#curtis yarvin

Comments sections at very intellectual-content blogs like Astral Codex Ten don’t tend to get all that intimate and personal, but every now and then you get an exchange like one I ran across under “Advice For Unwoke Academic?”, which I feel should be kept somewhere in full for posterity, so I’m posting it below the cut. (Warning: very long, but it gets more interesting towards the end!) I find it very interesting how it reveals the type of journey that leads someone (whose gender isn’t specified I don’t think but I’d be willing to bet thousands that he’s a guy) to alt-right intellectual figures like Curtis Yarvin. (I imagine something like this is happening on a grander scale with somewhat more mainstream public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson.)

Essex [this comment is in response to a different commenter than the one I’m going to show below]:

“It’s an actual war”

No, it isn’t. You are using hyperbolic language. I’ve personally seen the remains of “actual war”. It makes student protests, or even riots, look like a frolic in a field.

If you want this to be an ACTUAL war, though, please go ahead and keep deciding that every person you’re ideologically opposed to is a mindless psychopath who must be crushed and cast out of society just like they do. Keep your foot flat on the pedal, they’ll surely swerve first.

I think both sides here consist of small cores of people who are terminally ideological to the point of hating life and loving death and a bunch of people who have been tricked into listening to those people. Those are the ACTUAL sides here: normal people and those who hate life and love death, whether that takes the form of Terminal Woke or Terminal Anti-Woke. The latter win when they get the former to kill each other, and the former win when they ignore the latter, because the latter are actually very small and weak and can only cause damage beyond a tantrum with a gun when they convince other people that loving death and hating life is Just and Noble or Stunning and Brave or Based and Redpilled or whatever other banner those ghouls will eventually hoist next.

In summary- I hope every person on both sides who sees this as a total war and a whole half of the country as their irreconcilable enemies chokes on their own frothing spittle and spares the rest of us the mass deaths they crave. A pox on both your houses. Consider me the general of the Army of People With Actual Problems In Their Lives declaring war on both of your camps.

mrpatapon:

Centrists are those people that fell off the progressive band wagon because they didn’t survive the purity spiral, but aren’t ready to become full-on reactionaries/dissidents.

Are you an Army Vetran or someone who has been in an active warzone? Since you said that you’ve seen the aftermath of an actual war.

Also what is the end goal of Centrism in the so called Culture Wars? Is it to wait for it to end and join whichever sides ein? Or is it a return to a time when politics isn’t exisential and people could trust each other once again?

Essex:

1. Yes, in fact I’m not yet interested in stripping people of their rights. No, I’m not interested in hearing your very clever and novel argument about how rights are a spook or decadent or dysgenic or were invented by wealthy bankers or whatever other thing you want to blame for them.

2. Not an army veteran- I’ve done humanitarian work in Somalia.

3. The second. I’m certain now that you’ll say that I’m helplessly naive and a traitor and that I need to pick one group of psychotic death-worshippers or another and that being in the middle makes me a traitor- so be it. I will accept any consequence from this, up to and including death, in the name of human decency.

mrpatapon:

I wouldn’t exactly call you a traitor or a bad person for being a fence sitter. Instead I would say that you like most of the population are politically apathetic and have no real vision beyond upholding whatever the status quo is. If that status quo were to ever change then there’s a high probability that most people will follow suit.

Most people see their Rights as some magical unalienable thing that can never be taken away. I feel that the past few months have shown how untrue that notion is.

Also why do you keep describing us extremist as a psychotic death cult? I’d say that most of us in real life are actually pretty chill people with strange ideas.

Essex:

I am not “politically apathetic”. I recognize that politics consists of more than shrieking harpies screaming at each other over rainbow colors on sneakers when people are starving to death. Famine, disease, and want in all of its forms are the enemy of any right-thinking person, and the fact that so much of both parties blatantly don’t care about this in favor of playing silly fucking death-cult games which will lead to vastly more suffering is why I have such contempt for said games.

Yes, of course rights CAN be taken away- that’s a tedious and banal argument against rights. If you want to be a moral nihilist, though, then you’ve eliminated any arguments besides “Which one of us can crush the other into the dirt first”, which isn’t the thought of “a pretty chill person with strange ideas”- it’s the thought of someone who should have reincarnated as a lower animal instead.

