undefined | Better HN

0 pointsgom_jabbar1mo ago0 comments

Sort of. The thing building and being protected is capital, not humans. As Nick Land wrote:

"Robotic security. [...] The armed mass as a model for the revolutionary citizenry declines into senselessness, replaced by drones. Asabiyyah ceases entirely to matter, however much it remains a focus for romantic attachment. Industrialization closes the loop, and protects itself." [0]

The important part here is that "[i]ndustrialization [...] protects itself". This is not about protecting humans ultimately. Humans are not autonomous, but ultimately functions of (autonomous) capital. Mark Fisher put it like this (summarizing Land's philosophy):

"Capital will not be ultimately unmasked as exploited labour power; rather, humans are the meat puppet of Capital, their identities and self-understandings are simulations that can and will be ultimately be sloughed off." [1]

Land's philosophy is quite useful for providing a non-anthropocentric perspective on various processes.

[0] Nick Land (2016). The NRx Moment in Xenosystems Blog. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition

[1] Mark Fisher (2012). Terminator vs Avatar in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, Urbanomic, p. 342.

0 comments

quantummagic1mo ago

This reads like absolute gibberish to me. The capitalistic system does not function without the motivations of the people running it. Ultimately every decision and action is in service of some human, and his or his group's interest.

direwolf201mo ago

They're saying capital is power. Not analogous — the same thing. Until now power always had to be wielded by a human, but it's really the power who is wielding the human as an instrument to channel itself, like Majora's Mask. Once we have power that doesn't need a human, it won't need that and we'll all be subservient.

I agree with it. Consider financial markets, for example. There are individual humans whose account balances are changing, but the system as a whole is not an instrument of any human, not the buyers, not the sellers, and not the exchange operators, and yet it dictates the large scale structure of society in ways unimaginable a century ago.

kjkjadksj1mo ago

Companies are already like this. Boss fires his friend and puts him out of work with a family to feed. Why? It was ‘good for the company.’ So many inhuman decisions hide behind that fig leaf. It is a way to mentally remove responsibilities from these decisions. After all, it was for the good of the company. Stock buybacks while mailroom is on food stamps? For the good of the company. Dumping the waste into the river instead of safely disposing it? For the good of the company. Making money off vice and the mentally vulnerable? For the good of the company. Overfishing the ocean such that there won’t even be a commercial fishing industry in our lifetimes? For the good of the company. Polluting the earth and ushering in a new age of extinction? For the good of the company.

We are already enslaved to capitalism. Working against our own interest. In service towards the company and the company alone. This meta organism we value above all else on earth.

1 more reply

gom_jabbarOP1mo ago

From the Landian perspective, initially, sure, the system needs humans. But once you have autonomous and sovereign capital, things could look very different.

In Land's own words:

"Since capitalism did not arise from abstract intelligence, but instead from a concrete human social organization, it necessarily disguises itself as better monkey business, until it can take off elsewhere. It has to be the case, therefore, that cynical evo-psych reduction of business activity remains highly plausible, so long as the escape threshold of capitalism has not been reached. No one gets a hormone rush from business-for-business while political history continues. To fixate upon this, however, is to miss everything important (and perhaps to enable the important thing to remain hidden). Our inherited purposes do not provide the decryption key." [0]

[0] Nick Land (2013). Monkey Business in Xenosystems Blog. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition

If you're open to explore Land's perspective more deeply, you can read the introduction here: https://retrochronic.com/

pixl971mo ago

The motivations of the people running the capitalistic system is making more money. Remember the entire mantra of greed is good? Group interest can be a super-human entity that you can get caught in a loop of serving even though serving said entity is not in your best interest. Humans have only been 'mostly' in control of this because there was no other entities capable of said control themselves.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse