Author: geotrickster

EMDR and Dianetics Compared

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Geotrickster’s Note: The following is the third guest post by Brandon Hensley, who previously gave us such book review posts as ‘The Centrist Manifesto‘ and ‘Hope Never Dies.’ All other words are his.

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Dianetics, Revisited

A thought experiment. You are in need of some mental health therapy to help mitigate the triggering responses of some traumatic event. They have intruded upon your day-to-day activities and you’re tired of it. Pushing open the door to the Therapeutic Center for Mental Health, a lobby with two doors greets you. Above the first door is a sign: “Modified abreaction therapy with a licensed practitioner who will recuperate the cost of licensure by billing you for the treatment.” Above the second door is a sign: “Modified abreaction therapy delivered via a convenient self-help manual.” Which door do you choose? (And we’ll clarify what is abreaction therapy as we move along.)

In the ever-expanding world of mental health destigmatization and expansion of therapeutic access, choosing a practitioner can be troublesome, and that’s before you even begin the journey toward treatment. And then, once you’re embarking on a course of treatment, there’s plenty of room to criticize the underlying theories of some of those treatments. Which door, in this period of late capitalism where the advancement of costs of living annually outpaces advances in wage growth, does one choose?

Enter Dianetics Therapy. Or really, re-enter. The second door in the lobby of our hypothetical Therapeutic Center for Mental Health contains a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s 1950 best selling self-help book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

A famous Scientologist, Hubbard was also interested in alternatives to lobotomies and electroshock therapy—both popular treatments in 1950—for the promotion of mental health. In fact, it was this interest in mental health treatments that led to the publication of Dianetics in the first place, and only later (1952) did Scientology become a thing. While it is impossible to discuss Dianetics or Hubbard without also mentioning Scientology, for the purposes of this review it is also important to remember that Hubbard did not start out the head of an alleged cult, and Dianetics was published with the intention of promoting a novel psychotherapeutic treatment, not to be the foundational text of an allegedly predatory cult. 

It is precisely because Dianetics gets all the flak of Scientology’s alleged abuses while predating it and being patently uninterested in religious trappings for the first two years of its life that I have always wanted to read it. But, much like my interest in Hillary Clinton’s Masterclass (If you know, you know), I never wanted a penny of my own money going to the people who stood to profit off my purchase of a new copy (If anyone has a login to Hillary’s masterclass they’re willing to sell for $3.99, let’s talk).

Having spent my $3.99 on a used copy of a book which has a listed MSRP of $4.99 from 1986 (about $15 in today’s money according to an internet inflation calculator) I immediately dug into it and was…honestly, surprised.

The first few chapters are startlingly reasonable. Hubbard argues that the fundamental dynamic of human life is to Survive! (bold formatting Hubbard’s), and that all life processes are driven toward that one goal. He introduces some concepts that I don’t think are particularly relevant for this brief review, such as the tone scale and the four dynamics—these things are all readily available on Wikipedia—before getting into what I think is the meat of the theory.

According to Hubbard, we all possess two minds: the analytic mind and the reactive mind. The analytic mind is what we are aware of when we are conscious. Because life processes do not stop when we are unconscious, Hubbard’s explanation is that that is when the reactive mind is active (this is important). He describes the analytic and reactive mind in computational terms. The analytic mind is responsible for processing memories and experiences so that we as individuals can react and behave appropriately. The reactive mind, however, is responsible for collecting sense data and making quick associations that help feed relevant input into the analytic mind. The problem is that the reactive mind cannot analyze, and so it fills up with associations that lead to aberrations.

The example given by Hubbard is of a fish that swims into some brackish water to feed on shrimp. While feeding, he gets knocked on the fin. Startled, the fish flees the brackish water. The startle is a moment when the analytic mind shuts off momentarily and allows the reactive mind to take over. The reactive mind takes in all the sense information—brackish water, shrimp, knock on the tail—and files it away under the heading “startle” (he actually spends a lot of time discussing filing and cross-filing, but we’re keeping this simple). Later, the fish returns to the brackish water because the analytic mind remembers that there was plenty of shrimp to be found. However, just as soon as the fish enters the brackish water, the analytic mind pulls from the files related to brackish water and discovers important information about being startled. Suddenly, the fish develops a minor twinge in the tail which triggers the reactive mind’s associations in this regard, and the fish, without ever getting to the shrimp or being knocked in the tail decides to avoid the brackish water.

This becomes the basis of the engram, or a negative memory with the power to override a normal analytic process. Hubbard’s example is of entering 1+1 into a calculator while also holding down the 7 key. Ignoring that most calculators will either not let you push two keys at once or just produce a bunch of 7’s, we can run with the imagery. You’re putting in 1+1 but getting out 8. Or you multiply 1 by 10 and get 70. The 7 input is the engram stored in the reactive mind associated with the 1+1 program. Every time the analytic mind goes to run the 1+1 program, it reaches for all the files cross-referenced with it and the reactive mind is more than happy to supply a 7.

Hubbard links this behavior of the reactive mind to evolutionary processes and allows for the development of engrams as part of the survival process in an earlier stage of evolution. However, given the state of the human animal in the modern world, it is clear that these engrams no longer serve the purpose of promoting human survival and flourishing and must be cleared out.

The goal of Dianetics Therapy, then, is to clear these engrams so that the analytic mind can operate optimally and promote that singular essential dynamic: Survive!

How does this work?

The auditor and the preclear establish a rapport and trust between each other with the auditor assuring the preclear that they will know everything that happens during the session. The preclear then closes their eyes and enters “dianetic reverie”. The reverie is simply a term used to help the preclear think they’re entering an altered state, however Hubbard does say that optimal reverie will be noticeable due to a trembling of the eyelashes. A “canceller” is installed (basically a form of post-hypnotic suggestion that will be used to end the session) and then the session really begins.

The auditor asks the preclear to locate an incident in the past (Dianetics to a degree treats this like time travel; based on what I’ve heard the CoS treats this as literal time travel) and describe it. The auditor then asks the preclear information gathering questions about what is happening in this incident, to try and get as much data as possible. When the preclear hits a roadblock, the auditor brings the preclear back to the beginning and asks them to start again. This procedure is done over and over again until the session time is run out.

The same incident will be rerun over and over again over multiple sessions until the preclear’s attitude about it becomes positive. This is the sign that the aberration that led to the engram is purged, and the incident’s memory is refiled from the reactive mind to the analytic mind. Going “clear” is when the reactive mind is entirely purged. Focusing on individual incidents and specific engrams is called a “release”. 

All of this can be done from the comfort of home using Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, because Hubbard intended it to be thus. 

At the heart of dianetics therapy is abreaction therapy. “Abreaction Therapy focuses on reliving a traumatic event and going through the emotions associated with them to heal and move forward. Originally created by Sigmund Freud the method gives patients a way to release their unconscious pain and escape from the memories and feelings that have kept them from moving forward.” The mechanism by which Hubbard describes this working is the novelty introduced (along with his biological/physiological claims), which leads to specific claims about why the therapy is needed in the first place. Remember, according to Hubbard, we are full of engrams. These do not promote survival, but instead inhibit it. If we utilize dianetics to get to the state of “clear”, then we can optimize our survival and push human evolution forward. Thus, Dianetics becomes less a self-help book and more a manifesto of personal flourishing. In a way, it is the original Influencer Manual to Selfcare and Glowups (if this doesn’t exist, someone could make a mint). 

Interestingly, ignoring the runaway freight train that is “going clear”, dianetics is regarded as pseudoscientific nonsense despite a very similar treatment being one of the most popular and widely evangelized treatments today.

If you don’t know what EMDR is (Eye Movement Deconstruction and Reconstruction) then you are probably a shut-in with no friends and no internet access. If you’ve had the unsettling feeling over the last 5-10 years that every minor inconvenience is being diagnosed as trauma, you’re not alone. The “traumafication of everything” is a discussion for another time, but it has correlated to the rapid destigmatization of mental health and allowed the proliferation of services such as BetterHelp (itinerate scandals aside) to help democratize access to therapy. Hand in glove with this destigmatization and democratization has been a growing chorus of people championing EMDR.

