Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[rms]

McCarthy? Ein is about to bust a nut

 

[Einherjar86]

His next novel is going to be so fucking good.

Dude's a legit scientific mind as well as an amazing writer. His intelligence is enviable.

 

[Dak]

The McCarthy piece corresponded nicely with this quote:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-musk-neuralink-idUSKBN17N0CU

"There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing," Musk said in the latest interview.

 

[Einherjar86]

http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem

This is a strange piece, and raises more questions than it answers (of course, I can't say I'm surprised). For me, McCarthy's distinction between the unconscious mind and language leaves the issue of consciousness quite ambiguous. I'm not sure if he sees consciousness as concomitant with language or not; and this is important, because for the hypothetical cave-dweller to suddenly realize that one thing can be another thing, does consciousness have to be in the picture? Or does the realization of language's potential lead to consciousness?

In effect, this sounds like a Watts-ian revisionist account of consciousness, but I'm not sure where consciousness falls in McCarthy's view.

Also, I hope he credited W.S. Burroughs with the whole "language is a virus" theme--because Burroughs was writing about that shit back in the 1960s.

 

[Dak]

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/m...ntelligence-neuroscience-creativity-einstein/

https://qz.com/956682/philosopher-a...ing-silicon-valley-executives-define-success/

 

[Einherjar86]

The Guardian scores. A great read, very informative, and several connections I wasn't previously aware of.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ge-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in

The Warwick accelerationists saw themselves as participants, not traditional academic observers. They bought jungle records, went to clubs and organised DJs to play at eclectic public conferences, which they held at the university to publicise accelerationist ideas and attract like minds. Grant remembers these gatherings, staged in 1994, 1995 and 1996 under the name Virtual Futures, as attracting “every kind of nerd under the sun: science fiction fans, natural scientists, political scientists, philosophers from other universities”, but also cultural trend-spotters: “Someone from [the fashion magazine] the Face came to the first one.”

Like CCRU [Cybernetic Culture Research Unit] prose, the conferences could be challenging for non-initiates. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background. “Some people were really appalled by it. They wanted a standard talk. One person in the audience stood up, and said, ‘Some of us are still Marxists, you know.’ And walked out.”

Fucking insanity.

 

[Einherjar86]

From Shaviro's No Speed Limit (cited in the above article):

Marxists denounce capitalism for being inhuman and destructive; traditional defenders of capitalism deny these charges outright. [Nick] Land, however, jams the circuits by rejecting both sides of the binary; he extols capitalism precisely for its inhuman, violent, destructive power.

Land's position has resonances with that of the early twentieth-century Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. Today, Schumpeter is famous for his theory of "creative destruction"--cited by [Lee] Konstantinou because it is so central to neoliberal ideology. But in fact, the very idea of "creative destruction" comes entirely from Marx. Schumpeter is the only significant right-wing, procapitalist economist who actually took the trouble to read Marx carefully and seriously. And Schumpeter closely follows the Communist Manifesto when he highlights the way that capitalism "incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within." Schumpeter--like a smarter version of Ayn Rand--celebrates the mythical figure of the heroic entrepreneur. Where Marx emphasizes capitalism's long-term tendency toward stagnation, Schumpeter hopes that the entrepreneur's vital innovations can rescue capitalism from its otherwise fatal entropic tendencies. Fifty years later, Land updates Schumpeter's myth in postmodern and posthuman terms with his vision "of a cyberpositively escalating technovirus, of the planetary technological singularity: a self-organizing insidious traumatism, virtually guiding the entire biological desiring-complex towards post-carbon replicator usurpation." Here the entrepreneur is replaced by an entirely nonhuman entity: Capital itself as a viral source of new vitality.

Fucking crazy shit, and there's no way Land's style could be construed (even by him) as anything close to institutionally viable (much less discursively accessible). His style is a rebellion against the parameters of academic writing. This is why I'm fascinated by Land not as a philosopher, but as a writer of theory-fiction, or what he calls "hyperstition" (although that may be giving him too much prophetic credit)--or, more generally speaking, a speculative hybrid of gnostic occultism and science fiction.

Land really hasn't changed all that much from his late essays, which aren't essays as much as works of short fiction. Many of his current political beliefs (as much as they can be identified/categorized) stem from his late-'90s and 2000s writings (i.e. his breakdown and post-breakdown writings). This isn't to say that his current politico-philosophical positions are a result of his breakdown; but whatever the case, it's a really interesting tale of academic discontent and rupture.

