PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker

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Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

Rules

1) Don't engage these morons. They are wacky enough without encouragement.
2) Don't argue about politics. There is another subforum for that.

What is the Dark Enlightenment?

Short Answer-A bunch of basement dwellers who beat off daily to the singularity and how much better things were before democracy.

Long answer

quote:

�Reactionary� originally meant someone who opposed the French Revolution, and today the term generally refers to those who would like to return to some pre-existing state of affairs. Neoreaction � aka �dark enlightenment � begins with computer scientist and entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin, who blogs under the name Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin � the self-described Sith Lord of the movement � got his start as a commenter on sites like 2blowhards before starting his own blog Unqualified Reservations in 2007. Yarvin originally called his ideology �formalism,� but in 2010 libertarian blogger Arnold Kling referred to him as a �neo-reactionary.� The name stuck as more bloggers � such as Anomaly UK (who helped popularize the term), Nick Land (who coined �dark enlightenment�) and Michael Anissimov � started to self-identify as neoreactionary.

The movement has a few contemporary forerunners, such as Herman Hoppe and Steven Sailer, and of course, neoreaction is heavily influenced by older political thought � Thomas Carlyle and Julius Evola are particularly popular.

In their own words:

Who is Mencius Moldbug?
This guy

Among other things, Dark Enlightement Thinkers enjoy making magic cards flaunting their lovely purple prose political treatises.

Besides making magic cards of themselves, they love making lovely graphs and figures full of big words.

drat thats a lot of fancy mumbo-jumbo, does it make any sense? Not really. A lack of self awareness is a vital requirement to joining the Dark Enlightenment. For all their fetishization of science they have no loving clue of how it actually works.

Genetics, for instance

quote:

What is HBD? Human biodiversity is the rejection of the �blank state� of human nature. Creepily obsessed with statistics that demonstrate IQ differences between the races, the darkly enlightened see social hierarchies as determined not by culture or opportunity but by the cold, hard destiny embedded in DNA. One blogger calls it �The Voldemort View� (adding Harry Potter to the Star Wars/Matrix mix), claiming that, �mean differences in group IQs are the most likely explanation for the academic achievement gap in racial and SES [socioeconomic status] groups.�

Cue the adherents of The Bell Curve, eugenics enthusiasts, believers in white supremacy and sympathizers of the National Socialist German Workers� Party. In the Dark Enlightenment, we seem to have stumbled across a place where pseudo-intellectually grounded racism is flourishing in a way it hasn�t since before World War II.

In our discussion, Land was explicit in his view on this: �HBD, broadly conceived, is simply a fact. It is roughly as questionable, on intellectual grounds, as biological evolution or the heliocentric model of the solar system. No one who takes the trouble to educate themselves on the subject with even a minimum of intellectual integrity can doubt that.�

Unsurprisingly, the Dark Lords of the Sith despise modernity�s preoccupation with �equality,� viewing it as a triumph of democratic ideology over science.

Did I mention that almost all of the darkly enlightened are white men?

The Lesswrong Mockthread occasionally dips into this pool of crazy, but as a whole it is tangential to that thread's subject matter, hence here we are.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 01:14

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:06

MizPiz: May 29, 2013; by Athanatos

Please tell me there's a rulebook for this game. I want know more about this perfect world of libertarian monarchies.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 02:09

David Copperfield: Mar 14, 2004; im david copperfield

What a coincidence, their worldview would put them on top of their natural hierarchy. Pretty wacky!

# ? Jul 29, 2014 02:24

FreudianSlippers: Apr 12, 2010; Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Toussaint Louverture. That guy kicked rear end.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 04:01

fleshy echidna: Apr 11, 2010

ah yes... the perfect melding of secular traditionalist and masculinity the Hawaiian Libertarian.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 04:18

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Is there some story behind the name "Mencius Moldbug?" Why did this dude choose an Internet handle that sounds like something a second-rate Dickens imitator would reject for being too hamfistedly villainous?

# ? Jul 29, 2014 04:24

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

This is what you get when you get a board-gamer so isolated from normal social interaction that his hobby has become his ego, so that he thinks critical hit charts, the eight schools of magic, and the Great Wheel of the Planes are also a window into understanding the world in a way no one else can. Starting with politics!

# ? Jul 29, 2014 04:56

Haruharuharuko: Mar 24, 2008; Yeah I lied; so what is the truth?

