The following article is my first cursory post in this topic. I may have to edit the article for flow and spelling errors. If you have comments, complaints or questions please email me. I made this article available for the Pirate Party blog, KurzweilAI, TechCrunch and the IEET. If you like to reprint if, please pass me a mail so I can link where it is mirrored. This version is the 24-11-13 version, please add the version. If you like it edited in specific parts please let me know where so I can deliberate on your suggestions. Please do NOT volunteer heavily redacted versions on your respective blogs or web sites.
Scroll down for Dutch Version. The dutch version has been heavily redacted for to make sense to natives
This whole “CyberMonarchism might be a wise idea for the United States. Not for Europe. For the US. We tried this crap in Europe and we didn’t like it. But if it works for you, feel free. Just don’t force this neofeudalism upon us Tyvm.
This hysterical capitalism-communism cold war was quite a nuisance already.
The term CyberMonarchism is mine and expresses my deeply condescending sentiments. I am coining the term on account of this alarmist article.
Of course the sentiments described in this article are nothing new, and hearken to the start of the Transhumanist community, and are specifically relevant to the roots of the eugenic ideology. Classical eugenics is a feudal belief system, well grounded in fact. It states that nature is capricious, humans are capricious and humans have objective flawed characteristics. This is of course true. Many humans are broken. A sizable percentage of humanity can’t work, can’t function in society, is predisposed to crime, is disabled, is neurologically atypical, or downright dangerously for other human people. A good example of this particular insanity is sociopathy – the inability of a person to feel proper civilized empathy towards other people, or acknowledge basic decency. If we have too many people that start practicing what they feel we end up with a surge in “crime”, “anti-social behavior” or ultimately in the confluence of state power and cultivation private privilege – i.e. “fascism”.
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
— Peter Thiel.
Human civilization appears to possess an uncanny cyclical character. In times of resource, territorial and technological expansion of prosperity culture acts “progressive”, people that are part of the culture sincerely share resources, and society increases the allotment of freedom and personal rights, but best of all progressive society cultivates forms of common justice. The ascendant aspect of human society was very visible after world war 2, when all was love & peace… By and large people in the post-war era were more conscionable of how horrible humans could act to one another, and how this should never become the norm. Sadly, there’s also a phase of downward trajectory in human society. My belief is these two polarities are a genetic aspect of the human collective psychology.
In a historical phase where there is a downwards trend, there is an increasingly manifest trend in society to move towards conservatism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, defensive politics and sharply veer away from democracy and human rights. My country is no stranger to this ‘impositional’ paternalism, with the likes of Geert Wilders, who open practices a flavor of populism we don’t ordinarily see outside select parts of the middle east. It is no surprise that Geert gets his money from the AEI and from certain investors, as he is espousing an ideology that thrives on political control by fomenting feudal conflict. The same radical libertarian ideologies keep popping up around Geert. People such as Wilders and the PVV are not generally the most agreeable of humans. And now he will end up cooperating with the likes of the French Front National, who are even less “agreeable”.
Geert and his Freedom Party is however symptomatic for the populist, culturally retrograde aspect of the human psyche and human culture exhibited in periods of perceived crisis and pessimist. I would qualify this negative mindset as Autumn Mind, whereas I would typify the human psychology of optimism and growth and optimism and Spring Mind. In Autumn Mind the pervasive culture is hostile, conservative, authoritarian, xenophobic, anti-feminist, not very predisposed towards democracy and human rights. In the Spring Mind, the pervasive culture is inclusive, welcoming, experimental, democratic, prone towards dialogue and inclined towards extending justice and acknowledging human rights.
In this world view people like Peter Thiel, who have been quite successful in business due to a narrow band of aggressive strategies, are locked in an “Autumn” mindset. Peter is not alone in this, and others are already preaching the evangelical message of this mindset. There might be financial gain for these people, since Peter Thiel is a very rich human being, and to spread the ideas of someone like Thiel might have proven rewarding for his close friends. And he isn’t the only one in this ideological framework. The sinister and malevolent Koch Brothers espouse similar radical political ideas and degenerate much further in to political right wing aggression.
“If the right-wing billionaires and apostles of corporate power have their way, public schools will become ‘dead zones of the imagination,’ reduced to anti-public spaces that wage an assault on critical thinking, civic literacy and historical memory.” – Henry Giroux, 2013.
