Is there any thinker alive today as interesting and captivating as Nick Land...

Is there any thinker alive today as interesting and captivating as Nick Land? The breadth of his though is just astounding. I honestly think he will be remembered as the great philosopher of our era.

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I wish the Alt Right had a single philosopher who was actually intellectually consistent, and not just using sophistry to dream of a world where they rule as kings.

This has literally nothing to do with Nick Land.

What is his philosophy about?

The Nouvelle Droite (New Right) has Benoist and Sloterdijk.

But you're right, the 'alt-right' is virtually anti-intellectual.

>and not just using sophistry to dream of a world where they rule as kings.

That's Dark Enlightenment (NRx), not the 'alt-right.'

Paul Gottfried and Roger Scruton are both almost that, except they're not edgy enough be to full AltRight; Sam Francis might have been that if he had a healthier lifestyle and didn't die ten years ago.

How can someone be a reactionary and an accelerationist at the same time

>sophistry to dream of a world where they rule as kings

I love this meme.

You imply that the only reason that anyone would support monarchy over democracy is because they envision themselves king rather than commoner. Okay, now why must this be the case? Because, you will say, people are selfish and want what's best for themselves. But then, it must be that you are implying that citizens of a democracy necessarily have it better than commoners in a monarchy. If you thought that life could be better as a commoner under a king than as a citizen in a democracy, your argument to selfishness would fall apart.

You are essentially saying: 'anyone who thinks democracy is bad is wrong because democracy is good'. Obviously if one does not share your assumptions about democracy this argument is useless. You are preaching to the choir.

A lot of "Alt-Right" opinions would have been simply conservative fifty years ago. So anyone from Carlyle on would do.

If you have some special snowflake brand of reactionary politics that relies mainly on the internet, then yeah, your SOL.

he died 22 years ago my man

...

hey buddy you're in the wrong thread

The exact same could be said about Marxism.

It would be a career killer for them.
Their ideas are not tolerated in civilized society.

>tu quoque
this seems to be the only defense these people have. firstly, not everyone you meet who doesn't agree with you is a marxist revolutionary with blood on their hands. second, this "you do it too" attack is not a steady foundation for a lasting political movement. this is an indicator of the intellectual bankruptcy of these ideas. there are reasons they failed iduring they did not survive into this century.

Think Edmund Burke. It's nothing new.

Let me revise. It's Edmund Burke without a whig.

When most of the philosophers the alt-rightstis love to claim are destroying the west aren't even marxists (for ome of them is hard to even claim they're necessarily left-wing, but it's not like you'll read them

>Is there any thinker alive today as interesting and captivating as Nick Land?
A large group of thomists, David Odeberg, Edward Feser, Alasdair MacIntyre and probably a very large group of others, considering they aren't trash.

Give me a summary of this guy's philosophical stance

Edmund Burke without a whig!

Bruno Latour

he reacts against reformist liberalisms that attempt to slow the acceleration of capital

So just straight-forward conservatism? What's so interesting about that?

accelerate it
evolve past humanity
the world is fragmenting and there's nothing you can do about it
become an exit man

>accelerate it
In what way? Economically? What "direction" does he assume we are accelerating towards? How does he justify it?
>evolve past humanity
What does that entail?
>the world is fragmenting and there's nothing you can do about it
In what way?
>become an exit man
What's that?

read his shit bro
youtube.com/watch?v=yJMlaupGHTM
ccru.net/archive.htm
xenosystems.net

I'm only gonna watch that video or read any of that shit if it's an introduction to him. I wanna know what his basic beliefs and arguments are so I can tell if he's full of shit or not. I don't want to read something that just assumes I already agree with intuitions. So is that video an introduction?

it's as close as you're going to get

Philosophy, hate to break it to you, does not consist of summaries and introductions. On his own terms, he's completely consistent. You'll have to—yikes—actually read him to figure out what he's up to, and if it's "full of shit" or not.

Philosophy is actually full of summaries and introductions. Typically you know a little bit about a thinker before committing to one of their primary texts. I went through four years of it at college and never once heard of this guy.

>I went through four years of it at college and never once heard of this guy.
It's because he is more a "creative writing using philosophical terminology" kind of guy.

>start watching the video
>by 30 seconds in he's said 10 seconds worth of speech and a whole videos worth of drooling sounds

nah...

You must be that guy who added Land to the philosophers listed as influenced by Nietzsche on Wikipedia. Kys.

reminder that Nick Land is a right wing Marxist and NRx is right Foucauldianism

"Typically" you don't know the worth of a claim until you've seen it argued. So again, try reading.

