(or, Reconciling Cyclical Time with Linear Time the Survive Those Who Want to Stand Outside of Both)

7891 words.

When recording a livestream not long ago, a question was posed by one of the viewers, paraphrased ad “which is better for the health of civilization, linear time or cyclical time?” This was a deceptively deep question, but it was one we had explored before on my show, Blood $atellite. Many historians have concluded there was a shift from what the ancients viewed as a perennial nature to the universe to what we take for granted in the modern era as a linear progression of time – codified by the prevalence of Christianity – one where the universe has a final end rather than something like a Yuga cycle.

This transition was but one of branch of a great tree of human awareness through the spatialization of abstract concepts, allowing us an acute understanding of our place in the grand scheme of things. As the darkness retreats, our consciousness expands in new and inhuman ways. We feel as though we approach divinity as the iron bars multiply around us, all the while running complex calculations on how to allow our cultural identities to survive in increasingly complex environments where survival is defined by growth, perhaps even limitless growth.

“What is better for civilization” is to blame for this descent into maddening platitudes.

Eternal Cycles Riding the Sine Wave of Logos

Our relationship with time is governed by the type of mind that apprehends its passing, or even its flexibility. Those in the ancient world had completely different mental faculties through which they apprehended both time and space. We know our far-flung ancestors thought differently, but how deep do these differences go? Speculative musings inevitably arise regarding the hypothetical teleportation into antiquity, prompting contemplation of the extent to which the linguistic and conceptual moorings of our present discourse would resonate amidst the temporal expanse. Aside from the applications at their disposal, we may be running completely different operating systems.

Consciousness isn’t just a property of matter, nor a mere outgrowth of automatic functions, like how wetness cannot be derived from oxygen and hydrogen. Furthermore, consciousness is not just learning or the state of holding information; we frequently learn without being conscious of it. Further still, we often think through problems without considering the reasons why, a process standing before the conscious act of problem solving. So what is this thing we call consciousness? Julian Jaynes probed deep in the human mind with his seminal work “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,” concluding that the key to consciousness is the metaphor, or the description of something that exists but is unknown with some other comparisons.^​1​ For example, a theory is just a metaphor we generate between the data and final model, and consciousness could be described as an internal analog we create in totality representing the real world.

The ancient human, possessing a bicameral mind, is essentially a being with no consciousness – or awareness of thought – but all the learning, initiative, and drive to action remains. Jaynes identifies how the speech center is on the left hemisphere of the brain while other cognitive functions can be found on both hemispheres. Experiments in the right hemisphere of the brain which mirrored the placement of the speech center could trigger subjects hearing voices, and like schizophrenics these voices are more often than not admonishing or angry. Jaynes claims the undeveloped Right side – which still possesses some speech ability – was previously for speech of the Gods, or communicating the spirit world.

“We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog ‘I’ that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space.” – Julian Jaynes, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”

The way ancient man interacted with the world was much different than the way we might, where what we now understand as consciousness was the completely unmediated and integrated dialogue with the inner voice in the form Gods communicating to them, or memory of deceased family members beckoning to them from the grave. Some evidence and accounts from ancient empires such as the Incas indicate that they heard voices emanating from statues, which were sculpted with large eyes and gaping mouths for the purposes of direct communication. The breakdown of this type of mind, and the dulling of this speech center leading to the emergence of consciousness, was due to a distancing from the Gods through trade, other cultures, and mingling of peoples around the end of the second millennium.

Whatever the specific cluster of causes, that speech center is greatly weakened now granting us a greater capacity for self-analysis and abstract thought, at the sacrifice of losing a daily immersion in the mystical realm. This metamorphosis in cognitive function suggests a divergence from ancestral modes of existence, potentially underscoring a genetic predisposition incongruous with our forbearers.

Following this distinct architecture of the mind, it’s no wonder our conceptualization of time was different as well. In his landmark work “The Myth of the Eternal Return,” Mircea Eliade explored the shift in societal priority from cyclical time to linear time, and how the process of death and rebirth was so essential to the pagan or ancient world. The sacred rituals that even stone age cultures reenact are a repetition of what the gods or mythic heroes were mythologized to have done, these societies paying tribute through social muscle memory forever.^​2​ For example, aborigines circumcised with stone tools because this is what the gods did, and even Christians in our historical period have a day of rest such as God did. This is a primordial thirst for being, and the cyclical regeneration of time – like the seasons and the calendar itself – are embodied by ceremonies that keep the community healthy by reliving the acts of the divine to mark the beginnings. This is what is known as the “eternal return.”