The following section is indebted to YouTuber Neurotransmissions and his video “A Hard Look at EMDR and its Unscrupulous Founder” . In the interests of transparency, Neurotransmissions and I have never spoken, this is not a sponsored plug, and I gain nothing by pointing people to his channel. However, the algorithm popped this video up while I was in the middle of reading Dianetics and it provided plenty of verified source material that didn’t necessarily confirm my suspicions but at the very least gave credence that I wasn’t imagining the parallel.

EMDR is an endorsed treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder discovered by Francine Shapiro. Discovered is the correct word, since, in her own retelling, she discovered it entirely by accident one day while taking a walk. While thinking about things that generally troubled her, she noticed her eyes moving rapidly back and forth. This caused her to lose focus on what she was thinking about, so she returned to thinking about whatever it was that was troubling her, and she discovered that she didn’t feel so troubled about it anymore. Shapiro decided to test her finding by thinking about something else that troubled her, intentionally moving her eyes back and forth a bit, and then revisiting it only to discover the same result: she didn’t feel so badly about it anymore.

Shapiro went on to more fully develop the theory and promote it as a treatment for PTSD. A general rundown of an EMDR session looks remarkably similar to a dianetics audit:

  1. History and treatment planning, in which traumatic events are identified to be reprocessed.
  2. Preparation, in which the therapeutic relationship between patient and practitioner is established and the process is explained.
  3. Assessment, in which the specific event to be reprocessed is identified “including images, beliefs, feelings, and sensations” associated with that event.
  4. Desensitization, in which the eye movements or other bilateral stimulation is used while the event is recounted internally by the patient. It is during this period that the patient is encouraged to produce new thoughts, images, feelings, and sensations while subjectively rating how troubling the patient feels about the event. The goal is to get this subjective rating to zero.
  5. Installation, in which a positive belief is associated with the event until this belief feels completely true to the patient.
  6. Body Scan, in which the patient holds onto the target event and the installed positive belief while scanning the body and processing any lingering disturbance from the body with bilateral stimulation.
  7. Closure, in which the practitioner helps return the patient to a state of calm in the present moment.
  8. Reevaluation, in which the process is repeated in subsequent sessions.

One of the enduring critiques of this setup is that in controlled trials, the bilateral stimulation (or, according to the EMDR International Association, BLS since BS would have been too accidentally hilarious, probably) did not actually add anything to the therapeutic effectiveness. Neurotransmissions recounts how in the early batch of these controlled trials, Shapiro responded to this criticism by saying the researchers had not been properly trained. So the next batch of trials was done by people who paid for and took the training, producing the same result. Shapiro’s response was to say that they only had Level 1 training when they needed Level 2 training. So the researchers paid for the Level 2 training and so on and so forth. You get the idea.

If this sounds like the ever-increasing “you need more training to do advanced auditing to ascend the Bridge to Total Freedom” costs of Scientology, it’s because it is. If you google “EMDR and Scientology” there’s not a few links to people asking on various platforms if anybody else is noticing the similarities. And when you follow those links you’re greeted with plenty of testimonial from people who underwent EMDR whose lives were reportedly saved by it trying to refute the claim at the heart of the question. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that positive testimonials for dianetics also exist. There is a reason that cults are able to sustain themselves even amidst widespread and consistent allegations of abuse, precisely because they are able to offer something that people find useful or lifesaving. If we can adjust the old adage of “the difference between a cult and a religion is money and time” a bit, the difference between a cult and a religion very often has as much to do with the people at the top. Dianetics and EMDR, both just dressed up abreactive therapy, work. But they work for the same reason that abreactive therapy work, and the additional dressing up of the therapy is just there to help earn a buck for the one who added the accessory. And in the case of Scientology, the additional dressing up has been particularly and uniquely lucrative.

Yet, it is not the point of this digression into EMDR to make the positive case that EMDR and Dianetics are the same thing. I actually do think it’s more a case of parallel development. Dianetics claims to cure many physical ailments and in fact diagnoses things as somatic illnesses that are clearly and irrefutably physical or genetic. This fact alone is enough to dismiss Dianetics out of hand, even if the basic therapy on its own would otherwise be effective. So clearly, EMDR is in the clear on this?

According to the EMDR International Association, EMDR can be used to effectively treat “OCD, chronic pain, addictions, and other distressing life experiences”  (emphasis my own). Oh my. At least there is clinical support to back up the claims that EMDR is at least effective.

Except, as Neurotransmissions points out in his video, almost all the individual studies done on the effectiveness of EMDR that haven’t been dismissed by EMDR’s leadership have been done by practitioners who have a vested interest in seeing it be presented in a positive light. Accompanying metastudies don’t show an appreciable difference in effectiveness from other therapies, such as abreactive therapy or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. However, as he (also a trained and licensed therapist) points out, the cost of EMDR certification is substantially higher than most other treatment certification programs, which only adds the sunk cost fallacy to people’s vested interests in seeing EMDR succeed. So if all the clinical studies around EMDR have potential issues, and the overall form and function isn’t radically different from what is correctly denounced as pseudoscience, then at least a sufficient pile of anecdote lends some credence, right? Well, sure, but only if you extend the same to Dianetics.

What I haven’t bothered to find out is if Shapiro ever uttered the famous sentiment of every cult that ever existed: “Disagreeing with me is proof of concept”. Hubbard, however, does. When discussing the interactions between Auditor and Preclear, he specifically addresses someone complaining about the auditing and questioning its efficacy. Instead of stopping, the Auditor is urged to persist and encourage the Preclear to continue. By stopping, Hubbard says, the Auditor will actually implant an engram that associates the Auditor with sympathy, and the Auditor-Preclear relationship will be shattered. Questioning the efficacy of dianetics is proof of its efficacy, and proof that the Preclear just needs more.

So why spend so much time interrogating the surface-level similarities between EMDR and Dianetics? I bring it up not because I am skeptical of EMDR (I actually am, but that is beside the point), but because of a broader cultural phenomenon surrounding the ascendant moralism of “bettering oneself”, “selfcare”, and “doing the work”. This entire aside connecting EMDR and Dianetics applies just as well to other current personal improvement endeavors from New Age “shadow work” to HR ED&I initiatives. Any of these would have provided for a provocative essay, but few have as many direct parallels as EMDR. They all are based on the premise that outward negative manifestations stem from internal traumas or aberrative learned processes that need to be purged in order to operate like a normal human being (and that’s before we get to people like Robin DiAngelo who insist that the original sin of being of European stock is insurmountable, so the option of going “clear” in anti-racist action for her is off the table entirely). Had Dianetics been written in 2015, we would have seen BLM protestors and veterans of Occupy Wall Street flocking to Dianetics Auditing Centers around the country and championing the purging of their reactive minds. “Decolonize your mind,” indeed.

The unsettling truth is that Dianetics, when you strip it down to its bare essentials, is actually a very reasonable and understandable conceptual framework for treating the postmodern condition, while at the same time avoiding the Victorian, finger-wagging moralism of much of the contemporary moment. In that way it actually holds up a mirror to a lot of the supposed magic bullets being bandied around by today’s enlightened liberal. The underlying technique is still used in therapists’ offices today. So when we get right down to it, the takeaway comes down to this:

Hubbard had a remarkable imagination, and it helps pad out his book to over 500 pages. But whereas you need to spend thousands of dollars to learn how to administer EMDR, you can spend $3.99 to administer Dianetics. I am not advocating this, but it’s there. The allure of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, is because of the controversy surrounding Scientology and because of the alleged abuses and the alleged OTVIII material (of South Park fame). But at the end of the day, Dianetics is little more a boring snapshot of the state of mental health therapies in 1950 and one man’s imaginative alternative to electro-shock therapy and lobotomies.

Good for him.

Closing out the Year

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It is not, nor will it become, my habit to do yearly reviews. But I figure that since last year I specifically ended on the note of making particular predictions in order to see how accurate they would be, it is worth following up on them.

“The Ukraine War will continue through most if not all of the year“
Correct.

“China will NOT invade Taiwan“

Correct.

