Darkly Enlightened, Not Neoreactionary

I have to confess:  as exciting as all this neoreactionary talk has been, I'm starting to get tired of it.

It's not that I don't agree with the writers in the circle--I do, most of the time. I'm just losing interest in the self-reference and especially the drive toward a philosophical/political theory.

From now on, I'll think I'll go with the name Dark Enlightenment. The name's a bit goofy but it at least places us at the source of the conflict--the erroneous assumptions that arose during the Enlightenment and have driven the Western world ever since. I prefer the Counter Enlightenment but one never gets a say in these things.

My impression upon finding the movement was the same spark of recognition that most of us had. We'd lived in the modern world, having been educated but also educating ourselves, and found that modernity is increasingly absurd. It's absurd because its assumptions are founded on will, not on reality. We know enough history to realize that the past had very different assumptions, ones that prevented many of the problems we have today.

Where a leftist would flagellate himself and beg for understanding, we thought, Maybe it's not me that's wrong. We found our little spots on the web that engaged us, challenged and affirmed our ideas, and eventually a vague consensus was formed and the community has coalesced.

That's what I consider the Dark Enlightenment, a loose coalition of people who understand that the world is not the way the enlightened tell us it is. Now that "Neoreaction" has emerged, it strikes me as rather...progressive.

The core error of the political/philosophical Enlightenment is not the conception of human rights or the misunderstanding of freedom, it's that humans can be organized rationally. The assumption is the same whether it's parliamentary democracy or Soviet communism.

The error comes from not understanding this:  humans are non-rational and, well, sinful. Reason is a tool of the human mind, our special gift, but capable of misuse. The Red-pillers know this; they call it hamstering. Humans can decide what they want, non-rationally, and then rationalize their desires, creating the impression that whatever they want is good, logical and the only sane decision to make. This is why prudence is the highest virtue man can achieve on his own--using right(eous) reason.

There is no point in designing a system--every system is doomed to failure, given enough time. Our laws and our desires are always in conflict, so it's only a matter of time before the right people with wrong intentions find a way to make their agendas legal.

The drive to create some kind of political theory comes mainly from the youngest writers, the guys who are translating the conversation into an impenetrable brick wall of philosophical terms. They seem to think that if they stack enough abstractions together, they'll discover they've built an entirely new theory.

The second force behind neoreaction-as-ideology is the older writers who like to fantasize about the New Order that will come after liberal democracy fails. A pleasant enough diversion but do you really think civilization will stop and look at your blueprints?

Neoreaction, as a product of the Dark Enlightenment, works better as a descriptive mechanism and should avoid being prescriptive. Trying to set down a rational set of rules for a new society undermines all the insights neoreaction provided. We already had a Karl Marx and it didn't work out.

Like everyone in the conversation, I read Moldbug. His most important contribution is naming the demon. He called the back-scratching relationship between academia, the media and the bureaucracy "The Cathedral," and suddenly we all recognized its shape, like the blind men who each felt a different part of the elephant. He pointed out that liberalism is a faith, and one derived from "enlightened" versions of Christianity, eventually so enlightened that Christ was removed.

His prescription for the ills of humanity, to be blunt, is horseshit. Tech-heavy science fiction conflating business corporations and absolute monarchy. When he got to the point where state weapons are controlled by microchips in order to prevent coup de etats, I was wondering when The Prophesied One would enter the story.

Moldbug is better-read than I am and has made it his goal to be skillful in winning arguments. I'd probably end up silent if we debated. But, for all his intelligence and insight, his belief that a better society can be designed on paper is high hubris.

I'll avoid being prescriptive myself, so I'll predict instead. What I think will emerge from neoreaction, assuming that it stops navel-gazing and preening, is a precise critique of the assumptions that have led Western Civilization down the primrose path.

Large-scale democracy is inherently degenerative. People will never be equal in their abilities, temperaments or ambitions. Bureaucracy holds permanent power in government. The state can influence society but not control it. Culture matters. Ethnicity matters. Morality matters.

There's more, of course, that we will work out as we trade ideas. But, in fixing these post-Enlightenment errors, we must be thinking of the future. Not to triangulate the best way to put geniuses on a throne, but to avoid these errors because they are seductive.

The assumptions that come from the Enlightenment are those of moral and intellectual superiority. They are sweet-sounding words that foster evil. They profess unity but create division. They are virulent.

If neoreaction is to come to any positive end, it will be in creating a vaccine against the virus. We'll need it for whatever comes next.