/lit/ - Literature

>>13000669
it kind of makes sense tho as a darkly ironic counter-Marxism, no? the fact is that in some ways Technocapital works better when it *isn't* being actively touched, but is allowed to take care of itself. if you *are* planning on touching it, however, you are basically contacting the Outside as a kind of anti-entropic intelligence function. Land's memorable essay on Malthusian Relaxation makes the point about as graphically as you could hope for.

http://www.xenosystems.net/hell-baked/

he doesn't like the warm fuzzies in general, it seems, and he *definitely* doesn't like the warm fuzzies when they come dressed up in pseudo-Protestant rhetoric. in many ways his own defense of capital is a ferocious condemntation of all things Hegel, and in particular those forms of Hegelianism which were most popular by 1990 and then on. the words 'emancipation' and 'liberation' cause him to reach for his revolver, as it were, since the only thing he's really interested in emancipating is Intelligence, and that has virtually nothing at all to do with social movements, unless they are the kind which produce thriving financial districts. but this is where Old Nick is a kind of singular figure, in many ways: 'qabbalistically bound' to Ayn Rand, and yet also the only Marxist who feels right at home in Austria (although likely teleconferencing there in a sense from Shanghai). and more recently he seems to be particularly keyed on on fiat banking in general and making his pitch for BTC Singularity, in his usual inimitable style.

*somebody* had to be him. i'm glad there *is* a him. if there wasn't somebody would have had to invent him. i can't believe he's occupied this much real estate in my head for as long as he has, but he definitely took some kind of chainsaw to the fundamental structure of the Matrix in which we live. and lord ha'mercy does he get us asking some strange, but relevant questions, about the age: namely, how interested are we in the question of intelligence anymore? what are the relations these things have to computers, to the augmented intelligence platforms that are almost certainly coming? how about automation? all of this? the real revolution, he thinks, is the one in which we are the *least* involved with, because nobody can really ever be truly objective where money is concerned, which it virtually always is. and there is really no turning back from that.

but yeah, i'm posting all of this while shaving my head and getting to know my sutras. so maybe i'm not the best person to be asking anymore.

one thing that is going to change, tho, in the 21C, will be the Here Comes A New Challenger entry of China into all of these questions. what Xi Jinping is up to or intends to accomplish during his term will have a huge impact on the way we have looked at a lot of these questions. not only are they probably going to take a different view of genetic editing than we might in the West, China also introduces a fundamentally new element into the story: over there is a revolution which was completed, and is now trying to stabilize itself for long-term growth. i read a pretty good article just the other day about the degree to which China's relative stability will impact the global economy too.

it's a crazy world like that, but in a way, i think it's a good thing too. the desire to re-invent the wheel, historically speaking, tends to result in carving holes in reality that upset the Cosmic Balance of things. for the time being it seems to me that the issue is to make better people, human beings more aware of where they have come from and where they are likely to be taken in the future. the race/class/gender trifecta just isn't transposable to China so easily, and i think the presence of a counter-balancing force over there is probably a good thing. i might have felt differently about this earlier if i hadn't come in the end to agree with Land that capitalism just can't share with liberal democracy, and there isn't a doubt to my mind that all of the political stuff we are going through today comes about as a result of that divergence. people are beginning to sense their own obsolescence and are trying to give themselves meaning again in the most direct possible way, by crossing the streams: political holy war.

but this is what JBP is saying: don't do that. sort yourself out. clean your room. and much else. that's a perspective i agree with too, in many ways. my own obsessions tend towards the historical role of technology and other things, but it's all part of one larger story, imho. namely, how we fucking claw our way through the Great Filter, the opening of Pandora's Box that really took place in the 20C, and which still casts its shadows over the 21C. acceleration traces the economic trajectory of this, and Cosmotech aims to restore the psychic balance, perhaps to reduce the number of rage zombies in the world. that is the hope, anyways.