“Republican internal meltdowns will be hilarious“

Correct. I also mentioned that Kevin McCarthy was ‘a doofus’, which turned out to be proven in the most hilarious way as he lost the speakership to his own party’s antics. And while I did correctly foresee that DeSantis would not the be the titan he was predicted by others to be, the extent of his floundering so far surprised even me.

“2022 Was Peak GenderTrender for the U.S. and 2023 will be Peak GenderTrender for the U.K.“

Correct with almost a 100% accuracy on all details when you read the full section I wrote last year for this call. I did not know a year ago about the then coming book ‘Time to Think‘, and the SNP’s sloppy attempt to shore up its floundering with culture war really sealed the deal.

“After his inevitable removal from ”””’power””””’, Juan Guaido will go the way of Saakashvili“

Mixed. I was correct that he is now entirely irrelevant, but even Saakashvilli made headlines with his Brooklyn Hipster antics for a year or two. Guaido can’t even do that. Truly the biggest tool and cuck of our time.

” OneDnD will Rival the Galactic Starcruiser in terms of corporate entertainment fiasco“

Correct, but not nearly correct enough. The Galactic Failcruiser was indeed put out of its misery just a few months ago, and Hasbro/Wizards continues on, but its apparent ‘living’ is really more the jerkings of the rigor mortis afflicted undead. OneDnD itself looks like it will be a terrible product, but this is hardly even the main story anymore. Now its about mismanagement, squandering a cornered market and turning success into failure, layoffs and stock losses, former fans leaving in droves, poisoned relations throughout the hobby, and even sending Pinkertons to intimidate product reviewers. 2023 was such a year of unmitigated failure for Hasbro that if it were not for the entire nation of Canada one-upping them with even more ridiculousness (Trudeau saying Canada’s global contribution was ‘gender language’, Parliament giving a standing ovation to an SS veteran, the entire country being on fire all summer, collapse in relations with the two most populous nations on Earth in the same year, etc) I would just give them the Fail of the Year award outright. So while I could see the clear downward trends for the company a year ago, I still missed just how catastrophic it would be. Its honestly extremely funny. Any player of TTRPGs worth their salt has long since left that company and its products behind. It is good for the hobby not to be tethered to this bloated monstrosity anymore.

So my predictions were extremely on point for 2023. I would like to make one correction to an old post however, especially in light of the Hasbro thing. When I ranked the editions of a game that even then I no longer played, I overrated DnD 5E’s accessibility considering its bland generic nature. These days, I would switch the places of 5 and 2 in that ranking. 2 was a mess in some ways, but it was still the most similar to 1, the only truly good edition. And above all, it had a ton of character. The beige grab-bag casserole of 5E tries to be everything for everyone and thus is really for no one. We see the costs of this game design philosophy now with the implosion of its parent company and the re-writing of all their materials in corporate sensitivity training HR speak.

2023 Year Rankings

Now lets do something a bit different. Lets name the best of year.

Person [lolcow] of the Year:

George Santos of course!

(Runner Up: Yevgeny Prigozhin)

Film of the Year: Oppenheimer. Most basic answer I have ever given to that question ever, but it really is. Once in a blue moon, Hollywood can still deliver. Just don’t bet on it. (Runner Up: When Evil Lurks)

Book of the Year (nonfiction): The Ideology of Democratism by Emily Finley. I can’t stop citing it. Yes, it came out in 2022, but I always count books by the year I first read them, not their publication date.(Runners Up: The Turkish War of Independence by Edward J Erickson, End Times by Peter Turchin).

Book of the Year (fiction): A Different Darkness and Other Abominations by Luigi Musolino. I read so many short story collections in the horror/new weird genre that it takes a lot to impress me, and this one really delivered. (Runners Up: Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds and Sometimes Lofty Towers by David C Smith).

Album of the Year: Panopticon- The Rime of Memory.

There never has been a year since I have discovered them when Panopticon released an album and it wasn’t either a contender or victor for album of the year. (Runner Up: Pale Jay- Bewilderment).

Game of the Year: Lunacid. You will see Lunacid described as a ‘King’s Field or Shadow Tower like’, and it is. But to me, who never played those games until far more recently, its something else entirely. A kind of game I always wanted. Namely, the atmosphere and setting of Arx Fatalis without the interface jank and buggy default setting. An all dungeon world of mood and shadows with a killer score and weird monsters. After decades of waiting, I finally got that game I have long pined for. Comes just a tad short of Arx in the atmosphere department (but only barely) and surpasses it in all other ways. (Runners Up: Trepang2, Hrot).

Interpretation of a Mare, one of the more memorable enemies in the game.

All in all it was a good year for me. I finally got to take my grandmother’s ashes to Japan, and I was very productive on the creative writing front with multiple projects. I got to give a lecture on Western Hemisphere geopolitics in Buenos Aires and take some side trips. Next year, I am hoping, will shape up like 2022 in being a strong year for professional output.

Designing the Ideal International Relations Education

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It should be obvious right now that something is wrong with how we in the Anglosphere train and educate professionals who enter into the fields of diplomacy. Due to elite overproduction, short term topical issues are used to show regime loyalty and compete for ever scarcer positions, creating a class of people who believe the normal basics of geopolitics are abnormal and the abnormal period we are emerging from is the definition of the typical ideal. The ideology of democratism, not the wordly realities of statecraft, hold an inordinate sway over the world view of multiple generations in the North Atlantic policy making class.

While not the entirety of the diagnosis, it cannot be denied that how International Relations is taught is a major factor in this problem. And one thing I have quite a lot of experience with (even if it rapidly recedes in the rear view mirror from the present), is academia. Even when I was still in it eight years ago, I had many thoughts on how I did not like how international relations was taught, especially at the graduate level. As it was, I was a history major in undergraduate, which if anything gave me an advantage over the more conventional political science/IR undergrad people due to having a vast library of case studies to draw upon rather than the typical few. The only people having interesting or original thoughts in my program were also outsiders to the major, having just joined at the Master’s level if not later.

So, what would the ideal IR academic program look like? For simplicity’s sake and economic efficiency, let us make it a 4 year all comprehensive undergraduate program. The kind that requires no graduate schooling in order to immediately enter the diplomatic/statecraft field.

This four year program would be split into two two-year sections. In the first two years the knowledge of the student will be a kind of ‘Pre-IR’, with each student being able to choose the proportions of their courses from the following list:
-Geography
-History
-Anthropology
-Economics
-A foreign language

So long as the baseline requirements of having at least two courses in each of those topics are met, the student can choose however many additional ones from the list (as well as from psychology and philosophy) they want to meet their credit quota. Once this requirement is met, there is a mid-point review where the student is accepted into the next 2 year phase of the program, international relations proper or can opt out to pursue one of those other concentrations on the list instead with no penalty.

This concluding half of the experience begins with Introduction to International Relations Theory and Introduction to Diplomatic History as two required seminar courses. At this point, the amount of courses is reduced for higher credit modules and longer modules. Once those two courses are complete the student is then given free reign to choose any courses they wish so long as they are topic relevant. (Example of topics would be things like State Collapse, Alliances, International Political Economy, History of wars that had many participants, Courses on specific kinds of theorists, etc). Additionally, they now must select a mandatory study abroad year, either to begin second semester of junior year or first semester senior year.

This study abroad year will be covered in the tuition/financial aide of the baseline university costs and should come at no additional expense to the student. It would consist of either two separate stints in different countries (one developing, one developed) or a single year in one location of any level of development but which must NOT be an allied country to the host student’s host university. In other words, should this program be based in the North Atlantic, the full year study abroad options could not be in a country in the “liberal international order.” If it was based in China or Russia, the year abroad must not be in an S.C.O. country, etc. The point is that the students experience a diplomatic world outside of the normal bubble they would be subjected to. There will be coursework completed at an educational institution in the host country and an internship/job (part time) also done in that country, be it one’s home country’s embassy, an NGO, or at the temporary host university.

During this study abroad experience, the student would be encouraged to come up with and submit for approval a thesis project, to take one or two semesters, which they would create as a solo project upon their return to the home institution. If they end up taking extra semesters to do this they would not have to pay tuition for this time, and their accommodation would be taken care of by the university. But they must complete the project no more than two semesters after the return. The thesis project would use the knowledge they have gained both in coursework and in study abroad/internships in order to argue a unique and original point

Upon completing this, the student graduates and is now eligible for government service in a diplomatic capacity, and more than eligible in for work in the nonprofit sector. No further education should be needed unless specific subject matter expertise on a niche topic is desired. In such cases, this streamlined IR program should serve as a leg up in getting into any such programs.

