Wolfendale v. Urban Future¶
Pete Wolfendale has a version here. There were some threading issues, so this is the Urban Future version:
An appropriately derisive analysis of neoreaction: http://t.co/77M0JohrMd
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
As I mentioned at the #accelerationism workshop yesterday: old school fascism uses capitalism as a means to nostalgic anti-modernism…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
…whereas neoreactionaries propose nostalgic anti-modernism as a means to defend capitalism. If nothing else this is sillier than fascism.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics I realize the neofeudal types make it easy for you, but this constant reversion to BDSM political dialectics …
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics … is an evasion of the real challenge: Exit over Voice. https://t.co/PswTiiCXHm
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
Modernity threatening your libertarian fantasies of free-wheeling capitalist accumulation? Why not try monarchism?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics Both poles of the ideological spectrum have attachments to (distinct) ideals of emancipation.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics … Neither will abandon them causally, however much they are derided as 'silly'.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
[Not “causally” but “casually”.]
@deontologistics They've been watching too much Game of Thrones basically.
— pjebleak (@pjebleak) May 24, 2014
@pjebleak It’s more like they’ve read Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash/Diamond Age and thought: “that’s a dystopian diaspora I can get behind!”
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak Diamond Age is a dystopia? (It's easy to see why no meeting of minds is likely here.)
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak It does a good job of showing the difference between advancement in industrial technology and social technology.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak The human organism is highly write-protected, so 'social technology' is something of a misleading metaphor.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak The organism, yes, but hardly the social structures that are composed on top of it. Most of the write-protection there…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak …is itself a form of social technology (e.g., Nietzschean ascetic ideals, etc.).
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak 'Social structures' are to some considerable extent hard-coded in organisms — that's what "social animal" means.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak No, ‘social animal’ means the capacity to interface so as to create social structures.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak There’s a crucial difference between saying ‘there is a structure of social structure’ and inferring from this that…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak …particular social structures are hard-wired.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak This is a Levi-Strauss argument that I don't find particularly convincing.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak The left is always going to maximally emphasize the plasticity of social forms, the right the opposite.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak … It would be deluded to assume that such emphases will pass as uncontroversial outside their own constituency.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak It’s a simple logical point. The question of how much social structure is encoded is empirical, and well, it doesn’t…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak …look to be all that much.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak It looks like a lot to me.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak To use @benedict’s preferred terms, you’re confusing generatively entrenched social platforms with biological codes.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Biological codes determine a highly restrictive landscape of functional social models.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict … Societies explore that landscape, at different speeds. Attractor basins usually capture them.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Biological necessity is the last resort of scoundrels.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Your team will no doubt agree with you.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict So the tautology goes.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Over-emphasizing social plasticity is a standard utopian error.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Yes, unless it is a call to experimentally explore a wider space of possible social technologies.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict I'm very supportive of that. As long as it's based on Dynamic Geography, with exit, and local failure.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Communist social experimentation (for e.g.), if properly localized, would be an excellent thing to see.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Reciprocal liberation to try different things out is an attractive deal (but not holding my breath).
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict You definitions of social experimentation are pretty archaic though. Fundamentally about competition…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Competition is 'archaic'? I thought you guys believed in primitive communism.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict See next tweet. Internet glitch.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict …between geographically distinct nation states or analogs thereof. Biology is hardly that limiting.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Are you ruling out the possibility of competitive and non-competitive options, side-by-side?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict … If so, then of course there's no possible deal to be made.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Split up. Use dynamic geography to radicalize our experiments. Quit universalizing. Is it that hard?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict … The whole point is not having to agree. (Because we won't.)