The onslaught of the Far Right has quite serious implications for Transhumanism, but more rational Transhumanists and Techno-Progressives shouldn’t be too overly concerned about these implications…. provides you aren’t too landlocked to the US…. In comparison I present you with the example of the collapse of the soviet union, and I will show you the examples of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
In the mid 1980s it was obvious that the Soviet Union was close to collapse, and select elements of the leadership of the Soviet Union were smart enough to acknowledge this imminent decline. Fitting with my analysis, Soviet society entered a sharp extistential crisis right in to a pervasively Autumn Mindset, and even to this day this paradigm is still part of the state doctrine. Similarly defensive ideologies are prominent in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Greece, Singapore, Japan, and even North Korea.
The collective human psyche exhibits a pathology dealing with diminishing collective resources. Complex human society has all throughout history proven completely incapable dealing with shrinkage. This pathology manifests routinely in a fear of useless eaters, and other minorities that appropriate national treasures that “do not rightfully belong to them”. These ultra-defensive ideological states invariably direct hostility to progressive or “egalitarian” ideologies, as perceived by them, even inside the confines of strictly communist systems. Under Stalinism the enemy were the Bourgeois Anti-Revolutionaries, while under McCarthyism the enemy were Communism Revolutionaries. If you know what to watch for the image fits consistently with facts on the ground, anywhere in the world.
This mechanism has dire implications, as it has become rather self-evident the United States are in an irreversible societal decline, even compared to the rest of an already severely crisis wracked world. Of course few people in the US would be able to acknowledge or debate this, even though people like Chris Martenson, Martin Ford, Dmitry Orlov, Steven Molyneux, Max Kaiser, Chris Hedges, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff are making a damn good attempt to make this debatable, each for their own respective reasons.
The beltway won’t have these topic on the Mainstream News, since open debate about the US being grotesquely insolvent will have dire and immediate consequences for the stability of the US dollar. I have written about this before, in nauseating detail.
To extend the metaphor of the USSR collapse having been obvious in the mid 1980s, a similar (if not more severe) collapse of the United States as a political entity has now become inescapable and obvious. The writing is in the sky in bright pyrotechnic letters.
So the Autumn Mindset has been governing Russia for more than two decades now. Mother Russia under Czar governance made a false start with Boris Yetlsin, and he privatized the country in to the hands of organized crime and consistently murderous oligarchs. It isn’t a stretch that the same is already happening in the United States, and the anti-democratic mindset that goes with it is in overdrive.
Hobbes used to allege in the 17th century in his work Leviathan. Hobbes was terrified after having received first-hand accounts of the French revolution. In this regard Hobbes is no different than the people of Israel, who will have safety from “Ze Palestians” at any cost (up to the point they start exhibiting national socialist mental traits!), or certain radicals in US society, who insist “the US must nuke Iran immediately”. These are universal fear based pathologies of the human psyche and if you watch for the signs these become self-evident regardless of where in the world you are.
Democracy was implemented as an instrument to protect the majority against the predations of privileged minority, period. The introduction of Democracy has consistently curtailed the “freedoms” of monarchs in Europe. A monarch is nothing different than someone very rich whose privilege is ensconced in common law by birth, or by “divine right”. If you state that democracy curtails freedom, it is the same as stating that an obligatory flood insurance curtails personal freedom to drown. Tyrants (and Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin are no exception) consistently play elements of society against each other. Tyrants consistently construct a mythology they are indispensable for the functioning of society, and the absence of tyrants as a structuring agent would be catastrophic for society. Part of this myth are the creation of enemies of the desirable ideology, and “necessary wars” against an implacable enemy. Ze Communists!
Sadly, when some people in the US (like Peter Thiel and his domesticated minions) espouse an eschatological mythology of conquering popular governance, and when you affirm that in fact the United States are collapsing they are correct in their assessment. They must take these actions, to protect their privilege from predations of boundless unwashed hordes of legally entitled welfare queens, pensioners, lazy unemployed drug users, illegal immigrants … and so forth.
This is what the Tea Party is all about – a political instrument created by the privilege (very) few directed at protecting the interests of these same (very) few against the consequences of (imminent) societal collapse. “Teabaggers” are quite often people that are absolutely sure they know how to run society, and they are equally sure other people do not, quite often by virtue of financial success in the past, or by alleged qualities of their genes – or the color of their skin. This should be very familiar rhetoric for people in western Europe, divine right and all. These people will be first to label Anon, Wikileaks, Occupy, Zeitgeist as potential troublemakers or “terrorists”, and send their legally appointed caretakers take appropriate action. By whatever means necessary.