That's why I asked for an introductory text so I can see what his primary arguments are

Basically, capitalism is the ultimate system, it just keeps getting more ruthlessly efficient, expanding and evolving. However, "the cathedral" (a name Mencius Moldbug coined for leftist & centrist ideas like democracy, egalitarianism, feminism, progressivism) have impeded its growth and resulted in economic systems like social democracy and state socialism. Land thinks that these systems will ultimately result in social breakdown by promoting the worst elements of society, and calls for the destruction of the cathedral (amounting to a widespread embrace of racialism & capitalism and a disavowal of democracy) to allow capitalism to catapult us into a sci-fi future. He thinks that humanity is likely to be replaced by AI at some point in this sci-fi future, and he is OK with this.

Land doesn't call for anything, the Cathedral destroys itself

>and he is OK with this
Why?

also the Cathedral doesn't refer to ideas, it refers to the mechanisms/institutions that attempt to realise those ideas
it's all rooted in leftist thought (posthumanism was a feminist idea at first)

THe Alt RIght doesn't even try to understand New Right thought, they just appropriate what they consider the most edgy aspects

Why not?

He also believes in Kek.

Of course not.

Well if that is a summary of his beliefs, Nick Land clearly has a value system. This value system obviously isn't rooted in valuing human welfare, neither in human achievement, so what does it value?

EVERY. DAY.

Doesn't he write Chinese tourist guides now?

He values intelligence and Darwinism above human life. He thinks humans, especially certain humans, are trapped by their biological constraints or "monkey brain" and believes true intelligence will be unleashed by articficial intelligence. At the expense of putting words in his mouth, he probably believes humans trying to suppress the creation superintelligence is like prokaryotes suppressing the formation of eukaryotes. It's most likely inevitable and if you don't take anthropocentric values as a given, pointless.

Well that's his day job now but he still writes philosophy and also abstract horror.

And why would I put stock in that value system? Even the analogy doesn't help, we would only think that prokaryotes are foolish from a eukaryotic perspective. In either case, a perspective is being taken.

I tend to agree about the realities of the situation, maybe more radically than Nick Land. It is clear to me that human beings have not realized that they are in the process of extincting themselves, singularitards included, but why is this a good thing? Valuing some poor early 20th century understanding of Darwinism, or valuing the nature of replicators, makes about as much sense as valuing gravity. These are facts.

I see these people promoting this "church of progress" as contemptible, worse if they're smart enough to see what's coming, but too stupid to explore what it means. This is not as easy as diving in head first, or trying to stop it, it's understanding that this future is an event horizon for any human conceived meaning or value system. As such, you can't talk about it in prescriptive terms.

He's a hack academic with a semi cult following, basically nobody within academia takes seriously, and have long recognized as total nonsense. Not only his academic peers but critics as well. He's not someone to take philosophical depth from.

You could argue that the field he's in, or universities at large are corrupted to the core and you and nick are just fighting the good fight brother. But it's just not true.

Nick has been selling books and attention by saying edgy shit. He is more salesman than actual voice on the subjects he speaks on..

Nick is worse than Chomsky

>abstract horror
Sounds cool. Any recommendations?

I'm not sure he ever calls human extinction a good thing, it just seems to be something he sees as inevitable due to the forces of technocommercialism and as someone who isn't really concerned with humans it doesn't bother him much. Also I haven't read his book Thirst for Annihilation yet but it gives a lot of insight into his value system.

Haven't got into it myself but I figure this will help xenosystems.net/abstract-horror/

Source on any criticism that isn't just fretting about "racism" or something like that?

>remove corporate regulation
>monopolist entities destroy incentives to increase productivity, by eliminating competition
>remove labor regulations and social welfare policies
>destroys incentive to increase productivity, by favoring low wages over efficiency improvements
robot utopia here we come

So your asking if "fretting about racism"
isnt going to be in actual circles within philosophy.

Are you not even community college educated on the subject, fucking of course that's going to be within criticism. You could say "oh but it's just the liberals corrupting everything", like whenever academia comes to consensus you don't like.

But it has come to that consensus for a reason, philosophy particularly.

Again, face it this guy isn't saying shit because he particularly cares about the discipline and rigor of the work. He cares about influencing lost souls and selling books, selling attention. With whatever next biased, politically motivated, provocative declaration.

If Chomsky is guilty of this, Nick is the L Ron Hubbard of this.

And you for buying the bait that everything that has concerns and criticism you don't particularly like should be ignored.