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Quit universalising sociologically, by universalising biologically?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Quit universalizing in general. Let each society believe what it wants. Do your own thing.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict ‘Each society’ is where the biologically justified archaisms lie.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Dynamic geography would make a society a legacy of revealed preferences. No biological theory needed.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict You seem to be justifying the geopolitical war of all against all as the only legitimate form of disagreement.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict If there's a master-narrative being imposed above geo-political fragmentation itself, this won't work.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Indeed, it’s pretty important to see that struggle between fragmented poleis is not disagreement at all.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict This 'struggle' business is coming entirely from you. Why does dynamic geography imply struggle?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Competition bottoms out in struggle unless limited by a competitive framework. Is DG such a framework?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict It seems to me that we can develop better (socio-technological) frameworks for disagreement than fragmentation.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict That isn't going to happen, because the "frameworks" you like will remain massively controversial.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Unlike GEOPOLITICAL FRAGMENTATION.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Sadly, it's going to be messy. It seems the Left won't ever tolerate anything it can't control.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Because calling for your own personal nation state to secure your personal freedom isn’t being a control freak?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Freedom is control freakery? Anyway, at least the left logic is clear.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Thinking that freedom is getting everything your own way is pretty much control freakery, yes.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
***
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict A laissez-faire capitalist Phyle would rather ignore its communist neighbor than 'struggle' with it.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict And now we’re back to the benefits of our preferred phylums.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict But you don't want to be there? Why?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict If the benefits of DG depend upon the characteristics of the Phyle’s you prefer then you’re not really…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict …providing an argument for DG now, are you?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict The argument for DG is that every Phyle can do what it wants, succeed or fail, experiment.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Including struggle with one another outside the bounds of any framework for disagreement?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict That's as good as it's going to get. It's hardly likely that every crazed experiment will work out.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Struggle, struggle, struggle … it's exhausting. Won't your Phyle have anything better to do?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict And we’re back to Phyles rather than DG.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Use whatever language you like for a unit of geopolitical fragmentation.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict If you’re arguing that human nature necessitates geopolitical fragmentation, but aren’t willing to discuss…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict …the worst possible outcomes of such fragmentation (i.e., struggle over disagreement) you seem to have a bit…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict …of a double standard going on.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict At least it's clear what this is about. You guys want to strengthen the dialectical net. We want out.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict We both know this won't be settled by argument. It will be settled by escape attempts, succeed or fail.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict Perhaps, but this hardly invalidates the argument, especially given the supposed importance of ‘disagreement’.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict What argument? The argument that arguments have to be settled before anyone is let out of the room?
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict That IS communism. I'm seriously OK with people doing that stuff, but only if they localize it.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict The argument that anyone should be allowed to appropriate the resources necessary to build their personal ark.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict I’m OK with laissez faire capitalism on personal arks. Not so much with its use to justify their construction.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict I'm truly grateful for this discussion, because it's explaining all the blood-spatter down the road.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict So it goes. Blood-spatter. First up against the wall. etc. etc.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict The necessity for 'struggle' is your schtick. We just want Out.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict … Free Exit from our side to your communist utopia, so no "up-against-the-wall" necessary.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict We would, of course, replace all domestic political argument with "if you want communism, go there".
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict And the dynamic geography comes with guaranteed open borders, freedom of movement, and transit costs?
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict "Transit costs"? Oh, come on! Immigration freedoms, I imagine, would be non-universal.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Whatever can be done to build Exit security, should be. It's you guys who have the problem record there
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict This makes Exit a political framework, not simply a one off event. Overarching, not parochial.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Yes, it's complicated. Probably inevitable people would need to choose their Phyle carefully.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict If they screw up, and get locked into a North Korea, there's not much that could be done.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict … If the historical record is anything to go by, this won't be a problem for commercial republics.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict Collectivist experiments, on the other hand? That will be for those who go that route to sort out.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
***
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict It's the fact that you're absolutely determined not to allow Exit that makes the nastiness inevitable.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict I’m really not absolutely determined. There are speculative scenarios that could work. But it distorts…
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@UF_blog @pjebleak @benedict …the discussion of more realistic political possibilities like a warped ideological lens.
— pete wolfendale (@deontologistics) May 24, 2014
@deontologistics @pjebleak @benedict This is the meta-politics of the 21st century. The warpage has scarcely begun.
— Urban Future (2.1) (@UF_blog) May 24, 2014