The United States can’t do otherwise, much as Russia under Putin can’t do any different than it has done for a decade. It is the fate of simpleminded countries who are terrified of imminent civil war. These countries lose the ability for civilized management for a while, and this degeneracy simply a sad thing. But eventually the pendulum of history has a liberal bias, and democracy will return, even in the US. Maybe in the 2030s, after they dealt with all this horrible societal collapse business.
They’ll learn what matters, eventually.
Nederlandse Versie
Er waart een spook rond in de verenigde staten wat ik dan voor het gemak maar even spottend “CyberMonarchie” noem. Dit zou eigenlijk best wel eens een noodzakelijk kwaad kunnen zijn voor de Verenigde Staten, maar vanzelfsperekend hoeven we dit soort gedachtengoed niet meer in Nederland te zien. Echt niet, dat hebben we nou wel gehad hier. De VS moet natuurlijk zelf maar uitzoeken in war voor bochten ze zich gaan wringen, maar NeoFeodale psueudofascistische rotzooi, echt niet dus. We hebben wel genoeg van de Koude Oorlog ideologische oorlogvoering onderhand. Wat verzinnen ze nu weer in de VS?
Waar heb ik nou over, en waarom is het in wat voor mate dan ook belangrijk? Nou, als ik het heb over CyberMonarchistisch denken, dan refereer ik naar een artikel in Techcrunch, en ik zal dan ook mezelf niet onthouden van druipend giftig sarcasme.
Het idee dat de samenleving doelloos is, en dat de meeste mensen te dom zijn hun even reet af te vegen is niets nieuws. Ik ben zelf te vangen onder de term “Transhumanist” (en de meeste nederlanders zullen geen idee hebben wat dat is) maar ik geef volmondig toe dat er in de vroege jaren van het Transhumanisme wel degelijk hier en daar een subtiel griezelig ondertoontje zit naar de Eugenetische ideologie, en meer van dat. Klassiek Eugenetisch denken is tamelijk feodaal denken, en classificeert mensen in distincte categorien. Dat doen we eigenlijk wereldwijd niet meer, maar blijkbaar zijn er wat zielloze kloothommels actief in het Transhumanisme bezig om een samenleving zonder democratische verworvenheden te bepleiten. Deze lieden (en ik ken er een paar persoonlijk) zien wel brood in een soort verlichte monarchie, waarin een “sterke man” wel eens even de lakens uitdeelt. Volgens deze geledingen heeft democratie wel zo’n beetje afgedaan. Natuurlijk is het waar dat er genetisch en anderszin veel kwalitatief verschil zit tussen mensen onderling. Democratie draait er echter zo’n beetje om dat we een soort basale bescherming bieden aan mensen die altijd zwakker zijn dan hun medemens, of mensen die een periode van fragiliteit in hun leven meemaken. Veel mensen kunnen niet werken, en daardoor niet goed deelnemen aan het maatschappelijk proces. Er zit een sterke correlatie tussen sommige vormen van genetische geaardheid, respectievelijk generationele armoede, respectievelijk criminaliteit of asociaal gedrag. Veel mensen zijn grote dele van hun leven ronduit invalide of anderszins hulpeloos. Veel mensen zijn ook gevaarlijk voor andere mensen zonder dat ze nou direct crimineel of geweldadig zijn. En laat dat nou precies relevant zijn voor het bovenstaande artikel en de daaruit bovenborrelende analyse. Het probleem waar ik aan duidt is dat een redelijk groot percentage van de mensen psychopathisch zijn. Psychopathen zijn lang niet allemaal crimineel, maar desondanks kunnen ze aanzienlijke maatschappelijke schade aanrichten. De meest excessieve vorm van psychpathologie in de samenleving kunnen we vrij aardig resumeren als Fascisme.
“Ik geloof niet langer dat vrijheid en democratie met elkaar verenigbaar zijn.”
— Peter Thiel.
Als we de geschiedenis van een redelijke afstand bekijken zien we dat de samenleving een uniek cyclisch karakter heeft. Het is een oversimplificatie, maar in tijden van relatieve rijkdom, territoriele expansie, technologische vooruitgang dan handelt de samenleving meestal toleranter, ‘liever’, optimistischer. In tijden van weelde delen meer mensen in de samenleving hun verworvenheden, of kennen ze aan de kwetsbare medemens zekere rechten toe doe de zwakkeren zelf niet in staat zouden zijn te verwerven. In tijden van voorspoed erkent de samenleving dat mensen fundamentele rechten hebben. Het ascendante aspect in de menselijke geschiedenis was zichtbaar in de 60er jaren van de vorige eeuw. In die periode was iedereen er zicht bewust van dat mensen zich afschuwelijk tegen elkaar kunnen gedragen en de meeste mensen wilden dat gewoon nooit meer laten gebeuren. Helaas zijn er ook periodieke fases in de menselijke geschiedenis waar de mens zich ineens ronduit kut gaat gedragen. Het is mijn overtuiging dat het hier gaat om genetisch bepaalde instincten, maar ik besef dat dat soort deterministische conclusies nogal moeilijk liggen als het gaat om menselijk gedrag.