I think I might have gone crosseyed looking at the charts in the OP.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 05:03

Byde: Apr 15, 2013; by Lowtax

Does Alex Kierkegaard/icycalm count? Because his "philosophy" webpage/blog is simply the worst.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 05:04

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

It's like they made a political philosophy about trying to be both too smart for you and too edgy for you. "You know what's totally overrated? All Forms of Democracy. :smug:

# ? Jul 29, 2014 05:19

Fried Watermelon: Dec 29, 2008

Man I am tripping balls from that OP. wow.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 05:26

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Antivehicular posted:

Is there some story behind the name "Mencius Moldbug?" Why did this dude choose an Internet handle that sounds like something a second-rate Dickens imitator would reject for being too hamfistedly villainous?

Given the "Sith lord" bullshit and the fact that the word "dark" is right in their group's name, that was probably the idea. He probably thinks that he's a twisted intellectual anti-hero or something equally juvenile.

Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 05:58 on Jul 29, 2014

# ? Jul 29, 2014 05:56

Harime Nui: Apr 15, 2008; The New Insincerity

I'm something of a dark enlightenment conneseuer and I gotta tell you I have a hard time choosing between the misplaced idolization of extinct cultures in The Legionnaire and John Derbyshire's blend of Archy Bunker Dad with circa 1900 scientific racism :smug:

# ? Jul 29, 2014 06:09

Vorpal Cat: Mar 19, 2009; Oh god what did I just post?

Considering that this just came up in the Lesswrong Mockthread rear end well what is it with egotistical pseudoscientific idiots and misunderstanding IQ scores.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 06:26

Grondoth: Feb 18, 2011

IQ is your real life Int stat line.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 06:44

Lamprey Cannon: Jul 23, 2011; by exmarx

"Thinker" is such a generous term.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 07:21

Adeline Weishaupt: Oct 16, 2013; by Lowtax

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Given the "Sith lord" bullshit and the fact that the word "dark" is right in their group's name, that was probably the idea. He probably thinks that he's a twisted intellectual anti-hero or something equally juvenile.

Man, nerd society as a whole is overdue for a subversive anything in which the hero is a 'boy-scout'-esque hero who's antagonists are edgy 'intellectuals' who try to do the whole shades-of-grey heroism but fail at staying out of the black.

...and Kingdom Come doesn't count.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 07:35

Harime Nui: Apr 15, 2008; The New Insincerity

Nerd society is due for a goddamn ball-destroying wedgie is what, and I'm the pink anime princess who's gonna deliver

# ? Jul 29, 2014 08:28

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Ahahahaha, I just noticed that Roosh V is in that chart. :thumbsup:

Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 08:31 on Jul 29, 2014

# ? Jul 29, 2014 08:28

some plague rats: Jun 5, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

I want to see every single one of these guys beaten to death in the street

# ? Jul 29, 2014 11:49

Phobophilia: Apr 26, 2008; by Hand Knit

When I have their disembodied mindforks enslaved in my orbital coding farms, I will make sure to set aside a simulspace where they can be endlessly swirlied.

:george:

# ? Jul 29, 2014 12:03

Caufman: May 7, 2007

I'm much more familiar with the precursor to the Dark Enlightenment: the Harlem Renaissance.

And, uhm, I'm sure Cab Calloway thinked a thought or two.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 12:06

Lightanchor: Nov 2, 2012

Antivehicular posted:

Is there some story behind the name "Mencius Moldbug?" Why did this dude choose an Internet handle that sounds like something a second-rate Dickens imitator would reject for being too hamfistedly villainous?

Mencius is an ancient conservative Confucian philosopher, famous, ironically, for defending human nature as originally good.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 12:42

tupac holocron: Apr 23, 2008; The son of Maryam is about to descend amongst you as a correct ruler, he will break the cross and kill the pig!

roberto bolano tried to warn us

# ? Jul 29, 2014 13:14

No Dignity: Oct 15, 2007

umalt posted:

Man, nerd society as a whole is overdue for a subversive anything in which the hero is a 'boy-scout'-esque hero who's antagonists are edgy 'intellectuals' who try to do the whole shades-of-grey heroism but fail at staying out of the black.

...and Kingdom Come doesn't count.

Gurren Lagann has a pretty funny arc where that exact thing happens. The protagonist's close friend and long-time ally betrays him because things are really grim and he needs to make the hard choices for the good of humanity! Needless to say it blows up in his face, he ends up endangers humanity even more and the protagonist bails everyone, including him, out by doing the right thing and refusing to give in to nihilism even when the world is baying for his blood.

