dehumanized was like? I’ll give you a hint, look up on the cross.
Leftism today dehumanizes people just the same. It replaces a person with a concept. That the concept in mind is positive rather then negative makes no difference. You can’t feel Christian empathy for a concept. That’s one of the reasons Jesus isn’t a commandment or ethical principal given to us by God. He’s a person. It’s through that personal connection that we form bonds with our fellow man.
Heresies are nothing new. They’ve been going on forever. Sometimes the church and the Pope are heretics themselves. The faith survives.
You have to understand that the purpose of religion isn’t to fix society, a goal the faith itself says won’t happen until Christ comes again. It’s personal salvation. That the method of personal salvation would also lead to a just society is a credit to it, but not the purpose.
“Well of course it does. Do you not remember what the world in which we aren’t all connected by Jesus was like? Do you remember what hierarchical societies in which the conquered and lower class were completely dehumanized was like?”
They were pretty… reactionary. Hierarchy, rule by warriors and priests, etc.
This is an extremely troubling admission asdf.
As an American, I am struggling to deal with the colonization of my country by Christian Mestizo Mexicans.
Christianity seems unable to offer my people any reason to resist this sort of non-violent colonization, even though it will irreparably degrade our living conditions and our genes.
The Christian thing to do would be to share our wealth with our Mexican brothers and share our superior genes with them as well.
Your comments make it extremely clear that the true right cannot be Christian in nature, now that our ancestral, Pagan influenced Christianity-where-they-didn’t-read-the-bible is dead.
Foseti,
“I would prefer to use a different word than “Christianity” (because you’re referring to a very specific and narrow thing which is not connoted by that term)”
He is talking about a *real* thing. If we start calling dogs “cats” we will quickly note that the annual number of serious cat-bites jumps by an order of magnitude. Besides you use “Christian” all the time. You are even comfortable referring to outbreaks of heresy as instances of people becoming “more Christian”. You might as well say that George W. Bush is “more conservative” than Albert Jay Nock because he is the one who goes around calling himself conservative today. Words have meanings.
BTW, Jesus seems to have had a favorite disciple or at least some that he preferred to others.
Of course, and we’re all just conservatives. Nevertheless that word is much too polluted to use. Hence reactionary.
You do yourself a big dis-service when you adopt the name of your enemies.
I should also add that if the Pope no longer qualifies, you’re probably fighting a losing battle to retain this word. In you want to be differentiated from these guys, you’ve got to . . . you know, differentiate yourself
Sunshine Mary and Dalrock do differentiate, not by using a word other than Christian to differentiate themselves, but by criticizing the entirety of organized Christendom for heresy.
As recently as 1930-1950 the Christian right actually existed in the sense that there was a substantial organized group that held to the Jesus/Paul position on marriage, sex, and sex roles..
This no longer exists, at all. And while Bruce Charleton flames away at the Dark Enlightenment, I don’t see him criticizing actually existent Churches in the way that Dalrock and Sunshine Mary do.
Dalrock and Sunshine Mary accept that the Dark Enlightenment really is enlightened, because of the similarity between the Darwinian and the old Christian position on sex. Sunshine Mary routinely invokes the old Testament, and Darwinian atheists of the Dark Enlightenment side by side.. Bruce Charleton does not seem to much like the Darwinian position, and is embarrassed by the old Christian position.
Gyja,
If you want to go back to ancient pre-Christian paganism I can’t stop you. I would try to read up on what that was really like though. In the modern era you’d think the pagan Nazis who leveled similar claims against Christianity would have settled this, but I guess not.
I see little reason to believe God has a stance on what immigration policy should be in the nation today.
“If you want to go back to ancient pre-Christian paganism I can’t stop you. I would try to read up on what that was really like though.”
We’re not getting out of this predicament by being nice to everyone and hoping that they will be nice to us in return.
Nice. Is that the summation of your view of Christianity? I think you really need to study it more.
O/T – but…it seems the South is more violent. Especially Louisiana.
Buisness Insider says there’s no simple answer as to why.
Actually, yes there is…NH has the lowest murder rate at 1.1. LA the highest at 10.4. But there’s no simple answer. And they are all honorable men.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-murder-rate-high-in-louisiana-2013-9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29
I really like the description of a neo-reactionary as ‘a libertarian who’s been mugged by reality.’
BTW, it’s been sad to watch mises.org do backflips to avoid coming anywhere near these issues. The institute has shifted noticeably to Cathedral-approved thinking over the past 10 years. Their scholars (with the exception of Hans-Herman Hoppe and his band) are really being left in the dust on the great questions.
As seculars, libertarians goal has always been to advance themselves. Sinecures, social status, all kinds of pleasurable things for themselves. What lies they have to propagate aren’t really important.
Further, as paid consensus manufacturers academics advocate whatever sells. It doesn’t need to make sense, be consistent, or be morally good.