A program like this would correct for many of the deficiencies in IR education and make the major one of the more impressive and prestigious in the humanities. It would reinvigorate the humanities themselves as something practical and worth investing in. And, perhaps most importantly, it would give a graduate-level quality of education without having to take on any expense or time commitments beyond a basic Bachelor’s degree.

The Ouroboros of Cancellation

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The Left Sowing:

‘Yes, yes censorship and cancelling! This is how we get revenge on society for being the bullied losers in school! We are the cool kids now! You’re cancelled, you’re fired! No one will ever be made uncomfortable by words ever again when we abolish all bad things to protect victims everywhere!’

The Left Reaping:

‘Wait no, tyranny, censorship, how could I have known the culture of civic repression and empowering HR in society I took part in for a decade could one day revert back to the neoconservative and evangelical pro-Israel militancy from which it first spawned? What about my rights to dissent and not be fired for diverging from mainstream institutional thought?’

I always have despised the impact on public discourse by the Israel Lobby. Not one to enjoy taking part in ethnic strife halfway around the world in which I have no attachment to either side, I deeply resent the most effective group organization at entwining my country into a dispute which I think it should not be involved in at all. Israel is, of course, correct to follow its own interests in curating American support. But the United States is not correct in assuming its interests and those of Israel are the same, particularly since the end of the Cold War.

But I cannot help but laugh at the hole leftist activists have dug for themselves. Anyone with even a modicum of (fairly recent) historical knowledge knows that cancel culture in its modern form was pioneered by right wing Christians and their often-allies in AIPAC in a process that began in the 80s and continued without interruption through the 2000s. The left, subsumed by its own evangelical revivalist religion of wokeness, adopted all of these tactics for its own increasingly unhinged goals starting in the early 2010s. In a country where everything except some of their economic and socially libertarian ideas was deeply unpopular, this was always going to create a backlash. The question was simply when. As the former proper social justice causes of erasing legal inequalities got replaced by more and more ever-escalating demands which invaded people’s lives in the most horrifying of panopticons (workplace surveillance, censorship, ideological motivated firings, college campuses eschewing open inquiry for rigid conformity, victimhood grievance as the pinnacle of progressive activism, mandatory pronouns on work signatures, etc) a turn against the left-puritans was not only necessary, but inevitable. The linear-progressive view was such a blinker that it blinded the left activists to this obvious reality just as much as the same world view has blinded centrist liberals to the dangers of financial globalization and liberal internationalist diplomacy. It is dangerous to believe there is such a thing as a ‘Right Side of History.’

Ron DeSantis, or as I prefer to call him, Meatball Ron, was the first big figure to really exemplify this pivot back to the old pre-Occupy normal. A censorious culture warrior who governed an entire state seeking national media headlines, he pioneered (if not successfully for his own personal campaign so far) the return to right wing cancel culture by building off the very untenable situation created by the North American left. Even now he and that absolute horror show Nikki Haley are demanding mass censorship of universities and public spaces to defend the feelings of pro-Israel students. Cancel culture for me, but not thee. The right’s posture against censoriousness was always a canard.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone. The left absorbed and regurgitated the right’s old bugbears of sex entitlement, sex panic, the idea that people can become morally corrupted by entertainment media, and the cosmic battle of good vs evil to bring about the End Times. It merely repackaged them for different audiences. So why shouldn’t the right learn from professional managerial class and activist cancel culture? One form of slave morality meeting another in an Ouroboros of victimhood and cancellation.

I lament the canary in the coal mine that is mass censorship targeting critics of the U.S.-Israel alliance and will always advocate for the freedom to dissent from the establishment, as I always have. But I can’t help but laugh when it targets the American activist left. If anyone deserves this, it is them. Those of us who have remained consistent on these issues get nothing but our own peace of mind. But those others who are so insecure they are threatened by mere words will never know the confidence and satisfaction we feel to explore the world around us unburdened by their insecurities.

North American Shinto Shrines

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I recently got back from a trip to Japan. Though the purpose of this trip was primarily familial, I was able to go to Kanazawa (new location for me) and Kyoto (an overdue return trip) for historical reasons.

I made sure to go to as many shrines as possible, as I love Shinto Shrine culture. A non-unversalist and localized way of integrating people’s need of the spiritual and public ceremony with everyday life focused around local legends, lore, and topography.

What follows is an attempt to lazily (i.e. with AI) render Shinto shrines dedicated to North American folk heroes and cryptids, from the Raven of indigenous Pacific Northwest folklore to more modern fare like cryptids. Sadly, I was not able to give the shrines themselves an Americanized look and retain the overall theme. Normally, this is the kind of thing I would draw myself, but its focus on buildings (a weakness of mine) means this is the more efficient method.

Jersey Devil
Mothman
Raven
Coyote

Now for Halloween I just have to figure out what the North American equivalent of the Nuribotoke is.

Fools Pick Fights That Aren’t Their Own

/ geotrickster / 7 Comments

I was originally going to write this post anyway before all the Gaza Strip stuff happened. I was simply waiting to get back from an international trip before doing so. That a new round of fighting between Israel and Palestine broke at the tail end of my trip only added from my desire to write such a thing. And while I know it would get more attention if I published it externally at some official publication, I feel few would allow me to say what I really want on the subject.

Every tribal war or local territorial dispute now has taken on global dimensions due to media saturation, the universalist claims of the American state, and the existential rhetoric its opponents adopt in response. This leads to a massive distortion in what people regard as self-interest, rejecting rationalist prudence for a crusader mentality of whatever the pet cause of the day is or ones personal/psychological vendettas.

People who live in North America for instance, but have no friends or family in either Israel or Palestine, are deeply invested in a tribal ethnic war that has no bearing on their life. Or, would have no bearing on their life were it not for the risk of outside power escalation. And the primary driver of outside power escalation is of course countries (and their publics) wanting to ‘do something‘. This is why interventionist states and their mouthpieces in the press are so obsessed with human rights narratives. They are always seeking to manufacture consent for the next intervention. It is increasingly obvious that in order to care about peace and stability one must not embrace, but renounce, the human rights focused view of the world.

While I am sure a large amount of the religious fanfiction of some cultures draws them like flies to shit when conflict in the Levant breaks out, this region is hardly alone in attracting this kind of attention. Having a national interest based discussion about Ukraine in North America, for instance, is always buried under layers of posturing bullshit about democracy, clashes of civilizations, and whatnot.

The obsession with tallying ‘War Crimes’ is a big part of this and may be central to this kind of rhetoric. The problem is war crimes trials are always by necessity victors justice, and without trials the concept has no meaning but a kind of whine. Power differentials make the concept situational as we know certain people will be punished and others not. Furthermore, such discussions feed into a false belief that war can be tamed and functions as a kind of courtly jousting match on a predetermined field. But in an era of mass urbanization, high explosives, and existentially justified stakes, this is impossible. Any war is a war on civilians and therefore the point of ‘war crimes’ is moot. To support a military operation is, inevitably, to support war on a society, not just its front line military. Considering the logistical network required for militaries to function this is both logical an inevitable. But it also means that to support a war means, undeniably, support for war on civilians and all that entails. This is why I personally support only a very few military operations even though I am not a pacifist. In my adult life I have only directly supported counter-ISIS and counter-Al Qaeda operations. And yes, this means I was fully supporting the demolition of places like Aleppo and Raqqa. Nor did I have the gall to pretend the policies I was advocating were actually for the good of the people being bombed, because no such policy can be good for everyone. The very existence of foreign policy presupposes the obvious observation that there are multiple groups of people with divergent interests.

