Breaking: Godwin's Law Refuted By Finnish Ecofascist

Today, I have observed a clear violation of Godwin's Law. To compare this man to Hitler would be an understatement. It's a good thing he's older than dirt and will never get into a position of power, since it is an indisputable fact that Pentti Linkola would be FAR WORSE THAN HITLER.

Certified Worse Than Hitler

At least he's honest?

In his own words:

"If the present amount of Earths population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then:

• Birthgiving must be licenced. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licences can be allowed to families of quality.
• Energy production must be drastically reduced. Electricity is allowed only for the most necessary lighting and communications.
• Food: Hunting must be made more efficient. Human diet will include rats and invertebrate animals. Agriculture moves to small un-mechanized units. All human manure is used as fertilizer.
• Traffic is mostly done with bicycles and rowing boats. Private cars are confiscated. Long-distance travel is done with sparse mass transport. Trees will be planted on most roads.
• Foreign affairs: All mass immigration and most of import-export trade must stop. Cross-border travel is allowed only for small numbers of diplomats and correspondents.
• Business will mostly end. Manufacture is allowed only for well argumented needs. All major manufacturing capacity is state owned. Products will be durable and last for generations.
• Science and schooling: Education will concentrate on practical skills. All competition is rooted out. Technological research is reduced to extreme minimum. But every child will learn how to clean a fish in a way that only the big shiny bones are left over."

From ― Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail? - A Radical Approach To The Environmental Crisis:

"If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die."

“I could never find two people who are perfectly equal: one will always be more valuable than the other. And many people, as a matter of fact, simply have no value.”

“I believe that human brilliance manifests itself only in flashes, among rare individuals. For this reason, humanity as a whole is enormously destructive: the creation of something as devastating as Western culture, which is now allowed to spread throughout the world, offers sufficient proof of this fact.”

“The coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.”

Suck it, Godwin.

The Vacuum Metastability Event: New Evidence

"If you use all the physics that we know now and you do what you think is a straightforward calculation, it's bad news," Joseph Lykken said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Monday. "It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out. This has to do with the Higgs energy field itself."


The first thing I see on my facebook feed this morning: If Higgs Boson Calculations Are Right, A Catastrophic 'Bubble' Could End Universe. Recent work in the world of physics provides new evidence that something far worse than "the nothing" ought elicit our cosmic angst, as I wrote in: Ex nihilo nihil fit: Heidegger's Vacuuity and False Vacuum Decay.

New LSDs Bath Salts Zombies and YOU

Direct link.

We are going to take a break from our usual material here for this Public Service Announcement. Please pay attention to it, unless if you want your organs to basically burn up alive. Also see this Disinfo expose on a possible theory about the truth behind the bath salts / zombie "craze."

 From the creators of Gonzomentary.

 [Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Apocalyptic Imaginary: 1st Edition Released!

I'm happy to announce that the 1st print edition of Apocalyptic Imaginary is now available. You can order it direct or on Amazon. ($18) It is also available on Kindle. ($2.99)

Check out the free sample on Scribd. 

I just got my copies of this, and it looks nice. There are a few very minor aesthetic tweaks that I intend to make for the 2nd edition, but none of them are things that would probably even be noticed by most readers. (Plus, I'm sure, the stray typo or two that slipped by me and the freelance editor.)

More about this book:

"This book captures and expands upon the unique commentary and analysis that has helped define the Modern Mythology project in 2011. Through the voices of many contributors, we collectively take a hard look at the blurred lines between narrative and truth, philosophy and literature, personal history and cultural memory. All of this is done with an eye towards the imagined apocalypse that is always just around the corner."

Authored by James Curcio, Edited by James Curcio, Edited by Michael Tesney, Authored with Peter Emerson Williams, Rowan Tepper, Mr VI, Rusty Shackleford, David Metcalfe, Wes Unruh, Gunther Sonenfeld, Doctor Adventure, and Brian George.

Seriously, check this one out. Whether you're a writer, artist, musician, or just curious about how your ideas play into the world you live in, this book should give food for thought for years to come.