 

[Dak]

I would say Land resonates with Austrian economics in general, except when he diverges from any account of human action or at least human action as a tool of capital rather than capital the tool. Austrian economics does not have the same difficulty (as various neoliberal and neoclassical schools) in treating with marxist economics because it directly deals with faults in the critique (LToV) and the prescriptive theory rather than relying on models and history as a counter. Counter models can always be formulated, and marxists regularly discount historical failings (of communism, not other economic/political structures) in favor of hopeful tomorrows. Millions of directly starved is no comparison to the failure to get wasted food on one continent to the starving on another. The latter is the greater outrage, because it allows the ignorance of the difficulties of production in favor of the mental simplicity of armchair redistribution schemes.

 

[Einherjar86]

Austrian economics does not have the same difficulty (as various neoliberal and neoclassical schools) in treating with marxist economics because it directly deals with faults in the critique (LToV) and the prescriptive theory rather than relying on models and history as a counter.

Well, I don't think that Marxism is an economics, in which case it's pointless to critique Marxism tout court (if such a thing exists) as an economics. Marxism is a philosophy of history, with its various imperfections.

Louis Althusser points out that Marx doesn't adopt classical economics' labor-theory uncritically, and he doesn't reestablish it in his own writing. In fact, Marx criticized Smith and Hegel because they both proclaimed labor as the source of all wealth and the essence of humanity. They reduced human action to an abstract ideal of labor, which Marx saw as a symptom of industrial capitalism, not as an accurate reflection of value.

I feel like I've said this before. I know that you're more familiar with Marx through Austrian critiques, which usually mischaracterize Marxism as an economics because they don't actually take the time to read it, as Shaviro says.

But no one has time to read everything, hence discourse.

 

[Dak]

Well, I don't think that Marxism is an economics, in which case it's pointless to critique Marxism tout court (if such a thing exists) as an economics. Marxism is a philosophy of history, with its various imperfections.

Louis Althusser points out that Marx doesn't adopt classical economics' labor-theory uncritically, and he doesn't reestablish it in his own writing. In fact, Marx criticized Smith and Hegel because they both proclaimed labor as the source of all wealth and the essence of humanity. They reduced human action to an abstract ideal of labor, which Marx saw as a symptom of industrial capitalism, not as an accurate reflection of value.

I feel like I've said this before. I know that you're more familiar with Marx through Austrian critiques, which usually mischaracterize Marxism as an economics because they don't actually take the time to read it, as Shaviro says.

But no one has time to read everything, hence discourse.

Well that may or may not have been Marx's intent, but it's been interpreted as an economic theory by both economists and your average undergraduate "revolutionary". I would say also the the Bolsheviks etc but it's relatively clear that economics were an afterthought and Marx was more a justification for state power than a prescriptive plan per se.

 

[Einherjar86]

For most communist revolutionaries, economic sustainability is an afterthought. Initially, the goal is redistributing the relations of production. The excitement over solidarity in violent discontent is enough fuel for only so long.

Marx's utopianism is the weakest part of his philosophy, and can barely be described as an economics in any recognizable sense of the word. He foresaw collapse (which accelerationists pick up on) but dressed it up in optimistic clothes by imagining an egalitarian paradise afterward.

 

[Dak]

For most communist revolutionaries, economic sustainability is an afterthought. Initially, the goal is redistributing the relations of production. The excitement over solidarity in violent discontent is enough fuel for only so long.

I agree. Destruction and redistribution is easy, production is hard. There's the ol Thatcher quote about "socialism running out of other people's stuff". Quibbles about semantics aside, it rings true.

Marx's utopianism is the weakest part of his philosophy, and can barely be described as an economics in any recognizable sense of the word. He foresaw collapse (which accelerationists pick up on) but dressed it up in optimistic clothes by imagining an egalitarian paradise afterward.

It would be interesting to see what a marxist contingent would look like which vocally eschewed the economics.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think it basically ends up being a form of cultural critique. We've already had some: the Frankfurt School, the Situationists (and post-Situationists like Baudrillard), and even deconstruction (which isn't a Marxism but has plenty in common with Marx's critique of ideology and false consciousness).

None of these can offer viable economic alternatives to industrial and postindustrial capitalism. Their strategy is to draw our attention to where the gears are jamming, especially when most people would rather look the other way.

For my part, I still think systems theory can offer viable models for a post-cybernetic economics (which would include things like automation, hybridization, simulation, acceleration, as well as elements of hyper- and auto-critique, which stem originally from Marxist critique of ideology). The demands of production would have to outpace society's auto-critical aspects, but no element of society should be allowed to escape critique (not even critique itself--a very systems-theoretical tenet: we must always try and observe the unobserved spaces). This approach would likely mean a transformation in traditional (i.e. early-mid-20thc) social values, but I'm inclined to believe that as the emphasis shifts away from atomized labor (as it's already doing) this will be less of an issue.