Eliade posits that this phenomenon signifies not a celebration of the natural world, but rather a defiance against its deterministic dictates; primordial humans did not passively acquiesce to the dominion of profane history – that which was dictated by nature – and frequently attempted to break it rather than commemorate it in his acts. As a result, to ancient men and women there were very few activities devoid of spiritual significance; hunting, fishing, sex, they all participate in some way with the sacred. Everything was imbued with the spirit world, like the bicameral mind with the mystical realm.

“If we observe the general behavior of archaic man, we are struck by the following fact: neither the objects of the external world nor human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value. Objects or acts acquire a value, and in so doing become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that transcends them.” – Mircea Eliade, “The Myth of the Eternal Return”

The natural world is represented by a mythical chaos, and when settled it must be “cosmitized” by people who enact rites of creation there, like when Vikings settling Greenland and reenacted their creation myth to make the land real, or Spanish Conquistadors setting up a cross. The repetition of divine ritual was a rebellion against profane time itself, just as any sacred founding of a city abolished profane space.

This revelation indicates that these ceremonies were more about aggressive control of the universe rather than being held captive by time and circumstance. Ancient man stamped his mythology across the landscape and haunted all terrain he stepped forth upon. There was always a spatialization occurring, where mankind set itself apart. Far from passive receivers of the supernatural, we sought to harness it, control our immersion, even revolt against it.

This cycle of death and rebirth also takes its highest form in the ritual sacrifice, be it animal or human. Tribes and civilizations across the planet across time have engaged in these sacrifices, and it is arguable that while we no longer behead chosen victims for the gods, we engage in other sacrifice of those we collectively elevate. This is the argument made by Rene Girard in “I Saw Satan Fall like Lightning” as he describes the end result of what he calls the Scapegoat Mechanism.

According to Girard, all mythical and biblical dramas represent the same type of collective violence against a single victim. Myths see this victim as guilty – Oedipus has really killed his father and married his mother – whereas the Gospels see these same victims as innocent, unjustly murdered by deluded lynchers and persecutors. All such victims are what we now familiarly call “scapegoats,” meaning innocent targets of a collective transference that is both mimetic in its spread and mechanical in its predictability.^​3​ Taken individually, human beings are not necessarily given over to mimetic rivalries, but by virtue of the great number of individuals they contain, human communities cannot escape them. When the first scandal occurs, it gives birth to others, and the result is mimetic crises, which spread without ceasing and become worse and worse. A mimetic crisis is the apex of internal conflict within a community, infighting to a degree where the entire community is at risk of collapse. Collapse is avoided once a pressure release can be found in the expulsion or execution of a marginal individual who can be held responsible for the runaway mental virus.

“Scandals are responsible for the false infinity of mimetic rivalry. They secrete increasing quantities of envy, jealousy, resentment, hatred—all the poisons most harmful not only for the initial antagonists but also for all those who become fascinated by their rivalistic desires. At the height of scandal each reprisal calls forth a new one more violent than its predecessor.” – René Girard, “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning”

Within the framework presented by Girard, the mimetic crisis and its original seed as a scandal is the manifestation of Satan, that which lacks a true essence and only exists as the virus which sews discord and extracts suffering from the human race. The sacrifice of the victim expels the evil, however the Satan expelled is that one who foments and exasperates mimetic rivalries to the point of transforming the community into a furnace of scandals. In order to prevent the destruction of his kingdom, Satan – the contagion – provides the very means of expelling himself to continue his true goal: to sow disorder, violence, and misfortune among his subjects.

Most pertinent to our discussion is how Girard identifies that while the death and resurrection of Christ was supposed to put an end to ritual sacrifice to appease the gods, we never truly abandoned the ritualization of electing a victim to visit mimetic violence upon. Our calendars are still marked by cyclical and seasonal rituals that memorialize death and rebirth, we still end our year with orgies of reckless abandon, and we build up celebrities to break them down.