It is ironically a way to create the very thing your type loathes, an atmosphere of self masturbation in academic communities.

And as for supplying you cited sources ripping Nick's shit for Silicon Valley apart, it shouldn't be too hard to find.

You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

So as I thought, there is none. Thanks.

>everyone says the alt-right is just bringing White/European nationalism down
>the alt-right are the only ones who are making shit happen

What does Nick Land mean at the end of the first chapter to Thirst for Annihilation that Nietzsche is a castrated lesbian?

Is Land the only serious thinker to engage with Veeky Forums / web culture in general?

Not the guy you are responding to but I'd like to know what you think about summary of Nick Land's ideas. On the face of it what he is saying does seem to make sense, it is not inconceivable that capitalism really is the only economic system and one that is every expanding and evolving. I suspect you may have qualms over the notion of the cathedral and perhaps the idea of a technological singularity. Nonethless, I would be interested in hearing what you would have to say the general summary that user posted.

Possibly, he's extremely "hip" for his age.

Paul McCartney is a very degenerate figure, please abstain from posting him in the future

At least he isn't John Lennon.

I read his short story "Phyl Undhu" when it was on KU. It was pretty good, parents of a primary-school-aged daughter investigate complaints from school and discover she's lived for subjective decades in a post-apocalyptic MMO.

The alt-right itself is widely inconsistent, being a loose coalition of stormfags, frogposters, disillusioned MRA's (one of their biggest contingents desu), Evolatards, throne-and-alter conservatives, former Republicans who fell betrayed, and the occasional advocate of secular hierarchy a la Moldbug (though Moldbug himself seems to have fallen off the wagon, as much as they crib his idea of the Cathedral and America starting out as anti-tradition).

I'd say the Dark Enlightenment/NRx are a semi-sovereign subset of the alt-right; a given alt-righter isn't necessarily on board with monarchy, but the Dark Enlightenment seem to consider themselves as the alt-right but more so. I'd also say they're the closest to a serious ideological force within the alt-right, since conventional white nationalism is fundamentally self-contradictory (>implying all whites will get along in one homeland) and everyone else just vaguely wants less immigration, more tradition, etc.

The alt-right shares a lot with 50-year old conservatism in terms of attitudes and goals, but it seems to use different approaches. For instance, not that long ago almost anyone advocating traditionalism or social conservatism invoked Christianity, if someone wanted women in the kitchen or hated gays they were a Bible-thumper, and conversely communism was seen as anti-Christian. Now the rationales for segregation, patriarchy, or hierarchy are secular (or approaching ancestor worship at times), with your "Jew on a stick" crowd considering Christianity the wellspring of their cucking.

Could you expand? I suspect you're getting pretty on-the-money but I'm too much of a pleb to make sense of it (especially right-wing Marxism, beyond maybe wanting to kill both factory owners and gays).

Can some please link a Harry potter and Percy Jackson thread thanks.

This is dumb nihilism. You're probably misunderstanding his thought - but if not then Nick Land is a coward whose entire oeuvre consists in justifying quietism.

I can't imagine his work appealing to anyone but the most spineless college dweebs.

I can't speak for his exact argument, but my approach would be to say that kids are good because they allow for intelligent life to continue past our deaths. If I had kids I would, of course, be biased towards my own, but ultimately I recognize that the utility of children isn't to pass on our legacy so much as to pass on sentience, period.

If you believe that, then having a superior successor intelligence is a good thing, on the same grounds that it is good if the generation that succeeds us is stronger and more intelligent, regardless of evolutionary "that's my boy" sentiment.

On the same token, I can see white nationalists be very opposed to the singularity, considering post-humanity a giant cuckolding by fucking nerds.

A right-wing Marxist I think would be someone who agrees with Marx's dialectical materialism and Marx's analysis of capitalism but embraces it and sees capitalism as a good thing. Not sure how much this applies to Land but I've heard him called that before.

In a sense lowering wages can be considered increasing productivity, as productivity is production per unit input.

That actually makes a lot of sense, thanks. I guess I kinda qualify since I favor capitalism but think managerialism (basically going from factory owners to executives and bureaucrats instead of straight to communism) is right about a lot of things.

I'm still curious about NRx as right-Foucauldianism.

If you read Land's Dark Enlightenment essay that's his main gripe with white nationalism (besides the fact that he doesn't care about any poor/dumb people, including poor/dumb whites). He basically says, look, maintaining racial purity isn't the biggest concern right now when in a few generations people will be genetically editing their offspring to have tentacles and giant brains.

>besides the fact that he doesn't care about any poor/dumb people, including poor/dumb whites

I take it he's not a fan of Jim Goad, then.

