Comments on: On Power

By: Struggles for Sovereignty |

Struggles for Sovereignty | — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:25:37 +0000

[…] either country, possesses a stable sovereignty over the other sides? To no extent at all. Otherwise, there would be no real struggle. What we see in the Middle East is what happens when sovereignty (e.g., Mubarak’s and […]

By: fotrkd

fotrkd — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:44:29 +0000

Zero Hedge just posted a 'nobody really believes, but they're waiting for somebody else to do something about it' piece. It actually reminded me of a George Monbiot guardian article calling for citizens to rise up and unite, which all put together made me think of Hitler and my school history lessons. America with its unique relationship with communism may be a special case, but I do remember being told that the fear of communism was a significant factor in terms of boosting support for national socialism. On that logic isn't the popular support and anger of the left a more accurate indicator of where we are in terms of 'belief'?

By: Scharlach

Scharlach — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:40:46 +0000

I’ll have to go back and follow the critiques more carefully. I still think neocameralism has utility, if not in the details at least in the broad vision. Even if you think it has fallen into ruins, I imagine there is valuable rubble, or perhaps even the foundation is still in tact.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:11:54 +0000

I worry that K-selection types are the worst for this — look around the world for glassy, hypnotized stares and tell me I’m wrong …

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:09:38 +0000

Yes, sold through the Killer Apple Store

By: Thales

Thales — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:10:59 +0000

Even more, they like other people being told what to do.

The killer app for language: the command.

Julian Jaynes would be proud.

(Tagline: “Killer App for the Killer Ape!”)

By: Nick B. Steves

Nick B. Steves — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:16:20 +0000

As the situation gets more desperate, the masses will become even easier to manipulate, and the mesmerists will get ever better at what they do, which is to deepen popular delusion.

Though that is a strong tendency in humans, I think different races of men do not respond equally to desperation. Nor do they to mesmerism. r-selection works well until it doesn’t, whereupon the K-selecteds get to have their day.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:22:05 +0000

Nothing remotely that organized! With everyone telling me (persuasively) that neocameralism collapsed into ruins at some point when I wasn’t paying proper attention, I’m just trying to think things through, and — of course — to suck the Outside in high-Vulcan commentariat into helping me with that.

By: Scharlach

Scharlach — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:45:29 +0000

People are humans, humans are gregarious hierarchical apes with hardwired paleolithic morality, and most of them like to be told what to do. Even more, they like other people being told what to do.

In addition to being one of the most quotable things you’ve ever written, this also makes a question pop into my head: is your treatment of Power here merely descriptive, a statement of fact about the destiny of hardwired hierarchical apes? Or are there some implicit lessons here for how neoreactionaries should theorize Power if (when?) the current Idea of it–the Cathedral–begins to lose its purchase?

By: admin

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 03:19:54 +0000

Power is a consensual hallucination running on a substrate of real and irreducible anarchy — that’s what fascism at its most intelligent understands, and its why fascists tend to win. People are humans, humans are gregarious hierarchical apes with hardwired paleolithic morality, and most of them like to be told what to do. Even more, they like other people being told what to do. The more things come unstrung, the more precious power will seem, from the majority perspective, since it promises that something can be done — in a way that ordinary people understand (deliberately, charismatically, and in keeping with ape-band intuitions of ‘justice’). As the situation gets more desperate, the masses will become even easier to manipulate, and the mesmerists will get ever better at what they do, which is to deepen popular delusion. Dysfunction deepens dependency, which exacerbates dysfunction. Eventually cybernetics achieves what politics cannot, as runaway dynamics propel the collective power-dream into catastrophe, complicated by unintelligible things slanting in from outside. Then it gets really interesting …

Libertarians become neoreactionaries when they recognize that the people have no desire to be free. Yet some neoreactionaries remain libertarian enough to suspect that freedom might ultimately be compulsory.