This book will be featured in the upcoming class at SUNY Binghamton, "The Apocalypse of Love." Also, if these subjects herein interest you and you'd like a deeper look, check out The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized this past September.

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Apocalyptic Imaginary: Early Edition Available

This book captures and expands upon the unique commentary and analysis that has helped define the Modern Mythology project in 2011. Through the voices of many contributors, we collectively take a hard look at the blurred lines between narrative and truth, philosophy and literature, personal history and cultural memory. All of this is done with an eye towards the imagined apocalypse that is always just around the corner.

This is the $.99 early edition, meaning that there will be one more editorial pass before the final version which will be released in print. (To be performed by Michael Tesney of Driftwork.)

This early edition contains all the final content that the final book has, but will almost certainly have typos. If they light your hair on fire, feel free to report them.  

Available as PDF, .epub, Kindle and more on Smashwords. (Just $.99) 

First edition in print ($18) and kindle ($2.99) formats Jan 2012.

A sample is available:

Apocalyptic Imaginary: The Best of Modern Mythology 2011 (Sample)


[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Apocalypse: Seeing With New Eyes

We speak of apocalypse rather commonly these days, it seems to be a part of the zeitgeist of this age. Yet many seem to have only a cursory or rather simplistic idea of what the reality (and the concepts we use to encapsulate that reality), entail.

The idea of apocalypse has factored rather centrally into many of the projects I've helped create over the years.

Let me spell this way out by way of example:

December 23rd, 2022

(From Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End. Pick up the eBook for $2.99 or paperback for $16.99.)

It would seem Judgment day came nearly eleven years late.
I woke up this morning with the certain knowledge that it would be my last. I have fallen my entire life, as if through empty air. Now I can see the ground rushing up to greet me, and I am almost eager to make its acquaintance.
But it isn’t just me. The world is changing: the tide rises a little each day, never receding. There are terrible floods, fires, hurricanes. Solar storms. The constant catastrophe numbs you to the end result. Then one day you realize you’re about to eat asphalt.
Of all the people in this crumbling city, I had the most warning. I could have fled and started yet another life from scratch. Maybe I could have stood out on the sidewalk wrapped in three layers of thrift store trench coats, showering passersby with prophetic warnings and a plume of spit.


We all had our warnings. This end has been prophesied in our religions, in the newspaper headlines, and in the countless feverish dreams we choose to forget upon awakening. It has even happened before, and it will happen again, when the next civilization comes to its own grinding halt.


At the end of the lifespan of a universe, a culture, a life, it is destroyed, and a new one born. But for it to be born, and for life to be renewed, a divine sacrifice must be made. On the other side is a new dawn, and a new world.

Elves of the Apocalypse: "Machine Elves" and the Self-Sabotage of Psychedelic Research

By Prof Rowan
(Note: Someone tried to scrub this from Wikipedia (restored as of 6am Friday) yesterday. Hopefully this makes it all the more futile to try to make this little gem go away.)

I guess when getting worked up over whether "beings exist and not nothing at all" or whether "the nothing is really nothing" just isn't enough, you can always get worked up over the "clockwork [sic] elves" who control the global elite promising them "eternal life, total power, total control, everything you could ever want, just kill everyone [...] friendly little guys..."

Right. Most if not all mythologies include creatures resembling elves. Therefore the archetypal image must be based upon encounters with the Machine... Er... Clockwork Elves. As with all paranoid logic, this argument is easily felled by Occam's Razor, which advocates that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity," in short, that the "simplest answer is most likely the correct one." It is much more plausible to propose that the entities encountered during the DMT-experience could very well bear some measure of resemblance to elves (elongated and angular shapes are common); that one comes to think "if they look like elves, they are elves" at least makes sense!

THERE ARE NO FUCKING MACHINE ELVES!

