After the last post and the review of sorts it contained, of our personal journey into post truth awareness and consequent ongoing search for orientation, we rather hoped to leave out the abstractions for something more grounded. Unfortunately we cannot yet. Since that spot of online gleaning updated our understanding of the direction of Nrx politics we have thought and worried about it considerably and until we get it down in some fashion we cannot move on. We must have our say and perhaps then we can return to happier, calmer, more organic talk of painting and pictures.
Peter Thiel is at the center of nasty business. The story of the internet has turned into nasty business. While we have come to accept the AI arms race as a reality that is not going anywhere (hence our Borg dialogue) we were surprised by the metaverse. We were not offered a vote on the metaverse question of course but it seems that it will be unleashed nonetheless, but will we all bite? Apart from the strangeness of the sales pitch which one can only assume is aimed at youth and tech buddies, the whole vision seems a little underwhelming. It trails the promise of becoming like a real total recall, holo deck business, at least that's what we assume has exited young Zuckerberg enough to steer his giant business in that direction, but its not that yet by a big chalk. At present the metaverse seems chiefly like a bid to accelerate and normalize crypto currencies and blockchain governing of society generally and we need not enter the realms of conspiracy to note that the various pandemic lockdowns have helped nudge along the whole business. However, when we wrote in Bowers, 'locked in to the screens we perform the rehearse',1 we were thinking more of the movies, of the matrix, of the egg people but with the metaverse concept we have the architecture, but it still looks rather lame. How is that block chain city in Nevada doing I wonder?2
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On the blockchain question we must ask at this juncture whether our transition to blockchain represents the real roots of the AI super intelligence. Maybe the blockchain is the start of the Singularity. It's memory I mean. And if so what of before? The flat time of humans is it?3 Maybe the data rush of the early internet and post truth era years are the Borgs infant memories, like the one we have of the strange concrete globe on top of our play school, or of running out of petrol and walking to the garage with my father in Warwick. Fuzzy, in and out, dreamlike memories. But blockchain is crystal clear 2020 hindsight recall, at least of whatever's been minted which at present is a load of crypto kitties, cyberpunks and the rest, but soon it will be our very selves; bureaucracy on the blockchain, and there'll be no more fiddling the jobseekers then.4
Yes indeed there are many billionaire takers of this future. Countless crypto rich blowhards are sharking about but it really is Peter Thiel that stands out from what we have gleaned and look here there is more than just the standard self promotion indulged in by this brand of bond villain tech lord. He is right wing but so much more. As we have learned in the Burrows papers he is a believer in the dark logic of the Nrx ideology, which he helped create with his funding.
A crucial step in this alt right, tech lib, ideological effort against democracy has been to find a way to question the very premise of democracy and that was what Moldbug was doing with the idea of the Cathedral.5 One can easily imagine the appeal of Moldbug and his Cathedral construct. A concept like that does not stand up to scrutiny at all but it does do something rather more powerful in imagining a total enemy, and a perfect foil against which one can assert an opposing vision. As we read in the Smith and Burrows piece years ago, this line of thought from Yarvin leads him backwards in time to the idea of monarchy which he envisions together with the desired advanced tech realms where CEO kings rule over 'gov corps'. Government as corporations! No society, no democracy no choice other than to exit, to leave a gov corps if you don't like it. Lots of people right now leave countries because they don't like it and how does that work out?
Let us be generous and say that perhaps OP's6 interest in neoreation is not white supremacy but is rather based on his desire to be rid of democracy and politics altogether to his own tech libertarian ends. What was it he said, 'democracy and freedom are not compatible', the reason being that democracy stunts technological advancement which of course is a great obstacle to likes of the silicone lads. But if we give him this benefit of the doubt he is still so dangerous because it is quite evident that any chaos reeked to achieve the desired 'adjustment' to democracy, namely the rise of far right authoritarian politics, is merely collateral to his objective and even, as it increasingly seems, the method to achieve his objective. Do we go too far?
