Amerika

Over at Outside In, Nick Land makes some great points and some that are harder to support. But the core of his philosophy takes some effort to spot. For example, a cryptic post about the dominance of the Qwerty layout keyboard reveals a Landian theme:

In such circumstances ‘historical accidents’ can neither be ignored, nor neatly quarantined for the purpose of economic analysis; the dynamic process itself takes on an essentially historical character.

He quotes this source for a reason, which is that it reveals how markets and natural selection work on a mathematical level that is more advanced than human design. Nature is smarter than us.

This does not mean we should go back to living in mud huts, but the contrary: nature has built into itself a series of thresholds and tests so that only those who merit it can achieve high technology.

While Land relies on a technological progress timeline to show the defeat of liberal society, in an inversion of Kaczynski’s dour take on the same, history suggests that the pattern of a civilization and not its technological level determines its level of success.

That is to say, as Traditionalists have explained for decades, we do not wish to “back” in time; we wish to create the design-type of society that has always worked instead of pursuing alternatives such as the modern civilization design.

This is no different than management theory. Certain arrangements of roles and activities in groups of humans always produce success, no matter what $current_year is; others always fail, independent of the age.

What is interesting about Land’s theory is that it supports this idea. In his analysis, natural evolution — gradualism, selection, arbitrary modification — produce an end result that reflects the composition of the group choosing. When idiots are numerous, idiocy results; when intelligence is given precedence, one gets a society with the four pillars or some approximation.

This brings us back to Nietzsche. The four pillars evolved just like the eagles: we took early birds (pre-civilization humans) and applied intense selection pressure plus strong positive rewards for seizing opportunity, and the result was an apex predator (hierarchical civilization). This in turn modified the participants to be more able to fulfill that role.

Kaczynski and Land seem to agree that technology has created a “bubble” wherein humans have been separated from the consequences of their decisions by an inclusive civilization, and for that reason, idiocy rules. A more thoroughly analytical take reveals that this process occurred even in low-technology civilizations, and is the product of a wealth boom brought on merely by social organization, which is inherently exponentially efficient compared to individual subsistence farming and hunter-gatherer activities.

When this wealth boom happens, most societies begin dying just like yeast dumped into a jar of syrup: they breed until they consume the available resources, then die out. This is how nature regulates species that cannot regulate themselves; they self-destruct. We could see the failure of our civilization as just one step in the attempt by nature to produce a human genotype that does not lead to civilization self-destruction.

As those of us who will form the next civilization, which is only possibly by military/political displacement of the current occupants, look toward the future, it becomes clear that our enemy is unrealistic thought. Land’s praise of the underlying structure of nature is at its heart conservative, and a clarity we should all heed.

Tags: civilization design, evolution, gradualism, natural selection, nick land, traditionalism