Why yes, there is a vast world devouring monster with its tendrils encircling all of us, and it's plainly visible once you notice it, and it's everywhere. But you come off as insane when you try to tell other people about it.
Is SCP-3125 an allegory for capitalism? Shit.
Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad.
Lovecraft was basically translating his alienation with capitalism into short stories. Unfortunately, being a reactionary for most his life, he punched down instead of up, and his fears were pointed at minorities and women and air conditioners instead of the pervasive system itself.
Lmao nice to see Cold Air get a reference instead of his usual stuff people talk about
Hasn't anyone written modern leftist horror in his style?
Depending on your views of NK Jemisin, The City We Became is arguably an example of this.
Thanks, I can just imagine the stuff lovecraft wrote but leftist, it really isn't that impossible. I kinda feel like Rats in the Wall is about aristocracy and old money, though it also has the cat.
I also found a reading of the book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0nQm1tzZY
What did you think of
TCWB spoilers:
spoiler
The reveal that turning a city into a City requires the annihilation of all other versions of that city, and their inhabitants, in every parallel dimension? I remember being kind of shocked that they decided to go ahead after that- I guess the idea was to insert some moral ambiguity so it was less black and white, but since the villain had been such a clear metaphor for white supremacy in general up to that point it felt kind of weird.
I just finished The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin and it's incredible, I can't recommend it enough.
Honestly that's what makes his stories good imo, shows that liberalism is ultimately the fear of the big Other that is represented by minorities and how its inherent.
Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.
—Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital
Carl Marks said capital is a dead vampire and not having beans of production of mv own makes me an alien so if that's what capitalism is that's fucked
:Ricky:
Debord is like They Live glasses. I try to put the glasses on someone else and it leads to a prolonged fight scene over the way it's written. I just want to tell them, "LOOK AT THE APHORISMS. LOOK."
Any recommendations for someone who's unfamiliar with his work and wants to learn more and ruin their own sanity a bit more?
I'd actually read those in the opposite order, Comments kinda preps you for the disjoint theses of SotS.
His most circulated work, Society of the Spectacle, is both a book and a film by the same name. The film has alot of vivid visuals to help reinforce what's being gotten at in the written work.
To be clear though, the film is not it's own work; it is the book as narration with scenes as visual aides. (I hope I described that adequately)
CW for nudity and war footage though
E: Also if I remember correctly the scenes don't quite match the narration in the English version of the film, and for a "correct" viewing you should watch French with English subtitles so that the timing is correct.
With Society of the Spectacle, it's so abstractly written that I like to parse it with supplemental podcasts.
https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/ This guide has the main ideas illustrated.
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/08/14/ep170-1-debord/ This philosophy podcast did a two-parter
https://www.stitcher.com/show/dissecting-philosophy-with-dr-mcdonald This one did a five-parter (episodes 110-115)
edit: Also, A Sick Planet is a good longform examination of spectacle: https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/a-sick-planet-guy-debord.pdf
I usually recommend 'Ways of Seeing' series on youtube as an easier to digest alternative with many of the same concepts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
Man grew up in Winnipeg, it's quite possible that the deep socialist history of the city affected him even if he didn't realize it himself.
After finally getting into theory it fucked me up badly when I finally came around to the conclusion that there is violence all around us, unending, unyielding, all in service of making some number, on a server in the middle of nowhere, go up. At the behest of capital, the state is taking away our homes, our health, and our life all for an imaginary number
I wish I could remember this movie I came across years ago.
I thought it was going to be something like "Supersize Me" but about brands in general. But it turned out to be a lovecraftian/capitalism light horror film. It was weird as fuck and I liked it.
(just looked it up, its called " Branded "
In future Moscow, where corporate brands have created a disillusioned population, one man's effort to unlock the truth behind the conspiracy will lead to an epic battle with hidden forces that control the world.
HAH.. its Russian...
Damn, this looks tight. Counting this as informal nomination for movie night.
Silicon valley types worry about evil AI destroying the planet. There are a few cults around it even. MIRI is the most well known around here.
That is specifically a system created by people that is two large for any one to control that has goal antithetical to human life and the ability to manipulate people to support it.
What they fail to realize is that they are projecting their alienation under capitlaism unto the specific tools by which capitalism alienates them. It is wild.
Capitalism is an artificial intelligence, or at least a god, in the sense that a will is enacted on its behalf that does not rely on any individual person making contingent choices. And it has destroyed the earth.
a blind idiot god... something like a slime mold, chasing food by reflex.
Exactly. It uses people as components is a giant machine that produces only waste and misery.
Like any other computer it has started to run too fast and the heat it is putting out is going to cook it's substrate
Futurists who worries about AI and immortality is the peak form of imperial core privilege. When you are so far removed from want and bathed with wealth that you have to concocts fictional scenarios to worry about. I fucking hate these people.
I don't hate them. Deep down they want falgsac. They are just so brian poisioned they can't picture any form other than neoliberalism.
Like in the the deep time when we have achived ful nano scale control of all matter and our brains are digiatally stored in cold iron starts orbiting black holes till the heat death of the univere they picture there still being a need for people that specialize in contract law.
A lot of it is projection as well, another form of Capitalist Realism. If you're a STEM/adjacent person in the West, odds are you work in Defense, Oil&Gas, Auto, Aerospace (which rely on the first 2), or Tech/Entertainment (which makes money the same way tobacco or alcohol or gambling companies do, addiction).