E. Michael Jones, in his expansive “Logos Rising,” recounts a rich history of the concept of logos found deep in the ancient world and how it was integrated into Christian theology, helping to firmly establish the dominance of linear time thus subsuming the eternal cycles as pagan mysticism. It starts with the ancient Greeks, who understood that man was different from all other animals primarily because he could speak. The word they used for rationality was “logos,” which is the word for speech in addition to discourse, language, and other related concepts. Far from a synonym for vocalizing, it is that by which the inward thought is expressed.^​4​

While there were certainly civilizations like the Vikings who had a concept of the final end time, it was Western thought merged with Christianity that seemed to fixate our gazes upon the final end fulfilling a limited time of existence. The death and resurrection of Jesus was a one-time event, which made time itself linear and non-regenerative. Within Christian theology, we do not expect a cycle of Jesuses to christen each cycle of rebirth; we measure our calendars in increments after that significant event, distancing ourselves further and further from it and creating a remarkable spatialization of ourselves temporally.

“Augustine rejected the idea of a perpetual return as the natural consequence of the eternity of the world. The clear understanding of Creation as an act of God in time, ‘in the beginning,’ destroyed the pagan notion of circular time. Once time had direction, it also had meaning because, like the well- formed tragedy which Aristotle described in his Poetics, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end.” – E. Michael Jones, “Logos Rising”

In Catholicism, it is said logos was both God by nature while simultaneously a distinct person, specifically the Second Person of the Trinity. This is what John meant when he said “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is a very confusing phrase which few have seriously considered. The term “with God” signifies a distinction; it was symbiosis of two distinct entities, logos as the eternal creative metaphor parallel to what we understand as human consciousness. God could be understood as logos in motion, which meant that Logos wasn’t just a plan, or a language. God could create because he was processed by the force of ultimate creation, which is something humans can harness as we are made in God’s image.

Here we see the shift to a new understanding of historical permanence plus an understanding of responsibility to create and expand with new purpose. Presently, we wield unprecedented instruments with which to challenge the mundane realm, encompassing modes of communication previously inconceivable in their scope and efficacy.

We are not litigating which perception of time is superior but rather to establish that there exists a synergy between linear and cyclical time, both of which utilized for the human entity to stand apart from the chaos of the profane universe. Even within the framework of quantum mechanics there exists debate on whether the universe lives and dies with finitude or whether it rekindles itself. How are we to recalibrate our ideas about long-term survival with that knowledge in mind?

If it did not christen it, Christianity at least affirmed linear time, and normalized the societal relevance of the final collapse – or final judgment – making apocalyptic visions a fixture in our daily lives. While cyclical commemorations and ceremonies persisted, even echoing their pre-Christian purposes, vestiges of pre-Christian origins linger, their resonance subtly echoing through the annals of time. Collapse scenarios dominate our everyday lives, and we frequently find ourselves predicting the end and tacitly assuming a reflexive cycle of rebirth divorced from active agency or conscientious engagement.

Within our organic cycles, there’s a lack of glorious rebirth, or the ritualized orgy of violence leading to divine rebirth again. We just assume the orgiastic eruption of humanity will, like a machine, automatically rebirth a long-dormant vitalism, as if a natural extension of the nature we are supposed to be rebelling against.

Survival Through Blood Transfusion Annihilation

A popular concept on the political Right is what is known as the “hysteroidal cycle,” or the popular catchphrase that goes “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times.” While frequently attributed to ancient wisdom, the line actually comes from a 2016 novel titled “Those Who Remain: A Postapocalyptic Novel.” Despite this, many still believe the quote to be illustrative of an immutable natural law. As a result, many disenchanted with modern life recite this mantra while praying for a eugenacistic collapse to separate the wheat from the chafe and usher in an age of apex predators. However, an accounting of history reveals that it’s more likely that a complex collapse leads to permanent destitution, and a great people reduced to a fallen state are more likely to remain that way indefinitely. From Mongolia to Britain, the world is filled with former empires that did not rise once more from the ashes like a great phoenix. On the contrary, often times survival is not a glorious rebirth but a cold arithmetic on how to live on the margins within a new hostile power.

We know what it looks like when a minority culture is absorbed into a larger center of gravity, which appears to be the standard throughout human history. Often times this is undertaken as a way of survival when presented with a binary choice between assimilation or war. In “Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms” we Gerard Russell investigates a suite of ancient Middle Eastern religions – many older than Christianity – fighting for survival in the modern world, eking out a dwindling existence in the margins of both Christianity and Islam represented as dominant regional powers.^​5​

In our current era we still see Zoroastrians, previously the dominant faith in Iran. Founded in 1000 BC by Zarathustra, their priests were keenly interested in constellations and called the magi, which should sound familiar to Christians. Zoroastrian popularity fell to Islam similar to paganism to Christianity: utilizing a sociopolitical calculus, it was seen as a way out of the caste system, which appealed to the masses, and from there once you convert a couple aristocrats the momentum is established. Despite this, many Persians resisted and saw Zoroastrianism as integral to Iranian identity while Islam was an encroaching Arab cultural force. Similarly, the Mandaeans to this day keep the ancient language of Babylon alive and are living history going back to the third century. Mandaeans believed in magic and curses, giving each baptized person secret names for this reason, doing everything within their power to shut themselves off from the prying eyes of a globalizing world. Both Manicheans and Mandaeans experience dwindling numbers, and are currently weighing their available options which include abandoning their ancestral homelands and appealing to the aforementioned globalist powers for support.

