Keller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines a new global network woven by money and technology that functions almost like a world shadow government. Though it’s hard to grasp the full extent of this invisible network, Easterling argues that it’s not too late for us to change it.

If it’s not too late to ‘change’ it, it’s not too late to intensify and consolidate it. Tech-comm NRx is obviously doing OK, if it already looks this scary.

If we’re already entering the ejection phase of neo-secessionism, it has to be a good thing, right?

This is a nonlinear point, from my perspective, since the rapid development of telepresence is of obvious internal consequence to the recent intensification of Exit-oriented and neo-secessionist discussion. (Balaji S. Srinivasan brought this out very clearly in his October 2013 talk on the subject, from which this event takes its title.) Exit in depth — i.e. into the crypto-thickened ‘Net — is at the very least an important complement to more traditional notions of territorial flight. It also sustains a better purchase on the commercial principle which provides Exit with its fundamentalal model, and which can easily get lost among secessionist excitement and visions of technologically re-sculpted geographical space.

Some background to the event (and hints of choppy waters). Argument is, of course, the other side of the nonlinearity (a micro-enactment of the inclusive Democratic ideal), so it will be interesting to see whether on this occasion the controversy can remain productive in its own terms, rather than ‘merely’ stacking up the incentives to get Out.

It can be fixed, provisionally, by an hypothesis that requires understanding, if not consent. Capital is highly incentivized to detach itself from the political eventualities of any specific ethno-geographical locality, and — by its very nature — it increasingly commands impressive resources with which to ‘liberate’ itself, or ‘deterritorialize’. It is certainly not, at least initially, a matter of approving such a tendency — even if the moralistic inclinations of gregarious apes would prefer the question to be immediately transformed in this direction. Integral Leftist animosity to capital is actually valuable in this respect, since it makes room for a comprehensive apprehension of ‘globalization’ as a strategy, oriented to the flight of alienated productive capability from political answerability. The Left sees capital elude its clutches — and it sees something real when it does so. By far the most significant agent of Exit is capital itself (a fact which, once again, politically-excitable apes find hard to see straight).

“It’s escaping! Let’s punish it!” Yes, yes, there’s always plenty of time for that, but shelving such idiocies for just a few moments is a cognitive prerequisite. The primary question is a much colder one: is this actually happening?

The implications are enormous. If capital cannot escape — if its apparent migration into global circuits beyond national government control (for non-exhaustive example) is mere illusion — then the sphere of political possibility is vastly expanded. Policies that hurt, limit, shrink, or destroy capital can be pursued with great latitude. They will only be constrained by political factors, making the political fight the only one that matters.

If capital cannot in reality flee, then progress and regress are simple alternatives. Either nations advance as wholes, in a way that compromises — on an awkward diagonal — between the very different optimisms of Whigs and Socialists (Andreessen), or they regress as wholes, destroying techno-economic capability on the down-slope of social degeneration (Greer). Only if capital escapes, or practically decouples, does it make sense to entertain extreme pessimism about socio-political trends, alongside a robust confidence in the momentum of techno-economic innovation. The escape of capital is thus an intrinsic component of split-future forecasts, in which squalid ruin and techno-intelligenic runaway accelerate in inversely-tangled tandem (Cyberpunk, Elysium). Try not to ask — if only for a moment — whether you like it. Ask first, with whatever intellectual integrity you can summon: What is the real process?

It is the contention of this blog that without a conception of economic autonomization (which means escape) modernity makes no sense. The basic vector of capital cannot be drawn in any other way. Furthermore, the distribution of ideological positions through their relation to this vector — as resistances to, or promotions of, the escape of capital — constructs the most historically-meaningful version of the Left-Right ‘political’ spectrum (since it then conforms to the social conflicts of greatest real consequence).

If capital is escaping, the emergence of the blockchain is an inevitable escalation of modernity, with consequences too profound for easy summary. If it isn’t, then macroeconomics might work.

(The imperative version is Split!)

