Nothing conforms more exactly to the “general will” than the legislative abolition of reality.
Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
It’s true, isn’t it? We’ve seen very dramatic examples of this with transgenderism, BLM, “hate crimes.” An even bigger example is the enshrinement of democracy as the most virtuous pinnacle of societal organization. Democracy functions on the basis of bribing the howling, desiring masses by promising to feed their ever-growing appetites. “I’ll abolish taxes on tips!” – “Me, too! I’ll abolish them even harder!” Vote for me today, and I’ll let you devour tomorrow.
This is why democracy is intimately hostile to civilization. Civilization means depriving yourself today to invest in tomorrow. Democracy means robbing tomorrow to win today. Any civilizational project involves privileging the future. It’s not “gimme” but “I give this to the future.”
People like to be flattered. They love their appetites. Nothing flatters them more than having their appetites consecrated as political ideals. “Take away from him and give it to me” sounds kind of shabby. But if you call it “social justice” or “progress”, this immediately elevates you from a primitive coveter to a political being. Democracy, thus, is by its nature progressive. Appetite is the opposite of stasis. Feeding and glorifying the appetite is the opposite of conserving.
Unless it’s unclear from the above quote, I’m retelling Nick Land’s book The Dark Enlightenment. For my own part, I want to add that there were two famous Soviet sci-fi and fantasy authors, the Brothers Strugatsky. In one of their novels, Socialist scientists are trying to create a new type of human being. This individual, called “A Completely Satisfied Human” would have all his needs satisfied. The Socialist scientists in the book reasoned that, since this new human wouldn’t have to waste time or energy on satisfying his needs, he’d start creating. His creative capacity would be unleashed and he’d regale the world with extraordinary intellectual and artistic bounties.
When the Completely Satisfied Human was finally activated, though, he evinced zero interest in creating or giving. Instead, he manifested himself as a huge, desiring maw of need, devoured every material object in the vicinity, cocooned himself in his possessions, and tried to take ownership of time itself.
Yes, Soviet authors had a clear political reason to condemn complete satisfaction of needs. This doesn’t mean we don’t have political reasons to turn it into our deity.
More to follow.
Clarissa's Blog 
What is these people’s fascination with “dark”?
Dark Enlightenment, Intellectual Dark Web, Dark Brandon…
Jolly, then, let’s all go over to the dark side, shall we?
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How did you discover Nick Land. I’m very curious!
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I was looking to see if anybody was developing the ideas of Mencius Moldbug, and Land is one of such people.
To people who are interested in this direction of thought, I recommend Imperium Press. They publish a lot of interesting stuff like this.
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I continue to be amazed at the spectrum of your reading choices. Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land would not ring a bell for 100% of people who fit your outwardly profile: Gen X, professor in the humanities, mother, etc.
And here you are!
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Right? 😊 But we can’t exist in the world of ideas while insulating ourselves from much of the intellectual effervescence of the era. Yarvin exists far, far outside of any intellectual officialdom, yet he defined the conversation of the past decade. People use his ideas without ever having heard of him. I’m fascinated by how ideas appear, spread, and change things.
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Clarissa, thanks for addressing this topic. I think a lot of today’s elites totally embrace this ideology and that includes elites in both democratic and non-democratic societies.
Democracy clearly has its drawbacks and they are being exposed and tested like never before. Evidently there is a need for reform, but all alternatives to Democracy that I’ve seen so far lead to authoritarianism, which I think is even worse. We’re in the midst of a great power competition between China/the authoritarian South vs the US and the West. China in many ways can afford to think way ahead since they don’t have to concern themselves with the opinions of their population, same as Russia; but this is not necessarily a good thing. See the one child policy and if you really want to stretch it a bit, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Concentrating power in one omnipotent entity is never a good thing; the fact of the matter a lot of these “elites”, the Putins and Xi Jinpings of the world, are just as flawed as anybody else and their flawed thinking, nationalism, dogmatism, is leading their societies in a bad long term direction. So, sure Democracy is not great right now, but what viable alternative is there?
On the subject of satiating people’s needs and even going beyond that, I think this was one of the key pieces that won the cold war. There is a reason Russia, China, and any remotely smart autocratic regime follows the exact same model. At the end of the day, I think these are all fundamentally different shades of capitalism and consumerism that just about everybody continues to push for and advocate for.
The way I see it, it’s not so much that you can’t build society and civilization on Democracy, it’s more that you can’t really construct society and civilization on hedonism. But in that, I don’t see much if any difference between Democratic and non democratic countries.
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I’m also a lot more positive on democracy. While I believe we could all use some self-control and flee self-indulgence, I don’t think we are doomed to be self-defeating. I believe that the masses can make the right choice.
So yes, definitely, we need boundaries. We need them individually and collectively. We’ve experimented with chasing after every passing whim and it’s not that great. Now is the time to move away from that.
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“Any civilizational project involves privileging the future”
And just in time, I found this,
https://blog.exitgroup.us/p/why-the-westphalian-system-will-collapse
maybe not so much new but conveniently packaged with some memorable phrasing:
“physical borders are defensible, but the conceptual borders are not.”
“The state can no longer justify itself by protecting the citizens from enemies outside, because there is no “outside”.”
“Having children is not the optionality-maximizing, utility-optimizing, rational decision, so the people produced by liberal societies don’t do it.”
“Elon isn’t an American: he’s a Reddit libertarian. Like AOC or Rashida Tlaib, he assimilated into one of the many American sub-identities that rejects American identity as such — and these are really the only “American” identities still on offer to immigrants.”
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“Having children is not the optionality-maximizing, utility-optimizing, rational decision, so the people produced by liberal societies don’t do it.”
I often think I spend too much time twitter scrolling (and I undoubtedly do…) but occasionally I find something that makes it less a waste of time…
Case in point:
https://x.com/PaulSkallas/status/1856698412852494666
Of course quantitatively and qualitatively pets and kids are light years apart in terms of emotional connection and investment, but…. modern fussy pet ownership is much closer to the historical norm of parenthood in terms time and status and opportunity cost…. modern pets are like the kids a few generations ago. The owners can partly satisfy their urge to nurture without having to make the huge time and financial investments that helicopter parenting and vicarious clout chasing through kids require.
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Musk’s ideology is pretty much SA classical liberalism. He just assimilated into the group most like his native beliefs.
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“Having children…”
One wonders if that’s why so many of the key players here seem to be gay men.
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