The secular can offer no rebuttal to this fact. “But method XYZ would lead to ABC better outcome!” Ok, but whose going to carry out XYZ? Is ABC better for them personally? Because if ABC is not better for them personally, why the hell would they give a damn about ABC or XYZ?
All we get after that is a bunch of hand waving about how a magically crowned divine right monarch would care about ABC and know the right XYZ despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary based on the actual history of monarchies. It is kind of funny by the way how the word “divine” is right in the title there.
BTW, you can see the shift in tone lately. From, “we are creating a great new world,” to, “well, its not THAT bad.”
The shift in tone is indicative of the fact that they know its failed, but nobody wants to give up the comfort and power. So the goal now is simply to invent just-so reasons, attack straw men or made up counter factuals, and congratulate themselves on the fact that some of the technological spill off from our floundering societies make a few incredibly poor third worlds a little better off (not through any of their own sacrifices of course).
I think that’s one of the reasons “why now?”. Libertarianism, now gaining in popularity, is coming under closer scrutiny, and it’s flaws are being exposed. After concluding libertarianism is a Good Thing, you have to ask yourself how can it be implemented? Who is it popular with? Who is against it, and why?
Answering those questions honestly, you realize flooding your country with third-world immigrants is not going to help you achieve a free society, especially when they have the power to vote themselves a living out of your pocket.
If a neoreactionary is a libertarian mugged by reality, neoreaction is libertarianism with it’s self-destructive tendencies amended.
Bruce Charleton wants to be more reactionary than thou.
But not only am I more reactionary than Charleton, I, the Darwinist and atheist, am more Christian than Charleton, for I think that the position of Jesus and Paul on marriage and sex roles was wise, right, and appropriate for the nature of man, while Charleton finds it an inconvenient embarassment unsuitable for modern times.
Jim, your understanding of Christianity is bafflingly infantile. I can not comprehend why a man of your obvious intelligence caricatures Christianity in such a way. What do you hope to achieve by doing this?
As an atheist, I think that religion is at worst a scam (see Aisha’s criticism of Mohammed’s revelation that he was allowed to marry more wives) but is at best the wisdom of the ages, expressed in fairy tales and backed by divine authority to make it intelligible to the masses
Sunshine Mary and Dalrock are Dark Enlightenment Christians, and Sunshine Mary routine invokes both the old testament and Darwin side by side. I admire their Christianity as the wisdom of the ages.
Sunshine Mary endorses Darwin and the Dark Enlightenment, and I endorse Sunshine Mary as the authentic voice of the ancient wisdom of Christianity.
Ok, but I hope you do understand it is rather silly to claim you are more Christian than Charlton, when you don’t actually understand what Christianity is. Does this make sense?
But I do understand what Christianity is: A Christian believes that Jesus is Lord, which is to say, wholly man and wholly God.
And that therefore Jesus had authority to set aside large amounts of inconvenient Mosaic law, and to confirm or strengthen some parts of the law, but his apostolic successors cannot have such authority.
Like Lycurgus, he had to be kicked upstairs in order to stabilize what he had destabilized.
One of the few parts of the Mosaic law that Jesus confirmed or strengthened was that on marriage, divorce, and sex roles.
Bruce Charleton, however, like almost all of actually existent Christianity, seems to think that today’s Church has authority to set that aside also.
So I think I know what Christianity is better than Bruce Charleton.
They have been undermining marriage continuously from 1600 to the present day, just as they have been suppressing Christmas from 1600 to the present day.
The Puritans were guilty of many things but the above is absurd. The first part is bad enough, though could be argued, but the second is just lying. In my lifetime only one identifiable group has been at war with Christmas. Their names and the organizations they represent make it clear they not the descendants of Puritans.
http://defendchristmas.com/
I don’t regard Jim Donaldson/ Jamesd127 as a *deliberate* liar and slanderer of my reputation; because (sadly, because there was brilliance there) he has become so consumed by bitterness and vengefulness as to be incapable of seeing straight or following plain logic. He is, in my opinion, on the opposite side from myself and in service to my enemy; since he refuses to repent even his most egregious mistakes and celebrates arrogance, vileness and destruction. I would ask readers to notice that when he ascribes to me views (which in fact I do NOT hold), he does not follow the usual blog convention of linking to some source to back-up his claims of what I supposedly believe (because, in this case, there is no source except his darkened imagination).
Bruce, no need need to be naming names except that which is visible publicly. If that which is stated is public, then nevermind 🙂
Right?
Reason needs no face.
Jim Donaldson can be fun to read because he revels in saying controversial things. But the accuracy coefficient is lower for his blog than maybe any other blog that I read. He does not feel a need to marshall many facts to arrive at his extraordinary claims. In one post he insisted that the Fed has no gold (none at all!) would not be persuaded off of this unlikely position. His only datapoint seemed to be that they are taking their time repatriating Germany’s gold.