I’m certain you’re as sweet and charming as can be in person- antifreeze is very sweet when you drink it, and the members of Heaven’s Gate were all kind people who couldn’t hurt a fly. I know an incredibly gentle man who admitted to trying to discourage people from taking basic medical precautions because he thought it might accelerate COVID-19 into mutating into a form that would kill 99%+ of the human population. I suspect that he also tried to deliberately spread it when he became infected himself. Being nice and decent doesn’t prevent you from being evil in other ways.

If you want me to be more specific, I think ideologies that, in the longform, present themselves as the One True Answer to All Political Problems, and which generally revolve around the idea that a “THEM” is responsible for all woes, and if “THEY” were destroyed (either completely, or simply in the form of having all power and effective rights taken from them) and all power was handed over to those who hold to the ideology, the eschaton would be immanentized. If you believe some banal argument about monarchy being more proof against corruption due to the monarch’s state being his property and therefore the monarch would care for it, or the monarch fearing rebellion and thus making sure that the state functions well for its people, or that black people do, really and truly, have genetic propensities towards lower IQ and socially-aggressive behavior, I’d debate you on that, but I wouldn’t call you a death cultist- naive or a prick, but not a death cultist. Once you start talking about Kings in a way that suggests you secretly believe their touch cures the pox or advocating that because of this black people should simply be screened out of any position beyond janitor and put in bantustans, then you’re a death cultist.

Pitch me your “strange ideas”, and I’ll tell you whether or not I think you’re in a death cult.

mrpatapon:

Eh it seems you’re a bit too upset at the moment to be receptive to any new ideas, so maybe we should talk some other time.

That said, I would like you to guess what my political beliefs are, that way I can know what I sound like whenever I’m in the mood to sperg out like this again.

Did I come off as sounding like a Neo-Nazi Nihilist? If so then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Also I think that it’s wonderful that you did actual humanitarian work in Somalia. There are those who are practice what Charles Dicken calls “Telescopic Philanthrophy”, people who style themselves as philanthropist to serve their own vanity while ignoring less prestigious problems at home. You however seem like someone who genuinely cares about the people they are helping, judging from your response.

If you want to help people even more, then you should take a closer inspection on the regime and its institutions that turned Somalia what it is today.

Have a good day/evening.

Essex:

1. If you don’t want to share your ideas, you don’t want to share your ideas. I am currently my normal level of furious about the many injustices in the world and the people who either cause them or excuse themselves from caring about them, which is much more than most people but less than a Wisdom King. I simply don’t bring it up most of the time. I won’t apologize for it, but I will make it clear that I feel no animosity towards you as a person- I don’t even know you. If you hold to some ideology that I see as the hatred of life and worship of death, then obviously I hate that ideology, and rightly so. But you seem civil and reasonable enough. I make no promises of ever being “receptive” (which in my experience is a euphamism for “you must agree with me immediately after I lay out my ideology or else you’re ‘close-minded’” when these conversations occur), but I’m willing to listen without writing a massive screed of castigation in response to whatever you say.

2. You don’t “sound” any way, but I can generally guess just from the demographics in play here. You’re self-evidently anti-Woke and talk about “reactionaries” in a way that suggests you consider yourself one. Thanks to Yarvin, monarchists abound among rationalist reactionaries, so I suspect you’re a monarchist, or at least have monarchist sympathies. You probably believe in the things I’ve outlined earlier about race and IQ being indelibly linked but restrain yourself from actually proposing anything be DONE about it beyond a vague gesture at diversity initiatives being wrong because no, it’s not that Blacks are underrepresented at all, they’re just congenitally stupid (but dressed up in a nice, sweet way). You’re probably on one of the two extremes of being a technocrat who insists that every single policy should be based on “science” (lower confidence) or one of the anti-intellectual intellectuals who uses terms like “Professional Managerial Class” to describe everyone with same-or-higher levels of education that you don’t like (higher confidence- this is the current fashion), instead of having a moderate position on intellectualism. You probably think that the US should become a hermit kingdom and ideally would completely disentangle itself from every other nation and seal its borders shut, as that is also the fashion.

