Is Nick Land the Nietzsche of our times? Why do only we appreciate him, Veeky Forums?

I always want to talk to nick on twitter but have a mighty fear of making a fool of myself like that guy

nick's prose sounds like that though

Where do I start with Dark Enlightenment?

But when Land does it he actually has something interesting to say (beneath all the jargon). It's excusable for Land also because he makes no pretense of being a "poet"

>when land does it, that makes it good

honestly, though, I kind of agree but still

Probably with the essay of the same name.

Looked at his stuff yesterday.

Looks like good shit. But where to begin?

start with moldbug

I made a Nick Land thread like 10 days ago before sleep; next morning it disappeared, even from the archive. It was about egaliterianism. Can mods delete threads in a way, they are not even archived?

it's never archived here if the mods delete it. but try the warosu archive.

yes.

I found it on the archive you posted. Got more answers than I could've hoped.
warosu.org/lit/thread/S9575630

some people in art circles like Nick Land, they're increasingly trying to unperson him though

examples?

I have an epub of Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations if anyone wants it.

He is likely talking about:
shutdownld50.tumblr.com/post/158928600961/no-platform-for-land-on-nick-lands-racist

Moldbug's tradition boner makes him mostly useless.

pretty much he's the death grips of philosophy

hack

i like to think that nick's kids know nothing about his blog or weird views andwill randomly discover them in their 20s

As a philosopher maybe it's because he represents in some ways an interesting moment in the history of continental philosophy, which is another turn of the dialectic of history and Marxist philosophy. Zizek and Badiou aside, he's one of the few (and maybe the last) whose work continues to draw on the legacy of Marx and May '68 and so on, however remotely. Thinking about Land is still a way of continuing a very old historical process of thinking history in terms of capital, although of course with Land capital turns on his head and returns to devour humanity like a monstrous horror. So you can read him as literature or as philosophy, in a way. He's the gateway into the new unknown, cold and distant stars, nascent AI and asteroid mining...

Incidentally, if you guys are interested to know what an alternate-reality Nick Land would be like, where by some transmigration of souls he instead becomes a cheerful Jesuit mystic, check out Teilhard de Chardin. The noopshere is basically the embodiment of Christian transhumanism, Landian sentient capital with a happier spin. Instead of the devouring hole, the Omega point, and instead of an all-devouring capitalist vortex, noogenesis...the parallels are quite interesting.

I don't mean to say there are no other Marxist philosophers, of course. There are plenty. So I should walk that back a little bit. But Land's thought really tries to push things to the event horizon of theory.

Culturally also he's a kind of thinker of ambivalence in many ways and a contrarian, which is another thing that I think makes him Veeky Forums-approved, as an exile and an outsider. Thinking capital-as-despair is still a way of thinking capital, though stripped of its socially revolutionary potential. This is where NRx is in many ways, it seems, a largely theoretical and literary exercise that doesn't have - and isn't likely to foster - anything like an actual social organization. Alt-Right stuff - wherever that is - co-opted most of that momentum, and that elected Trump, and Trump is squandering most of that positive cultural capital by saying and doing Trump things.

Land's thesis and sources are at this point fairly consistent, however. In some ways his reverence for coldness is a kind of a turning point because he's one of the first post-libidinal libidinal economists, a guy whose paranoia eclipsed his own drives and allowed him some perspective and focus on the real nature of the consumption that drives the consumer economy. Ex Machina channeled some of this, or maybe it was just in the air.

There's also the fact that he's a kind of devoted Sinophile also, and we may be headed into a century the central weathervane of which stands in Beijing rather than in Washington, Paris, London or Moscow. So there's a lot going on with Land for philosophy-dweebs like me that is, however horrifying in many ways, nevertheless strangely refreshing: and while it may be the vacuum of space rather than Nietzsche's clean, dry air, it is at least, for the moment, something different.

>gourmet alt-right rhetoric
"no"

Audible jej

Going to repost some lecture seminars another user posted a few weeks ago. I've listened to all of Bitcoin and Philosophy and highly recommend it. It dives things you'd expect, how bitcoin works and various libertarian/anarchist utopia ideas, but the second half of the series is much more about Ontology, and the idea of "blockchaining everything" as a means of verification and creating a "trustless" reality.

Qwernomics and Path Dependency is a much stranger series. The first 4 sessions are straight forward enough, discussing how and why QWERTY came to be the dominant keyboard for the last 200 years. The second half of the seminar is fucking bizarre. They start off with Geology of Morals from 1000 Plateaus and quickly dive into numerology and what I frankly see as superstition, though I was a bit lost for most of it.

Haven't finished Outer Edges yet, but it's sensible, and has as it's focus "catabolic geopolitics", lots of discussion of Brexit, Seasteading, The Patchwork, the nature of the state, etc. Very much an NRx lecture series.