Still taking their time. It has been quite a while.
From which I conclude, if not zero gold, not nearly enough gold to cover what the Fed owes Germany.
Why now?
The Enlightenment was about the ideas of reason and individualism. We took those ideas really far, and it went exponential in the last few decades. What we realized is that it went to far, with obvious negative effects for society.
For reason we realized that logical inquiry can’t solve the big questions in life. Hence the ennui, atomization, and obvious spiritual dysfunction you observe in every day life.
In addition, we’ve found that reason is a lot flimsier then we imagine. Human beings act on instinct, and in 99% of cases the role of reason is simply to rationalize that instinct. Since we no longer acknowledge the sinful nature of some instincts we’ve taken to believing that the rationalizations are based on solid reasoning, with disastrous consequences.
In the sphere of individualism advances in both lived experience and science have shown us that people are not born blank sheets of paper. That while they do have agency they also have inherent natures and traits that they have no control over. Moreover, attempts to ignore or undermine those inherent natures have had disastrous consequences.
The Dark Enlightenment is the acknowledgement of the flaws of fetishizing reason and individualism beyond their appropriate place in a more traditional set of values. It’s coming about now because those ideas radicalized over the last several decades and because technological progress can no longer mask the underlying rot these ideas have caused.
asdf commented on Why now?.
“We hold these truths to be self evident: That all men were created equal”
This is not reason, but unreason, not individualism but collectivism.
“Endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”
Civil war coming, where some white people use the inalienable rights of black people to alienate the inalienable rights of other white people.
[…] muses on the Why Now? of neoreaction. I’d prefer to first answer the question: “What Now?” I.e., is […]
Bruce Charlton
I trust then you will be laying into all actually existent post 1950 churches the way that Dalrock and Sunshine Mary do, and the way that you have been laying into to the Dark Enlightenment, and they have not.
You identify with groups that most definitely do hold the beliefs that I attribute to you, and do not criticize them for holding those beliefs.
Foseti got it right. The left is winning. The winners write the books (and newspapers?). The books become history. The history depends on the winners.
Three sides to every story. Only one being the truth, which is unknown.
For a small example:
This is a masterpiece. Not through sheer technical wizardry, but through sheer inborn traits:
That is a mighty song. Have you heard it? Probably not. The problem with negging art is that the negger(s) haven’t heard or haven’t given a shit about music for a long time. Relatively speaking, I’d put that (the song above, note for note) equally on a wall with Bach, or Mozart.
Bach correctly thought (does any book say this?) harmony is the soul of all music. Thus he produced hundreds of amazing music based off of four whole notes.
Mozart, like Schubert, thought (or composed) music that seems to be brought from a theory of melody over harmony.
Anybody that knows anything, in any tuning, harmony is melody, and so now what?
Some assume no music to be found, or art. There is music to be found, as there is art to be found.
Jeremy Soule for example, practically created a new genre – a new ambient orchestral genre – to his repertoire. I go back all the way to Palestrina. Haven’t heard anything like Jeremy. I know nothing about history. Too busy to bother with that shit. Mises is calling but I have to make my way, slowly but surely.
Art and music ARE going along as expected. Just see where you are unwilling to look.
Harp. Amazing. Gets a little weird, but hey, the structure (bach) and melody (mozart) are present in spades.
Fact.
Read my book to find out more.
Below I forget to post link to a Bachian/Mozart piece.
Jeremy Soule: Alls Well. Check it out. Fascinating piece of work. Trust me.
Older than a boulder
Old books; old crooks
History is mystery
Past is a blast
Past isn’t far enough
Enough is rough
Oceans sweep the narrative
New conclusions, are blue
See the sky? See the earth – the gray?
Nature kills all, does not seek, we do….
Seeking sees nature
Nature has no remorse
Mature – sees the seeking
Emptiness, voidness, nothingness, forever…
Ever knows forever
Now knows nothing…
History, a mystery
The new have no clue
Art is a fart
Knowing…
Impossible…
(dedicated to Jim’s blog written in a minute.;…)
All you nuggas including F, should check this baller out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24564487
Band: Sky Harbor
Singer: Daniel Tompkins
Dan is a fucking BEAST! Come at me brah! (16,000 jews) come at me!
(I kid)
Point being that Dan, an unknown would have so much fun raping the 1200ad dudes in a voice contest it becomes comical.
Art – painting and such – is EXACTLY the same. Let’s get real brahs! History books do a lot but they don’t do that muich lol
[…] Why now? is tackled by the blogger Foseti. His explanation for the novelty of Neoreaction is that one of the key realizations of the intellectual movement : “is that progressivism has been beating its opponents for centuries. This concept is difficult to grasp because 1) none of us have lived through centuries and 2) since progressives always win, they always get to write the history. One of the necessary conditions for a Dark-Enlightenment-style movement was something like this or this.” […]
[…] now?” Foseti wants to […]