Having endured centuries as resilient custodians of antiquity, these communities now confront a pivotal juncture wherein they contemplate assuming the mantle of a diasporic populace, propelled by the forces of governmental bureaucracy, the pervasive currents of globalism, and the encroachments of Islamic influence. The result is an all too familiar binary choice: absorption into the modern superstructures or opening up their clandestine inner worlds to welcome in the rest of the world.

We see the same with the Vikings, as explained by Lars Brownworth in “The Sea Wolves.” One of the reasons Christianity was so popular in its spread throughout Western Europe, even to the budding kings of Scandinavia, was it provided the model of more centralized authority and rule of one. Once more we see a sociopolitical advantage for kings and rulers to convert, regardless if they became believers later on.^​6​ Christianization had the ladder effect of increasing literacy everywhere it spread, and often increased birthrates with its charge to be fruitful and multiply. Harald Bluetooth inherited the kingdom of Denmark – the largest of the Viking nations- from his father Oleg the Old, the first great king. He then united the kingdom into a single nation by converting to Christianity. One reason that was likely enticing for Harald was as other nations Christianized, they never invaded each other. This same calculation was likely employed a world away by the Swedish Vikings – known in the south as the Rus – who were making their fortunes trading slaves. These people eventually became Russians and Ukrainians, both claiming to be descendants from the House of Rorik the Rus.

This is geographically relevant as around 900 AD they were presented with influences from the West in the form of Christianity as opposed to any of the other myriad of oriental currents. The discernment of Scandinavian communities to align with a predominantly European sphere of influence rather than an Asiatic counterpart reverberates profoundly across current cultural dynamics.

This is a choice not yet dawning upon a unified Western world, but rather specific classes in particular regions of Europe and America. In “Global Inequality,” Branko Milanovic explains how an increase in living standards in the East correlates with those same standards declining in the West. In short, wealth is a zero-sum game, according to geopolitical exchanges. Social and political change only occur within what the economy allows, and Milanovic shows how higher mean income coupled with inequality of distribution amplifies political change, results in more activism, and ultimately revolutions.^​7​ This is compounded by the identification of the Kuznet Curve, which states that as income rises as does inequality axiomatically, although on a long enough timeline will eventually normalize as the classes gouge towards each other. Rather than the developing world being hoisted up, it is much more likely that stratospheric rises are pulled back down to the mean.

“If the losers remain disorganized and subject to false consciousness, not much will change. If they do organize themselves and find political champions who could tap into their resentment and get their votes, then it might be possible for the rich countries to put into place policies that would set them on the downward path of the second Kuznets wave.” – Branko Milanović, “Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization”

The middle class – the engine of the Western economy and a massive production sink for global manufacturing – could be seen as a historical aberration, one that it is normalizing now with the Western middle classes the only group impacted negatively by the change. This is to say the only way to survive is to be subsumed by the rest of the planet, to sacrifice what we have gained to level the playing field rather than elevating everyone to our level. The global minority which drives so much of the manufacturing growth by way of consumer spending is forced to outmaneuver the very populations that seek to absorb it, perpetuating a bizarre symbiosis. Even the term “developing world” implies a natural process impeded by Western existence, a false and propagandized term that continues unchallenged in the globalized discourse.

On the other hand, the margins are more commonly seen as where innovation and vitalism stem from. If classes must descend into the emerging equilibrium of darkness, that may be what is required to rediscover radical strategies for survival. “Empire & Communications” by Harold Innis illuminates several empires across human history that show how new communication media are innovated on the fringes of society, ultimately adopted by the centralized powers and ossified to a point where new media must once again be gestated.^​8​