If you put a gun to my head and made me guess, that’s what I would say.

3. The only reason you would come off like that to me is the casualness- most “hard-right” people I know of who talk like that about serious issues are people who see everything as a joke, including the suffering of others (but excluding their own suffering, which is of course a grave injustice on them). I have no patience for such people- if they want to be clowns, they should do so in a way that won’t harm others instead of actively damaging their communities because “clown world honk honk”.

4. I have no idea what you’re trying to insinuate here. Islam? Religion in general? Capitalism? Communism? Neoliberalism (somehow, because reactionaries in my experience blame “neoliberalism” for everything from both World Wars to checks being lost in the mail)? Africans-as-an-institution? I’ve heard every single one of the above and many other things blamed for the situation in Somalia.

If you’re writing this because you think I’m a crypto-Marxist, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Marx would call me a peddler of the opiate of the masses and want me up against a wall.

mrpatapon:

Wow you got mostly everything correct, nice going man. I don’t fully agree with the idea that race and IQ are linked since I’ve met plenty of both smart “black” and stupid “white” people for me to conclude that blacks are all cogentially stupid (I believe that everyone including myself is a little stupid in some ways). But you are 100% correct in saying that I would exercise restraint in suggesting anything that might be seen as problematic and use vague terms as much as possible or sugercoat things to avoid offending people. It’s part of my practice of “Ketman”, the act of hiding one’s identity and true believe. It’s best not to let most people know that you’re part of the “alt-right”, especially with the amount of “witch hunters” prowling about. I see myself not as a warrior fighting in battle, but a quokka trying to survive a dangerous world; it’s better to stay hidden in the shadow than fight in the open.

I use irony and casualness as a coping mechanism against the evils of the world. When I was still in grade school/highschool I used to feel guilty about everything that happens in the world, about the children that are around my age in Africa dying from starvation while I’m sitting here doing nothing. It sucks knowing all of this and feel powerless to do anything about it other than a few useless token gestures of good will(African Art projects, donations to impersonal organizations, eating all of your vegetable to not waste food, etc.)

I think the Covid lockdown is what finally caused my mind to snap and embrace Clown World fully. I finally decided that I just don’t care anymore about the injustice and suffering that is happening in the world, because I can’t do anything about it, I am powerless and trapped in my own room.

That was also the time I discovered Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug) works by accident and become fully committed to his intellectual cult. I found Scott Alexander from one of Yarvin’s writing about him.

In my mind, I decided that the only way to make the world a better place is to transform it into something completley different and antithetical to the way we live now. Which is why Monarchism as proposed by Yarvin interests me.

I oppose the use of violence not just for pragmatic reasons but also moral one; you have to “heal” the elites, not destroy them. That and the fact that most of us are not ready for a war, and war would only make things worst. I have nothing against science as a process (not as a bureacratic institute) and intellectuals. However I do feel like we place too much faith in them and forget that they’re still human too. Funnily enough, I’m not actually American but I believe that a world without American “diplomacy” while dangerous would be much better. The USG should shutdown all of their Military bases and Embassy, granting “true independence” to all nations of thr world.

In case you haven’t figured it out, the institution that is responsible for the current state of Africa is the USG. I assume that you know about Unqualified Reservation and have read what Curtis Yarvin have to say about how Africa came to be this way.

I’m glad we could have this talk together. It feels nice to meet someone who can understand this much about my believes. I consider you as a friend now, not because we agree, but because you can understand what I am. It feels so lonely being a REAL “alt-right” individual.

You sound like someone who has lived an interesting life, judging from the people you’ve met and the work you did in Somalia. What do you actually believe in anyway? Secular Humanism? Do you still think that I’m a bad person? A pathetic human being? Give your most honest opinion, I don’t really care either way anymore. I am what I am.

The only thing I can be certain of is that your whatever your believes are, they are antithetical to mine.

Essex:

1. I am very sorry that you aren’t strong enough to actually confront suffering. I do not judge you for it, because you don’t seem to be actively trying to increase the amount of suffering in the world and most people aren’t strong enough to accept the world how it is and then continue to still do good.

