I appreciate the earnest sincerity of your response. That communicated a lot. It opened up a lot, too. It got me thinking beyond what was said, and beyond what is written here. I think that’s good. But then I’m just a dreamer.

“critique of my framework”

My critique, as you call it, is not so much about you and your articulation of frameworks, it is about those frameworks themselves. I’m not saying they’re necessarily wrong, in any wholesale way. But there are others, and I’m trying to be careful. It’s a way of keeping an awareness of them being in play, just in case.

” the obviousness of pre-modern ‘deprivation’ (e.g., the Sentinelese off the coast of India haven’t even figured out how to make fire), you don’t even see ‘no deprivation.’”

Of course I don’t deny the fact that there is deprivation. There’s deprivation in First World countries, too. I came across the Sentinelese last year, there are a lot of tribes in and around India.

“This is a list of Scheduled Tribes in India, as recognised the Constitution of the Indian Republic; a total of 645 district tribes. The term “Scheduled Tribes” refers to specific indigenous peoples whose status is acknowledged to some formal degree by national legislation. A collective term in use locally to describe most of these peoples is “Upajati” (literally “clans/tribes/groups”).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scheduled_Tribes_in_India

Thanks for bringing up the Sentinelese again, I’ve learnt something new this time around. They’re an amazing tribe. Locked away for 40-60 000 years, an absolute hostility to outsiders, their language hasn’t been deciphered yet, etc.. And, yeah, they have no fire, though they’re fiery. But they can survive tsunamis, and no-one else knows how. It’s tempting here to go into SF territory and dream a bit…

…The Sentinelese inhabit a different region of ontological possibilities. Their isolation from others, their relative undeveloped state, opens them up to a set of possibilities and interactions with the ‘world’ that are lost to the particular forms of ‘development’ exemplified by other human groups. Among these possibilities, is the ability to survive tsunamis. Perhaps they have a ‘group-mind’ of some sort: that arises from their unique configuration of culture, location, history, etc.: being itself is changed for them: they are aware of other humans as aliens from another dimension: emissaries of a threatening process thrown up by the world around them, to which they have to be hostile. If they allow the aliens in, they lose their ability to survive tsunamis, perhaps other things, too. They don’t ‘know’ this exactly, they experience it in a visceral sense, according to a different ‘viscerality’ from other humans. The way they inhabit ‘Nature’ is different, and ‘Nature’ gives them different things than it does us. Other humans are ‘supernatural’ to them, they experience things ‘supernatural’ to other humans, like the ability to survive tsunamis…

It’s the kind of story Brian Aldiss would have written, perhaps Ian Watson. You get the drift. It keeps things open. We’re in a different space now, one which contextualises both mainstream humans and the Sentinelese. From this space, present understandings of ‘reality’, mainstream tribal understandings, are localised, too. And from such a space, it is possible to discern differences more clearly, to see both the mainstream and the Sentinelese as expressions. Perhaps it is even possible to learn something from these considerations, to see something that mainstream development has neglected, or is deficient in? So, we’ve had a bit of fun, but we’ve been roused out of the habits that can constitute the blockages of insularity, a bit anyway. Now, I’m well aware that it is possible to reverse everything I’ve said here, and go back to those ‘habits’, just as the Sentinelese do, with their bows and arrows.

What can we say? That mainstream habits are better? That their deprived lives will be improved through whatever mainstream ways have to offer? That their current ‘autonomy’ is worthless, they should be assimilated? To quibble about this is just anthropological romanticism of the other? That the only scale of values by which these things are to be measured is that deriving from mainstream valorisations? Because we know better, our concepts of knowledge work, and they’ve gained dominance, after all?

Okay. But you see how that could apply to neoreactive calls for autonomy? That any group seeking independence from the “Cathedral” is reacting just like the antisocial Sentinelese? That any appeal to exceptionalism of any kind is a romantic mystification along the lines of the SF idea above: one that generates biased interpretations of data governed by the ethos of such mystification: or disingenuous, enforced, and manipulative selection of characteristics claimed by the exceptionalism, and overly valorised? And so on…

If one were to get ‘real’, as it were, question the Sentinelese survival factor as not being ‘supernatural’, as being down to something that is assimilable by mainstream understanding, and then justify their forced assimilation and integration, citing all the benefits of ‘modern’ culture for them: assuming the ‘superiority’ of the mainstream by citing, in the final analysis, the mainstream’s greater resources, technologies, military capability, etc., in short, the Hegelian might-makes-right that governs Occidental culture and derives from the metaphysics of ‘reality': then one has to question why there is any neoreaction against the “Cathedral” at all? Especially when this “Cathedral” is depicted as being the epitome of power? Or why complain about the banks and finance system, the ‘victors’ of the Darwinian race?