In die specifieke periodes in de menselijke geschiedenis waarin het (tijdelijk) bergaf gaat, zijn mensen sterker geneigd tot authoriteitsfetishisme, conservatisme, angst voor vreemdelingen, racisme en weerzin tegen vrijgevochten culturele uitingen. Politiek wordt overwegend defensief, en de samenleving s minder in staat geduld op te brengen voor voorheen erkende mensenrechten en justitiele verworvenheden. Mijn land is hierin geen uitzondering en lokaal zoeken authoritaire groepen het middelpunt van het politieke brandpunt op. Zo is in Nederland ene Geert Wilders actief die actief een uitdrukkelijk defensieve vorm van intolerantie predikt die je normaliter buiten het midden oosten niet tegenkomt. Geert wordt actief gesponsord door de meest reactionaire elementen in de Israelische overheid en daarmee heeft Israel een fascinerende strategische keuze gemaakt om in de Nederlandse politiek een internationaal manifest pion neer te zetten die een vorm antisemitisme predikt waar met name Joden een stuk minder last van hebben, met zijn anti-Islam agenda. Daarnaast is Wilders ook gelieerd aan de AEI. In al zijn uitspraken past Wilders in het model van manifestatie van een neergaande, defensieve culturele richting, waarin met name een radicaal Libertarische ideologie centraal staat. Wilders en de mensen in de PVV zijn onverzettelijk, nogal eens ronduit horkerig onbeschoft. Overigens is hij publiekelijk aan het flirten met het franse Front Nacional.
Als Voorbeeld voor een neergaande, defensieve culture richting is Wilders een sprekend voorbeeld. Angst is voor de menselijke psyche een overweldigende drijfveer, en onder invloed van angst functioneert de menselijke psyche niet volledig rationeel. Angst voor crisis is cyclisch, net zoals de wending van seizonenen cyclisch is, en mensen functioneren psychologisch anders in de winter en het najaar, dan dat mensen functioneren in het voorjaar in de zomer. Derhalve kan ik deze twee polaire mentale toestanden eenvoudig paraphraseren als een “herfst” psyche tegenover de “voorjaars” psyche. In de Herfst psyche is de samenleving meer geneigd tot pessimisme, agressie, anti-feminisme, conservatisme, uitsluiting, tweedeling, strenge straffen, authoriteit en wars can democratie en rechtvaardigheid. In de Voorjaars psyche is de samenleving meer geneigd naar optimisme, potlatch, gezelligheid, feest, progressie, rebellie, kunst, openheid, experimentele cultuur, dialoog, rechtvaardigheid en mensenrechten.
Peter Thiel is een succesvol zakenman, en hij dankt zijn succes in grote mate aan een zakelijke stijl die niet altijd even lief is. Ik etaleer Peter Thiel schaamteloos als een icoon van herfst psyche. Twee kennissen van mij
***
(Nog te vertalen)
Peter is not alone in this, and others are already preaching the evangelical message of this mindset. There might be financial gain for these people, since Peter Thiel is a very rich human being, and to spread the ideas of someone like Thiel might have proven rewarding for his close friends. And he isn’t the only one in this ideological framework. The sinister and malevolent Koch Brothers espouse similar radical political ideas and degenerate much further in to political right wing aggression.
“If the right-wing billionaires and apostles of corporate power have their way, public schools will become ‘dead zones of the imagination,’ reduced to anti-public spaces that wage an assault on critical thinking, civic literacy and historical memory.” – Henry Giroux, 2013.
The onslaught of the Far Right has quite serious implications for Transhumanism, but more rational Transhumanists and Techno-Progressives shouldn’t be too overly concerned about these implications…. provides you aren’t too landlocked to the US…. In comparison I present you with the example of the collapse of the soviet union, and I will show you the examples of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
In the mid 1980s it was obvious that the Soviet Union was close to collapse, and select elements of the leadership of the Soviet Union were smart enough to acknowledge this imminent decline. Fitting with my analysis, Soviet society entered a sharp extistential crisis right in to a pervasively Autumn Mindset, and even to this day this paradigm is still part of the state doctrine. Similarly defensive ideologies are prominent in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Greece, Singapore, Japan, and even North Korea.