2. You say “intellectual cult” in a self-effacing manner, but his following is cultish and I think you would be happier if you recognized this and remembered that CY is also human and gets things wrong. In my opinion he mostly gets things wrong, in fact.

3. I agree that people place too much faith in science to provide all of the answers; rationality can tell us what the best way to do something is, but it doesn’t tell us what we should do.

4. You live a life so deeply swaddled in American soft power that I can only hear you say this and laugh. To me you sound like a frog talking about how much better the world would be if the water went away. I’ve seen places where the Pax Americana doesn’t apply- I doubt that you’d want to live in any of those places even if I offered you all of your material needs met. Or perhaps you do want that for your country because you’ve deluded yourself into thinking Putin is a just monarch.

5. Somalia’s current state is not caused by the United States, regardless of what Yarvin says. Yarvin is a man just smart enough to be extremely stupid, and I won’t pretend like I know what his argument is because I considered the basic elements of his arguments a while ago and decided that he wasn’t going to say anything worth listening to. I don’t listen to my Cold Warrior neighbor when he starts ranting about how Marxists cause everything from the poor conditions or roads to the legalization of same-sex marriage for similar reasons.

6. In order:

-I’m a lay Buddhist who’s increasingly tempted to take his vows.

-I think you’re a misguided person, but you don’t seem any worse than many people. I think if you believe everything CY says you’re believing very foolish, dangerous, and a couple of outright evil things.

-You’re deserving of compassion, so in that aspect- yes, you’re pathetic. Not in the sense usually meant, however.

-If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t ask.

I don’t know if my ideas are antithetical to your own, but I do know they’re antithetical to CY because, whether he admits it or not, CY is a totalitarian.

mrpatapon:

You know, most people would look down on a man who admitted to being weak. The fact that your willing to show compassion instead means a lot to me. I guess it would go against buddhist teachings to show otherwise.

4 years ago, I hated myself because I thought I was too weak, stupid, and naive to fight against evil. So I became obsessed with becoming stronger. I separated myself from my parents to learn how to be independent, I studied martial arts and lifted weights to strengthen my body, I took my College courses seriously and studied hard. Then one day, while I was having an emotional breakdown, I called my parents and they said that I’ve already made them very proud, and that they couldn’t have asked for a better son. I stopped beating myself up after that call.

When I said that I don’t care, what I really meant to say is that I no longer blame myself for being weak and pathetic. I’m tired of pretending to be a strong man. For 4 years, I thought I had what it takes to become a Great Man, like Alexander the Great, and I ended up as a Muppet of a Man instead. I wanted to become Superman, but I’m at best a Very Manly Muppet.

Have you actually seen what Curtis Yarvin is actually like in real life? Go search up one of his podcast on youtube and listen to how he speaks. He is actually a very awkward jewish nerd who says “um” a lot, not exactly what I would call a dangerous person. I guess I find CY appealing because he is a lot like me in that we are both awkward nerds who like to entertain controversial ideas, just for the sake of rebellion against the mainstream.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrOAzYUsaPp55lYOpWON_AxYQsG2uf9ul

My generation is very laden with “irony”, the ability to entertain ideas without and serious and sincere belief. I’m willing to bet that most of those so-called Marxist you met haven’t read Karl Marx works and treat Marxist Ideology as a fashion accessory, like Ear Piercings and Goth Clothings. I treat Monarchism the same way to be honest with you.

Sometimes I get awkwardly mistaken as a foreigner in my own country because I speak English more fluently than my own native tongue. It just shows how much American soft power has had on me, because I find Western culture more appealing and fashionable. My country once tried to resist US soft power by banning the english language and trying to leave the UN, but I guess it didn’t work out in the end.

I don’t think Putin is a just Monarch at all, I think he is a fuckup just like the rest of the so-called “World Leaders”. The US elites fucked things up by antagonizing Putin constantly, Puting fucked up by letting himself get antagonized by them, and the Ukraine fucked themselves by being goaded to surrendering their nuclear arnaments to the US and choosing to fight when a peaceful surrender might have been a less bloody option. The fact that everyone screwed up and let this war happen feels demoralizing but strangely comforting, knowing that even elites are falliable.

