A: We’ve got nothing against you personally. We don’t even know you. It’s just that we’re more comfortable restricting club membership to upper-income straight white male English-speaking Protestants.
B: Then you’re not very good Protestants!
A: Damn! You’re right …

Red tribe Blue tribe Grey tribe Color-out-of-space tribe

— Deity Of Religion (@DeityOfReligion) January 1, 2015

Atlantean/Hyperborean/Turanian could be generalized out into a political typology.

— Wesley Morganston (@nydwracu) December 14, 2014

Atlantean: Nick Land, bonobo rationalists, Ron Paul, maybe Gorbachev.

— Wesley Morganston (@nydwracu) December 14, 2014

Hyperborean: Marinetti, some of the Progressive Era reformers, Hitler, maybe Modi and Khrushchev. Some of the left wraps it in Atlanteanism.

— Wesley Morganston (@nydwracu) December 14, 2014

Turanian: Anissimov, Niyazov, Dugin, Hindu nationalists, Kim Jong-un, maybe Stalin.

— Wesley Morganston (@nydwracu) December 14, 2014

OK, this is seriously interesting and — I suspect — highly productive, but did Nydwracu just throw me into a freaking cuddle pile?

(The trigger link.)

Islam is Nature’s solution. Like the Architect from The Matrix Reloaded, it is Nature’s way of saying that “There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.” It is stultifying, depressing, and tyrannical. It is an enemy of real culture, with the most militant variations smashing the tombs and shrines not only of other religious traditions, but of their own. Modern Wahhabism is funded by Western decadence, enabled by Western weakness, in many ways a product of Western postmodernism and self-hatred. […] And lest what I say be misunderstood, it is obviously, laughably, and comically false. It is sustained by the protective cordon it has created around criticism. Yet believing that a pedophiliac illiterate transcribed the literal word of God still makes more sense than believing all men are created equal. Islam’s refusal to allow critical analysis of itself is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Islam is the first term in Hood’s tetralemma. It’s the executioners blade for a civilization that has lost all cosmic purchase upon existence. A disgusting way to die, begged for by the broken, in the end (which is already) — because at least it’s a way to die.

The remaining three terms entertained by Hood are the “god of our grandfathers, the White Christ upon whose image the West was built” which “is dying”, faithless liberalism (including modern Christianity), and paganism. Among these options, he declares, “The Old Gods are my own choice.”

Much of this analysis — down to its grimmest conclusions — is highly compelling, even when abstracted from the flow of Hood’s vigorous prose. The proposed remedy, however, is by far its weakest component.

To make a choice among Gods, is that not the final expression of liberalism, and therefore of degenerated Christianity? If we have learnt anything from the manifold failures of multiculturalism, it is that religious freedom is downstream of religion. ‘Freedom of conscience’ lies at the furthest remove from a genuinely secular conception, if any such thing is even possible. If it now seems imaginable to shop for different gods, it is because of the way a distinctive religious tradition has worked out. If political considerations seem to occupy a position of meta-religious authority, the descent has been deeper still. Choice is internal to religion, even if the decayed image of religion serves to obscure this fundamental fact. Contemporary Occidental paganism remains dissident Christianity. There is no decision that could alter that.

As Hood himself states: The very fact that I frame this identity as a “choice” is itself proof of decadence — a vibrant metaphysics simply is and has nothing to do with a rational actor listing pros and cons. Ironically, those who profess the Old Gods are weakened because what they profess is so obviously new and a product of innovation and modernity. Few would even call it a real faith that actually expresses literal belief in personalized divinities. […] The new pagan cults that preach fanaticism and virility owe too much to reason and deconstruction.

A God that is not the very principle of destiny is no God at all. Are we, then, destined to rediscover the Old North European Gods? The impossibility of answering such a question with confident affirmation says everything necessary about it. The Old Gods manifestly failed against the challenge of the new One. There is no reason at all to suspect that this outcome has been rescinded by the subsequent calamities befalling the new faith.