A little background:

Does anyone else find this as spooky as I do? http://t.co/2eT0jEp3d4

— Bryce Laliberte (@AnarchoPapist) October 10, 2014

@AnarchoPapist nothingness, the void, Chaos…

— NIO (@NIOReaction) October 10, 2014

@AnarchoPapist matter and anti matter being the result of nothing splitting.

— NIO (@NIOReaction) October 10, 2014

Too much Ebola news and commentary to process, from speculative nightmares of various kinds, to historical reminiscences, neo-Puritan panic attacks, border disputes, alarm calls, and conspiracy theory.

Ron Paul, John Glanton, and Keith Preston walk into a bar. The bartender says: “OK, break it up gentlemen.” (Jordan Bloom should get it.) Related.

Eugenics around the back.

The game has changed.

Crabby thoughts.

An unfortunate invention.

Goldman on Codevilla.

War is good. (Hard though that can be to believe.)

Racism today.

Is there anyone left on earth who doesn’t think Dawkins is a religious fanatic?

Kant’s hellish idea.

ADDED: Some HK links over at the smiley side (still updating). Something significant happening in North Korea? Modi is still upsetting the chatterati.

ADDED: … and then there’s this.

The problem with ordinary racism is its utter incomprehension of the near future. Not only will capabilities for genomic manipulation dissolve biological identity into techno-commercial processes of yet-incomprehensible radicality, but also … other things.

First, a sketch of the existing racism-antiracism contention in its commonplace or dominant form. The antiracist, or universal humanist position — when extracted from its most idiotic social-constructivist and hypocritical alt-racist expressions — amounts to a program for global genetic pooling. Cultural barriers to the Utopian vision of a unitary ‘human’ gene pool, stirred with increasing ardor into homogeneous intermixture, are deplored as atavistic obstructions to the realization of a true, common humanity. Races will not exist once they are reduced, by practical politics and libidinal indiscriminacy, into relics of contingent historical partition. In contrast, racial identitarianism envisages a conservation of (comparative) genetic isolation, generally determined by boundaries corresponding to conspicuous phenotypic variation. It is race realist, in that it admits to seeing what everyone does in fact see — which is to say consistent patterns of striking, correlated, multi-dimensional variety between human populations (or sub-species). Its unrealism lies in its projections.

Gregory Cochran suggests that space colonization will inevitably function as a highly-selective genetic filter, unless extreme political intervention is taken to prevent this:

One generally assumes that space colonists, assuming that there ever are any, will be picked individuals, somewhat like existing astronauts – the best out of hordes of applicants. They’ll be smarter than average, healthier than average, saner than average – and not by just a little. […] Since all these traits are significantly heritable, some highly so, we have to expect that their descendants will be different – different above the neck. They’d likely be, on average, smarter than any existing ethnic group. If a Lunar colony really took off, early colonists might account for a disproportionate fraction of the population (just as Puritans do in the US), and the Loonies might continue to have inordinate amounts of the right stuff indefinitely.

As a scientific sort, Cochran is exploring this scenario as a potential source of compelling hereditarian evidence (anticipated through thought experiment). What, however, of the prospect itself, as the illustration of a mechanism that lends itself to theoretical generalization? One might discuss it in terms of ordinary racism, as a zone of disparate impact (which it would almost certainly be). Yet this is only to scratch at it, hazily and superficially.

The most prominent model of such a filter is found in the theory of assortative mating. Strictly speaking, the racial-preservationist culture advocated by ordinary racism is an example of assortative mating, with a criterion of genetic proximity filtering potential matches. This is not why the idea has such currency. It is assortative mating on the basis of SES that has lifted it to prominence, both because it seems unquestionably to be happening, and because the implications of its happening are extreme. (Crucially, SES is a strong proxy for IQ.)