The political center and its lapdog journalists, in love with war as they are, are actually made more hawkish by their faith that war is a controllable, even chivalric force of social change. Their maudlin humanism is not a hypocrisy except in rhetoric, it is a natural extension of their world view of treating war as transformational and moral rather than the breakdown of order and the failure of diplomacy. But some, even going back to Sunzi, warned us of the truth from the start: War is always a failure and a dangerous roll of the dice, even when it is necessary. That is why it must be kept to a minimum even though it is always prepared for as inevitable. But when it is embraced, it is only rational to embrace it to the maximum. If you believe a war is necessary, you believe the attempted demolition of another society is necessary. At least have the honesty to admit it. All people have a place where they reach this point. It is dishonest to deny it. And becoming squeamish when your faction does not behave in the way a suburban commentariat wishes just shows your views are superficial at best, calculated for social prestige at worst.

But let us not just pick on the centrists. The past month has shown us the worst spread of leftoid and rightoid thought across the board. Our entire culture is unprepared to seriously engage with nuance and restraint. Earlier, a moronic English language spokesperson for the Ukrainian military threatened U.S. citizens for criticizing involvement in the war. Even a cursory examination of this person’s past reveals a sadly predictable pattern: the lost soul in search of a cause who wanders the world looking for a fight that isn’t theirs. Having finally found one (a war which, since the failure of the first Russian offensives anyway, is basically now one of local territorial control) the foreign volunteers have adopted as a cause above and beyond their empty listless life in an attempt to find meaning they are too weak to make for themselves. A lack of self-cultivation leads to radicalization abroad.

I used to analyze patterns of extremist recruitment for jihadist networks when I worked for the U.S. government. It is interesting how many of the psychological identifiers are in place for western Ukraine volunteers. Downward mobility, an obsession with culture war and global teleology, the desire to erase one’s own personal insignificance by joining an existential cause beyond themselves. When these people come home, mark my words, they will destabilize their home countries. They are the new Freikorps, or Japanese army officers after the Siberian Intervention, or jihadists. Their jihad is Reddit (or Azov) and their connections and sense of entitlement make them a domestic danger. At the very least they should be put under surveillance. And for me, a general opponent of the surveillance state, to say that means I am very serious about the danger these people pose to the rest of us.

The right, if anything, has beclowned itself even more than the left and center. At least Ukraine ties into great power competition and therefore is a national security issue of some kind. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can’t even do that unless you think Saudi Arabia and Iran are global powers…an odd thesis. For years I have been warning the realism and restraint community (who has been rightly happy with more republicans listening to its argument than at any time in generations) that this was a fair-weather situation. I told many people, again and again, that the second something happened to Israel you would see the Bush/Cheney marriage of evangelical end times prophecies and neoconservatism come roaring back to the surface like it had never left. That happened this week. All the Big Tough Guys who pose about being better than the pussy humanists now shriek about seeing the face of war brought to their darling little pet nation, Israel, the nation they have sworn allegiance to above that of their own. This transferred nationalism allowing them to go to places the regular old kind at home is inadequate for. The conservative love of a country which could be considered the biggest ‘welfare queen’ in American history, one that bombed the USS Liberty and constantly schemes to involve Washington in more Middle Eastern quagmires, is a masochistic and yes, quite cucked, affair. Any utility this alliance once had ended with the end of the Cold War, and it now serves only as a burden. Yet these sentimental rightoids cannot stop themselves. Its the Bible Country and its under attack! Tom Clancy would want us to be the heroic protagonists of this new Battle for Civilization! The Left Behind series is now real- get ready to RAPTURE!

And these American Pied Noirs are just waiting to see their Biblical fever dreams reenacted at home as well as abroad. Once again, surveillance is needed. In a rational state without delusions of Imperial Globalism, that’s what we would do. We would treat people more interested in fighting other people’s battles as inherently dangerous and unstable, and merely waiting to bide their time to import those battles back home. The historical record on these type of people is very clear on this point. At the very least their antics should be tracked and publicly documented on public forums.

Conflict zone interest should be categorized on a location-based capacity. The further something is located from you, the less relevant it is. Its ability to impact you only worsens the more things get involved. Anglos are taught from birth to see all struggles as global and good vs evil, but they are inevitably local, contextual, and tribal. They can be everything and existential if you live in or near a place, but are not if further afield. The true danger of globalization is that every struggle can become globalized.

Conflict is both inevitable and eternal. Understanding this, the only rational conclusion is containment, not intervention. Containment is not pacifism and requires both vigilance and force, but it can and will reduce the spread of outbreaks of violence. Those who wish to make local conflicts go global are complicit in making the world a more awful place, be they hawkish politicians or these psychological damaged war tourists. Diplomatic wisdom is being rooted more in place, in a very real physical sense, than being rooted in some Platonic-Manichean realm of battling ideals. It is spatial relationships that should concern the makers of foreign policy, not dreams of world transformation.

Review of John Gray’s ‘The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism’

/ geotrickster / 2 Comments

‘The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism‘ is the philosopher John Gray’s latest book-length work. As long time readers may be aware, I am a huge fan of his. This was one book I could not wait for the official U.S. release of, and ordered a U.K. copy early so as not to have to wait until November to read it. It helps that it will be used, along with some other of his works, as part of a longer term research project I am just beginning to embark on.

Those who are unfamiliar with much of Gray’s work will find this book bracing, unique, and a welcome antidote to the normal neoliberal consensus/culture war echo chamber of our decaying order where nations pretend to be fighting for the angels of light against the forces of darkness, and mediocre politicians such as Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis square up to have debates over who can be the better Not-President.

Those who are familiar with Gray’s work, however, will find little new here. The Ukraine War has given Gray an extreme fascination with historical writers and thinkers in Russian history, which colors most of the central portion of the book. His (correct) disgust at early Soviet attempts to create ‘a new man’ becomes a tad overdone in his list of aphoristic anecdotes, to the expense of the first and closing sections of the book, which, in my opinion, are superior. If you have read Black Mass, Soul of a Marionette, Two Faces of Liberalism, and The Immortalization Commission, however, you will not find wholly new material here. Only new combinations centered loosely around the framing of Thomas Hobbes.

The overall argument is one I have made before myself, while citing Gray and his prior work no less, Hobbes -along with Spinoza- was the true and original liberal (before it began to mutate into a messianic religion starting with Kant and Rousseau and reaching full apotheosis in the present day neoliberal). His Leviathan, for all its flaws, was a useful and practical attempt to escape the delusions of endless sectarian warfare and the social engineering of Puritans by creating a society that could arbitrate between different groups, allowing diversity to exist below the state while retaining outward facing unity.

As society has changed, however, so too has this Hobbesian state edifice-the Leviathan. I myself have written before about its becoming an out of control beast that is no longer restrained by human-tier comprehension. (Considering Gray has a subsection on Lovecraft in this new book, I cannot help but wonder if he has read this blog). Gray wants to focus on how the Chinese social credit Panopticon and the Russian theocratic-mafia edifice are also now rival leviathans to the neoliberal-woke hybrid in the North Atlantic. Not just to let his readers know that the world is currently multipolar and the liberal internationalist experiment has failed, but also to lament the passing of the old secular Leviathan. A Hobbes brought forward in time might recognize Singapore or some of the Latin American states, but would not recognize these three creatures.

For in place of the old has come the Leviathan taken over by the very forces it was meant to control and dissipate. The Leviathan of the missionaries which seeks total control over the private as well as public sphere. The old and perpetually failed project of directed human betterment to bring about the great teleology which is always claimed to be around the corner, yet never arrives. There is no diversity and keeping the peace, no navigating the necessity of a balance of power, only eternal war of The Elect against all who are not Elect. The very thing the Leviathan was meant to prevent is the thing it is becoming. It is mandatory inclusiveness in sectarian war.

Gray once had a bunch of reactionaries who gravitated to his thought. Such people suddenly stopped writing about him favorably once Seven Types of Atheism was released and it became obvious that his true target in attacking humanist pathos was the religion that inspired it. In New Leviathans he reminds us of why this was with his bracing honesty at the intellectual lineage of the dire process he speaks about:

All four of the defining ideas of liberal thought are continuations of Christian monotheism. The primary of the individual is a secular translation of the belief that each human being is created by the deity, which has an authority over them that transcends worldly power. The egalitarian belief that human beings have the same moral status reproduces the that all human beings are equal in the sight of God. Liberal universalism- the belief that generically human attributes are more important than particular cultural identities- reflects the idea that humankind is created in God’s image. The belief that human institutions are indefinitely improvable replicates the theistic faith that history is a moral narrative of sin followed by redemption.
The ancient pre-Christian world accepted that the evils of human life recur in unending cycles. The secular humanist faith in progress is a pseudo-solution to the so-called problem of evil, which arises only with the belief in a benevolent and omnipotent creator-god. […] This Christian message inflamed the millenarian movements of medieval times and the secular revolutionaries of the twentieth century. It underpinned classical liberalism, and inspires hyper-liberals today. In woke movements, victimhood confers moral authority, as it does in Christianity.