Regardless of what exactly you make, odds are someone down the line you come to realize that what you do for a living is based on either killing people, or killing the planet, or making people miserable by selling them more pointless shit to coerce them to keep working for the empire. So it's definitely possible for you to develop a mindset where you can't even imagine the things you work on being used for anything but Bad - prime example is how Silicon Valley leaders shelter their kids from tech more than fundamentalist Christians. You hear about AI, and of course your brain goes to "how are we gonna use this to sell ads, get people addicted, or bomb other countries"? Because that's what the capitalist world makes technology for.
I feel this. As much as liberals love stories of people escaping from cults, they really don't like the suggestion that they may be living in one too.
In Lovecraft's last letter, didn't he denounce fascism, call himself a fool for believing that, and say capitalism will kill us all?
apparently he joined the socialist party of america the last year of his life
Yeah...
Tell your average lib about dependency theory and Eurocentrism and they'll think you've gone mad, or be like "yes that's true and it's good actually".
I've been reading a lot of Frantz Fanon and Samir Amin lately.
Basically, that third world countries/global south (called the periphery by Amin) are not underdeveloped, but what the imperial core/Center nations economies are built on though exploitation. The economies of periphery countries are permanently structured by imperialism to serve the needs of the imperial core nations.
An important part here is that counties in the periphery cannot catch up in development with the imperial core countries in the system of global capitalism, because of monopolies held by the imperial core nations, and inherent polarisation between the core and periphery. Monopolies such as nuclear weapons, communication systems, technology, global financial systems and access to natural resources. These monopolies are maintained by organisation such as the IMF and NATO.
Thus the way to develop is to "de link" from imperial core countries and prioritise domestic development. Obviously due to globalisation, delinking 100% from imperial nations is not possible and economic suicide. If I remember correctly, Amin stated that de linking by 70% is the best most periphery countries can hope to achieve as an end goal in the current system. In 2017, he considered China 50% de linked. For interests sake, South Africa was 0% lol.
This is obviously a big oversimplification, I'm missing out on a lot of stuff, also I'm new to it so I could be summarising wrong.
Yes Parenti definitely outlines the core concepts of dependancy theory in certain speeches.
I mean it's a forced de-link, unless Putin predicted every sanction in advance and this is some 4d chess move, it's never going to be as smooth as doing it as an actual pre-planned encomic policy.
But maybe in the long run it will be good, as his successor is forced to be de-linked from the west.
He could never have guessed the day nor the hour, but the Russian government knew this was coming eventually. They were moving manufacturing and agriculture back to domestic production for years before this.
Isn't he like unironic fash? Probably one of the few people worse than Putin
Ah, it doesn't sound new, I've hearing those concepts all my life.
Another factor that helps keep the periphery underdeveloped: agrooligarchs (or other primary-products-oligarchs) not wanting to cede power to industrial oligarchs. That's what happened to South America.
Agricultural colonies are easier to handle, less unions and all that hassle that comes with then
Ya'll ever feel like learning theory does to your brain what Lovecraftian eldritch horror is meant to do?
Naw, reality does that part, theory just allows you to see it
I don't know if I'm just disassociating or becoming more socially reclusive as I get older, but I get more disappointed in people the more theory I read. I pick up more and more on imperialist stuff they say, or latent bigotries, or how they can't seem to say anything sympathetic about the homeless. It's nearly everyone I meet unless they're a self-identified leftist but even leftists sometimes still do it.
I probably do it too and I don't even notice, which is probably the most horrifying aspect of all. I can't even trust myself to be free of the ideological poison that permeates everything, but I certainly see it in others and I hate it. I hate seeing it when people turn glass eyed and spout off some propaganda embedded within them or something homophobic or transphobic and it's just depressing. People often have such an energy and a life, they have their own pursuits and what they want to live for, but their brains are actively being choked by capitalism and living in the first world that they can't help themselves. They offload their brains to the superstructure, because that's all they know.
The most insidious aspect is the lack of trust I often feel. Like you have to know an exceptionally generous person or have an established history for them to help you do stuff like run errands or maybe drive you somewhere or whatever else. Chronic or long term favors are to be established, not just the default. It's even worse with coworkers because I have a good relationship with a lot of mine. A lot of them are good people and I've done tons of favors for them and they've done so for me as well. I have no idea how our relationship would change once money gets involved. Would they try to compete with me for a promotion? Would this sour everything between us? I have no idea. Would they treat me differently if I were their subordinate? Again, no idea and it's horrifying to consider. I'm here imagining situations in which people I know have their humanity stripped from them in service of some irrational, abstract thing that has tendrils in all of us.
Yeah it's pretty eldritch
Don't have anything too insightful to add except that I relate to this post a lot. It gets extremely alienating feeling like the people around you are basically children raised by a deeply evil cult (my words not yours ofc), and that you have also been raised by this same cult and that you therefore can't even really trust yourself or your ostensible comrades who "should" know better. Obviously a big part of me also thinks this shit is changeable and that political education via mass working class movements is very much possible otherwise I wouldn't be here and I'd just check out politically. But in the current moment of capitalist realist victory? Yeah it sucks feeling so deeply alienated from not only nearly everyone around you, but also your own psyche given the hostile, anti-human life socioeconomic environment that's shaped everyone.
If you don't believe in people, then what's left for us to believe in?
I believe in people and their ability to change for the better if given better circumstances, I just get so miserable sometimes with where they are. It's a frustration that doesn't necessarily consume me.