He is far right yes, but more dangerous and ambitious than a base racist he is actually planning, right now it seems, to bring about a far right Trumpist revolution so as to further his tech lib goals and he is prepared to create absolute chaos to do it evidently. We do not speak without cause in this. We know he supported and funded Trump first time around and we know that he didn't second time but not out of change of heart but because he wasn't pleased with Trump's performance. As we had a little look see recently we discovered a lot of stories about OP now funding the 'Trumpism after Trump' project. He has spent millions on a couple of senate candidates to challenge Republican senators who backed Trumps impeachment, he funds election conspiracy ad campaigns about voter fraud and he has just invested in the right wing video platform Rumble in what has been described as 'part of his building a right wing media empire'. This is happening now. He is a politically active billionaire backer of the far alt right! And he is someone who is not in the habit of making bad investments it seems and furthermore, with those Palantir's in his pants he has 'other' ways of making sure the world moves in the direction he wants it. The headline of one recent article about all this sent a chill: "Peter Thiel bets on the far right: Tech tycoon spending millions to bankroll "Trump wing".
He is preparing for the election. This is the decisive decade for the planet we have been told by scientists studying the climate and right in the middle we have an election in the USA that has the potential to throw it all to hell. Orange Peel has chosen and fights for the far right, for conspiracy, for disinformation for the politics of no politics. Indeed this next election will not be between left or right versions of democracy but between the very idea of a democracy itself vs some nrx derived vision of gov corp monarchy and horrifying as it now really is, one can see how the latter could be made far more appealing than the former particularly seeing as everyone is addicted to the tech anyway. He's a bogey man and no mistake. And people still seem puzzled by his motives, seeing how he still plays both sides of the tech politics, but surely it is quite simply the singularity he wants. That's why we have him pride of place next to the Borg in our banner montage.
We did want to talk about OP's love for the Sovereign Individual7 and for his buying up of land in New Zealand to escape to. We wanted to write about his being inspired by childlike sci-fi visions of the future and perhaps talk a little about the Simon Denny exhibit on the geeky influences of tech billionaires,8 all things which support his image as a genius tech lord, master of the future Ayn Rand type character, but reading about his recent activities scares us as we realise that, rather like Trump and the capital riot, Orange Peel is willing to go all the way. His belief that society is better off without democracy is not just talk, this man is hell bent on making it happen:
We want more.
He wants none.
We're the Wretched Painter.
He's Peter Thiel.
He's the 'sovereign individual'.
We're just 'us'.
Forgive such unconnected thoughts. Let us turn to the work. The yearly task of collecting the fallen leaves came around this last weekend. It is always a pleasure actually as great progress can be made with the rake, a tool which works so well. Its like negative painting, or scraping off like the old void merchants.9 Great swathes of green can be created with every long drag of the rake, a labour which in turn results in the a none too shabby assortment of orange, brown, yellow maroon and violet hues as the leaves pile up like mountains. I tried to make Sainte Victoire.10 My method was to take up a position and without changing footing drag the leaves to myself and gradually repeat this whilst turning slowly around. In this way one can reveal a three meter radius of green, leaving a very satisfying doughnut of leaves once one has jumped aside. We did it all morning. In the end the abstractions eeked their way back into consciousness as we imagined each pile of leaves a little gov corps into which we shall all be raked.
With a shiver,
John
PS We remember hearing about that famous quote during that debate between David Graeber and Orange Peel, after which their respective positions as anarchist and tech libertarian gov corps advocate seemed not so far off. Did you know David Graeber came a cropper in Venice? RIP.
1. See verse 9.
2. We do not know about it.
3. See verse 37, line 3.
4. Potentially refers to the artificial treatment of employment benefit.
5. Discussed also in DS1 work 31
6. OP is for Orange Peel which evidently refers to Peter Thiel. John has a habit of assigning childish nicknames to important figures, for example Vladimir Nabokov has twice been referred to as a 'bowl head' which translates to Swedish as a 'pottfrilla'.
7. The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age. A book which is said to have greatly influenced the vision of and politics of Peter Thiel.
8. See Blockchain Future States.
9. Likely a reference to abstract painting. 'The void' understood in this context refers to the perception of infinite depth on a 2 dimensional surface. See Mark Rothko. The phrase 'void merchants' has been used before but we cannot remember when.
10. Cezanne's mountain.