Comfy frog vs maldcel
Does the world need redemption?
The young dissident’s curse is that itching irritable desire to disprove default reality. True nihilism is the realization that the real world—the present moderate world—does not need to be disproved.
from Curtis Yarvin’s Covid and our strange defeat
That’s a phenomenon across the board, left and right, incel and volcel. Rebellion is culturally enshrined stronger than ever before since the 60s. It’s weird to see people not going through that phase.
Fortunately, we go through that and by our 30s we’re done with that, right? right???
Why does rebellion persist?
Young people inevitably learn some life scripts. That is neurologically hardwired into us. Between ages 16-25 the imprint is the strongest - the ‘reminiscence bump’. Whatever we do then, lasts with us until death.
Whether you are successful then, whether you fuck (Hajnal line pattern) and whether you pray.
Memes inprinting then are the Pareto’s 20%. It’s the fresh ground, the green field investment after the youth rebellion. Then arguably it’s all path dependant.
The ‘early imprint’ here is similar to Freudian thinking, but is was much earlier. We can then expect the youth imprint to be more memetic, surface level and less biological.
If that’s a modern phenomenon, let’s see how things were done before.
What did the ancients do differently?
The world was fallen indeed - the Greeks we know, lived in the Brass age, after the Golden and Silver ones. Yet redeeming that world wasn’t the goal. They were the first to ride the tiger.
The ancient world was about personal greatness. Was it Satanic? Modern Satanism is a individualistic movement, after all.
Ancients weren’t rebelling against the world. They saw the world as structured toward rewarding excellence. Personal greatness was about self-cultivation, self-mastery and mastery over others (soldiers, peoples). That is contrary to the themes of self-denial and rebellion.
Is the heroin-fed transhumanist in throes of eternal techno-orgasm that different from a self-denying monk? Both rebel against the wisdom of the body, of the Universe.
Framing exploration vs exploitation as order and rebellion
A theme of transhumanism is exploration - of human limits, machinic capabilities. Rebellion is intimately bound with exploration. The theme of order is exploitation. Acceptance of the levers / cards you’re given.
Exploitation is the immenetization of eschaton. You accept a given incentive structure as your eternal destiny.
Exploitation is existence. Existence is the only thing that is. Becoming is the explorative process. Improv vs art. Art is static. Even music, is the forever repeated variation of tones, of themes an instruments, is an exploitation inside a defined musical system.
Music is beautiful, music is exploitation inside the confined system.
Exploitation is beautiful.
As music, so is life. …Aaand here we converge with Nietzsche.
“The aesthetic justification of existence was not an invention of the young Nietzsche. He was just first to give it name. Earlier it had been the tacit premise of life in Greece under the Olympians. Perfection of the outward appearance was indissolubly linked to the acceptance of a life without redemption, without salvation, without hope of repetition - circumscribed by the precarious wonder of its brief apparition.”
– Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony (1994) 117
Ok but why is that a better way?
Odo Marquard, a German 20th century philosoper defines ‘overtribunalization’ in his intro to his 1989 ‘Farewell to the matters of principle’ essay.
tl;dr: first God judged humans. Then the problem of evil, putting God on trial. That was appeased by Leibniz in the early 18th century with his ‘best of possible worlds’. Then 1755 Lisbon earthquake happened out of nowhere. Why not Amsterdam, the great whorehouse? ‘best world’ hypothesis started shaking, In the end God got acquitted from the problem of evil by not existing. What did the God-defying progressives do next?
Man became the target of the Cathedral Inquistition
Incommesurably high moral standpoint was seen out on the horizon. All human intuitions came under suspicion.
That is the overtribunalization. You can’t eat a steak without moral outrage pouring at you. Now we’re at animal rights activism and furry acceptance stage. Not all moral high grounds are supported by the material conditions in this Universe, but I don’t need to tell you this.
Back to Yarvin
Forget the ‘irritable desire to disprove default reality’. Get comfy. Exploit what you have. Ride the tiger. Embrace the eternal return.
YES, they are actually all the same.
Did I mention I’m a chronic lumper?