The concepts of time and space have significance in how empires and civilizations prioritize their media, whether it be long lasting like sculpture or easy to spread like paper. Core centers of civilizational influence exhibit a predilection for modes of communication characterized by longevity, indicative of a desire to perpetuate ideological narratives across epochs. Conversely, outlying regions, distanced from the locus of power, gravitate towards mediums optimized for rapid dissemination across vast expanses, facilitating the propagation of ideas over extensive geographical domains. The tendency of each medium of communication is to create monopolies of knowledge to the point that the human spirit breaks through at new levels of society and on the outer fringes; consider how paper was most widespread in the populous long before it was folded into the administrative state, eventually leading to a monopoly held by the publishing industry which drove the most electric and eccentric minds into cyberspace. Presently, we bear witness to the assimilation of cyberspace into the apparatuses of authority, a phenomenon prompting ongoing discourse regarding strategies to navigate this paradigm. A healthy civilization can repeat this process multiple times; the vitality of the empire itself is based on its mastery of communication balanced between the time-oriented and the space-oriented.

“The significance of a basic medium to its civilization is difficult to appraise since the means of appraisal are influenced by the media, and indeed the fact of appraisal appears to be peculiar to certain types of media. A change in the type of medium implies a change in the type of appraisal and hence makes it difficult for one civilization to understand another.” – Harold Innis, “Empire and Communications”

The reason for this is communication media is representative of the ideas themselves, not just tools for expressing the same ideas. Monopolies of knowledge – like academia – inspire alternative learning to those barred from it, which demand unique methods of transfer. For example, the wide gap between the governing and the lower classes in China facilitated the spread of Buddhism from India. Additionally, the rise of vernacular literature hastened and was hastened by the growth of modern nationalism. The spread of writing contributed to the collapse of Greek civilization by widening the gap between the city-states. But the destruction of concepts of absolutism assumed a new approach of rationalism which was to change the concept of history in the West. The achievements of a rich oral tradition in Greek civilization became the basis of Western culture.

Now we see how the decline of civilizations – even vibrant empires – typically does not contain a natural rebirth to its former glory. It is much more common to see decline and then dissolution into a more fluid community injected into the bloodstream of the new reigning power. Operating in the margins presents certain benefits as long as the groups occupying that space are strongly united, but the absorption can easily lead to diasporas commodified. Is it possible to see decline as merely a recalibration – a refining of scale due to harsh Darwinian social pressures – that can be used for the benefit of the group’s sovereign power within the organs of new empires?

The Aristocracy of the Surplus

The natural extension of this inquiry is whether or not constant growth is possible without exponentially replicating human capital. Chiefly, we want to know if it is possible to achieve growth of wealth and power without an expanding population which requires Lebensraumic manifest destiny, which implies that growth of wealth and power can be achieved by a minority population.

Many believe there is a final day of reckoning, or a ceiling of complex collapse that will inevitably spell death for civilizations that reach a certain scale. While growth was the primary driver for civilizational stability in eras past, we now find ourselves navigating a landscape dominated by introspective obscurities and the swift encroachment of automation upon human labor. Technological acceleration has thrown our relationship with the natural world in flux, and the realities of overpopulation have presented new filters which seem to forecast the miserable deaths of billions. The labour of workers, if current trends persist, will not be weighted the same as in the past in the expansive tapestry of advanced industrialization, where specialization has left a contingent of individuals adrift in the shallows of societal functionality, marginalized by the evolving demands of a complex civilization. Still there are those who tell us that acceleration is inevitable, and that infinite economic growth is feasible, especially if we factor in declining birth rates. As we have already addressed, this renaissance will most likely preclude many nations, but there are select regions that can approach this project.

On the topic of infinite economic growth, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) theorists like Richard Duncan believe that the American state has at its disposal the ability to provide infinite credit to industrial sectors that can scale the fastest, as long as the current runaway economic train we are currently stuck on continues to be steered correctly.

To understand how this is possible requires understanding how the modern financial system and federal reserve work in concert, described in exhaustive detail in Duncan’s “The Money Revolution.” While the Federal Reserve can create or retract money based on demand or to address a financial crisis, it typically only creates credit and deposits it in the accounts of the banks who then release it to the public.^​9​ While historically the Fed could only create credit based on its Gold reserves – up to 35% of credit created – this changed over time and credit was eventually completely released from all material wealth. This transition commenced during World War I, a pivotal period marked by the exigencies of the war, which precipitated a staggering surge of the Fed’s assets by 2300% within the initial six years of its inception. Not long after, the Bretton Woods international financial system replaced the gold standard; after two world wars the United States and France held the majority of gold in the world, so America could establish the dollar as the global standard currency.

