More on the Cathedral

In the comments over at Mangan's, there is a raging debate as to whether Moldbug's term "The Cathedral" is a good one, or whether it contains anti-Christian undertones. I see both sides. One commenter does a nice job of breaking down exactly what the various arms of the Cathedral do:


1. The schools and universities make decisions.
2. The media manufactures consent.
3. The government enforces the outcome.

I like this. 

More on Nick Land

This Nick Land essay on the Dark Enlightenment is one of the most profound things I've read in a long time. More excerpts:

"Peter Thiel summarized the trend bluntly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

The dread of democracy by libertarians and classical liberals is justified. Libertarianism really is incompatible with democracy. Most libertarians have made it clear which of the two they prefer. The only question that remains to be settled is why anyone should pay attention to libertarians

Increasingly, however, libertarians have ceased to care whether anyone is ‘pay[ing them] attention’ – they have been looking for something else entirely: an exit.

For the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative.

Civilization, as a process, is indistinguishable from diminishing time-preference (or declining concern for the present in comparison to the future). Democracy, which both in theory and evident historical fact accentuates time-preference to the point of convulsive feeding-frenzy, is thus as close to a precise negation of civilization as anything could be, short of instantaneous social collapse into murderous barbarism or zombie apocalypse (which it eventually leads to). 

 

… libertarians cannot present a realistic picture of a world in which their battle gets won and stays won. They wind up looking for ways to push a world in which the State’s natural downhill path is to grow, back up the hill. This prospect is Sisyphean, and it’s understandable why it attracts so few supporters.

The state isn’t going anywhere because — to those who run it — it’s worth far too much to give up, and as the concentrated instantiation of sovereignty in society, nobody can make it do anything. If the state cannot be eliminated, Moldbug argues, at least it can be cured of democracy (or systematic and degenerative bad government), and the way to do that is to formalize it. This is an approach he calls ‘neo-cameralism’. (Running government as a business.)

The 21st-century nondemocratic tradition can be seen in lost fragments of the British Empire: Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. These states appear to provide a very high quality of service to their citizens, with no meaningful democracy at all. They have minimal crime and high levels of personal and economic freedom. They tend to be quite prosperous. They are weak only in political freedom, and political freedom is unimportant by definition when government is stable and effective.

Democracy is fundamentally non-productive in relation to material progress. Democracy consumes progress. When perceived from the perspective of the dark enlightenment, the appropriate mode of analysis for studying the democratic phenomenon is general parasitology."

What is the Cathedral?

The "cathedral" is blogger Mencius Moldbug's term for the politically correct beliefs and power structures of the elites in government, media and academe. To hold these beliefs is not a matter of truth (for there are a whole range of taboo issues that cannot be researched or questioned). Rather, it's a matter of de facto religious faith. To depart from these beliefs is de facto heresy. The original sin is racism -- even the hint of which will get you ostracized and excommunicated with lightning speed. Moldbug's insight is to see the Cathedral as a direct descendant of the overzealous puritanical Protestantism, that first evolved in England, then moved to New England, and finally found it's core home in New England's Ivy League colleges.

Writes Nick Land in his brilliant essay on the Dark Enlightenment:

"With every year that passes, the international ideal of sound governance finds itself approximating more closely and rigidly to the standards set by the Grievance Studies departments of New England universities. This is the divine providence of the ranters and levelers, elevated to a planetary teleology, and consolidated as the reign of the Cathedral."

Continues Land,

"All legitimate thought on earth today is descended from the American Puritans, and through them the English Dissenters. ... Whatever one's opinion on the respective scientific merits of human biological diversity or uniformity, it is surely beyond contention that the latter assumption, alone, is tolerated. Even if progressive-universalistic beliefs about human nature are true, they are not held because they are true, or arrived at through any process that passes the laugh test for critical scientific rationality. They are received as religious tenets, with all of the passionate intensity that characterizes essential items of faith, and to question them is not a matter of scientific inaccuracy, but of what we now call political incorrectness, and once knew as heresy."

The Cheapest Generation

Millennials are not buying cars or houses at anything close to the rate of Gen X or Baby Boomers. It's the crash, Smart Phones -- and a rejection of the alienating aspects of dispersed living patterns (i.e. suburbs). Young people want to live in close-in suburbs and/or cities. They use Zipcar when they need to go somewhere (Zipcar's explosion being made possible in large part by Smart Phones). Piece in the Atlantic, here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/

Rubio fails to follow the logic train

Good post from Vox Day on the internal contradictions in Marco Rubio's statements on immigration:

"The Republican Senator doesn't think through the logical implications of the accusations he is directing against the Obama administration:

"So in the span of four days, [there were] three major revelations about the use of government power to intimidate those who are doing things that the government doesn’t like. These are the tactics of the third world. These are the tactics of places that don’t have the freedoms and the independence that we have here in this country."

They are the tactics of the third world.  They are, unsurprisingly enough, the tactics of a president who is himself an immigrant and a third worlder.  They are the tactics of a place that no longer has the freedom and independence and population that it once had. And yet, even as he laments this, Rubio is actively campaigning to legalize millions of third worlders who illegally settled in the country and add tens of millions more to their ranks.

Welcome to Third World America.  This is merely the smallest taste of what it is going to look like."

His site:

Vox Popoli

I agree here. Also, I think Rubio is done as a serious presidential candidate. The notion that a serious Republican presidential candidate can be in favor of legalizing 12 million illegal immigrants -- 80% of whom will vote Democrat -- just doesn't make sense.

Geoffrey Miller: 'Why the seduction crowd picked up on my work'

"The seduction community has become a vanguard of applied Darwinism."

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/05/ideas-bank/why-the-seduction-crowd-picked-up-on-my-work


From the comments:

"Men are using evolutionary psychology to bash the bejezzes out of the idea of gender as a cultural construct and that men and women are a "blank slate"."

Yes. That's the crucial insight from both EP and the PUAs. 

Pat Buchanan on Jason Richwine

A skirmish in the battle of the rational against the anti-rational. If you are naturally rational and refuse to defend rationality, you will be crushed by the rising tide of demagoguery. Good thing Richwine didn't apologize. If somebody can disprove his thesis then maybe, but until then no ...

http://takimag.com/article/the_heretic_at_heritage_patrick_buchanan#axzz2TV2V1lr8