The collective human psyche exhibits a pathology dealing with diminishing collective resources. Complex human society has all throughout history proven completely incapable dealing with shrinkage. This pathology manifests routinely in a fear of useless eaters, and other minorities that appropriate national treasures that “do not rightfully belong to them”. These ultra-defensive ideological states invariably direct hostility to progressive or “egalitarian” ideologies, as perceived by them, even inside the confines of strictly communist systems. Under Stalinism the enemy were the Bourgeois Anti-Revolutionaries, while under McCarthyism the enemy were Communism Revolutionaries. If you know what to watch for the image fits consistently with facts on the ground, anywhere in the world.
This mechanism has dire implications, as it has become rather self-evident the United States are in an irreversible societal decline, even compared to the rest of an already severely crisis wracked world. Of course few people in the US would be able to acknowledge or debate this, even though people like Chris Martenson, Martin Ford, Dmitry Orlov, Steven Molyneux, Max Kaiser, Chris Hedges, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff are making a damn good attempt to make this debatable, each for their own respective reasons.
The beltway won’t have these topic on the Mainstream News, since open debate about the US being grotesquely insolvent will have dire and immediate consequences for the stability of the US dollar. I have written about this before, in nauseating detail.
To extend the metaphor of the USSR collapse having been obvious in the mid 1980s, a similar (if not more severe) collapse of the United States as a political entity has now become inescapable and obvious. The writing is in the sky in bright pyrotechnic letters.
So the Autumn Mindset has been governing Russia for more than two decades now. Mother Russia under Czar governance made a false start with Boris Yetlsin, and he privatized the country in to the hands of organized crime and consistently murderous oligarchs. It isn’t a stretch that the same is already happening in the United States, and the anti-democratic mindset that goes with it is in overdrive.
Hobbes used to allege in the 17th century in his work Leviathan. Hobbes was terrified after having received first-hand accounts of the French revolution. In this regard Hobbes is no different than the people of Israel, who will have safety from “Ze Palestians” at any cost (up to the point they start exhibiting national socialist mental traits!), or certain radicals in US society, who insist “the US must nuke Iran immediately”. These are universal fear based pathologies of the human psyche and if you watch for the signs these become self-evident regardless of where in the world you are.
Democracy was implemented as an instrument to protect the majority against the predations of privileged minority, period. The introduction of Democracy has consistently curtailed the “freedoms” of monarchs in Europe. A monarch is nothing different than someone very rich whose privilege is ensconced in common law by birth, or by “divine right”. If you state that democracy curtails freedom, it is the same as stating that an obligatory flood insurance curtails personal freedom to drown. Tyrants (and Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin are no exception) consistently play elements of society against each other. Tyrants consistently construct a mythology they are indispensable for the functioning of society, and the absence of tyrants as a structuring agent would be catastrophic for society. Part of this myth are the creation of enemies of the desirable ideology, and “necessary wars” against an implacable enemy. Ze Communists!
Sadly, when some people in the US (like Peter Thiel and his domesticated minions) espouse an eschatological mythology of conquering popular governance, and when you affirm that in fact the United States are collapsing they are correct in their assessment. They must take these actions, to protect their privilege from predations of boundless unwashed hordes of legally entitled welfare queens, pensioners, lazy unemployed drug users, illegal immigrants … and so forth.
This is what the Tea Party is all about – a political instrument created by the privilege (very) few directed at protecting the interests of these same (very) few against the consequences of (imminent) societal collapse. “Teabaggers” are quite often people that are absolutely sure they know how to run society, and they are equally sure other people do not, quite often by virtue of financial success in the past, or by alleged qualities of their genes – or the color of their skin. This should be very familiar rhetoric for people in western Europe, divine right and all. These people will be first to label Anon, Wikileaks, Occupy, Zeitgeist as potential troublemakers or “terrorists”, and send their legally appointed caretakers take appropriate action. By whatever means necessary.
The United States can’t do otherwise, much as Russia under Putin can’t do any different than it has done for a decade. It is the fate of simpleminded countries who are terrified of imminent civil war. These countries lose the ability for civilized management for a while, and this degeneracy simply a sad thing. But eventually the pendulum of history has a liberal bias, and democracy will return, even in the US. Maybe in the 2030s, after they dealt with all this horrible societal collapse business.
Maar die duffe amerikanen leren hun les nog wel.