This book is a warning. It may not be one needed by those already familiar with Gray, but it is one that more people should heed. Though perhaps I might be more likely to recommend Black Mass or Two Faces of Liberalism above it. Nevertheless, the central thesis holds up. To quote from the conclusion:

The deification of the human animal was alien to Hobbes’ way of thinking as the divination of power. Leviathan was mortal just as every human being was mortal. There is no final deliverance from the state of nature. This is Hobbes’s hidden message, which he never fully accepted himself.
If Leviathan is human artifice, politics is a necessary art. The task of the age is not to bind to the new Leviathans, as was attempted in the late liberal era, but to bring them close to what Hobbes believed they could be- a vessel of peaceful coexistence. In recognizing that peace can be achieved in many types of regime, Hobbes was a truer liberal than those that came after him. The belief that a single form of rule is best for everyone is itself a kind of tyranny.

Unlike in Film, Game Remakes Work

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I am on record on this very site as being very opposed to the trend of constantly remaking movies. While there are outliers, usually remakes miss what makes the original timeless and strip all the brains and soul out of a movie in order to make something forgettable and Current Year that will make a few bucks or worse, be an inferior product which then replaces the original in the memory of people too young to have seen the first.

Keep in mind I once broke up with a dude for saying the Dawn of the Dead remake was better than the original.

But something I have come to notice recently is that this dynamic does NOT hold up in games. Game remakes and remasters can be (usually are?) often very good. Sometimes even great.

To understand the difference in these two mediums and the reason games work and films do not when remade is to realize that interactivity in a product greatly increases the amount of moving parts at play. A certain practical winnowing has occurred in the past 20 years that enables endless playtesting to refine what works for an experience and what does not. This is a level of pragmatism and necessity that is irrelevant for film. Film must first and foremost be a visual and auditory feast for the audience and all other concerns are secondary. Personally, I think the medium peaked (for now anyway) in the 70s and 80s when it comes to proportional quality in aesthetic. Most ‘innovation’ since then has become finding new ways to green screen things and find every more bombastic spectacles that compromise the tried and true veracity of practical effects. There are exceptions, of course, but the overall trend still doesn’t look good and hasn’t since the 2000s.

Games on the other hand are always working to improve user interface (or should be), as well as having to upscale for new hardware. This means often times botched yet innovative experiments cannot be fully realized until later. At the same time, the industry has become lucrative, corrupted by investment over vision, and has lost a lot of what once made it great in its era of peak creative experimentation (the 90s- think about where games were at the start vs the end of that decade and compare it to any other). Additionally, neglected games eventually become unplayable due to technological compatibility issues.

And so we have some remakes and remasters that have brought back some great products that might not have even been made in today’s climate, but with quality of life improvements and graphical upgrades that enable new audiences to find them. Most notable of these to me have been the System Shock remake, the Quake II remaster (its a very real possibility that 1997’s Quake II might be my 2023 game of the year), and above all the gold standard for remakes so far, the Resident Evil 2 remake of 2019.

So, indulge me here while I list some games I would love to see remade or remastered with a brief description of why. Just in case any enterprising developers are using their google-fu to figure what old properties might be worth mining again. Not included on this list is Max Payne, which I just learned is in fact going to get remakes.

Afterlife– Few people have heard of or remember this game, but the 1995 heaven and hell building simulator was my first building game and, thematically and aesthetically, still my favorite. The game has a terrible balancing system and broken, if funny, natural disasters. But its peak quality pixel art and funny humor. I would hope a remake would keep the pixel art aspect.

Unreal (the first one)- The Unreal series went hard for multiplayer and left its original debut with only one terrible sequel to mark its passing. But this game is a masterpiece of atmosphere and unbroken first person exploration and combat on an alien world. It came out around the same time as Half Life and honestly I view it as the far superior shooter of that year.

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2- This series, a kind of 60s/James Bond immersive sim parody, was fantastic spy shooting and sneaking. The first one was funnier but the second one really pulled out the stops with workable stealth, great locations, and even a level in a trailer park being sucked into a tornado. The franchise has lingered in legal limbo for years though, preventing further development.

The Thing- 2002’s Thing game tried to capture the paranoia of the movie with an interesting squad based mechanic of shapeshifter infiltration. The tech just wasn’t there at the time though to pull this off properly, but I think it could be done today. Imagine a Thing themed game in Capcoms RE engine and then having to do the blood test on squad members.

Eternal Darkness- The only console only game that tempted me to break my unsullied record as an exclusive member of the PC Gaming Master Race, the idea of historical time hopping survival horror (but with way better controls) deserves a revival.

Battlezone- Not the very original black and white arcade game, but the 90s franchise of sci fi ground control combat/base building strategy game. Taking the Cold War into the solar system for alternate history sci fi was fantastic, and the game was a blast with many unique vehicle designs.

Heavy Gear 1 and 2- Honestly this franchise just needs a proper sequel. But the second game in particular was probably the best executed mecha combat game of all time but is hard to get working on modern systems. I am, to put it mildly, a huge fan.

Though there is a Daggerfall remaster, modernized controls and UI feel would be extremely welcome in my opinion.

People who will read this and know me well will wonder why my favorite game of all time, Alpha Centauri, is not on this list. The first reason for this is that the GOG version works perfectly fine and the game is so good I don’t think it needs anything else even after 24 years. The second reason is that its my plan to have an entire entry at on this site at some point in the future all about just that one game, so hold on.

Shadow Aristocracy

/ geotrickster / 4 Comments

The job of the trickster is not to passively lament negative trends, but to seek to exploit them for one’s own gain even if they are terrible. This is why historical figures like Nixon could spend decades lamenting the march of communism and then turn around and basically end the ideological-priorities-first phase of the Cold War.

Constructing the Black Longhouse was always meant to be a gradual and long term coming together of trends I have noticed. Many are discontent with the mainstream offerings and noticing an overall intellectual decline in greater civil society. As dark ages descend, the public sphere becomes more unbearable as it is divided between the most complacent status-quo defenders and the most fanatical cultists for their opposition. The two create between them a system of exclusion for all others. In order for one to keep both their curiosity and their sanity, it becomes apparent to stay engaged with like minded individuals and create alternative communities…but communities sufficiently divorced from schizophrenic mediocrity to enable actual inquiry and critical thought to survive long term and prepare for its return.

I don’t want to take attention away from how Neoliberal Boomers are primarily responsible for this mess, and that younger people certainly did not create these conditions, but its becoming increasingly undeniable that the Boomer’s true cultural and ideological successors are now the Zoomers. Their future in power will be just as bad if not worse as what came before. A true dark age really is coming as hypersensitive people with tiny attention spans and held to the lowest possible standards gain power over institutions. The bitter harvest of No Child Left Behind and Common Core are bearing rotting fruit. The cable news couch potato has found a recruitment pool just as deferential to authoritative propaganda as they are. One whose utterly enslavement into the norms of neoliberal bug-people is so complete it is lifelong and totalizing, though superficially covered up with performative radicalism and the postmodern-identity lapel-symbolism of various far right and far left loyalties.

At this point everyone knows the drill. Conflict adverse, intellectually incurious, and passive-aggressive, a generation of weaponized autism stands ready not to rebel against the mistakes of those who came before them, but to become the fundamentalist wing of perpetuating those very mistakes. A ready made snitch brigade obsessed with cultural conformity in the service of Silicon Valleys neofeudal church and social arrangement. The gateway demographic to a future of WALL-E People. Ready and willing to sell out their friends and family for updoots and cultural capital between media binging. A useful cohort for those who seek to keep the present socio-economic system intact is one which claims to challenge it but in fact upholds its structure. The Boomer elite truly has found a cohort they deem worthy to carry on their legacy of endless culture war in service of neoliberal-imperial maintenance. The full spectral dominance of the lumpens. Sounds incredibly bleak, right?