Religions are providential. They are units of fate. The claims they make far exceed rational controversy or personal decision, in the abyss of their decadence no less than at the apex of their flourishing. If Christian Modernity is a process of escalating nihilism, as Nietzsche conceived it to be, it is nevertheless a road without turn-offs, that can only be followed to the end.

ADDED: Second long (italicized) quote has been grafted in, thanks to Irving (in comments below), who pointed out its clearly indispensable relevance to the topic. Just in case it is not already obvious, the Hood essay is a superbly crafted masterpiece — its quality only enhanced by its supple self-ironization. It deserves to be a landmark reference whenever this question re-arises, as it will continually do.

Earth is dying, unable to further sustain human life. Mankind has thrown their last resources into creating a space ship that can reach a habitable planet. However, the space ship can only carry 10,000 people and little is known about the planet beyond gravity and oxygen levels. With the literal fate of humanity lying before us, who do we send and why?

After that, it gets WEIRD (+ ++). In a nutshell, Lutter’s ‘we’, while — apparently in absolute innocence — employed to represent the voice of humanity as a whole, is self-evidently processing the problem in a way that would make no sense beyond its own peculiar thede. ‘We’ could probably all come to the reasonable conclusion that only the Swiss get to survive. (Right?)

In passing, he notes that ‘we’ all agree multiculturalism is a dysfunctional mess: “For all the praise of multiculturalism, no one would seriously bet a diverse group of cultures would give the greatest chance for success. …” (The whole paragraph is a jaw-dropper.)

The main point, however: “Picking a cultural group to colonize a new planet and save humanity forces the mind to focus on positive and negative attributes of the cultural group.” This perfectly exemplifies the weirded out intelligence of libertarians, expressed as a detached universalism wholly incognisant of its own deracination. The obvious rejoinder: No one thinks like that (except you guys). It might be over-compensation to suggest that two-thirds of the world’s population would respond to the total extermination of the Swiss with vague amusement, but it’s at least as plausible as Lutter’s assumption that the good people of Helvetia would be neutrally evaluated, selected, and then cheered on as the sole remnant of ‘humanity’, to such an extent that not being Swiss would be cheerfully accepted as an ethnic death sentence.

This isn’t meant to be any kind of denuciation — it’s very possible Lutter is playing his (weird) audience hard, and doing something subversively dark around the back. As barb-hooked bait for libertarian nuttiness, his post is really something. I can’t wait to see what his comment thread looks like.

ADDED: “I do not believe anything I wrote was terribly controversial …” (At least one of us has to be psychotically dissociated — not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Naturally, if people are able to haul themselves — or be hauled — to any significant extent from out of their condition of total depravity (or default bioreality), that’s a good thing. To argue the opposite would be full-on Satanism, and we wouldn’t want that. Lamenting immorality, however, is something to be done quickly, and comprehensively, before moving on — without looking back. Man is fallen, naturally selected, and / or economically self-interested, and this is a basic condition. It’s not a remediable flaw, to be thrashed out of a mud-spattered angel. (No faction of the Trichotomy has any grounds upon which to base moral preening.) Realism is, first of all, working with what we have, and that’s something approximately Hobbesian. There’s social order, and there’s homo homini lupus, and in fact always some complexion of the two.

Anybody motivated to improve themselves is already doing it. As for those not so motivated, moral exhortation will be useless (at best). At its most effective, moral hectoring will increase the value of moral signalling, and that is a worse outcome — by far — than honest cynicism. It is worthless, because it is incredibly cheap, and then worse than useless, because its costs are considerable. A ‘movement’ lost in moral self-congratulation has already become progressive. Having persuaded itself of its worthiness to wield power, it has set out on the road to perdition. We have seen what that path looks like, and even given it a name (the Cathedral).

It is by empowering moralism that modernity has failed. This is not a mistake to saunter complacently into again.

