In this episode, we chew on a question that’s been on Dougald’s mind since a recent event in London, where Brian Eno wondered what is the difference between an analysis which says we cannot save or make sustainable the trajectories of industrial modernity and technological progress, and an accelerationist position which says we need to bring about collapse in order to release the possibilities to be found in the ruins?
Brian Eno's question about leaving good ruins and accelerationism reflects an unconscious bias towards --isms as an inevitable part of future developments going forward. In other words he can see only a continuation of the modern project of mass mobilization of entire populations through ideological constructs that promise some universal improvement in the human condition.
Instead, I think part of what we are witnessing is the ultimate failure of all such projects. The future we are heading into is not only unknown, but unknowable because the universality of modernity will be replaced by thousands of local developments that can't be foreseen, or planned for except on the spot as communities coalesce around strategies for survival that grow out of the varied terrains, cultural and environmental, each community exists on. Making good ruins means, to me, leaving behind as much fertile ground (in all senses) as we can, so that future generations will be able to do more than just scramble for bare survival in the aftermath of the universal catastrophe modernity has created.
I am of two minds about accelerationism. On the one hand, certain aspects of the overculture are, maybe, collapsing under their own weight. On the other hand, the edifice has and is being eaten away from beneath by projects and alliances that are long-term and reasonably well organized and extremely well funded, and which have used trumpianism as a sort of Trojan Horse. The alliance of the tech bros with the christo-fascist theo bros only happened recently, but the Christian nationalism part of the equation has been building since the 1970s. For more on all that you can mine the podcast, The New Evangelicals, especially episodes from 2022-2023. People who have left churches because of scandal or harm or just the observation that what many churches now champion has little to do with the faith of Jesus have been asking themselves how this came about, and the answers have been illuminating, including the political origin of many so-called Christian movements. All this is seldom included in election post mortems but it seems to me to be the most salient point. I wish more thinkers and journalists were up to speed on it.
I mention this because I think it is a stronger driver of the white evangelical vote, which went 80% for trump, than the economic matters materialists on the left tend to focus on. They want what Orban has done to Hungary.
Brian Eno's question about leaving good ruins and accelerationism reflects an unconscious bias towards --isms as an inevitable part of future developments going forward. In other words he can see only a continuation of the modern project of mass mobilization of entire populations through ideological constructs that promise some universal improvement in the human condition.
Instead, I think part of what we are witnessing is the ultimate failure of all such projects. The future we are heading into is not only unknown, but unknowable because the universality of modernity will be replaced by thousands of local developments that can't be foreseen, or planned for except on the spot as communities coalesce around strategies for survival that grow out of the varied terrains, cultural and environmental, each community exists on. Making good ruins means, to me, leaving behind as much fertile ground (in all senses) as we can, so that future generations will be able to do more than just scramble for bare survival in the aftermath of the universal catastrophe modernity has created.
I am of two minds about accelerationism. On the one hand, certain aspects of the overculture are, maybe, collapsing under their own weight. On the other hand, the edifice has and is being eaten away from beneath by projects and alliances that are long-term and reasonably well organized and extremely well funded, and which have used trumpianism as a sort of Trojan Horse. The alliance of the tech bros with the christo-fascist theo bros only happened recently, but the Christian nationalism part of the equation has been building since the 1970s. For more on all that you can mine the podcast, The New Evangelicals, especially episodes from 2022-2023. People who have left churches because of scandal or harm or just the observation that what many churches now champion has little to do with the faith of Jesus have been asking themselves how this came about, and the answers have been illuminating, including the political origin of many so-called Christian movements. All this is seldom included in election post mortems but it seems to me to be the most salient point. I wish more thinkers and journalists were up to speed on it.
I mention this because I think it is a stronger driver of the white evangelical vote, which went 80% for trump, than the economic matters materialists on the left tend to focus on. They want what Orban has done to Hungary.