 

[Dak]

Land just wrote a thing saying atomization is another thing which is accelerating, not decreasing (which is how I interpret a comment about the "shift of emphasis"), and that to fight it is pointless if not counterproductive.

 

[Einherjar86]

I know, I just saw that! Need to read it, because at first glance I don't agree.

 

[Einherjar86]

Land just wrote a thing saying atomization is another thing which is accelerating, not decreasing (which is how I interpret a comment about the "shift of emphasis"), and that to fight it is pointless if not counterproductive.

I read his Jacobite piece, and I just don't think he's talking about atomization! Or rather, he's discussing only one part of a larger social phenomenon. He even goes into the semantic problems with using the word: "As is well understood, ‘atoms’ are not atoms, and ‘elements’ are not elements. Elementary particles – if they exist at all – are at least two (deep) levels further down. Human individuals are certainly no less decomposable." He's writing here about the normalization of rupture, epitomized by monumental events such as the Protestant Reformation. Such moments have been associated with the rise of individualism as a social/ideological value, but they're also increases in social complexity.

The Protestant Reformation didn't annihilate Catholicism, and it didn't escape completely from interactions with the Catholic Church. It simply added a new mode of religious organization into the mix. Niklas Luhmann refers to the splitting and restructuring of society as "functional differentiation," and I would suggest that the Reformation is an example of this phenomenon--it's a macro-scale process by which social systems evolve (and I use that word cautiously--social evolution isn't biological evolution). There are ideological ramifications that manifest at the individual level, but that's not proof that atomization is outpacing large-scale social complexity.

This seems to be a crucial passage:

American history – at the global frontier of atomization – is thickly speckled with elective communities. From the Puritan religious communities of the early colonial period, through to the ‘hippy’ communes of the previous century, and beyond, experiments in communal living under the auspices of radicalized private conscience have sought to ameliorate atomization in the way most consistent with its historical destiny. Such experiments reliably fail, which helps to crank the process forward, but that is not the main thing. What matters most about all of these co-ops, communes, and cults is the semi-formal contractual option that frames them. From the moment of their initiation – or even their conception – they confirm a sovereign atomization, and its reconstruction of the social world on the model of a menu. Dreher’s much-discussed ‘Benedict Option’ is no exception to this. There is no withdrawal from the course of modernity, ‘back’ into community, that does not reinforce the pattern of dissent, schism, and exit from which atomization continually replenishes its momentum. As private conscience directs itself towards escape from the privatization of conscience, it regenerates that which it flees, ever more deeply within itself. Individuation, considered impersonally, likes it when you run.

The passage I put in bold could come right from Luhmann, except Luhmann would say that there is no withdrawal from modernity--period. No attempt to flee modernity back into community (or any other supposed refuge) can ever result in a clean break, schism, or exit. Every schism drags modernity with it--hell, it was the Protestant Reformation that contributed to the acceleration of what we would call modernity in the first place! And a large part of that had to with tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism. Atomization replenishes its momentum only insofar as it replenishes the momentum of the systems that it gives rise to, and in which it participates. This is the standard definition of functional differentiation in sociological systems theory.

Finally, functional differentiation doesn't preclude independence. In fact, it encourages independence, which is what Land seems to be zeroing in on. Systems and subsystems operate both independently and interdependently. That is, processes of differentiation (what Land sees as atomization) do increase independence--they produce new social systems that designate their own codes and operations--but they also increase interdependence, communications, and observation.

I think Land privileges an ideological admiration of individualism at the expense of the inevitable material situations in which various forms of individualism (or atomization) are produced: i.e. as divisions and subdivisions of a formless mass (that we might tentatively call "society") that is increasing in complexity.

 

[rms]

not to jump in here but i'm a real big fan of Junger and his ideas about, at the very least, masculinity in a changing world. A damn shame it's only 90 minutes but hope you guys enjoy him as much as I do. I imagine Dak already does.

 

[Dak]

Thanks for sharing that! As a psychologist, I concur with the general gist of Junger's position. The issue of being "alone in a crowd", and more especially, "alone among acquaintances", is incredibly challenging to the human psyche. We are not evolved to live with our current luxury, and even more so are our immigrant populations. There's an intense unease created by the bounty, atomization, and freedom. This is, what I think, the real social solution provided by patchwork. I'm not sure what @Einherjar86 would have to say in response to this, but my experience both in and out of the military, as well as my limited clinical and classwork experience, suggest that we need limited, like minded communities for optimal functioning - particularly ones which face regular challenges.

 

[CiG]

This is instantly fascinating.

 

[rms]

Restrepo is my pick for best military piece in film. I'd say art, but I haven't read enough books or seen enough paintings