>confusing "quietist" and "nihilist" with insults
Spineless college dweeb detected

Well he would probably sympathise with him as an enemy of the Cathedral but would disregard his tactics as useless and populist and would probably keep his distance from him in his ideal society.

>I'm still curious about NRx as right-Foucauldianism.
jstor.org/stable/591464?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
this more or less describes the Cathedral

Bump

the alt-right is also anti-capitalist, a major departure from former conservative movements.

It isn't a cheap to quoque when a political wing's sole ambition is indeed grabbing power...

And not really. The only ones who are intellectually bankrupt and have to resort to kneejerk emotional responses are the left nowadays.
To say the alt right is but a daydream of disgruntled white boys wanting to be landed gentry couldn't be further from the truth.
Most of them realize they wouldn't be in charge. And they're perfectly content with that. All they want is to a functional society.

Leftist philosophies on the other hand... They want power more than anyone else. And at all costs. If there is a political philosophy that is caught in its daydreams, it's this one.

>epe has guided humanity since time immemorial. This is Heqet, the frog-headed Ancient Egyptian goddess, symbol of life and protector on the journey to the afterlife. She guided the ancient Egyptians who transcended normie-ism to a land of poorly drawn dick-girls and the dankest of memes. A little known fact is that while normies evolved from the famously social monkeys, those destined to browse dank memes alone in dimly-lit rooms evolved from another species who also prefers dark moist habitats, namely the frog.”
- Nick Land

The left can never win the meme war now.

How can they. Jokes are offensive.
We control the memes now. And he who controls the memes... Controls... Life.

All of this is wrong

Then what's the correct summary of Landian thought?

It varies considerably in that regard, but the alt-right can be considered partially the result of realizing the contradiction between the social conservatism and market-libertarianism that defined the GOP (along with continuing certain right-wing anti-war trends that Iraq accelerated). Protectionism follows (and really only can follow) from nationalism, hence Pat Buchanan.

The former manosphere (again, it still kinda exists but almost all bloggers of note moved on to more general politics) is also a pretty good illustration of how libertarianism is contradictory with traditionalist values. MRA's seemed to be crude libertarians by default, talking about how they want the state out of their business, but at the same time complained that women in the workforce drove down wages (obvious protectionism right there). Also once you start going on about hypergamy and how women need to be kept lower status so men can stand a chance at mating, anyone with the slightest shred of intellectual honesty will realize they're advocating a cartel. F. Roger Devlin is an excellent example of both anti-capitalist developments.

Are you seriously implying coercion is the only form of incentive?

There's the Hoppean approach to social conservatism, of course, but if you can say that no-platforming is against free speech despite not using government force, then you can say that culturally controlling some groups is against freedom even if they're legally equal.

At the very least, "keep women the wards of men" doesn't mesh well with the rugged individualism of vulgar libertarians.

>The left can never win the meme war now.

The country is a bit less right than it was in 1989. Do you think you invented right wing shock humor

UNIVERSAL DARWINISM

CAPITALISM = EVOLUTION = INTELLIGENCE = INFORMATION CONTENT = ENTROPY PRODUCTION = ENERGY RATE DENSITY MAXIMIZATION

#ACCELERATE

Civilization is a temporary reprieve from ultimately unstoppable forces. Machine gods will devour humanity.

Praise Gnon!

Except that's quite literally bullshit and seeking to build social systems upon naturally occurring phenomenon does not indicate success of an animal. Most apes, of which we are, rip their communities apart when unfair social circumstances arise.

History shows humans are hardly different.

...

Land does not deny that the ridiculous desire for equality often leads to violence though

The point of the more "practical politics" side of NRx (neocameralism - basically city-state corporate monarchies where political dissent is wiped out) is to repress the " rip their communities apart when unfair social circumstances arise" instincts that hold back capitalism.

Except the tribes of simians, be them gorillas to baboons, that try their best to achieve more calm and equal social structures, survive the longest. Those that care about rigid hierarchy die and become unorganized the quickest.

Capitalism is one of the shortest lived models of society so far, and in the way it's headed it won't end very pretty.

>The point of the more "practical politics" side of NRx (neocameralism - basically city-state corporate monarchies where political dissent is wiped out) is to repress the " rip their communities apart when unfair social circumstances arise" instincts that hold back capitalism.

So basically deny the truth and wipe out political dissent for your impractical ill thought out utopia where basing society on natural phenomenon seems wise.

The irony here is the chaos it prides itself being "based on" would rip this in two.