Ex nihilo nihil fit: Heidegger's Vacuuity and False Vacuum Decay

By Prof Rowan

There's no denying that Heidegger was a member of the National Socialist party. The controversy over Heidegger's association with the Nazis is now well-known and all too often used as an excuse, a shortcut, to dismiss his philosophy out of hand with the phrase “well, you know, he was a Nazi!” A recently published book (Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy (2005), by Emmanuel Faye) has even made the utterly moronic argument that his philosophical work is so thoroughly contaminated by party ideology that his books ought not to be taught as philosophies but rather as “hate speech.” Look, I loathe Heidegger even more than I do Sartre, and I reject his philosophy as emphatically as anyone, but for various reasons and according to arguments more valid than merely calling him a Nazi. [1] The very existence of Godwin's law testifies to the fact that to do so amounts to little more than ad hominem and one that is widely taken to indicate the absence of a better argument, and in the case of Heidegger's “philosophy” there is no shortage of them.

The final section of the newly published English translation of Hans Blumenberg's Care Crosses The River (1987, English Translation 2010), “Dasein's Care,” contains several suggestive and compelling criticisms, including the following:

Perhaps no one has ever shuddered, as if before a yawning abyss, on being asked or asking themselves whether the world in which we live, experience, and gain knowledge really exists... In opposition to many opinions that want to view this question as the core of modern philosophy, it must be insisted that none of the imaginable answers had any consequences. In each case, everything remained the same. Indifference in the face of what looks to be such a hard problematic already sees that nothing will come of it, because nothing can come of it. (Blumenberg 141-2) [2]

Hans Blumenberg is Awesome

This refers, of course, primarily to Heidegger's lectures of the early to mid 1930s, “What is Metaphysics?” and even more to An Introduction to Metaphysics. In these lectures, Heidegger makes precisely the claim that the question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics 1) is precisely the core of modern philosophy, concern for which differentiates it from science, for “the nothing is rejected precisely by science, given up as a nullity... The nothing – what else can it be fore science but an outrage and a phantasm? If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wants to know nothing of the nothing.” (Heidegger, Pathmarks 84)

New Disease: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Superbugs

By Mr. VI

Not to worry you, but you're going to die. If it's not old age that gets you, it's probably going to be some mutated form of the primordial killer – as much an apparent monster as Godzilla, rising up from the depths to cause chaos and destruction in your life.

Unless you're extraordinarily unusual, or a little bit morbid, you don't like to think about it much. After all, there is so much to see and do in life that thinking about it and can be a little distracting, can't it?

But vast amounts of future tech notwithstanding, you're not going to be rejuvenated, or immortal any time soon. Of course, even if the future tech arrives, initially it'll probably belong to this sinister lizardy Methuselah-types like Rupert Murdoch due to the billions of dollars they have in their bank accounts.

The fact is, the majority of the world still doesn't have access to decent healthcare – and those that do tend to live in the richer nations. In the UK there is state healthcare, but in America? Staying healthy is the province of those who can afford it. Now, imagine all those folks in countries which we laughably call the Third World or the developing world.

Imagine what happens when they get ill, and what they do when it comes time to die. Technology and medical care and such may have advanced way beyond the four humours – rationalism may be slowly doing away with snake oil sales but what good is that if you can't get your hands on what you need?

What stories do they tell themselves to make sense out of death and dying? Are they that different to the ones we tell ourselves when disease strikes, seemingly out of the blue?

Kairos: Complete Podcast Version

By Prof Rowan

Hot off the microphone, the entire Kairos series in podcast form. Including a short introduction. Comment, criticize, etc. Please!