Over time, government deficits lead to the state asking the Federal Reserve for assistance, which lead to severe gold outflows from the nation, which ultimately led to Congress in 1965 removing the requirement for the Fed to have a certain amount of gold on hand to create credit. This move led to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the complete untethering of the Dollar to Gold entirely. By 1971, the Fed could create as much credit as it wanted by depositing it directly into commercial bank accounts. From then on, credit growth became the main marker of economic health. By 2007 the Federal Reserve in no way resembled the Fed of 1913; it could create infinite credit, monetize government debt, and drive up the price of stocks and property with credit extensions.

“As a result of the removal of the constraints on how much Money the Fed and the banking system can create and as the result of the power of foreign central banks to inject trillions of Dollars into the US economy, Money, as it was understood in the mid-20^th Century, no longer exists.  It has evolved  into something entirely different.” – Richard Duncan

It’s important to remember this wasn’t just American banks engaging in this practice; the credit blitz occurred all over the world, and the influx of foreign made the situation in America worse. The system we have currently can be more accurately described as credititism rather than capitalism, where credit and consumption drive the economy more than ownership, investment, and accumulating capital. As of this writing, US Capital growth is stalled over recent decades. The data shows that R&D in the form of Basic, Applied, and Experimental Research in America has slowed in the past decades to the point it was overtaken by China and its investment in the private sector to the tune of 3x.

In his short treatise “The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy,” Warren Mosler outlines specifically how America can identify and exploit specific industries to lead the world in infinite growth, which is an essential project since competitors like China appear to be racing towards ownership of these sectors. The challenge lies in discerning the elements within our societal framework that act as fiscal drains, devoid of both productivity and scalability. Although the correlation between taxes, governmental expenditure, and the welfare state appears self-evident to the majority, it is imperative to recognize that these facets are not inherently intertwined.

Of the seven arguments he believes are standing in the path of pursuing unlimited growth, the first is the belief that the federal government must raise funds through taxation or borrowing in order to spend. The federal government, in reality, can always make any and all payments in its own currency, no matter how large the deficit is, or how few taxes it collects.^​10​Since money doesn’t really exist, it’s just changing numbers on a computer screen. This does not mean that the government can spend all it wants without consequence, as over-spending can drive up prices and fuel inflation, but never insolvency or bounced pension cheques. More importantly, taxes were not required during Covid-19 to generate trillions of dollars over the course of a matter of months. The government never leaves its spending up to a vote and does not delay when it needs something done fast.

What are taxes used for then, if not to fund government spending? Taxes create an ongoing need experienced by citizens to get dollars, and therefore an ongoing need for people to sell their goods, services, and labor to accumulate those dollars. The government taxes us so we have that much less to spend which makes the currency much scarcer and more valuable when it needs to be, essentially driving the economy when necessary.

Taxes control how money moves within the economy, but credit can be issued with stipulations that it be given only to sectors which are drivers of technological growth rather than social welfare or make-work programs for dying industries. A few of these industries are targeted: artificial intelligence (AI), neurotechnology, renewable energy, space exploration, and quantum computing. The logic goes that if credit is released into these sectors, they could drive unlimited growth in the 21s century. If unlimited credit is granted to the most innovative and scalable industries, it is claimed, then we will not experience the inflation primarily caused by consumer spending, however inflation caused by trade embargos, system shocks, or the influence of international markets are another story.

As previously acknowledged, several civilizations feel compelled to be first across the finish line in mastering these areas. This is the linear progression within which the familiar economic cycles will threated with. Some sort of legacy – a focus on time over space – can be achieved here. The same utopian designs inform our quest to break free from the cycles of death and rebirth speeding upon the rail of dim and distant apocalypse. While we secretly understand that these forces will persist despite our best efforts, we seem closer than ever before to changing the game completely.  

Growth as Fingers From Man as Nuke

There is a class of individuals, distinguished by their unprecedented stature and sway, who are deeply invested in crafting a world without cycles, like the replenishing of generations. We have no experience living in a world without death, but what is known globally as the Longevity Movement seeks to literally cure death. This is the convergence of several different fields and sectors, but in aggregate the goal is to prolong human life indefinitely. Situated at the nexus of cellular rejuvenation, neural enhancement, and physiological fortification, this aspiration epitomizes yet another aspiration for perpetual expansion, envisaging a sustained abundance devoid of existential tumors.

