Comments on: Voyages in Irony

By: Lesser Bull

Lesser Bull — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 02:40:23 +0000

You read Greer to clear your mind of the inbuilt progressive assumption that everything just has to get better. Not because his arguments are so good, but as a counter-contagion. You keep reading him for the same reason. But the mind having been cleared, it would be a mistake to fill it with most of Greer’s specifics.

That said, as a counter to extreme downside risk, I am glad people like Greer’s acolytes are around, planning on how to preserve some workable ways of doing things after a collapse.

By: Kgaard

Kgaard — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 23:12:43 +0000

Greer’s fundamental conceit — that the oil price will soar — is falling apart. Perhaps it’s not just a nervous tic of his … perhaps this is central to his entire mode of thought (i.e. collapse of complex systems) and perhaps oil’s decline basically proves his entire mode of attack to be useless. After all, the thesis of the Silicon Valley Cyber-Apocalypticism post was also precisely anti-Greerian: Prices can’t collapse without INCREASING complexity of systems (and efficiency) of systems.

So I think Greer needs to go back to the drawing board. I like his conspiratorial turn of mind, but he needs to vector it a bit more constructively …

By: First Bayes

First Bayes — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:16:54 +0000

I first came across Greer over here, and I am grateful to admin for that introduction. In my opinion, the worldviews of NRx and Greer complement each other quite well. NRx looks at Gnon from a proprioceptive POV, while Greer’s description of Gnon is purely exteroceptive. He believes the environment is the prime mover of human society, while according to NRx, it is human behaviour. Leaving aside the correctness of each hypothesis, one observes that both, human nature according to NRx, and the environment according to Greer, display very Gnonic(..?) attributes. I think this complementarity deserves further exploration.

By: TheInternetIsGod

TheInternetIsGod — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 08:54:06 +0000

Jesus Christ on Our Ironic Culture:

By: admin

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 07:17:20 +0000

Impressively apposite.

By: orlandu84

orlandu84 — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:11:06 +0000

Why does Dante have Ulysses damned? For Greer Dante has done so in order to show that Ulysses has transgressed the respected limits of knowledge and power. Yet, the structure of the Inferno would argue otherwise. Namely, the eighth circle of hell punishes fraud and treachery. Most especially, Ulysses is burning in hell due to his campaigning for the Trojan Horse stratagem. Although Dante probably found Ulysses’s death fitting, his place for all eternity comes not from his love of wisdom but from his misuse of intellect to encourage wrongdoing.

I bring this distinction up because NRx is dedicated to discovering the ways that lead to stable and abiding polities. Far from wanting anarchy and chaos, NRx seems well aware that the Cathedral has become the new Ulysses – it is an engine of change for change’s sake. In order to discover what will help us to found dynasties that will stand the test of time, we set out onto the sea. In this respect we are like Ulysses, or as I prefer Odysseus. For our forefathers have sacked and burnt Troy, and now we have to try to get back home however we can.

By: RorschachRomanov

RorschachRomanov — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 23:45:20 +0000

The Reactionary rejoinder to the Ulysses contract is perhaps found in the following, from T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets:”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left go discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall

By: Voyages in Irony | Reaction Times

Voyages in Irony | Reaction Times — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 21:19:40 +0000

[…] Source: Outside In […]

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 18:52:02 +0000

… it demonstrates the architectonics of irony. To ironize, with such supple capability, is to explore a structure, differentiating an inside from an outside. This is no mere rhetorical device, but a fully philosophical — and metaphysical — operation. Crude antagonism is bypassed, through envelopment. Ironically, therefore, irony itself becomes a mark of seriousness. It is introduced at exactly the point that a cognitive process exceeds a constricting frame, in a doubling, which repeats and exceeds simultaneously. In the complete absence of vulgar polemic, it demonstrates an incontestable superiority. There is an accomplishment, a lesson, and an elevation of the game.

Damn, that’s good.