“I might say that you begin all your musings with a vision of how the world should be according to your utopian view rather that with a vision of how the world simply presents itself; therefore, every philosophical step you take (whether logical or not) is already limned by a peculiar brand of utopian morality.”

Well, I’m definitely using the theoretical spaces from which both present and utopian perspectives can be derived. What else can I do? If I’m trying to understand?
And I don’t think that the ‘world’ is only a matter of simple ‘presentation’. Simplicity is available, but it’s always connected with the possibility of complexity, by definition. I don’t think simplicity is necessarily some magical Occam’s key to Being or Truth or whatever. It can be, but the inflexible and unquestioning worship of what are held to be its persuasive examples (the successes of scientific method, etc.) aren’t so much to do only with the way things ‘are’, but rather with the systematic way they need to be approached to gain an understanding. I’m not going to go into these issues here, they’re complex.
What is simple for one, can be complex for another, and vice versa.

“peculiar brand of utopian morality”: do you think it’s a bad thing, I guess you do, Nick Land almost certainly feels that I am barking up a mystical tree, I would imagine?

“psycho-analyzing the other and the other’s motives.”

I don’t mind if you do that, perhaps I’ll learn something.

“It devolves into arguments about each person’s “representations” and “ethos” and forsakes any attempt at addressing the material reality that exists regardless of how we represent it.”

I don’t think that “representations” and “ethos” are so easily separated from “material reality”? I’m not so sure if “material reality” is quite such a monolithic beast, either. Again, I’m being careful.

” If you’re ready to have a conversation about that reality—ready to attempt to triangulate our partial views on it to come to a consensus, to match our “representations” with the underlying facts as best as we are able”

I can only do what I do. I’ve only just archived “Outside in”, and its linked articles. It’s going to take time to go through. A fact is “a thing made”, as is a fiction, it’s best not to be unnerved by them.
There is no need for a forced or false consensus. I’m not censoring anyone, I’m not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with anyone (whether “Neoreaction”, the “Cathedral”, or whatever), I am trying to understand.
I don’t have a view, as such, really, that I can express in conventional ways. So I don’t ‘know’ that I can come to a consensus with anyone, not that I would rule out consensual effects.
“It’s not what you think, but that you think, that is the source of all things.” Zen saying.

“non sequiturs about cosmetics spending”

What I meant is that it is possible to question all non-NASA expenditure. The person who made the point about cosmetics was implicitly considering them frivolous, in contrast to NASA projects. Your points about welfare spending and significance of NASA projects to Afro-American males, likewise, implicitly considers them as frivolous, in contrast to NASA projects. Or, in all cases, as frivolity is not stated, the juxtapositions do imply the non-NASA expenditures to be drains on general spending, whether government or private, and leave open the possibility of questioning.To be honest, I think NASA was making the cosmetics point in answer to the question: “How can we justify the Moon missions when there are starving people?” The cosmetics point answers: “If you’re all so concerned, do you think buying make-up is more important than feeding people, because that’s what you’re doing?

” and in putting “quotes” around words in order to deconstruct the binary at the heart of my social and linguistic constructions . . . there’s really no point.”

I use the quotes as indicators that the term could be problematic, I’m using the term gently, carefully. Or I have left something unsaid. Or it is a quote. Or it’s an irony. Damn, why do I do that!? I haven’t really read much Derrida, either, just “Positions”, which I like. lol It’s just what I do.

And to merely indicate the constructed nature of any ‘point’ or ‘position’ is not necessarily a rejection, or an acceptance.

The space of pointlessness provides understanding of all points. To proceed only according to a particular point, within its ambit, is to be governed by it, is to be a drone in its economy. Drones neither create nor solve. There’s no need to be a ‘drone’.

Do you know of any books/resources that cover the recent d-evolution of the history of law (ideally from a Nietzschean angle)?

Although I did love the NASA video . . .

Thanks for confirming my belief that it’s really pointless to argue these things on an internet forum. We’re obviously in disagreement on very fundamental issues. Most of your response was a critique of my framework, which indicates that any meaningful discussion we might have would need to be prologued by addressing a lot of fundamentals and definitions. And quite honestly, all a prologue would do is force us to realize that we simply inhabit different universes. For example, where I see the obviousness of pre-modern ‘deprivation’ (e.g., the Sentinelese off the coast of India haven’t even figured out how to make fire), you don’t even see ‘no deprivation.’ You’d probably rather talk about my “representation” of the Sentinelese, my “monolithic concept” of technology, and the “blinkered avarice” of my priors.