But yeah the ideology behind the whole grimdark trend in nerd fiction is really gross, I've seen a few things recently which have started to buck the trend, like X Men:DoFP, which paints a really lovely grim scenario but has the protagonists pull out a win (and a better future!) through pain, sacrifice and faith in each other so maybe there's there's hope yet.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 15:37

Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

I love when networks of pseudo-intellectuals descend into a cult.
Don't know how much of this is true but funny to picture anyways.

quote:

-But only the media call them �Sith Lords�. In Inner Speak, they will often use phrases like the Men of N�menor or the Eldars.

- The movement is a weird mixture of ethno-nationalists, futurists, monarchists, PUAs (�pick-up artists� like Chateau Heartiste), Trad Catholics, Trad Protestants, etc. They all believe in HBD (what they call �human biodiversity� i.e. racism) but disagree on some other minor points.

- I was initiated into the first stages of the Dark Enlightenment, which involved me stripping down naked so people could �inspect my phenotype�. I was then given a series of very personal questions, often relating to sexual matters. I was then told to put on a black cape. (I really regret doing this but at the time I was younger, more impressionable and eager to please.)

- For the initial oath taking, everyone must swear on a copy of Darwin�s Origin of Species, just to show their fidelity to HBD. After that, for the later oaths, seculars will swear again on Darwin, while Christians will swear on the Bible, and pagans on the Prose Edda or Iliad.

- They also have all their own secret handshakes, and their own terminology [like the Cathedral ("political correctness"), thedening ("re-establishing ethnic group identity"), genophilia ("love of one's own race"), NRx ("neoreaction"), etc.].

2014 nerds still scared of brown people.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 17:19

Harime Nui: Apr 15, 2008; The New Insincerity

Yeah that dude got told a bunch of horseshit whoever his source was. These people aren't the skull and bones society, or even really a coherent movement other than they are 1) various flavones of paleoconservative to wingnut futurist libertarian and 2). Complete dorks. They probably range from college kids who will hopefully grow out of this to dudes posting out of a trailer park in Couer d'Lane

# ? Jul 29, 2014 17:58

Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

Harime Nui posted:

Yeah that dude got told a bunch of horseshit whoever his source was. These people aren't the skull and bones society, or even really a coherent movement other than they are 1) various flavones of paleoconservative to wingnut futurist libertarian and 2). Complete dorks. They probably range from college kids who will hopefully grow out of this to dudes posting out of a trailer park in Couer d'Lane

Oh thank god.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 18:02

Deceitful Penguin: Feb 16, 2011

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Ahahahaha, I just noticed that Roosh V is in that chart.

Yea him and Hans Herman Hoppe were the only names I recognized, and Hoppe has a similarly ridiculed existence in the academic world. Literally never heard a kind thing said about him by any respectable academic.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 18:15

Grondoth: Feb 18, 2011

This is such a trap for teenagers. I thought being a libertarian was embarrassing, could you imagine looking back at your teenage years when you believed in "the dark enlightenment?"

# ? Jul 29, 2014 18:31

Filippo Corridoni: Jun 12, 2014; I'm the fuckin' man
You don't get it, do ya?

Crane Fist posted:

I want to see every single one of these guys beaten to death in the street

is emptyquoting allowed in PYF? Because I really want to emptyquote right now

also who here thinks that these are all virgins in their mid-twenties

# ? Jul 29, 2014 19:15

Tujague: May 8, 2007; by LadyAmbien

This sounds like somebody drank a bunch of kerosene and then tried to invent a fantasy backstory for Farmville.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 19:20

Harime Nui: Apr 15, 2008; The New Insincerity

My semi-educated guess is these people run the gamut from probably trying-to-be-edgy postbacs to inveterate cranks who make their living off presentations and lectures for crazy people. Mencius Moldbug is a programmer in Silicon Valley and we just had a thread in GBS about a google programmer who started parroting this stuff on her twitter (only relevant at all b/c she had some vague connection to the Occupy Movement). I'd say the techno-feudalist nonsense if not the racialist or mens' rights stuff is popular with at least a handful of young professionals in the dotcom/tech industry, concentrated in Silicon Valley, and some of the WN/ethnonationalist online crowd has hitched their wagon to it cuz hey, these guys sound smart!

# ? Jul 29, 2014 19:24

Filippo Corridoni: Jun 12, 2014; I'm the fuckin' man
You don't get it, do ya?

I've got a theory.

