'Gnon and the Cathedral, a Lovecraftian fable': Prelude to 'What is Neoreaction?'

Or, the Coming of the Great Crab God...

Once upon a time there lived a big, bad, scary monster named 'Gnon.' Everyone had to worship Gnon, and make sacrifices to Gnon. Human sacrifices. No one liked Gnon, and Gnon liked no one, but as long as the rituals were observed and sacrifices made, Gnon kept its claws out of the lives of its unfortunate worshippers. The people got into the habit of worshipping Gnon, and so Gnon was pleased and did not wreak vengeance upon the people. They kept Gnon's Laws, and things where, mostly, well.

Soon, Gnon declared that he would leave the people for a while, and go and sleep. But, should the worship or sacrifices or lawful obedience cease, Gnon would awake...

But, one day, some people from another place came from over the hills who did not worship Gnon, who did not make sacrifices to Gnon. Indeed, they said that...'Gnon is dead!'

Gnon was not dead. Gnon, content with what worship had been done, what sacrifices had been made, and what Laws had been kept, merely slept.

The influence of those who did not worship Gnon spread more and more. There where still those who observed the old ways, and kept Gnon asleep, but the sleep grew fitful. The numbers of the faithful declined, and the unfaithful built a monument to themselves and the Gnon-free world. They called this monument 'the Cathedral,' and it was a fine thing to behold! It was filled with art and music and vast rooms. Everyone had a say, everyone had all they could eat, and anyone was allowed in, so long as they professed that Gnon was dead. Soon, very few believed in Gnon at all.

The Cathedral grew taller and taller, and the Gnon-believers grew fewer and fewer. The Cathedral reached all the way up to Heaven, and its builders where mighty pleased with themselves. So pleased, that they did not hear the rasping breath from beneath their foundation stones...

They did not notice the cracks spreading into the heart of the Cathedral...

They had not noticed that a few, and only a few, had left the Cathedral's grounds and gone of into the hills, to do things their way...

They barely had time to notice when the Cathedral split asunder up its central tower...

They did not realise that, in their folly, they had built their Cathedral atop the resting place of Gnon!

Reports on the Reactosphere #2: Lines of Demarcation

The view from the edge of the Cathedral...

This is, to an extent, departing from the original programme I had on reporting on what I noticed this week in the Reactosphere. I am, instead, expanding the remit to include general reflections on NRx. This is more on the latter than the former. This being said, this has been a topic of discussion recently, as exampled here, here, here, here (sort of...a little. Maybe.) and here. Same rules as before apply: this is intended for people who are already familiar with NRx. Check out my previous Report for some links to introductory texts if you want to learn more.

Incidentally, Content Warning: the Dugin link below is to a website with some radical-Right content and links.

*

I'm tempted to say that there's a fight for the soul of NRx, but that wouldn't be wholly accurate (and not just because I'm hesitant to suggest that the Cult of the Great Crab God has a 'soul'). Such a phrasing would suggest that both sides of the fight equally value the notion of exclusive 'rights' to the name 'NRx,' and really it seems to be a conflict, or tension, or whatever, between those who want NRx to be a clearly and neatly defined club, replete with a 'No x, y and z' sign outside, and those for whom such questions of exclusivity/inclusivity are wrong-headed, unless understood on very purely pragmatic grounds. This isn't to say that it isn't a battle for identity in some sense, but I get the impression the 'identity' (or 'identitarian') aspect of it matters more for one side than it does the other.

By all this, I mean that it seems to be a tension between what Land calls 'Inner' and 'Outer' NRx. In a word: Land vs Anissimov.

I am, of course, radically oversimplifying this conflict. There are all sorts of vectors and currents and matrices and spheres and schools of thought plunging into, brushing past, intersecting, invading, penetrating and rejecting one another within NRx, but one can observe broad trends and directions of thought. Naturally, I will miss subtleties and intricacies, but sometimes it's best to leave the minutiae to one side.

A lot of people who have heard of NRx describe it as being monarchist or neo-feudalist, and leave it there. Others, who are more directly familiar with its origins in Moldbug's thought, will also be aware of its right-libertarian, anarcho-capitalist tendencies: the neocameralists. Roughly speaking, those who want to go back to before the rise of the Cathedral in its present form, and those who want to push beyond the Cathedral's boundaries (note, I do not say push 'forward'). Anissimov is of the former, Land of the latter.

