[almostdeadguy]

Nick Land is a philosopher who had a mental breakdown taking speed, blasting jungle music, and croaking into a microphone and I think it’s not coincidental that many of the people I’ve met who believe in this stuff have a relationship with amphetamines/MDMA. Andreessen name checked him in his accelerationist manifesto, which is funny because the manifesto is all about how tech is supposedly “pro-human” and Land was very explicitly anti humanist.

[notahacker]

The missing detail is that he was doing this whilst being the stereotypical midlife crisis lecturer who finally finds a peer group who respects the avant-garde nature and intellectual depth of his philosophy by inviting first year undergrads to enjoy their first acid trips in his flat. Eventually he managed to find a group of people impressionable and emotionally immature enough to find his schtick impressive without him having to get them high first by re-emerging as a figure on the fringe right. This involved quite a pivot on notional values and inspirations, but that was only a problem if you assumed there was any substance to it in the first place.

[balamatom]

Found the Stoic :)

[gom_jabbar]

You're absolutely right - Land's vision of technocapital is fundamentally anti-human, while Marc Andreessen's is pro-human. Mark Fisher criticized Land for underestimating the importance of the human face in keeping capitalism functional. However, I'd argue that for Land, camouflage has always been central to pre-singularity capitalism. A human face can serve as useful cover, helping technocapital advance toward its ultimately non-human ends.

[almostdeadguy]

Millenarian philosophers whose arguments rest on this kind of technological singularity/rapture event, especially one fueled by technocapital development have to contend with the fact that historically capital has stepped away from the fray multiple times. And it's in their interest to, as they want to preserve class relations. A bolstered welfare state and worker protections passed during times of upheaval have happened periodically when there's been backlash. This is how we end up in "The End of History", and though that seems to be unraveling, there's no reason to believe the politics of today aren't a temporary push of capital to reorganize the world that will also come with a backlash. This is where I take issue with orthodox Marxism, because ultimately capital does not want to destroy class relations. Will this be the case in the future? I'm skeptical of anyone saying it won't or can't, but I ultimately have no interest in this kind of prediction market philosophy of historical materialism.

[balamatom]

Mental breakdowns, blasting jungle music, and croaking into microphones are wholesome and meaningful human activities belonging to a long-lived tradition that perhaps predates you. I honestly can't imagine what must be going on in the head of the kind of person who finds them reproachable.

"Just saying no" to drugs in 2025 is like refusing to use computers and the Internet. Sure, you can do just fine without them, but you're locking yourself out of a whole realm of the world, since an illicit psychoactive drug is not just a substance - it's a well-established global network of independent human-scale (but not always human-shaped) agents that does not cease to exist when you successfully ignore it. It's no coincidence that chemical neuroaugmentation has developed hand in hand with the silicon pseudocognition that lets us write to each other over a wire :)

And that's exactly why the goody-two-shoes humanist-by-default muh work-and-family type economic agents never know what hit 'em when weird shit inevitably hits the global fan. Though personally, I would prefer a world designed by acidheads, or even opiate addicts, rather than the present inane timeline, which is largely the work of coke fiends (and their industrious flunkies the speediots) over the course of the last half century or so.

Spoiler, kids: contrary to naming convention, amphetamine and its derivatives do not "speed" you up in any meaningful way.

(EDIT: for the sake of it)

[52-6F-62]

These are not the loving and empathetic acid heads you would believe they are.

Those ones do not write angry half baked manifestos and try and take over the world and flex their power on everyone in their path.

Usually they just realize the trees are talking to us and very important and we shouldn’t cut them all down. That kind of thing. Long term thinking.

These guys just want to be king of the castle. And god knows what happens if they achieve it all and then get bored

[balamatom]

Oh I'm already perfectly robbed of the delusion that LSD somehow makes people loving, empathetic, or long term thinking (the last one being a mixed blessing in its own right: someone might as well say, in the long term I'm dead with 100% probability, so let it all burn!)

That whole "psychedelic enlightenment" meme is half due to the privilege of narrow-mindedness uniquely permitted to the college-educated (whose psychedelic journeys usually end up with the proverbial lousy T-shirt), half elaborate hypermedia smoke screen (deployed by you-know-they-know-you-know-who by means of the Learies, Lillies, and other difficult to pronounce for our East Asian strategic partners Huxleys)

As a matter of fact, it gets worse. I've observed psychedelics assist people's slide into faschizoid thinking on multiple occasions. My point was more like, cocaine turns people into peasants, maaan. You've never seen? And they've already been in charge for a long time, surprise surprise. And they're hella bored, too, which is why the things you must've been observing if we're at all on the same planet have been occurring at an ever more farcical cadence. (Therefore, according to your own reasoning, you're god. Enjoy! ;)

[52-6F-62]

I think you grossly misunderstand and misrepresented what I said.

Bad form.

[tim333]

>"Just saying no" to drugs in 2025 is like refusing to use computers and the Internet.

Nah not really. You need computers and the internet to engage with the modern world but not doing drugs is fine. I mean they can be interesting but also have well documented downsides.

A possible real world example - I'm guessing here is Elon. The pre drugged up one of a decade ago building rockets and cars I thought was cool. The current Elon doing nazi salutes and cruelly firing people looks to me like someone who's done too many drugs. You can ask yourself which you'd rather be.

[balamatom]

And, to your edit: wouldn't take that dude for much of an example of anything really. Except "how do you do fellow kids" IRL - he's such an obvious plant!

All the people near and far who have been putting up with his existence for the past decade, now they could sure use a fat ass jolt to the ol' central nervous. Except they fear it would make their wives invoke Mumbo Jumbo!

[balamatom]

Alas, so does engaging with the modern world...

[soulofmischief]

You should not be assuming one's politics just because they take stimulants and listen to jungle music. That is textbook prejudice.

[tim333]

I kind of missed the assuming politics. What political view does stimulants jungle music imply? I mean I've been to clubs with that and not noticed particular politics.

[soulofmischief]

OP said,

> I think it’s not coincidental that many of the people I’ve met who believe in this stuff have a relationship with amphetamines/MDMA

[jordanb]

DEI for tweakers!

[balamatom]

Some of us are still Marxists, you know ;)