The conference talk for my trip to Germany goes unwritten, today’s meeting remains unprepared, emails unanswered, bureaucratic forms unfilled, and I’m hidden in the backroom, reading Curtis Yarvin who finally appeared in book form:
There has never, in the history of any country on earth, certainly including England and America, been a regime which abandoned its role of managing the public mind. When it appears that the public mind is going unmanaged, look for any organ or power which is managing the public mind, but is not formally part of the state. Add this organ or power to your definition of “the regime.” Nothing has changed and nothing ever can. Sorry. Yes, I do realize that this is contrary
to our entire national myth. It’s really a bummer.
If you don’t agree that this is more useful and enjoyable than filling forms and preparing meetings, I’m not sure you are still fully alive.
Just one more quote so that everybody can share in the backroom fun:
What would past societies make of us? Whom would Lincoln or FDR, retrieved in our time machine, support in the 2024 election? We have no idea who these people were. So we cannot imagine their advice and we cannot benefit from it. We have no real history at all—not the story of what happened, just a story we tell ourselves. On the other hand both of these men were racists. Which candidate do racists support? Maybe both Lincoln and FDR would be Trump voters? Because white supremacy? Why would their trip in the time machine alter such a core belief? What would you show them from the present to convince them, without coercion, to change their minds?
There are several pages preceding this quote that detail racist statements by Lincoln and FDR and tell the story of FDR entrapping young soldiers in gay relationships to destroy their careers. I had no idea about this, and it looks like for FDR at least half of the fun was setting these rapey situations for his marks and then enjoy public descriptions of gay sex, using them to shame and persecute the young men.
The point of all this is to question our current understanding of the entire human history as one gigantic mistake deserving of nothing but contempt.
Clarissa's Blog 
“human history as one gigantic mistake deserving of nothing but contempt.”
While I share your enthusiasm for Curtis Yarvin (as a result of your quote I frittered away the best part of this morning reading his Substack instead of marking my students’ classwork – ’nuff said), I say NO. It’s not human history that deserves our contempt, it’s real people, actual men and women, and their despicable actions that deserve our contempt.
Enough with abstractions: human beings are responsible for human deeds.
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Yarvin agrees with you and condemns our mainstream approach that rejects the entire human history as an abomination at worst or the product of confusion and mistake at best.
Isn’t it endearing that we both spent our morning disregarding our tasks to read Yarvin? It feels really good to experience such commonality of purpose.
I’m reading him in an actual paper book which makes it even more fun.
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Alas, in Italy – and I presume Europe-wide – Fascicle I: Disturbance is only available on Kindle. As in the case of Sailer’s Noticing I shall have to contact his publisher directly, as they are one and the same. [They only charged extra for the postage, the book was the same price as in the U.S. only in Euros instead of dollars.]
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It’s Passage Publishing. Their mission is to bring to the reading public the countercultural, conservative books and do it with excellent quality poligraphy. The books are a joy to hold and leaf through.
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I have other books from Passage that arrived yesterday. Khm, khm. We are in for a fun spring.
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Are you reading his Gray Mirror: Fascicle I: Disturbance ?
Would love to read your review when you finish.
Wiki says he supports replacing American democracy with “an accountable monarchy” / “a sort of techno-monarchy” which sounds very weird and makes me suspicious of his ideas in general.
Very weird, but if you like this book and since the quotes in the post are well-written & worthy, I would give some of his ideas a chance.
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“a sort of techno-monarchy”
That’s Musk…. hard pass.
Is Yarvin a transhumanist? I know he was big into ozempic recently
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Yes, that’s the one. Of course, Yarvin will troll with the “fascicle” stuff.
I’ll provide commentary as I go.
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Per his wikipedia:
“Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger. He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).”
So yeah, transhumanist, accelerationist, etc. Don’t know about the “monarchist” part. Can anyone elaborate?
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I appreciate the sense of urgency but let’s wait for my insightful analysis instead of Wikipedia’s tendentious propaganda.
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That’s the website I found:
https://graymirror.substack.com/
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In SA, controlling the public mind via newspapers was historically a route to power. Musk seems to have taken a similar approach with X, although this seems to cater more towards the lunatic fringe as opposed to the old style which targeted the mainstream.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers
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