I will here borrow Land's own words: 'For the inner faction, a firmly consolidated core identity if the central ambition...Inner NR-x, as a micro-culture, models itself on a protected state, in which belonging is sacred, and boundaries rigorously policed.

Outer-NRx, defined primarily by Exit, relates itself to what it escapes. It is refuge and periphery, more than a substitute core. It does not ever expect to rule anything at all (above the most microscopic level of social reality, and then under quite different names). The Patchwork is for it a set of options, and opportunities for leverage, rather than a menu of potential homes. It is intrinsically nomad, unsettled, and micro-agitational. Its culture consists of departures it does not regret. (While not remotely globalist, it is unmistakably cosmopolitan — with the understanding that the ‘cosmos’ consists of chances to split.)'

Inner-NRx defines itself by what it is: ethno-nationalist, aristocratic, traditionalist. It is, to use Dugin's terminology, 'Overland,' or 'Hyperborean.' 

Outer-NRx defines itself by what it is not: democratic, egalitarian, universalist. It is 'Maritime,' or 'Atlantean.' 

The reader will have noticed, of course, that neither of these definition stand at odds with one another per se, but in practice they have tended to. They also have much in common. They both broadly agree with what they are opposed to (The Cathedral; 'Modernism'; 'Demotism'- these points are arguably effectively synonymous), and both value the dubious insights of 'Human Biodiversity' (HBD), but tend to depart widely when it comes to application. For an Inner-NRx, HBD entails a form of ethno-nationalism. 'We need to keep them (insert slur of choice) out or Gnon will eat us!' For an Outer-NRx, tribe and thede don't really seem to matter. The 'Them' to be kept out are just those whose heredity is not advantageous, who will drag down GovCorp if they're let in. Their race, understood in the colloquial sense, matters less than their specific genetic characteristics. A clever African with clever African children would likely be as welcome in Singapore, Inc. as a clever white-European or East Asian. Tribalism isn't that useful any more. Gnon doesn't care about your ancestors racial or national identity, but He cares a lot about the state of your gene-pool and how effective your government is...

A good acid-test here is Tunneygate. Justine Tunney is a transwoman (this is relevant) who was previously involved with the Occupy Movement. Then...something happened, and she ended up involved with NRx. Anissimov doesn't like her, and has called on NRx to cut of all contact with her, and I suspect this isn't just because he disapproves of her particular ideas about what NRx is about. I'd agree that, from what I can see, she probably isn't a great spokesperson for the movement, but, and I'm not accusing anyone here of being anything, but...I wouldn't be surprised if it is at least partially because of her gender identity. That doesn't fit in with the homogeneous, Traditionalist society that Anissimov wants. It's bad manners, if nothing else (and it is a lot else) to deliberately refer to a transperson with the pronoun of the gender they are transitioning from. I won't dig back and find the particular Tweet because it was a while ago now (in Twitter terms), but someone finally called Anissimov out on the obvious conceptual dissonance of a transhumanist being transphobic (or, at least, perceived transphobic). This seemed to please Land. Further, he quipped that any insistence on boundaries that cuts off the possibility of talking to interesting people who don't happen to be NRx is 'insane.' 

The Hyperborean/Atlantean distinction is very useful here (please note, that isn't meant to be read as an endorsement of Aleksandr Dugin in the slightest. I'm simply applying a particular conceptual framework that has already been used to map out differences with NRx- call it political chaos magick): the overlanders value politics over economics, which I read as ideological/cultural purity over pragmatics. Conversely, the seafarers reverse this, and value economics over politics, pragmatics over ideological/cultural purity. A nice example of this comes from the first Chaos Patch comments thread, regarding homosexuality and the Techno-Commercialist tolerance thereof: 'Missing out on an Alan Turing would be less than impressively functional.'

Inner-NRx and Outer-NRx both want to escape from the claws of Gnon, which they see as growing steadily closer to raking upon The Cathedral's doors. Outer-NRx is, frankly, the more viable option of the two. That isn't to say that it is particularly likely that the Moldbuggian Patchwork will ever get sown, but a loosely defined, voluntary association of corporate-states seems a helluva lot more plausible than the Holy Roman Empire Mark II.