The racism/"human biodiversity"/white nationalism poo poo is what happens when a sheltered rich white nerd decides to move to a scary black neighborhood to save money for more games on steam (or when these far-right, sheltered morons come across all the plethora of racist garbage clogging the internet), the weird pseudo-social conservatism poo poo is what happens when you delve so deep into the manosphere that you get to the people advocating "patriarchy" and traditional marriage so that they can finally get laid, and the cartoonish anti-democracy poo poo stems from their libertarian love of a free market unfettered by the filthy, mininum-wage loving masses.

Put a big ole dallop of nerd on top, and this is the hellish result.

Thank you, internet.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 20:04

Filippo Corridoni: Jun 12, 2014; I'm the fuckin' man
You don't get it, do ya?

Grondoth posted:

IQ is your real life Int stat line.

Content:

I Am A Fan Of Marital Rape posted:

Marriage is a a contract between two people, in which love, of which sex is an implied and fundamental component, is promised to the other. This contract is vowed for life and is binding for life.

With sex being so vowed to the other, sexual consent is given for life by contract.

There can not be sexual non-consent in marriage for sexual consent has already been contractually agreed to.

Marital non-consent is an impossibility: if there is non-consent, there is no marriage; if there is marriage, there can not be non-consent.

****

But from the beginning of creation, �God made them male and female.� �Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.� So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.� (Mark 10:6-9 ESV)

The basis of Christian marriage is laid out in Genesis and reiterated in the Gospels. The man and wife become one flesh.

Can a person commit a non-consensual act upon their own flesh?

The very idea is absurd.

Any statement that there can be non-consent in marriage is an attack on the fundamental basis of Christian marriage and the Christian family.

If you believe you can have non-consent in marriage, you do not have a Christian view of marriage.

If you believe non-consent can occur in your marriage, you do not have a Christian marriage.

****

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Corinthians 7:3-5 ESV)

The Bible is very clear that you should not deny your spouse sex. Someone who does is sinning.

Anybody who encourages or tolerates spouses denying each other is encouraging and tolerating sin.

****

Rape is sex without consent. There is a difference between rape and abuse.

Sex can be violent or abusive without being rape.

Words have meaning.

****

All that being said, this should not be taken as encouragement to take your spouse if the spouse is saying no. Your spouse may be sinning and consenting, but it would not be the loving thing to do and might be sinful in itself. As well, from a practical standpoint, the law does frown upon it.

****

Finally, I hypothesize the concept of marital rape hurts those who suffer from �marital rape�.

The trauma of rape does not primarily come from its physical aspects, but rather its psychological aspects. The trauma comes from the violation.

If this is so, it stands to reason if there is no sense of psychological violation, there is no trauma.

The creation of the concept of marital rape, creates the idea that a spouse can be violated in marriage where the idea didn�t exist previously. Undesired sex that would have been an unpleasant duty is made traumatic by removing the psychological aspect of duty from it and imputing a psychological aspect of violation to it.

I think it likely, the psychological trauma of marital rape only becomes a reality because of the belief that there can be such a concept as marital rape. Pushing the concept of marital rape increases the likelihood of trauma from marital rape; the very concept of marital rape creates the trauma of marital rape.

****

Vox [Day] posted on the same topic the day after I wrote this. I guess great minds think alike.

"the law does frown upon it"

Filippo Corridoni has a new favorite as of 20:30 on Jul 29, 2014

# ? Jul 29, 2014 20:16

get that OUT of my face: Feb 10, 2007

Justine Tunney.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 21:06

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

There can only be one.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 21:13

Noun Verber: Oct 12, 2006; Cool party, guys.

Shut up Wesley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afhMMcAHlKw

# ? Jul 29, 2014 22:36

Improbable Lobster: Jan 6, 2012; What is the Matrix 🌐? We just don't know 😎.; Buglord

Filippo Corridoni posted:

Content:

"the law does frown upon it"

quote:

Welcome to the home of Free Northerner.

I�m a Christian and a reactionary monarchist from British North America.

You can read my story at my first post. In short, I became dissatisfied with my life.

After a period of red pill exploration I have decided to embrace Christian masculinity. I am working to improve myself for God�s glory. My plan is to find a wife and raise a large family with traditional values. Failing that, by age 35 I plan to have established a plan and enough income to live independently without relying on a regular job.

Something tells me that this rapist-wannabe isn't the picture of ~~Nordic~~ ~~British~~ Canadian(?) virility that he thinks he is.

# ? Jul 29, 2014 22:58

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:06

Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

Filippo Corridoni posted:

"the law does frown upon it"

I wonder if he would see eye to eye with that libertarian who locked up that teenager in the shipping container.

# ? Jul 30, 2014 01:24

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