Funnily enough, I actually found Freddie deBoer to be as equally relatable as Yarvin. I agree with a lot of what Freddie have to say about society. We’re both not very gung ho about the neverending culture wars and wish for and end to it. I also believe that genetics do play a role in intelligence and what students can realistically achieve in class, which is discussed a lot in Freddie’s blog.

Anyway may I ask that you also show compassion to the extremist on both end? I might be projecting, but I believe the real reason they join hateful ideologies is because they are confused and frightened of a world that has accelerated to something more complex than what their mind can comprehend. The “cult” tells them a story on why the world is the way it is now, and it gives them an outlet for their fustrations against the world.

Don’t worry about the Cold Civil War happening in America, the reasons it stays cold is because there’s not enough fuel left for a fire to start. You’re not going to be rounded up or executed. And honestly you sound a lot tougher and stronger than most “extremist”, so you can probably kick their ass if they try anything funny. You’ve been to much more violent places.

You know, I’m glad I stumbled upon you by accident. It’s not often I meet someone who is both compassionate enough to listen and understand how I feel and what I believe in. I learned a lot about myself today. I had a friend like that once, we met on campus and we haven’t seen each other in years.

Do you have any advice for a 20 something year old who has a lot of youthful energy and intelligence but no real aim or higher purpose in life? I’m too soft to go to Somalia and help people, but I can still try to be a good person as long as it is within my ability and willpower. I am a rabbit, not a lion after all. That’s what I am.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tBpGjHN4b0

Essex:

1. I’m aware of how CY presents himself. One of the wonderful lessons Buddhism teaches is that good and evil can look like many different things. An attained soul can be serene and handsome like Buddha, loving and kind like Kannon, austere and rough like Daruma, or jovial and ugly like Hotei. There is no one “enlightened personality”, and just so, there is no one “depraved personality”. Curtis Yarvin has strayed very far from right thinking and has twisted his thoughts into a labyrinth, believing that this proves he is more intelligent instead of more deluded. He speaks of freedom while endorsing slavery and totalitarianism. He says he feels no animus towards blacks and isn’t racist while saying they lack moral fiber and are “absolute human garbage” (his words, not mine). Either he believes both things he says, and is thus deluded, or he doesn’t, in which case he’s a liar and one of the very scoundrels he denounces.

Reflexive contrarianism is a false path and will not make you closer to the truth or even happier. At best it’s replacing an actual pillar in your life with a toy. At worst it’ll lead you down a path of pointless hostile anger that will leave you isolated from everyone else around you and from yourself. If you choose your beliefs based on whatever “They” stand against, “They” are still choosing what you believe.

2. I am aware of ideology as fashion- if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have used the language I did earlier. I think it’s honestly a shame that you think so little of yourself and those around you that you engage in that. It’s one thing to be afraid of action- but to be afraid of belief? It’s a deep sickness, and one I intimately understand. It’s safer to be completely detached from everything- if you aren’t part of the world you would think it couldn’t hurt you. But that detachment is a deeper and more vicious pain in itself. You trade authentic joy and contentment for superficiality, never allowing yourself to genuinely feel anything and living a life of deception upon deception. How can such a state even be called living? You cannot grow and change and become happy in such a way- you can only become more and more burdened by the sorrow you flee from. You are better than existence as a ghost. I know this because you are a human being with a soul.

3. I try my utmost to show compassion to others- but when someone does wrong, they should be corrected. Indeed, it would be most heartless of me to not speak against those who stray far away from righteousness. Not only will they cause others to suffer if they persist- they will also hurt themselves. And if they refuse to listen to me and persist in wrong-doing and delusion when I am kind, then I must be harsh with them.

Fury and compassion are not opposites- true, righteous fury is born from a deep compassion and love for others.

4. Respectfully, you do not live over here. I think that there is likely going to be violence before it is all over- the wheel of Samsara spins towards suffering, after all. I pray deeply for peaceful resolution, but that is all I can do in the bigger picture.