Techno-Eroticism and Tetsuo:The Iron Man

           
If you want something to listen to while you read…

            Tetsuo gets that machines are sexy. Or, rather, that technic-productive forces occur within the greater context of the libidinal economy, the vast interconnected membrane of desiring-production that drives existence forward; The Will to Power, id, libido, taken as a macro-whole which includes all productive activity.

*

            For a brief summary, I suggest consulting everyone’s favourite consensus reality generator, although it isn’t a long film if you want to watch it first (doubleplus NSFW). I will assume that the reader has a cursory knowledge of the film, at least.

            Tetsuo breaks down all of the barriers between the organic and the mechanic. The Salaryman first notes his transformation when he comes across a shard of metal growing out of his cheek, while the Metal Fetishist drives a piece of metal into his leg. The entire course of the film is the Salaryman’s transformation into the Iron Man, the re-rendering of his flesh into metal, but metal that behaves like something living. The metallic sounds that replace the noise of eating when he feeds his girlfriend, the sodomy nightmare, the phallic drill- the metal is almost parodying the organic, demonstrating its absurdities and limitations. The technological infiltrates the ‘ordinary’ human world, stripping away the cultural edifice, reducing it all down to mere libidinal drive, to mere process without direction.

            Like I said, the film gets the sexual element of technic-production. The way the camera plays over the body of the car at the beginning of the film in a quasi-pornographic manner, taking in its lines and curves. The entire sequence of events of the film begins with a bizarre masturbatory act with the Metal Fetishist penetrating the self-inflicted wound in his leg with a rusty rod of iron; following on from this, there is the illicit sexual encounter between the Salaryman and his girlfriend after they’ve run over and left for dead the Fetishist. It is the illicitness of these sexual acts that bring about the occurrences of the film, almost as if the breaching of the traditional structure of sexuality and production allows the true face of desiring-production to come to the fore in a revelatory manner. That is, the initial (and initiatory) upsetting of the accepted order of the libidinal economy allows for the techno-erotic heart of said order to be displayed to us as it really is.

            Oddest of all is that the Salaryman accepts this new way of being. Of course, for much of the initial stages of his transformation, he reacts with perfectly understandable horror as his body mutates of its own volition into something completely other; this being said, he does not lose control over his body, for what control did he ever have over it? He is, rather, forced to accept his lack of control over his body, that the process now occurring is beyond anything he could ever resist or influence. All he can do, and does do, is accept it and move along with the transformation. Using the old Hermetic dictum of ‘As Above, So Below’ (that is, the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm), and taking the Salaryman to be the microcosm of the order of desiring-production at large, the conclusions are disturbing. We, as components of the mechanisms of the desiring-machines, cannot resist the process as we are a part of that process (though this does not, necessarily, discount the possibility of Exit, if such an Exit is total enough). I’ve quoted Nick Land on this before, but it’s a good enough quote to warrant its partial repetition: ‘Machinic desire can seem a little inhuman, as it rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities, and hacks through security apparatuses, tracking a soulless tropism to zero control.’

            Consider the films conclusion, in which the Salaryman and Fetishist have embraced and become one, transforming into (I’m assuming this scene is meant to be comical) a gigantic bio-mechanoid phallus, and then setting out to turn the whole world into metal. After the merging has occurred, this line is said: ‘Our love can destroy this whole fucking world!’ Is this…a positive message? A happy ending? The two main characters, after all of the horror and trauma, have accepted their new way of being and now seek to rip apart the world, mutating it into metal, rust and then finally dust. This is suggestive, I feel, of the possibilities that technology, in all its dynamism and innovation, can offer: everything can change. Everything. The forces of production cannot be successfully limited, they will continue to operate, to self-improve, to increase efficiency, and like it or not, we (or, most of us at any rate), are going to have to move with it. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a weird journey up ahead…

       

Hope we're not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2014

Reports on the Reactosphere #1

The view from the edge of the Cathedral

This is the first of what will hopefully be a semi-regular feature, in which I will report on (gossip about) any exciting stirrings I find in the weird and wonderful world of Neoreaction (NRx). A friend suggested that I do something like this, most likely in the hope that I'll stop boring him with this stuff (whether or not I will remains to be seen). It goes without saying, this is not intended to be even remotely exhaustive. It’s just the stuff that caught my eye.