But keep some things in mind here:

Zoomers are the smallest age cohort in modern history.

They will likely be the poorest cohort in modern history, reducing their potential for political influence.

They will inherit/replicate a world where having long-term perspectives and the ability to read a book (especially a nonfiction book) cover to cover will be seen as superpowers.

You can literally communicate in code in public to avoid their snitching by simply writing in cursive or using non-literal metaphor in speech. Finally, a use for cursive!

Once the sheen of the usually not-neutral but claiming to be so Phact Checquers begins to rub off, inevitably people will come to distrust pop-knowledge, hot takes, and other mid-wit sources claiming to be authoritative. The default ‘Google Search to find the truth in 2 seconds’ trend will die because it will deliver less useful or trustworthy answers over time.

The expansion of AI and automation will negatively impact mid-wit commentariat and effectively ‘offshore’ thinking skills for the lumpenproles, but this will further increase the value of what the non-mid-wit observers bring to the table as their competition imposes self-obsolescence. There are things AI cannot do.

All of these trends argue towards a re-emergence of a new cultural aristocracy. Not (I hope) in the economic sense- in fact, the new economic aristocracy will almost certainly be part of this monolithic and trend chasing morass worth opposing. But rather a new intellectual aristocracy will arise made up of the minority of people still capable of critical thought. These people will not be popular or well-liked. In fact, they will be treated with great suspicion by the masses. But they will be necessary. And it is better to be needed than to be liked. This new aristocracy will even include (and perhaps even be dominated by) Zoomers, for none will be more motivated to go underground than those most awash in a groupthink they know to be false and futureless.

The opportunities to lurk in the shadows and emerge as advisors, leaders, and oppositional taste makers, to say nothing of the overtly creative pursuits, are enormous. Think of how Triple-A gaming has produced ever more terrible products and higher and higher costs while the indie scene has exploded into affordable quality by word-of-mouth. Think of how the old neoconservative establishment loses popularity and public cache constantly even as its power remains -for now- intact.

This unfolding era of brainrot can in fact be survived and even turned into an opportunity so long as the opposition is willing to take to the shadows and play the long game. Slowly, surely, with some behind the scenes coordination, oppositional ideas can be inserted back into the conversation as the Silicon Douche neofeudalism inevitably begins to collapse on itself due to its unsustainability and inability to see its own problems. While never lucrative, those who bothered to stay apart and aloof will end up wielding disproportionate influence over society if they only hold out long enough. Orders this stupid simply cannot last without either changing or falling.

The question remains, however, how long will that time take to arrive? Since this may not even occur in any of our lifetimes, we had best get to community building. Stay local and under the radar whenever possible.

In the meantime, the kidult minions of the Silicon Reich will be scouring the world for challenges to their complacency (and the interests of their older, richer masters). There are still shadows to hide in online, but not on public-facing social media. That is terrain that must be de facto ceded to the enemy. Anonymous forums and email lists are a better way to find contacts now. Perhaps more importantly, in a world where the former counter-cultural nature of the internet has become the monoculture, it becomes imperative to turn the real life offline into the new place of the counterculture. In cities this is easy, with word-of-mouth events not posted online. Outside of cities this is more difficult.

In a world where few read books, publishing them becomes a new way of communication. Information peasants are rarely even aware of books, especially nonfiction ones. And thus even online will likely not even know or care about those discussing them even publicly. This also serves as a screen to keep out those unwilling to do reading from diluting the Shadow Aristocracy.

These are just hypotheses. Practically speaking, things will work out their own way. But I have no doubt the increasing stupification of society will only lead to the demise of this current phase. I just don’t know the timing.

In the meantime, hold strong and build those connections. You are going to need them.


The Tokugawa Option vs NeoConfucian Sorkinism

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One of the most precious local resources you can have is a used bookstore. Especially one with a focus on things usually not held at other similar establishments. Even in the age of widespread Kindle access (which as a person who frequently relocates and likes to travel light is usually a good thing), e-books tend to come to people either by algorithmic recommendation or from specific search. But sometimes, what you need to complete the collection is something you don’t even know exists. Or that is too obscure to be well known enough to get an electronic adaptation.

So was it with me this month. I knew I had to write something on the utility and necessity of divergent governance, world views, and culture complexes. Specifically because there seems to be a kind of partial resurgence of Fukuyama-Friedmanism among a surly establishment. But I held off due to lacking a specific frame of reference worth writing about. And then there was the missing link right on the shelf in front of me in the used book store. A book I had never even heard of previously; Maruyama Masao’s ‘Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan.’

The uniqueness in shaking up a complacent world plagued by used bookstores overlaps with the themes of appreciating the uniqueness of divergent societies. It is interesting to think how the big panic among bibliophiles in the 90s and 00s was how giant bookstore chains were going to eat up all independent booksellers. There was even a terrible romantic comedy about it. But now we see that smaller bookshops are doing comparatively well to these former behemoths, specifically because of their uniqueness, while the neoliberal edifice of the giant chain is the one which struggles to survive in the internet age.

Ask any farmer, herder, or long term trend examiner if they think monoculture is a good idea and they will tell you it is not. The Irish Potato Famine, the Dust Bowl, the modern day Khat farming in certain parts of the world, and many more examples show this to be the most dangerous thing humanity can do on the macro-scale. The same principle applies to politics and economics, albeit in a less immediately quantifiable way. Too much of one thing, no matter how apparently successful it may appear to be, invites disaster the second this singular thing goes wrong. The degree of interconnected commerce the world was under at the turn of this century was viewed by most in the developed world as a good thing, but the worldwide collapse caused by the failure of the American housing bubble caused the Great Recession of 2008 and a series of violent economic disruptions we are still living under today. Present conditions of social homogenization in the internet era are similar in that an apparent triumph by present teleologists is not but hubris before an inevitable collapse. Those prepared to diverge and capable of learning from different examples will weather the storm better than those who simply follow trends. Not because they simply adopt a contrarian world view (reflexive contrarianism is simply a values inverted take on still being enslaved to present trends, after all), but because they show that alternatives are not just possible, but necessary. Such examples do not exist to be copied, since they are context dependent, but because they can be proportionally learned from in a way that cultivates critical thought and distance from mandatory trend chasing. This is why diversity, which, sorry DEI HR people, includes ideological diversity, is a critical value for the flourishing of the human experience. And it is especially critical for the scholar of the humanities-itself a discipline subjected to a forced conversion of sorts in the last decade.

The Tokougawa Shogunate was in many ways a conscious effort to diverge from what seemed like omnipresent trends then affecting Japan. Coming to power after generations of constant regional warfare, it was a thoroughly feudal but also self-consciously centralizing force of stability. The ruling elites had spent a thousand years being Sino-Weebs and nursing an inferiority complex towards China and blindly copying its philosophical and political debates. Meanwhile, in the south, enormous amounts of people under the influence of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries were converting to Christianity, a religion of mandatory monoculture with an expressly ‘globalist’ intent to culturally assimilate the planet into a teleological quest of seeing the human experience of a universal battle of good versus evil.

‘Greetinth Heathan. We hath come from Cathhtillia to sthpread the wordzth of Haythooth.’

Though this was too early on in the period of European ascendance to be like the threat that would have to be adapted to in the 19th Century, Spain had recently conquered the Philippines and the ability to project its fleet in the Pacific was a real and immediate threat.

Japan had always been a place of syncretic tolerance when it came to religion. Buddhism and Confucianism could exist in syncretism or modus vivendi with local Shintoism and so they could be tolerated. Christianity could not play well with others, and thus it was not tolerated. It was, in fact, thoroughly exterminated. A decision which might have saved Japan politically and certainly saved it culturally. A side effect of this was the closing of the country to all but regulated amounts of Chinese, Korean, and Dutch commerce.

