/lit/ - Literature

socially, i think, a more enlightened civilization at some point might look at all of these dystopias and feel inclined to put them in a kind of museum, or even a zoo; species of urbanology, complete with ideologies and cultural milieus all simulated in VR, so that we can how, and why, things turn out to have the shapes and forms that they do. history and time being what it is, all of them are possible, and most of them have happened, but there is a horizon beyond which we start to realize that fantasies of the polis almost uniformly end in disaster. glorious disaster, but disaster.

i don't know if it's because i am falling under the spell of Marty Glass these days, or other reasons, or just from having been talking about this stuff for a while - b/c when i'm not here shitposting, i'm basically saying the same things IRL to everyone within earshot, over and over. which aren't very many people, because i prefer life as a hermit or itinerant wasteland bard. it's just how i'm wired.

but that meditative life, the contemplative life as expressed by the Traditionalists, as well as by any number of eastern mystical approaches - (neo-)confucianism, taoism, zen...sometimes it just feels like it hangs together and makes sense, that a profound kind of skepticism is required about all things political, or at least during the present Times of Trouble. it definitely has something to do with yuk hui also and the possibility of life after Nick Land's Wild Ride, which has been obsessing me for years.

sloterdijkian anthropotechnics has a bright future also, i think. it takes some of nietzsche's stuff down out of the clouds and makes it present in the world. true, this is to diminish some of nietzsche's poetry. but it also gives a perspective on the Overman that doesn't point directly to crusade. engineering better people - learning to live on the practicing, ascetic, *necessarily* (self-) disciplining planet - this isn't craziness. what is craziness is what we are doing now, which is like the final scenes of scarface: mountains of coke, automatic weapons, and the mansion under siege. it's the dizzying ecstasy of life just before the final collapse.

an enlightened neo-humanism sounds retarded, but seriously, what's the alternative?