No Way Home
It follows from the analysis of socio-political modernity as a degenerative ratchet that identification of deterioration does not in itself amount to a program for reversing it. The vividness of this problem is directly proportional to the seriousness with which the nature of time, as a practical consideration, is addressed. The essential difference between reaction and neoreaction is adequately articulated as soon as this point is made.
‘Past orientation’ is an impressively defensible value (even by techno-commercial criteria). Retro-directed action, in contrast, is sheer error. This is too obvious an idea to labor over. Those who do not get it have chosen not to.
Unlike the many unsettled controversies of neoreaction, the temptation to simply return, however well-intentioned, merits no more than condescension. In this case — as in so many others — an image is worth a thousand words:
(click on image to enlarge)
Evola said it best:
You can never go back, no matter how much you might want to.
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Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 3:44 pm | QuoteThere is no way back — or out — so we must hope there is a way through.
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Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 7:31 pm | QuoteAnyone who says they want to go back is pushing a radical break that will resemble the past even less than the present.
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Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 7:49 pm | QuoteAdmin never mentions going back. It’s entirely achievable. Move to Sark or the Falklands (or the middle of nowhere in China, Russia…); or if you’re after the atmosphere of an earlier explosive age in the likes of Amsterdam, London, New York… move to Shanghai. The present operates on many time zones. So if you’re not happy where you are, move to a different one. Retro-directed action is merely useless as action for NRx – it doesn’t halt the ratchet.
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Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 9:09 pm | QuoteYes– and the image you used to illustrate the point was hysterically on target. I wish more NR/DE concepts were presented so succinctly and effectively. Me like this.
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Posted on April 21st, 2014 at 11:02 pm | QuoteShanghai isn’t New Old London. It’s in China, so it couldn’t be. It has the form but not the essence.
No, Evola is right about this.
“…what really counts is to be faithful not to past forms and institutions, but rather to principles of which such forms and institutions have been particular expressions, adequate for a specific period of time and in a specific geographical area.”
The hard part — and it was hard even for him — is to articulate, specifically, what those principles are, what sort of ark is required to carry them forward, and what organic form they may take in a new context.
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fotrkd Reply:
April 21st, 2014 at 11:12 pm
It certainly doesn’t have the form (It’s in China, so it couldn’t).
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Malcolm Pollack Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 2:42 am
Yes, well, maybe not that either.
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You cannot turn time directly backwards, that’s like trying to run up the face of a cliff. You must move diagonally.
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Ademonos Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 7:54 am
We’re still thinking in two dimensions. Add one.
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What do you expect them to do? Christianity is a Jewish heresy. Are they supposed to honor Christ as some kind of generic “holy man”?
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Posted on April 22nd, 2014 at 4:56 am | QuoteYet, isn’t the notion that there was ever a home a key delusion in the “trad” wing of neoreactionary politics?
I don’t mean to group smart racial writers with the white trash over Stormfront or the idiots gaping over retconned racial history with Game of Thrones, but there’s a kind of excessive cleanliness to the mental model of history that might be kewl as anti-Cathedralism but it’s not Nick Land/Moldbug reaction — it’s not the clever reappropriation of the better right-winger thinkers of the semi-distant past *while* immersed in future shock.
Americans, to boot. As if America had ever had the political convulsions that led to the prince-elector system of Enlightenment Germany.
What’s your take on Schelling, and the recent Schelling revival, dr. Land?
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admin Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 2:08 pm
My take on the Schelling revival right now is almost perfect ignorance — I’ll try to educate myself. (Assuming the dynamic I.H. Grant is behind the phenomenon?)
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Going home is not a spatial or temporal consideration, but a metaphysical one. Going back is simply an engineering problem, comparable to the one that going forward represents. Deciding which one is superior is a matter of formulating the problems correctly and then solving them – but as usual, we will probably end up with a compromise rather than a pure form of either.
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admin Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 2:09 pm
An engineering problem that involves time-reversal poses peculiar challenges.
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Ademonos Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 5:07 pm
The challenges are similar to those that the problem of going forward along the right path poses. It is a given, though, that walking backwards into the future is never a good plan.
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One could also make the technological argument that dwindling natural resources is literally going to send us back both in terms of capabilities and values, but that would be a minority position on this blog I’m sure.
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admin Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Collapse is a figurative ‘going back’ — but not a real one.
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MW Reply:
April 23rd, 2014 at 1:49 pm
Similar but not the same like all moments in history (even speculative ones). A lot of behavior reactos hate is propelled by technological change. Promiscuity -> birth control | homosexuality -> ARVs | diversity -> trauma centers. Take that away, and a lot of the old structures of morality would come roaring back with a vengeance.
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Interesting paper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect
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admin Reply:
April 22nd, 2014 at 3:01 pm
It does look useful. Was there any special relevance I’m missing?
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northanger Reply:
April 23rd, 2014 at 1:33 am
Life is not like chess.
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fotrkd Reply:
April 23rd, 2014 at 1:53 am
(Hello) Life isn’t… but the D&G war machine nomadology thingymy-jig suggests the thing we’re in is exactly like chess… that’s the horizon, no?
northanger Reply:
April 23rd, 2014 at 6:07 am
that’s the horizon effect, yes?
fotrkd Reply:
April 23rd, 2014 at 10:53 am
Yes, that works better.
[…] them either). “‘Past orientation’ is an impressively defensible value,” Nick Land says, “Retro-directed action, in contrast, is sheer error.” “Home also I cannot […]
Posted on April 24th, 2014 at 8:19 pm | Quote