This is really for people who are already familiar with NRx; if you're not one of those people, but would like to be, check out this and this for an idea of what it is I'm talking about. If not, I'm planning on writing a piece about a Japanese horror film this week, so perhaps skip this post and wait until then...

Scott Alexander, with his usual wit, has given the Reactosphere plenty to be annoyed at with his wonderful (though lengthy) new post Meditations on Moloch, an analyses of a pet topic for NRx: Gnon, the God of Uncomfortable Truths (God of Nature, Or, more simply, just Nature). You can find Nick Land’s response here, and Anarcho-Papist’s here. I’ll update this as I notice more, assuming I have the wherewithal, energy and inclination.

There was excitement for me earlier in the week, where I tweeted Michael Annissimov…and received a response (*pops party popper*)! 

@TEPidthinking Yes
— Michael Anissimov (@MikeAnissimov) July 31, 2014

*I only just noticed I call it 'the' Russia...

Another stir has been Arthur Chu's denouncing of NRx for the Daily Beast, which is largely just speculation about what the Hell the deal with Justine Tunney is. I wasn't that impressed with it: if you want a comprehensive rebuttal of NRx, again, Scott Alexander provides. 

Most interestingly, seemingly from the fallout with the Chu article, Land has proposed we use two, new vector calculations when we attempt a NRx topography, 'Outside' vs. 'Inside.' The 'vs' is perhaps misleading, but there is certainly a conceptual tension between the two currents. This is hardly the first time such a tension has been noticed, however, but any nod towards it is interesting.

Finally, we've had our first sign of life from Mencius Moldbug, the man who catalysed it all (mostly), for several months, with a formal declaration of hiatus. He even says that his return probably won't be in the form of his Unqualified Reservations blog...

I'll leave you with this piece of Anarchically-Papal wit: 

pic.twitter.com/YUAlgZKKg8
— Bryce Laliberte (@AnarchoPapist) August 2, 2014

Musings on Google Glass and AR

     

       

          I got to try on the Google Glass the other day. Sitting in my friend’s kitchen, after a lot of fiddling we 

were (just) able to get it working. Thus, I found a rosy display sitting slightly off-centre of my field of vision.

            It didn’t work too well.

            It got hot quite quickly; I wasn’t ever quite able to convince it to take a photo properly; it kept trying to email his twin brother. This being said, it was a developer kit, pre-sale and all that, so it’s not likely to work properly at just this moment. No, this isn’t a finished model, this is a demonstration of ability more than anything else. This is one of the most strident steps towards widely available reality augmentation yet taken. This is Google showing us what it can do right now, so it can hint at what it wants to do later.

            It’s one thing to carry a phone around with you in your pocket, but to have an interactive display that is visible only to you, subjectively, is an exciting (and frightening) move. The biggest problem that the Glass faces, other than the obvious hardware/software challenges any and all new tech has to confront, will be a mixture of aesthetics and social accessibility. At the moment, I fear it looks a little too…Star Trek [link]. What needs to happen is for the Glass to become less obvious, less intrusive. There will always be people who revel in obviously wearing their new toy, but wide-spread Augmented Reality will only occur when the hardware that facilitates it can be properly blended with already standing aesthetic and social conventions.

            In a word: Google Glass needs to look like a pair of glasses.

            This is the direction that technology is going to go in. It will become less-and-less obvious, more-and-more commonplace, and less distinguishable from its user. Makes you wonder what direction all this is going in, doesn't it?

Morality, Religion and 'Neuromancer'

            So, I’ve read Neuromancer, and I want to talk more about the morality of the characters more than the technology. Molly seems to be almost purely amoral. She has affection for Case, she feels hate for Riviera, but she never takes any moral stances. Case obsesses over the death of Linda Lee and his simulated ‘killing’ of the Julie Dean construct that Wintermute uses to contact him; he never, however, takes an ‘edifying’ step, he never pronounces upon the morality of the situation. Ultimately, he is driven by pure self-interest. Wintermute was designed from the outset to seek to unify itself with Neuromancer, so the degree of its moral culpability is ambiguous to say the least.