And that’s fine. I can play the same game. Continuing with the same example, I might say that your refusal to recognize the intellectual and material poverty of tribal and third world living probably arises from your blinkered class privilege—you’ve never actually spent a year without hot water or refrigerators, so you take them for granted and have no problem framing peoples who live without them as simply existing in “alternate ways-of-being.” I might say that you begin all your musings with a vision of how the world should be according to your utopian view rather that with a vision of how the world simply presents itself; therefore, every philosophical step you take (whether logical or not) is already limned by a peculiar brand of utopian morality.

So on and so forth. But this kind of talk gets us nowhere. It simply devolves into each person psycho-analyzing the other and the other’s motives. It devolves into arguments about each person’s “representations” and “ethos” and forsakes any attempt at addressing the material reality that exists regardless of how we represent it. If you’re ready to have a conversation about that reality—ready to attempt to triangulate our partial views on it to come to a consensus, to match our “representations” with the underlying facts as best as we are able—then we can have a dialogue. However, so long as you’re more interested in non sequiturs about cosmetics spending and in putting “quotes” around words in order to deconstruct the binary at the heart of my social and linguistic constructions . . . there’s really no point.

“Since poverty is ultimately a choice, although typically a tacit one, the only way to “eradicate world poverty” — even in principle — is to control people to a near-totalitarian degree. Given the inevitability of perverse outcomes, in practice even that wouldn’t work.”

I’m not sure you’re right. Although, I can imagine all the examples you could give that would show that. And, really, I would say that totalitarian procedures are well evidenced in current setups, anyway. Chomsky’s phrase, “manufacturing consent”, indicates why that is tolerated. Wars are won through incessant production, in culture, too. The culture doesn’t even have to be any good, it just has to work.

“There’s a poem somewhere: “What is the Moon Landing to a Negro?” or some such. That set the stage for much r/d policy that wasn’t military related (though I love the military stuff, too, don’t get me wrong). America would be terra-forming Mars by now if we hadn’t devolved into a welfare democracy.”

You seem to be blaming racial minorities and social welfare for the deprivation of interplanetary possibilities? I do remember it being said that America spent more on cosmetics than on the Space Programme: it being the 70s, this would imply that the culture of female appearance and stylisation took precedence over space exploration and development. Are you going to blame women, too, for wanting to look ‘good’? And who do they want to look good for? Who gave birth to you?
If we’re honest, the Apollo missions were a military exercise, the Soviets were first into space, and the USA had to better that. And it did! The history of Afro-American involvement in space exploration is excellently summarised in this short documentary – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX_687HwX9c

“My best friend’s life…”

The mobile phones and computors were given as an example of 70s dreams that were realised. The following examples outlined dystopic developments that, indeed, are “deplorable”. Should’ve have written it more clearly.

“Also: anyone who has traveled to a third-world country will tell you that fat poor Westerners dining on Burger King is far preferable to emaciated children huddled over pools of dirty water.”

It could be said that the majority of “Third World” problems are the after-effects of prior colonial interventions and continuing economic exploitations. How things would have developed without such incursions is difficult to assess, especially in the case of culturally isolated regions. Your example is reductive, it merely contrasts two states, offering preferential evaluation that shows cultural bias. There’s a lot behind those two images.

“Oil companies don’t need to block the development of alternate energy because alternate energy is not a threat to them. The minute an alternative becomes viable on a mass scale, ExxonMobil will invest, invest, invest. To think otherwise is to demonstrate one’s ignorance of corporate strategy.”

Oil companies are sitting on alternative energy patents. The notions of viability you speak of are determined by specific corporate interests struggling to survive in the space of competitive commerce, rather than any concept of general well-being. That’s a very different ethos. If you think differently, why would there be any need for an ‘oil lobby’. And why something like this – http://www.alternet.org/print/story/67793/democratic_leaders_poised_to_sabotage_hope_for_renewable_energy

“The entire point of science is mastery of environment.

I would of thought science attempts to understand and ‘know’ the ‘environment’. The potential application of resulting ‘knowledge’, the ability to produce ‘effects’, constitutes what you’re calling ‘mastery’. Is not science ‘itself’ a feature of the environment, neurophysics wants to say it is a development of it? There’s lot more that could be said here.

“If the Enlightenment had been ‘green,’ it never would have gotten very far.”

Wouldn’t a true ‘enlightenment’ render unneccessary any ‘green’ oppositions?

“Now, I’ll admit to having environmentalist sympathies. I grew up in Southern California, so I hold pristine spaces at a premium.”

You like deserts? “at a premium”: nice to see the way you evaluate “pristine spaces”. lol.

But I know that New Science is the best way to clean up whatever messes Older Science leaves behind. These messes are not the result of greed or stupidity; they are simply the by-products of people trying to figure shit out and trying to figure out how to put the shit to use.”

