/lit/ - Literature

>>12445334
hence, perhaps, the growing appreciation for Christianity. if in /acc world-view it is always-already too late, this same sensibility is found in Christianity too. the disaster is in, from the get-go. you cannot go back in a time machine and prevent the Crucifixion. the Crucifixion is already more of a disaster than you can possibly imagine, but it is also a necessary one. it anticipates a great many of the problems we find ourselves having today: namely, the need to carry on believing that someday, everything will turn around.

i think that for Heidegger, Nietzsche was the implosion of Western thought itself, after which would only follow the gestell, and cybernetics. if you ask Land about this, Land would not only enthusiastically agree, he would also say that the faster we hurry up the gestell, the better. but this really is an impossibility: if the Matrix has taught us anything, it is that the system of capital works when we are *least* aware of it. even Singapore thrived because people were being given a progressively better life, not because LKY was hammering away at them every day with a copy of Mises or Hayek in his hand. he sold people on a vision of prosperity because people like prosperity, and are sometimes even willing to suffer for it. and they suffered him, for fifty years, battling with them every step of the way, but he never needed a secret police force to do it. it was all done through elections, which is as it should be.

it is hard, however, for us, today, to settle complex philosophical ideas with elections, precisely because they tend to become arms races. if Trump wins in 2020, all it will do is tell the Blue Team that they have to work harder than ever to combat Darkness and Evil; if he loses, it will be only so much more evidence of the Bilderberg group, or whoever the fuck. both of these things contribute to each other's fictions by virtue of being all-in. they both tell you something about the nature of America itself: that is, that on some deep level, it is a place at least theoretically capable of sustaining the fantasies of both extremes. that is what happens when you really believe you are in the country in which anything is possible. that, however, will destroy your mind also. if anything is possible, then...what the fuck are you supposed to do?

but this is why asceticism makes so much sense to me, as an involution - and an admittedly perverse one - for some of these questions.