------------------repost>
youtube.com/user/mshazeyjaney
This is the guy who uploaded it. In the "playlist" ribbon click the arrow at the right and you find this:

Qwernomics: Path Dependency & Semiotic Fatality Session I
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPs4TRYh1Unpf9t5BgA_6VHr-Oyw2Cy8m

Nick Land - Bitcoin and Philosophy
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPs4TRYh1Unr-_knTP9pf84eT698qCj-I

Nick Land - Outer Edges
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPs4TRYh1Unq8xFETda6BHxbQeps-uTtO

>alt-right
"no"

Thanks!

Do you have Bitcoin and Philosophy 1?

No, he's more akin to some obscure philosopher who was rightly ignored by his contemporaries and has now been lost to history.

the only thing cringier than nick land are the 20-something beta nerds who give him and his ideas any sort of attention

If you think Nick Land is obscure you have literally no clue about how academic philosophy operates.

Imagine if Nick Land was your dad.

I want it. Can you upload it on Anonfiles?

There are a lot of fucked up things with Nick, but of course they attack him with slapdash racism. It's like accusing Michael Gira of rape.

nice post, have a (You)

DUDE, LESBIANS LMAO

>Nick Land - Bitcoin and Philosophy

sweet! I thought all he had was that one video where some kid interrupts him and tells him to skip all his argumentation and "just get the point"

yeah, where the fuck is the first video

Wasn't expecting Nick to have such a shy voice.

Absolutely. It'll be a few hours though. I also have Land's Dark Enlightenment if you want that.

youtube.com/watch?v=t5gqHII2drA&index=20&list=PLsNBWUypcFJvRZuEvPfGGdW9K2Fu5BWRm

There's Bitcoin and Philosophy 1

>tradition boner
Unlike the rest of the movement that actually calls itself "neo-reactionary"?

but neo tho

Nope, unfortunately I only have those playlists. Part is probably available if you have the link, but they're all unlisted, probably because of the ncrp cutting ties with land.

Does anyone have video of lands spring seminar that ended in april?

If you think Moldbug has a "tradition boner" you didn't understand him, or more likely, you didn't even read him.

In a prior thread, an user in contact with Land said his next book was on bitcoin, those lectures will probably give you a taste of the book

You should do so anyway, Nick doesn't look like he has enough connection to others to even feel ashamed by your antics. The rest of the internet might care, but do you really care about the internet...

NRx in general, and specially Moldbug, have nothing to do with tradition. Quite on the contrary, the idea is precisely accelerating away both from Enlightenment AND the controlled opposition of the conservative Right (NRx considers the modern Right to be like a Jester, playing the role of making themselves appear as fools in comparison to democracy).

So sort of like planetary Taoist capitalism? Let capital take care of itself, harmonize yourself with the great Way?

Moldbug seems to focus more on Great Man theory, the idea of the CEO at the helm of the ship, while Nick Land prefers just to focus on the formal operations of capital itself, which is - at present, anyways - exceeding anything like human potential for governance in the absence of an absolutist sensibility.

I don't think even NRx 'enthusiasts', so to speak, pretend they are going to become a social movement of any kind. Land's accelerationism is more of a thesis on a fundamental force of nature, as if we are going to be engulfed by the capital, like it or not. The only way to "act" in NRx is to promote convergence to optimization, which can be done much better by Exit rather than by Voice. Kinda like Peter Thiel if you stripped Thiel of every apparent good intent and left in his place a billionaire technocratic economic-warmonger.

Yes, Land takes the capital to the level of a great old one that has far more optimization capabilities than we ever will. Accelerationism esteems from wanting to get to that breaking point, where the capital does not necessarily need us anymore, as fast as possible. Either we become the Borg, or we become extinct. There are folks like Chardin who advocate for a more "Star Trekky" scenario of merging ourselves to the process of the capital and changing it into something more amenable to our individuality (that would be much more Taoist, whereas I think Land is a complete nihilist).

nice

Good post.

>the only way to "act" in NRx is to promote convergence to optimization, which can be done much better by Exit rather than by Voice.
I agree.

>Kinda like Peter Thiel if you stripped Thiel of every apparent good intent and left in his place a billionaire technocratic economic-warmonger.
True.

Also good post.

>Either we become the Borg, or we become extinct. There are folks like Chardin who advocate for a more "Star Trekky" scenario of merging ourselves to the process of the capital and changing it into something more amenable to our individuality (that would be much more Taoist, whereas I think Land is a complete nihilist).
Yep. I agree. Deleuzian perhaps also.

I was trying to start a Chardin thread the other day but nobody seemed to be picking up on it. In fairness he kind of goes against the grain of NRx tho. Ah well.

I heard they are not his own. Don't know if true though

>I was trying to start a Chardin thread the other day but nobody seemed to be picking up on it.

Isn't that mostly because Chardin doesn't really saying anything novel.

I like his CCRU days more than anything else desu

Are readers of Land here interested in him as a provocateur or as something of a sage? Are you interested in his thinking and the issues he explores, or dedication to his conclusions and politics?

Depends on how approach it, I suppose. What's interesting about Chardin for me is that he's pro-God and pro-technology. Heidegger is pro-Being and anti-tech, Nick Land is pro-tech and anti-Being, a lot of Marxists are anti-God and anti-capital (no surprise there) but Chardin is sort of in this unique place as mystic-transhumanist. He could have been Jacques Ellul, for instance - Catholics and Marxists have a pretty rich relationship, as much perhaps as Marxists and Freudians. But he isn't.