            The only occasions of actual moral pronouncements on both the immediate situation of the characters and upon the world as a whole come from the Rastafari of an O’Neill habitat named ‘Zion.’ I worried that Gibson would stray into using the Rastafari as comic relief, and to an extent he does, but the comedy comes from the reactions of Case to their lifestyle and philosophy than from any idiocy on their part. Indeed, despite the possible handicap of constant emersion in cannabis smoke, they’ve constructed and operate a fully functioning space colony. The Rastafari in Neuromancer have performed a subtractive act, and have physically separated themselves from corrupt modernity (‘Babylon’) in order to live according to their customs and traditions. To be honest, they were perhaps the most human and likeable characters in the novel.

            When Case introduces one of the Rastafari characters, Aerol, to the matrix (cyberspatial virtual reality), he asks him what he saw. He responds simply: ‘Babylon.’ Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the only time we have someone in the novel pronouncing upon the fallen world of Neuromancer, making the much needed observation that there is something wrong here. It’s a world of poverty, corruption and painfully casual cruelty (much like our own). Another Rasta character, who agrees to help Case rescue Molly, describes the situation as ‘Babylon fightin’ Babylon, eatin’ i’self…’ Most curiously, when Case is trapped in a simulation by Neuromancer, it is Rastafarian sacred music that pulls him back out of it...

            What are to make of the Zion subtraction from the fallen world of ‘Babylon’? It is interesting that it is only the high-technology of the capitalist world that has allowed for the Rastafari to remove themselves from ‘Babylon,’ though we might respond by calling this a subversion of the (literal) mechanisms of modernity: using the tools that capital has provided to distance ourselves from capital… Perhaps by being (again, literally) above the world, looking down upon it, they are the only characters in the novel in an appropriate position to make pronouncements about the state of the world. The words ‘God’s eye view’ spring to mind… As someone who feels that there is a sore absence of the sacred in today’s world, there is something heartening about the presence of a community who believe in something like that. There is little forethought or transcendental desire from anyone except Wintermute in the novel. Of course, the dark side of the peaceful subtraction from modernity is the violent rejection of it. There is at one point a hoaxed terrorist-scare blamed on Christian fundamentalists which is immediately swallowed by the authorities, suggesting pre-existent expectations of religiously motivated violence.

            We must not be too swift to dismiss the continued relevance of religion in the world, even if only for purposes of pure Realpolitik. It’s been a long time since Fukuyama declared the end of history, and I doubt that many people where convinced by his proclamation, but history since then has continued to reveal that society has still not settled on its final form, and the rise to prominence of a group like ISIS and its self-declared Caliphate is yet another indication that alternatives are available, though not necessarily preferable. Religion is still yet to finish having its way with us, for better or for worse. 

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Cyberpunked

This is hardly an original observation, but it is an observation I shall make all the same: of all the futures that SF has and continue to deal with, it turned out that cyberpunk would be the one to come true. Ho-hum.

This is a thought I have had before, and I’m certain lots of people far cleverer than me have noticed it too, but the obviousness of it really dawned on me earlier in the week. I had decided, at long last, to actually get round to reading Neuromancer, and I was finding it rather enjoyable. I was in town, sitting under a tree in a small square of park land in one of the quieter streets, enjoying the shade and the story. I was reading it on my Kindle, idly messaging a friend from university on my phones Facebook app, and I realised how eerily, eerily prescient the novel was in so many ways. I had been able to partially de-tune myself out of social reality by listening to music from a film on my MP3 player, I had two devices on me that allowed me functionally unlimited amounts of information (for an oh-so reasonable price), I had had falafel for lunch, with a side of chips and a can of the Classic, and had passed a clinic which advertised cosmetic surgery. I realise now that it’s a minute-or-so walk away from a TESCO cash point.

It’s not something unique to the city I live in, it’s something you find in most Western(ised) big cities now. The past and the future rushing headlong into each other and producing the present; the cultures of the world colliding to create new cultures containing elements of both; tradition gradually being eaten away without any sign of new traditions (in the sense of structures of customs and values being offered to us out of the past) being ready to fill them. Everything has become so impermanent, so digitized and monetised. One thing Marx was undoubtedly right about was that Capital and the system of its accumulation melts down all solidity in the name of profit-maximisation.

Capitalism as the economic manifestation of Gestell, in which economics is understood as praxis. The shape of the essence of technology as we see it today is principally not mathematical/scientific but commercial.

This is not an original observation, but it feels worthwhile to say it all the same. 

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