As for violence against extremists- I am not physically powerful, and have never learned how to use a gun (I have a personal bias against touching anything created solely to take a life). I know a little bit of the martial arts, but not enough to “kick someone’s ass”. I find the mental image you apparently have of me very flattering, and a little funny, but not very accurate.

5. I would start by removing yourself from irony. Irony poisoning is a real issue. Find a way to root yourself in the natural world to start with. Avoid using your cell phone or social media for a while. Get out and talk to people, face-to-face, without thinking about whether they’re Woke or Anti-Woke or whatever. Find a hobby that isn’t politics or rationalism. Do community work, like at a soup kitchen or something. Do as much of this as possible while opening your heart and refusing to deflect your own emotions or those of others. And examine what you actually believe about the world- what is good, what is evil, what makes sense and is the truth to you? These are questions that Rationalists, in my experience, are very bad at answering. To me, Buddhism was the truth, and believe it or not when I was your age I was a lot like you- I even considered myself to be fairly hard-right and spent a lot of my time being angry about SJWs. I also considered myself to be very weak and pathetic. I wasn’t. I don’t think you are either.

I’d encourage you to read the Heart, Diamond, and Lotus Sutras for an examination of one perspective, and the Infinite Life and Contemplation Sutras for another. These are good texts to communicate the basic ideas, although the essence of the teachings cannot be communicated with words. I am willing to discuss my personal experiences with Buddhism or any other topic if you wish.

mrpatapon:

The past few days have been very enlightening to me, and I feel kind of exhausted now. I think this will be my last reply.

Well yes I do sound like I’m putting myself down, but I like to think otherwise. I’ve been deluding myself into thinking that I’m smarter and more enlightened than most other people, so I used to get very inseucre whenever someone challenges me. Now I feel more humble and less insecure about myself, I don’t feel the need to constantly prove my worth all the time. I think this may have something to do with the “ego”, in which my distorted perception of the “all-important self”, or I, has become the driving force of my thoughts and behaviors which continually causds pain, based on my unrealistic expectations.

I’ve been trying to be more open emotionally to the people in my life and I find it to be very exhausting emotionally. I try my best to connect with people, but sometimes I’m just not in the mood.

I tried reading Buddhist texts that I found online once while I was in highschool and couldn’t undetstand most of it. Now that I’m much older maybe it will be easier to read.

You know, we talk about good and evil a lot but what does it mean? Is good any action that reduces suffering and helps people reach enlightenment, while evil does the opposite?

I used to be angry at SJWs all the time in the past. Nowadays I don’t really have any strong hateful feelings for anyone unless they did something really evil. Even then, I try to remember that it is not my job to judge sinners, it is God’s job.

You don’t need to be super strong to protect yourself and those around you. Isn’t the point of martial arts to allow the weak to overcome the strong and protect the innocent? Pacifism does not mean you are not allowed to defend yourself or protect others from harm.

Anyway it was nice meeting you. We should talk again in a different place. You can contact me through my email address: [redacted]

Farewell.

Let me make my own brief comment on Curtis Yarvin. I’ve never read him, except I think for one blog post about the 2020 election, and the only video of him I’ve seen this long one on YouTube. I, like mrpatapon, was really taken aback at his presentation and mannerisms. I haven’t watched the linked Q&A session from whatever it was since the time it came out, but two things that stick out in my memory is that he professed some humility and mild shame at his younger self for writing stuff that was so extreme and edgy (he said something like “yeah, I did that because I was younger and immature, you really shouldn’t do that”), and that at some point (around the 20-minute mark) he launched into a story that made him choke up with tears throughout. Essex says this is all a presentation, implying that he puts it up deliberately to hide the evilness of his views, which… I know this sounds naive, but I genuinely wonder if it’s even possible for all but the most extremely psychopathic to fake that kind of personality. Humans are complex. Who knows what makes the Curtis Yarvins of the world tick. I will say that I also remember from that video being very unimpressed with his views overall, feeling that (despite his show of humility) he still came across more subtly as quite full of himself and convinced of the brilliance of some of his ideas (e.g. the US constitution was actually a conservative document because it was a remedy to the Articles of Confederation!) that were in my opinion not nearly as original or as insightful as he was making them out to be.