The conventional narrative at this point is that the Tokugawa Shogunate sat in a state of pure stagnation for over 250 years. Peaceful, yes, but undynamic. This is not true. Or, more accurately, it was not true until the last half century of its existence. For while there were many onerous, unnecessary, and even farcical rules of the closed country such as related to travel and adoption of technology, overall this was a remarkably successful and dynamic government. Edo went from a tiny fishing village to one of the largest (and one of the cleanest, somehow) cities in the world. Peace became the norm for centuries. The population exploded initially and the government responded by instituting the first country-wide forest preservation program in history. The creative world took off, especially in arts like wood block printing. The country would eventually fall behind, as all orders do under the entropy of time, but not after a massive and impressive recovery from what came before.

This brings me to the book I just finished, ‘Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan.’ The above was something I already was quite familiar with, being a lifelong student of East Asian history. What I did *not* know, however, was the specific intellectual currents of high Tokugawa thought. And Maruyama’s book (first written in the 50s and reissued and updated in the 70s) filled this void. And within the story of this period of philosophy are many useful ideas for those concerned with resistance to monoculture and who value practical steps for how to develop alternatives.

At first, the Shogunate decided to get into Confucianism hard. Neo-Confucianism, specifically. This was because it filled a very specific niche in converting the potentially dangerous samurai class into good administrators and bureaucrats. This process was so successful that it was basically completed in less than two generations. Once that was the case, many intellectuals began to realize that Confucianism may not in fact be an ideal synthesis for the Japanese context. Neo-Confucianism, the then dominant strain, in particular was extremely moralistic and idealistic, demanding a kind of cultural uniformity from ruling to ruled based out of the Song Dynasty priorities it has first arisen from. Specifically the thought of Chu Hsi, who was a kind of Song Aaron Sorkin who held out that public policy would follow naturally from personal example and the ruling class’ commitment to principle above all else. A walk-and-talk of style with no substance but that of being desirable to emulate. Yamaga Soko, writing in the latter 17th Century, was himself a Confucian but found this Song world view alien and idealistic. He noted that the Song had preached these principles as they were humiliated by the Khitan and Jurchen and then wiped out by the Mongols in turn, so what actual use had this world view served? Song history was not more glorious than other Chinese Dynasties and its failure to secure its own stability made its moralistic traditions seem like compensatory coping. Surely, Japan needed something more grounded and less idealistic. Confucianism, according to Yamaga Soko, had to be recaptured from these Song revisionists and adjusted to be practical.

This began a growing rebellion against moral-idealism more generally and with greater degrees. Ogyu Sorai, also a Confucian, would end up unintentionally laying the groundwork for a full blown intellectual anti-Confucian reaction with his critique of being wedded to Chinese examples and practices when the reality that the Shogunate governed Japan, which had a different historical experience, beckoned. The core of this problem, according to him, was the commitment to universal principles that Neo-Confucianism espoused:

“All things in Heaven and Earth derive their forms from yin and yang and the five elements. They all originate from one and the same source. But once they have been transformed into Heaven and Earth and a myriad of things, they cannot be discussed in terms of principle alone. It is a great mistake to teach that human nature and Heaven are the same as principle.”

Sorai’s main focus was that history debunked rigid moralism. The more one looked at home and abroad, the more complex the story became, and thus the less relevant seeing the world through a single ideological prism became. Now that Japan had some stability and distance from the conflicts of the past (and raging abroad) it could reflect more on its own place, which was distinct but not exceptional. In another quote which sounds all too real today he says:

“The fact that even many men of good character become bad after the pursuit of learning is entirely due to the harmful effects of Chu Hsi rationalism. According to the Tung-chien kang-mu, there has never been a satisfactory person, past or present. Anyone who views the people of today with this kind of attitude becomes naturally becomes a man of bad character…Those who subscribe to the Sung scholars’ version of Confucianism insist on making a rigid distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. They like to have every aspect of all things thoroughly clarified, and in the end they become very proud and lose their tempers very easily.”

This was coupled with an awareness that not everything is interconnected. Creative pursuits need not reflect governing ideals or vice versa. The multiplicity of living was to be found in the division of human output into different fields, rather than trying to force them all together.

Coming later came thinkers like Motoori Norinaga, the real hero of this story, so far as I am concerned. For him, Sorai had not gone far enough. Human nature was part of the rest of nature, and thus beyond such quaint concepts of good and evil- as was the world itself. Confucianism had blinded people from simply adapting to their circumstances without a need for elaborate justifications. So too had Japan erred in trying to become Chinese when it was not part of China. It was the historical evolution of society that mattered in how it should behave, not some abstract non-historical ideal. The Shogunate, according to Motoori, was a highly successful government because it had allowed Japan to become something other than a Chinese pick-me or a Spanish colony despite being initially outclassed by both. Devoid of the imperial ambitions that would afflict later Japanese history, he spoke of a uniqueness without resorting to that other kind of moralism, chauvinism. Neither was he a nostalgic, despite his scorn for both Confucianism and Buddhism, stating:

“When I propound The Way I do not advise the people of today to behave like the ancients, unlike the Confucians and Buddhists. Any attempt to compel people to practice the ancient way of the gods in opposition to existing circumstances is contrary to the behavior of the gods. It is an attempt to outdo the gods.”

Within this thought, and that of its successors, came a litany of scholars who had unknowingly prepared the way for the dissolution of the very feudal order they were supposedly defending, with a general questioning even of the class system being teased just in time for the sudden crash into modernity that Japan would experience in the latter 19th Century.

Masao Maruyama’s book, needless to say, was a great find. And it cannot be ignored that the only reason I found this useful book on societal divergence and bucking moralistic trends in another time and place was because of a used bookstore that itself stood against the tide of monoculture in my own society.

To wish for a universal order in economics is to wish for monopoly. In politics it is to wish for monoculture. When monoculture fails it can drag everyone else down with it, so alternatives need to exist, even if only on the outskirts. Motoori Norinaga advocated for obeying the laws but understanding that the laws were temporary and people must always keep an open mind to governance. This becomes impossible if everyone, everywhere, is governed the same way. The more different people are, the easier it is to learn from them. When ensconced inside one moralist order, be it that of the Sorkinite libs, neoreactionaries, or the Neo-Confucian fanboys of Chu Hsi, we must treasure the opportunity to learn from divergence, both failures and successes, whenever possible. It is not thinking through received wisdom with no counter-examples that serves as our antibodies from the failures of the monoculture.

This is also why the ‘Tokugawa Option’ is superior to Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ and other related examples of North American paleocon thought. They wish to wed their attempt at an alterative to the very first ideal of universalized moralism: Abrahamic monotheism. Missionary monotheism is the ultimate monoculture after all. It knows no limit on souls to harvest or geography to conquer. World views that seek to squash context and distinction for mass moralism behind a universal purpose are contrary to the necessity of upholding intellectual diversity. To opt out from the relentless groupthink cannot be done with a world view that sees all of Earth as its rightful dominion and sanctimony as its unifying principle. Neoliberalism, and especially its current evangelical incarnation of woke-progressivism, is nothing if not the direct intellectual descendant of Christianity. But the Benedict Option people are correct that alternative communities (plural, I would add) are needed. But to live in a modus vivendi with each other they must take divergence as the norm rather than unity. Communities that reject atomized liberal individualism can and should exist, but only as situational groups in time and space. This requires the rejection of universal moralism and the acceptance of a polydirectional world view. In theological terms the word is polytheism.

The Tokugawa Shogunate died when it became too old and obsolete. All things do. Furthermore, one should never seek to copy the past. But when it comes to thinking, in a future oriented way, of alternatives, divergent examples are more useful. The Shogunate is just one of these case studies. I have endeavored to mention others before on here and will continue to do so. But for now the most realistic way to get to the end goal of The Black Longhouse is by contemplating The Tokugawa Option and other such self-conscious societal outliers. We look at those who intentionally turned away from massive pressure to take another’s path in order gird ourselves for potential futures. How can we emulate their successes and avoid their failures to outlast the monocultural fads that seek to brainwash us into acquiescence?

The yokai and goblins parade through the night, terrifying but fascinating to look upon. Without them the night streets would be devoid not only of character but of originality. They remind us that there is more than the rote mundanities of the town in daytime.