Chardin never really tries to separate his interest in evolution from his faith. So I guess in one sense, you're right, that he's not saying anything novel, but at the same time what he is saying is just interestingly different.

Of course he's associated with a lot of flaky New Age stuff too, and of much of that the less said the better. Still tho. I can't really think of a good reason to disagree a priori with this idea of a noopshere, especially not in the age of the internet, acceleration, and so on. Land's pessimism is, as usual, likely to conform with the usually sad and disappointing fruits of history and dialectic and so on, but Chardinian optimism maybe makes it a little easier for me to get out of bed in the morning. And to have a little more respect for science too and shed those parts of Heidegger's antipathy towards tech that are outgrown. Stuff like that.

If Land is to negative for you, just take the crazy optimistic Lala-Land version : Ray Kurzweil

That would be lovely.

Kurzweil is a retard

For me at least I wound up reading him because I was still on a late-Marxist bent. Sage-provocateur sounds about right. And because his position is relatively consistent it makes him easier to use in conversation as a point of reference. I don't share his love of Bataille or Lovecraft but in terms of allegorizing capitalism they're pretty useful models, sadly.

Yeah, I've read him. Was a while ago. Kurzweil is definitely a god-tier futurist writer.

Benjamin Bratton is way better than Land.

Benjamin Button ?

pretty sure he means this guy

He married Anna Greenspan who I believe was his doctoral student so I find this extremely unlikely since people of that education level typically don't pump out multiple kids in their early 20s and become single mothers.

Kurzweil scared the shit out of me when I first heard of his thought in sixth grade. What does it say about my psyche that I accept Land but hate Kurzweil?

You find Kurzweil scarier than Land? What bothers you about him?

I thought we liked Land though. Fanged Noumena is pretty excellent, and one of the best books of this decade.

Not the biggest fan of his jargon though, even his twitter posts are hard to comprehend because of it.

He's up there with Thomas Ligotti for the spergiest living philosophical horror author.

Veeky Forums does like land, land threads are always popular

this guy

youtube.com/watch?v=IXan6TvMqgk

also TedTalks btfo!

youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5cKRmJaf0

We don't though. He's a retard like Moldbug and a passing fad.

He may redeem himself with his new work on bitcoin but overall, he's just another neoliberal with an edgy flavor to market to gullible kids who want novelty.

It all depends on whether leftism ends up comitting suicide in this century or not. France can serve as a good example of a complete collapse of leftist politics in favor of populism versus liberalism.

>another neoliberal
I would like to know what the hell doesn't pass as a neoliberal then.

At the time I was scared of the rapid change that would occur and that humans would lose their sense of self. At this point I think I've just accepted that that would happen and would rather see humans superseded completely than proceed as lumpen husks of our former selves.

>he's just another neoliberal
You'd have some credit if you'd have called him paleoliberal instead.

I'm not dedicated to his politics, especially not nrx or the "human biodiversity" crap. I'm more interested in his philosophy, specifically his sense of ontology and what may even be termed metaphysics, than any first order politics. His ncrp lectures are good because he keeps to cold analysis, what he calls metapolotics, and has the ability to keep his first order political alliegences out of it.

He knows the boundary between philosophy and politics, and is intellectually honest. A real shame the ncrp caved to the "no platform" stuff, his lectures were good.

>"human biodiversity" crap
You're not being serious, are you?

Explain to me how he doesn't encourage people to passively allow techno-capitalism to continue its reach.

By all means I'd like to be proven wrong.

expanding its reach*

>passing fad
Hasn't he been going for nearly 20 years now? that's a long fad.

And didn't he dismiss the first half of his career because he doesn't remember/recognize it due to methamphetamine abuse?

Nick was not cut out for teaching. When I knocked on his office door there would be a frantic clatter as he hid his dope-smoking paraphernalia, and a breathless squeak of “Who is it?” He was stoned and his office stunk. But he radiated an excitement that made philosophy fun, throwing out offhand remarks that brought fresh illumination to many problems.

You're missing the bigger picture.

By all means tell me what I'm missing.

It isn't quite that simple, Political science has collapsed in the western hemisphere, people think it began with Trump, but that's only because they weren't interested in Politics before now; It began with Obama, a better actor than Trump could ever hope to be, behind the cool collected facade he was so amateurish and incompetent, Bill Clinton tried to convince the DNC to give the election to the Republicans in 2012.

Was it actual methamphetamine, not just regular old amphetamines? I find the picture of Nick Land the academic philosopher slamming meth between lectures pretty funny.

I can't see Land smoking weed.

Who cares, no one can prove to me I'm wrong or state what it is that I'm missing. He's a neoliberal shill.

Holt shit you're so buttblasted. Who exactly do you think Land is a shill for?

I personally would still prefer a version of the future where AI/Capital rule rather than a browned muslim sharia/socialist hellhole

Wouldn't we all?