What they are trying to destroy is this concept of lack, as explored by Jacques Lacan. Like many Marxists he believes it is surplus itself that creates the trauma that defines all social organization. This is what he describes as the objet petit a, or the permanent lack that everyone feels and pollutes human relationships.^​11​ It is the unattainable object of desire, the “a” being the small other a projection or reflection of the ego made to symbolize otherness, as opposed to the big Other which represents otherness itself. Similar to Girard’s mimetic crisis embodied by Satan, it is an inescapable element of all human interaction, one that requires a complete reengineering of humanity to resolve. Those who possess the height of human power are currently attempting to abolish this metaphysical sinew entirely and bestow a new world of immortals a materialist feast.  

The ramifications of an extended lifespan on phenomena such as wealth redistribution, the perpetuation of authority structures, and the evolution of cultural paradigms remain enigmatic to us. The scenario wherein a privileged echelon attains lifespans spanning centuries or even millennia has an inevitability radiating dread, the likelihood of which simply due to the sheer amount of both human and financial capital being funneled into it.  

Each advance in technological development we counter inexorably changes us, and it’s unclear if we can ever revert back to a previous state. This is perfectly explained in the magisterial “Understanding Media and the Extensions of Man” by Marshall McLuhan, and how the revolutions of language, form, and ideas become literal extensions of our beings into the world.^​12​ This is the root of the famous maxim “the medium is the message,” which is to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is the state of being well filled with data. The telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the car gives a meager amount of information. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. We currently live in a society defined by instantaneous connection to each and every other person, with the knowledge that we are always being tracked and recorded. This is was a media form popular on the margins of society, but has come to dominate every facet of the administrative apparatus.

“The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experi­ence, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis, or numb­ness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system.” – Marshall McLuhan, “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way. The medium of speech extends our mind into the world, which further manifests in the realm of literature, where the mind’s reach is further elongated, propelling human consciousness into a realm of boundless intellectual exploration. In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we find ourselves intricately entwined in the intricate web of repercussions stemming from each of our actions. As a result, we find ourselves compelled to desensitize or “numb” its receptivity, lest we succumb to overwhelming sensory inundation and resultant demise. Thus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconscious and of apathy.

The Western mind is what’s known as a literate mind, standing in opposition to the oral mind which communicates more dynamically but less conceptually, unable to visualize or grasp abstract concepts. A hallmark of literate societies is the accentuated cultivation of individualism, wherein individuals engage with informational stimuli in a markedly solitary manner, necessitating heightened concentration and analytical acumen. This is blasted to smithereens by the electrical revolution, forcing the more atomized existence back into naked tribalism once more; we are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation.

What it means to be a Western individual has changed forever, yet the seismic significance of the information revolution remains inadequately recognized, despite its status as a veritable tectonic shift in the socio-cultural landscape. We are subsumed once more into the reality of the ancient man, the barriers between the real and the supernatural essentially removed as even the poorly educated grapple with parallel dimensions, inheritance of trauma through genetics, speaking to the dead through totems of our own construction, and brokering deals for eternal life from mischievous electric entities which demand seemingly benign sacrifices.

This isn’t far off from how the administrative state sees things, by the way. One salient example if a collection of essays titled “Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense,” gathered from a murderer’s row of academics and specialists who are attempting a secular humanist influence on the development of both technology and toxins designed to advance or inhibit the intrusion of the human mind fully into the new environment.^​13​ They identify six domains of neurocognitive function that can currently be pharmacologically manipulated; these are (1) memory, Learning, and cognitive speed; (2) alertness and impulse control; (3) mood, anxiety, and self-perception; (4) creativity; (5) trust, empathy, and decision-making; and (6) waking and sleeping. These can be enhanced by technology such as implants or medications, or weaponized in the form of toxins or cognitohazards. In short, the future of global conflict has moved from understanding that every civilian could be an enemy combatant, to every civilian might as well be an enemy combatant, as long as the new war is more concerned with destabilization than destruction. The book even explains how culture is both a medium for bio psychosocial development and a forum and vector for its expression and manifestations, and the technological efforts known as “Neuro S/T” provides techniques and tools that are designed to assess, access, and target these neurological substrates, which could be employed to affect the putative cognitive, emotional, and behavioral bases of human aggression, conflict, and warfare.

Culture can be weaponized in mind-bending new ways, presenting profound threats to the electrically tribalized man. It is not a question of if but more of a question of when; your mind, and the autoamputated extensions of all your senses into the cybernetic realm, are engaged in a matrix of geopolitical conflict that even the perpetrators are struggling to comprehend. Unlike our ancient ancestors, we lack the sacred practices with which to influence this unnatural world, fully aware that our gods are speaking from the statues but unsure if they are pawns in a greater celestial war somehow created by our own fathers.