Assortative mating tends to genetic diversification. This is neither the preserved diversity of ordinary racism, still less the idealized genetic pooling of the anti-racists, but a class-structured mechanism for population diremption, on a vector towards neo-speciation. It implies the disintegration of the human species, along largely unprecedented lines, with intrinsic hierarchical consequence. The genetically self-filtering elite is not merely different — and becoming ever more different — it is explicitly superior according to the established criteria that allocate social status. Analogical fusion with Cochran’s space colonists is scarcely avoidable. If SES-based assortative mating is taking place, humanity (and not only society) is coming apart, on an axis whose inferior pole is refuse. This is not anything that ordinary racism is remotely able to process. That it is a consummate nightmare for anti-racism goes without question, but it is also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake.

Neo-eugenic genomic manipulation capabilities, which will also be unevenly distributed by SES, will certainly intensify the trend to speciation, rather than ameliorating it. On the sweetness-and-light side, racists and anti-racists can be expected to eventually bond in a defensive fraternity, when they recognize that traditionally-differentiated human populations are being torn asunder on an axis of variation that dwarfs all of their established concerns.

ADDED: Assortative Mating, Class, and Caste

For anybody tugging at the scorched /pol/ thread, this is an interesting — and impressively sophisticated — strand to pull at (+ some Ebola-Chan context). ++ Trolls are Kulaks — Science. Free Northener on #Gamergate (+ NIO anticipates the storm).

The regular Mitrailleuse secession round-up makes serves as a good Scottish re-dependence portal. Some now dated, but stimulating Scotland-related commentary here, here, here, and here. (Also loosely related, and highly-recommended, from Mitrailleuse.) This might also be the place to throw in some Proprietary Cities links (1, 2, 3).

Anything — however embryonic — proposing to synthesize Neoreaction and Accelerationism is bound to get a hearing here. This is the sign. From a left-slanted sensibility, but related.

Dark comedy on the civilization-morbidity front at the MacArthur Genius Grants. (Some residual seriousness still apparent.) Grants and awards are clearly a crucial zone of conflict.

Some blog series of note:
Mark Yuray’s Articulating a Traditionalist Worldview (1, 2, 3).
John Michael Greer’s Dark Age America (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Victories Pyrrhic (setting out on) The Question of Sovereignty (1)

Exemplifying an uptick of complex dynamics / game theory analysis throughout NRx (and among its neighbors), from Anarcho-Papist: “The crucial feedback loops necessary to the prosperity of a society is dependent on the alignment of first-order and second-order collective action solutions. Punishing defectors offers a first-order equilibrium, but punishing those who won’t punish defectors offers a second-order, and stronger, equilibrium. However, the knowledge of punishing those who won’t punish defectors is not necessarily so obvious as the knowledge that defectors should be punished, for it entails a level of abstraction which separates the event of punishment from its result, and is thus that much more difficult to defend. This is where most people get tripped up by too readily identifying some practice or social norm as oppressive. We are very good at identifying first-order feedback loops, but not very good at identifying the second-order, meaning we tend to lose sight of the second-order benefits a practice has which on the first-order analysis has a negative game theoretic equilibrium.”

An intelligence and genetics overview. (Related: Margaret Sanger on race and eugenics.) + weaponized dysgenics (“This trend is clearly not our friend.”).

Anarcho-capitalist security mechanisms falling into place.

Lee Harris on The Future of Tradition.

Jim makes a crucial point.

An illustrated Kipling appreciation.

How the steppe was won.

How ISIS works.

Back to the 1930s watch.

Media credibility collapse watch.

Really?

When sensible libertarians discuss immigration, they don’t sound like Bryan Caplan.

Online video selection:
1. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers
2. Andrea Castillo on Bitcoin (and stuff)

Since World War II, we’ve generally been focused on the Great Concentration, while another story was developing in the shadows. Its focus: the de-concentration of power in what the Bush administration used to call the Greater Middle East, as well as in Africa, and even Europe. Just how exactly this developed will have to await a better historian than I and perhaps the passage of time. But for the sake of discussion, let’s call it the Great Fragmentation.

This is why, now in my eighth decade, I can’t help but wonder just what planet I’m really on and what its story will really turn out to be.