Social evolution is just a modern myth. No scientific theory exists about how the process is supposed to work. There’s been much empty chatter about memes — units of information or meaning that supposedly compete with one another in society. But there’s no mechanism for the selection of human concepts similar to that which Darwin believed operated among species and which later scientists showed at work among genes. Bad ideas like racism seem to hang around forever, while the silly idea of social evolution has shown an awesome power to mutate and survive.

(Gnon laughs.)

@AimlessGromar @Outsideness @ClarkHat The difference between #Rx and #NRx IMO is only caste.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@Outsideness @AimlessGromar @ClarkHat The disagreement seems to be whether theorizing is necessary or not i.e. a caste difference.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@libertybookmeet @AimlessGromar @Outsideness @ClarkHat To me, seems like those claiming Rx are standard US vaisyas, NRx are (ex)Brahmins.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@AimlessGromar @ClarkHat @Outsideness @libertybookmeet Where are #NRx from? England? Minnesota? California? NY? DC? Canada? BRAHMIN ALERT!

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@AimlessGromar @ClarkHat @Outsideness @libertybookmeet Where are #Rx from? Tennessee? Texas? Mothers and former Paleocons? VAISYA ALERT!

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@_Hurlock_ Progressive is not the same as Brahmin (or it is, depending on whether you see us as Right-Brahmins or ex-Brahmins).

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@henrydampier @_Hurlock_ The problem is Brahmin has two distinct connotations: US urban elf progressive democrat OR intellectual elite.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

This model processes the NRx / Rx gulf difference to my entire satisfaction. It works beyond the Anglosphere, too:

@MarkYuray @henrydampier one major difference is that in bulgaria most of the 'vaisyas' i.e. lower class are old-school communists

— Hurlock (@_Hurlock_) November 4, 2014

@_Hurlock_ @henrydampier Culturally or ideologically? In Russia and Serbia the situation is similar, however…

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@_Hurlock_ @henrydampier In Serbia and Russia both the same people who glorify the old communists will glorify Orthodoxy and nationalism.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

@_Hurlock_ @henrydampier This is because communism is viewed not as ideology but as an expression of national strength i.e. ethno-respect.

— Mark Yuray (@MarkYuray) November 4, 2014

It’s far less an ideological difference, than a difference over the importance of ideology. It’s also a matter of thede, rather than phyle (I’m assuming). The initial, obvious, and somewhat disconcerting implication is that nothing is going to be shifted anywhere significant by ideological maneuvers. NRx and Rx will each attract their core constituencies, after which there’s only pointless bickering. On the positive side, there’s our work to do …

ADDED: A slightly different tack (from June). “NRx is signalling to ‘open-minded progressives’ aka ‘cool people’.”

ADDED: Heading back a little further (to December 2013), contains much of relevance and interest.

Time preference and provincialism are both special cases of salience preference.

— Gate Of Heavens (@GateOfHeavens) October 31, 2014

On the assumption that most reactionary-types will want to refuse the idea of an integrated ‘salience preference’ — what is the counter-argument? (I’m also wondering whether ethico-political humanism — in its restrictive rather than expansive usage — can be bound into the same super-syndrome.)

There are definitely two opposing theories of a fast high-tech future. I call them “Accelerationism” and “Futurism”

I’m a futurist Techcom, Land is an accelerationist Techcom.

FWIW I think this is nicely done, but the complexities will explode when we get into the details. Fortunately, distinctions closely paralleling Nyan’s enhancement / artifice option have been quite carefully honed within certain parts of the Singularity literature. Hugo de Garis, in particular, does a lot with it — through the discrimination between ‘Cosmists’ (artificers) and ‘Cyborgists’ (enhancers) — although he thinks it is ultimately unstable, and a more sharply polarized species-conservative / techno-futurist conflict is bound to eventually absorb it.

It’s also interesting to see Nyan describe himself as a “futurist Techcom”. That’s new, isn’t it?