A pocket of this modern condition was analyzed in great detail in “Decadence” by Jim Hougan, specifically the existential malaise which paralyzes individuals within this system. It all boils down to the delineation between the world of substance inhabited by our ancestors, and the world of technique inhabited by us, specifically in Western nations and even more specifically of European descent. Ours is a world of specialized processes, systematized thinking, and spatialized time as a container of utility. Most importantly, how the atomized individual finds their place inside that space. This emerged from its historical chrysalis during the industrial revolution, but it was not spontaneous; like linear time and the concept of logos, its roots extend far deeper into the ancestral mindscape.

Techniques have a long memory and have the remarkable tendency to never withdraw on their own, increasing in complexity and symbiotic relationship. With the proliferation of techniques, human agency becomes ensnared within a labyrinth of decisions, relinquishing the luxury of choice for the burden of multifarious determinations. They lose total control over the means and the ends, becoming cogs in a vast and impressive machine, aware of their precise utility but also the inertness of their struggle. Our possibilities increase but not our freedom; we are at the mercy of machine and technique, akin to the indigenous tribesman subject to the caprices of nature’s whims.

Techniques epitomize the essence of capital itself, you can forego them purposefully, but society is based around their mastery. The reign of technique – the reign of scientism – it is the desire for increased efficiency and progress without endpoint, which results in increasing specialization and complexity. This gives birth to a new sort of managerial class, the blue and white collars merging into a gray neckerchief, where employment is all created by the proliferation of complex techniques instead of tasks.^​14​ Division of labour and specialization grants an individual as much power as a tribesman has against his environment.  The popularity of technique over substance in the mechanical age means that deeper questions are relegated to the periphery as mere glitches in the march of inevitable and upward linear development.

The countercultural uprising of the 1960s stands as a profound expression defined by one of the most fragmented generations in history, rife with pervasive social anxieties and existential disquietudes. The basis of the belief is that the world is about to end or that a massive paradigm shift is about to occur. Intriguingly, the ethos of the era posited a confluence between global salvation and personal survival, encapsulating within its framework a uniting apocalyptic narrative. This belief survived the counterculture as that generation became cynical, and it’s clear that apocalyptic visions – either damning or redemptive – have been of crucial import to our collective consciousness, especially during times of social transformation driven by technological, environmental, or economic influences.

Most people associate the counterculture with he political Left and Marxist activism, but this is a myth perpetuated largely by the Leftists who drove it into the ground. The blueprint for American social revolutions was never really aligned with the New Left, and was not really politically “counter.” It did not emerge from the Beat generation which preceded it, and was not instigated by the war in Vietnam.  The Counterculture of the 60s was, in reality, basically what political dissidents are engaged in as of this writing, even following the well-trod path of migrating from soulless cities to the promise of rural homesteading, and from mysticism to practical parallel societies of thought, and finally from collectivism back towards the individual. Our current state of discombobulated anxiety is allowed paralleled in this movement, in the form of what Hougan calls “decadence.” This is our response to cultural decline, a self-consciousness taken to a pathological extreme, a narcissistic awareness that shakes the relationship with self. We become meta narrators of our own experiences. Once the culture declines and collapses, as does our shared consciousness. The tribalism triggered by the electrical revolution becomes a prison, converting the matrix into a spider’s web.  

The revolutionary is powerless within this system of technique, and revolutionary parties can only go so far as raising consciousness, triggering some ill-defined awareness, or theorizing about the inevitably collapse, creating deeply interconnected tribes in the margins of power tribe rather than making them subject to the vast inhuman organism that creates the façade of humanity stepping outside both its cycles of birth and death. Incessantly transfiguring dreams of apocalypse granted by the logos linear time, completely disconnected from any divine action that could replenish the vitality of the immediate universe we have never been so directly immersed in through technology.

Our civilizational proclivity appears to be stepping outside of not only life and death, but being and time in toto, still convinced we must accomplish this not as individuals but as a retribalized collective wherein each member has the multitudinous mindscape which may very well present them as extraterrestrials to their very own ancestors. This will inspire intense Othering, spurned on by the cognitive weaponization of state actors both foreign and domestic, which will spiral out of control unless we can redefine what our tribes are and what survival looks like in the light of ahistorical marginalizations.

Truth is what we repeat, and it is within our power to find a new rebellion with undiscovered mantras.

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