Reducing the Input

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
A rat hitting the switch for the food pellet.

Long after the food's been removed

I don’t think it’s just dopamine - it’s about revelation - somehow out there sense can be made.

But like the rat thing, most of the time, it never does get made. But we keep seeking it. How many stories from the last 20 years have had their ends tied together? Adam Curtis talked about this. After the millennium the news narrative has become an endless supply of open stories with no clear beginning, middle or end. No beating the baddies. Never quite knowing what's going on. I think the conspiracy circles work on this stuff too. The sense of getting close to finally cracking it, pulling back the curtain. It's right around the corner. But they never get there. I'd have to guess this is based on addiction mechanisms, i.e. dope, yo.
 

version

Well-known member
"To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile -- such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished -- behold! -- all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile--and the return to an eternal rest."

-- Joseph Conrad
 

version

Well-known member
The author has a Goodreads account and she's currently reading about Bergson. He keeps coming up atm.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
that cover style is pretty popular right now, especially paired with the obliquely self help type book, to be fair.

this bergson book looks great. know nothing about him though
 

version

Well-known member
They've had some interesting people on Hermitix. Gregory Marks, the guy who runs The Wasted World, was on there talking about Pynchon not long ago and there's a predictably bizarre episode with Nick Land.


 

version

Well-known member
Alex Smith 2 months ago (edited)
What is he talking about? Lemurs? And then he's a fascist nutjob too, right? I was expecting something more evil from this interview but this guy just sounds like an incoherent lunatic. It makes me wonder how much far right ideology is just a result of broken thought processes by self-promoting people who style themselves as intellectuals while really just being attention-seeking simpletons.

😂
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I mean, in his defense, it sure seems like, in order to procure any novel insights about something as strange as capitalism, one is almost required to go off the deep end, right? That is, unless you take a more empirical or economic approach.

Not quite sure it necessitates dealings with esoterica and the occult, but such a combo can potentially yield insights, no? I'm certainly not inclined to reject such matters (lemurs, numogram, etc) wholesale, but I can also see where such things can enamor people purely by virtue of their mystique. Doesn't seem to be the case with Land, though. His point about the means of production seeking to gain autonomy is, as far as I can tell, a novel thesis. Perhaps there were seeds in D&G, or perhaps they even explicitly argued it, in which case I'm not sure what Land brings to the table. Also, I'm far from being an expert on the guy - there could very well be clear right-wing stuff in his thought. I'm just going off of what I know.

I'm inclined to believe many of us here have heard enough from Land and any apologists of him, but there seems to be a robust loss if we just cast him aside as some right-wing burnout lunatic. It seems like he just became "right wing" because he became convinced that a proper/traditional opposition to capitalism was not only fruitless, but even counter-productive. I don't see that as a space exclusively reserved for right wing thought. It could be, but I'm far from convinced. And I can hardly blame the guy for going insane, we all know its head-splitting stuff.

And meta-nomad (Hermitix host, don't know his name) seems to be very influenced by Land. He was leading a reading group for Thirst for Annihilation.

And I get the strange and uneasy suspicion of crypto-right-wing ideology underpinning some of these currents, but I don't think such underpinnings are essential to much of this thought. But I also am suspicious of that suspicion. Again, I could be way off base.

If my defense of him seems strange and protracted, its because I think he represents something much larger. He seems to represent, perhaps better than anyone else I can call to mind (maybe D&G), what happens when you carry/push the left-wing impetus to its extreme, or at least one of its extremes. To ignore that, I think, could be fatal, or at least unwise.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Call me crazy, I just think he's an important person to understand. At the very least, an important case study.

edit: bold assertion here, but Nick Land could even prove to be, in terms of theorists, the primary false positive of "cancel culture"'s ideological revisionism - which is, to be clear, a movement that I have faith in.
 
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version

Well-known member
I think it's possible to find him hilarious and think he's a lunatic whilst finding him intriguing.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
That could very well be an error on my part, that I take him dead seriously. Maybe I'm granting, too much, the benefit of the doubt.

And that could be because, obsessed/confounded by the metaphysics of capitalism as I am, I see some of him in my future. In that sense, I'm glad I caught wind of him when I did. Plus, how important I think it is to build bridges for trans-partisan dialogue - he is someone who, however intentionally, seemingly managed to traverse such rivers in the absence of bridges.

But I think you're right. And I wouldn't simply deny his lunacy, I would merely frame it is, perhaps, a necessary symptom of a dive that deep?

He certainly can be funny, in a way that is almost definitely unintentional. But hey, I don't know.

I remember, when he was asked "the Hermitix question" of which thinkers he would put in a room and overhear, he immediately launched into "syzygetic lemurs", even named ones, ostensibly serious about it. Even managed to confound the host of a podcast specifically about fringe philosophy and hermeticism. That's no light task, I reckon.
 

luka

Well-known member
Call me crazy, I just think he's an important person to understand. At the very least, an important case study.

edit: bold assertion here, but Nick Land could even prove to be, in terms of theorists, the primary false positive of "cancel culture"'s ideological revisionism - which is, to be clear, a movement that I have faith in.

you havent even read him though!
 

luka

Well-known member
also those podcasts will rot your brain. just read books if you really have to engage with this stuff but don't listen to podcasts.
 
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