Sure, there’s ‘trial and error’ in the learning process. But fetishising an ignorant and impoverished concept of Science, “new lamps for old”, only characterises a blinkered and avaricious utilisation.

“The natural state of humanity is abject poverty. Don’t believe it? Spend a few weeks with one of the ‘uncontacted’ tribes in the Amazon or South Asia.pace Odyssey Technology is the fons et origo of humanity’s rise out of abject poverty. It cannot, however, be blamed for not having risen everyone everywhere out of it.”

I disagree, you’re just focussing on instances of the apparently undeveloped, counterposing them to a monolithic concept of “technology”, which you’re attempting to represent. Things are more complex than that. What your schematic does show is a simplistic ‘deprivation’ ethos, one that usually drives “blinkered and avaricious utilisation”. Sure, you can abstract someone out of society and place them, unacculturated and unprepared, in the ‘wilderness’, give them a lesson in those ‘harshnesses’, those ‘drivers’, of ‘evolution’ or whatever: but that wouldn’t mean anything. And the ‘bone-to-spaceship’ narrative of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, say, isn’t the only explanatory narrative available for technology. Again, things are more complex than that. But they aren’t for a mindset based on addiction, deprivation, and the exclusion of other possibilities.
Technology can’t be blamed for anything, but people , the ‘operators’, can.

Well, I guess those observations are ‘reactions’, or ‘responses’, and it looks like my own tentative forays into the political quagmire (“Towards A Critique of NewColonial Manifestation – Introduction”, “Contours of Colonial Coercion and Beyond”) could be called “neoreactive”? And it even seems that I’ve been using ‘Neo-‘ and ‘New’ a lot, in formulations like ‘NeoPolitical’, ‘NewColonial’, etc.. But
I’m not coming from any tradition really when I approach these things. I’m sure most of you are much more au fait with political traditions than me. To be honest, fotrkd, I don’t think the two statements you’ve quoted are reactionary. They’re just observations. My basic thesis was that there are no technical or scientific reasons why poverty hasn’t been eliminated. It’s purely a matter of ‘politics’, not lack of resources or know-how.

“But you then seem to still want to believe in these dreams – e.g. ending world poverty.”

You’re right, I do, because of the reasons given above.

“Neo-reaction (I think) says to forget all the universalist lies (all the childhood dreams of what NASA might do); you’re right about anthropic vanity, all the rest of it – so lets see what can be salvaged and built upon.”

Firstly, I want to say that most of my thinking was done in childhood, before I ever read any philosophy. I know a little more now about various phiolosophical traditions, but none of it has undermined the approaches developed in childhood, which I ‘believe’ were right.
The NASA possibilities were achievable, but there was no ‘political’ will to realise them.
About the “universalist lies”: it’s a big universe, and it offers more than a single ‘truth': the ‘lies’ have a raison d’etre, too. Let’s not get too comfortable with any form of compelling evidence, there are always other possibilities…

“Presumably your position is that even if this was (somehow) achievable, human nature would inevitably lead us back down the same path – so look at the transformative effects of technology on human nature – (even) computers and mobiles have begun to seriously rewire us. IF we’re the problem then you know what needs fixing…”

I’m not so sure if ‘human nature’ is such a fixed concept, I started with SF, so was always aware of transformative possibilities. This is why I’m quite happy to dispense with the concept as a Latin regi-mentation. The Indian traditions which developed Yogic practices, are relatively independent of that regi-mentation, if not of others. Although, I’m sure, links could be made, but there are differences.
I’m not so sure it’s so simple to localise ‘problems’ in any but the most banal, perspectival ways. Sure, if you’ve got a delimited field of variables in a machine you’ve built, even a social machine, you can specify difficulties. And that has to be done, but that’s just the beginning. Indexing a symptom alone does not provision a fuller, holistic understanding.

““The root problems are at another level” is an intriguing phrase. Can you tie the goals of neo-reaction into this other level?”

I’m not sure what “neo-reaction” is yet, so I can’t answer that now.

fotrkd, I thank you for your clear and insightful questions. These answers are the best I could do, for now.

Yes, I know I should be careful when extolling NASA. In theory, it’s my favorite government program because it delivers more tangible (material, cultural, intellectual) returns on tax payers’ investment than, say, Medicaid. However, it’s always good to remember that NASA is still a wing of the Cathedral and thus essentially a political organization, as Peter points out.

Still, if we’re going to have a huge centralized government spending lots of money on things, I’d prefer a government spending lots of money on space tech and other r/d. As it stands, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is about $40 billion a year, while NASA is about $17 billion a year. As a comparison, the Transportation and Security Administration (whose task is to screen old white ladies at airports and feel my crotch when I go through security) has a budget of around $8 billion. So, US gives NASA only twice as much as they give the crotch-feelers.