Aesthetic Materialism

  The Church of Satan is a bit of a paradox -  on the one hand, it stressed extreme individualism; on the other, it was a community, an institution, a church.  The founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, was always going on about how he was seeking "superior" people - an "elite" - a community of the most extraordinary and successful members of a generation.  And yet contemporary Satanists tend not to be members of any elite, but rather losers, resentful misfits, nerds, and incels.  Ah, well.  Back to the drawing board.  If I were a Satanist - I'm not, but if I were - and I were seeking an elite of superior, successful people, I wouldn't look for them among the followers of Ayn Rand, who are the most resentful, nerdliest nerdlings of them all, but rather among the communists. What makes communism such a hotbed of elites?  First and foremost, I love communists for their clothing.  Communists are, on average, far better dressed than other p...

Playing fast and loose with the truth Let's get faster! Let's get looser! Fast! Loose! Fast! Loose! Let's get faster! Let's get looser! Fast! Loose! Fast! Loose!

  "I am whatever you say I am" -Eminem, "The Way I Am"   The above quote outlines a kind of feint, which I call the Eminem strategy.  It goes like this: "You have insulted me, called me a name.  You expect me to defend myself, and prove that I'm not that thing.  But the joke's on you - I am that thing.  And I'm proud of it!" There are times when this a joy and a Delight.  As William Blake put it, "Listen to the fool's reproach.  It is a kingly title." The Eminem strategy is a bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu.  With it, not only can one render your opponent's attacks useless, but one can use the force of their own blow to topple them over. I think primarily of the old anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.  Until his time, and even during it, the term "anarchist" was used almost exclusively as an insult.  (It may have been Kant who coined the term "anarchism," though the word "anarchy" is far older.)  Peopl...

      Marx's most serious theoretical error - his moment of real utopianism - was when he said that "Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation."  (Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859)  This bizarre claim, which reminds me of Wittgenstein's idiotic notion that "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.  The riddle does not exist.  If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6:5), is more of a religious belief than it is a scientific observation.  But it is simply false, which is easy to see.  Humanity has all kinds of problems, both theoretical and practical, that it is unable to solve, and has been unable...

  Kafka is almost the opposite of an existentialist, at least the way Sartre defines the term. Sartre thought that there was no given meaning for experience (such as religion might provide) and was therefore for boldly giving meaning to one's own experience, creatively. Kafka's metier was all about the lingering doubt, or fear, that this is not enough... that, in fact, there IS a given meaning to one's experience, completely out of one's own control, and that it is a dark and terrifying and inscrutable meaning.

  The two most important statements in all of Karl Marx's writings come from the same book ("Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right").  In fact, they come from the very same page.  I call them "thesis 1" and "thesis 2," though Marx does not number them.  They are as follows: Thesis 1: "...It is evident that all forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy." and  Thesis 2: "...In true democracy, the political state disappears."  How one interprets Marx hangs completely on how one interprets these two statements.  In a few words, Marx brings together all the diverse tendencies that made the group of thinkers to which he belonged so distinctive - a group that was familiar and conversant with the writings of Hegel and other important philosophers of the period, and yet represented a rebellious, even shocking divergence from tradition. ...

The 4 levels of history: 1. War 2. The State 3. Religion 4. Philosophy (& science & art) These should not be thought of as occurring distinctly and subsequently; they all happen, of course, simultaneously.  Nonetheless, there is a kind of order between them: not a chronological order, but a kind of logical order, because each step represents the recursion of the previous step. The state is the recursion of war - it is war turned inward, war turned back on itself.  A side of the war turns back on itself, turning what had been outward aggression inward, so that the struggle for dominance (the "will to power" as it were) is no longer directed towards the enemy but rather towards one's own.  You might say that the state is war turned inside-out. Similarly, religion is the recursion of the state: the self-referential "meta-state" so to speak.  You could call it the state of the state.  The church has been, traditionally, the center of morality, and morality c...