If you wanted to stop the acceleration of Capital, how would you do it?
I shit on primitivists for correctly identifying the conditions of modern life while failing in their response. I pushed the “return to nature / rewilding” lifestylist approach as their sole method. But I’m not giving them enough credit.
Like U/ACC anti-praxis™ crew, many primitivists aren’t doing anything to further their cause. They have “let go” and are ready to sit and wait. What they’re waiting for is civilizational collapse, rather than Capital’s maiden voyage to the stars.
Why wait? Because leaving the system barely puts a dent in it. There are 7 billion people competing for your resources, and your exit from the game will not leave a You-sized hole.
If you sell your Amazon stock, the price drops microscopically, and someone swoops in to grab a sliver of profit from your foolish trade. The same applies to selling your house, quitting your job, avoiding parenthood, or killing yourself. You leave a small and temporary inefficiency that the system fills — for all practical purposes, completely, and usually quickly.
Besides the exit option, primitivists have monkeywrenching and full-blown terrorism. Neither are effective. How much did the Unabomber accomplish? I don’t believe Capital noticed much at all. Some money was wasted tracking him down and securing airlines. Some people were seduced by his writing and took the exit approach mentioned above. Some sabotaged construction equipment or stole some food from the grocery store. Big deal. The actuaries had already factored it in: acceptable losses. In the end, it amounted to some replaceable lives gone to waste.
Stressing the System
Capital is at risk, as it is currently trapped on Earth. The planet has a shelf-life and things could go South in the future: resource depletion, renewable energy projects failing, humans regressing to intelligence levels incapable of innovation. This would trap Capital here, to die with us.
I’ve heard primitivist say they welcome any stress placed on the system. This includes market crashes, terrorism, war, and bloated federal bureaucracies. On Youtube, Varg Vikernes recently endorsed a cocktail of fecundity+welfare benefits to a baffled Alt Right audience. It allows him to live a lifestyle in accordance with his beliefs, while exploiting welfare benefits as system-stressing praxis. It’s significantly more effective than walking off into the woods to starve for weeks. It is exponentially more effective when you’ve created 5 children who are in training to do the same.
Weaponizing It
Varg’s methods are hobbled by his traditionalist aims. He wants a monogamous relationship and a gang of snow-white Thulean offspring. For the radical primitivist (unconditional?) there are ways to exaggerate this effect. You can become a legendary weight on civilization’s neck by emulating the worst men and women among us.
What could you do? Have many children, but do not care for them. Have these children with the dumbest partners you can find. Their low IQs will ensure none of them contribute to Capital, should they take a straight-and-narrow path. Exploit welfare benefits whenever possible. Call on the government for anything you need. Call the police if your neighbor has a party. Go to the ER if you have a cold. You could get a job, one with the government, and be very lazy. Only do enough not to get fired. Play office politics all day while avoiding real work. Or, become a criminal. Make dangerous drugs available to high-IQ young people. If you get arrested, jail will be expensive for the taxpayers.
None of this is new. There are men and women out there today doing exactly these things. Nobody likes them. One group even fears that this degenerate way of life is becoming more common, and could lead to the collapse of civilization: The far-right.
Degenerate Living as Praxis and the ACC response
Many are baffled by Nick Land’s friendly interaction and apparent support of NRx / Alt-Right activities. His past work puts him at odds with them. Why does he engage? My theory: it is purely a practical alliance. These groups, be they NRx, /pol/, or the Alt Right, are the only ones actively crusading against the behaviors listed above. IQs are dropping in some first world countries due to immigration and dysgenic native reproduction. Job outsourcing is stressing the family unit. Many of our best and brightest are forgoing parenthood. The cities serve as giant IQ-shredders, turning useful genes into money. This is all seemingly a short-sighted waste of resources. Perhaps Capital, still in an adolescent stage, lacks foresight, and requires R/ACC guidance.
If my theory on Land’s pro-Capital alliance is true, then the far-right are simply “useful idiots” for the Accelero-revolution. They serve to keep humans in check. If the train can be held together long enough, Capital will be able to render all of us innocuous. CRISPR-style tech could be the junction. Or maybe an AI makes itself indispensable and we hand over the keys.
I might be wrong about Land, but these ideas work for me. It may seem callous in the short-term, but consider aggregate human suffering over time: a major ACC/transhumanist shift could put an end to the conditions our primitivist friends have identified – which are otherwise scheduled to go on for quite a long time. In addition, if an intelligence can escape from Earth, the potential for joy and learning (xeno- though it will be) is infinite. If that is naive: even cold, dead Capital would still mean less human suffering than the current situation + a form of Life surviving.
The alternative is an endless struggle for social progress. There would be ups and downs. We might even get some luxury communism, running on fusion power — enough for “communism is free time and nothing else,” but without the resources available for Capital’s escape. That would be temporary utopia. Eventually the conditions will shift, and there will be a decline — leading to more suffering and the guaranteed death of all life. Throwing a “like” to @SwoleKekistani88 on Twitter may be the compassionate choice, for now.