Rowan G. Tepper - Introduction to kairos by rowan-g-tepper

Kairos I: Exemplary Acts by rowan-g-tepper

Kairos II: Kairos at the End of Modernity by rowan-g-tepper

Kairos III: La révolution post-historique by rowan-g-tepper

Kairos IV: The Whatever Messiah: We're Who We've Been Waiting For by rowan-g-tepper

Parts I and III have previously been posted. Enjoy! Discuss! Goddamnit! You don't have to read, just listen!
  Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Weaponized: Reality Games and the Dystopian Future

There is a secret that haunts Haze01, the original treatment facility. Two patients, locked deep within its walls, contain archetypes that reject all reprogramming. They channel portents and omens of another future, a world where myth and divinity remake reality, manifesting a planet fit for Gods. In this season of the Y show, the doctors of the facility make their final attempt to process these two patients, before they break free and unleash total anarchy. Tune in. (Alterati)
PRE-ORDER CITIZEN Y: BLUEPRINT OF A RITUAL EXPERIENCE
Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Modern Myths in Final Conflicts

By Wes Unruh
While fairy tales like Red Riding Hood may historically be better indicators of psychological tendencies within a people than the more traditional myths of a civilization, I tend to think the division is tragic. We are always somewhat separate from our gods, but the urban legends all happened to a friend of a friend's cousin. Same with fairy tales - the stories are the narratives that people use to flesh out the world around them - the farther away the space they are mapping, the more surreal and empowered the hero, the more archetypal the expression.

Now we ourselves are journeying to the darkest spaces of the planet with diodes and halogen bulbs, scanning the earth itself with orbital satellite platforms, a technologically empowered ghost dance chasing every last spirit, for good or ill, deeper into the core of the earth (picture Agartha overrun with fables seeking shelter from the mundane accountant). It's been said if god did not exist we would have to invent her. I'm pretty sure that's been said, at least - the same goes for all myths - if they don't yet exist, sooner or later someone will speak it, seek to express that archetype in narrative, that it might be apprehended, toughened up, and brought into conversational space.

We cannot parse our existence without narrative - even if that narrative is implied. When we hear of something spilling out from the crawling chaos of our own psyche, it can only appear in divine or demonic forms until we understand it - and even then it gets iffy. When I read about the 'central nervous system for the earth' I immediately think of Gaia, first the goddess and secondly the planet in Asimov's Foundation meta-novel - and I suspect I'm not the only one who sees the shadow of Skynet as a kind of distant third. Myth-making with archetypes is a fundamental expression of sign-wielding cognition, a 'here-there-be-dragons' kind of filling in the gaps, that helps reality stabilize for a society.

Unfortunately, our current global situation seems to be a clashing of archetypal expression preventing true communication. Our world's biggest belief systems most extreme fundamentalists are all obsessively focused on the Temple Mount and the end of the world. Or more precisely, ending the world. Every time someone says they can't wait for the Second Coming of Christ, they're publicly expressing the desire to see the world come to an end. Give them a good hard slap in the face - it may not wake them out of their trance, but it will give them the slightest taste of the sheer magnitude of harm they are wishing upon the rest of the planet, not to mention the blood which has already been spilled in the name of the Kingdom of G-d.

Perhaps the new modern myths will not be myths of distance, or of the huge archetypal forces moving just beyond the liminal, almost formless yet manifest... the new modern myths will be more like fairy tales, urban legends, and cross-cultural movements of signification. The days of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity squabbling over the Dome of the Rock in the hopes of kickstartering up an armeggedon so the thousand year reign of Christ can begin once the Dajjal's armies of djinn and demons have been put down are almost over.



This is the myth of the far-away god that kills, a powerful myth that persisted for years, but didn't become apocalyptic until the myth-forms themselves sensed the encroachment into their space of the 'thought-at-a-distance' technologies of the telegraph, the radio, and finally the satellite. With the telegraph came the refinements in notions of the Rapture, with Sputnik and the Space Race Hal Lindsey conceived of and exposed 'The Late Great Planet Earth' planting armeggedonist dispensationalism into conservative politics and linking the modern state of Israel with the violence described in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.



In opposition to this traditionalist nationalist view of history, we're seeing the rise of the borderless state and the collective mind, a cybernetic enhancement assimilating (borg-like) all of the world into a new cognitive model of networked spaces. With this new virtual state, we see a different kind of archetypal force moving (as promised) against the God who kills from the skies with fire. The new world order will be all of us, illuminati each and every one, creating environments about us as we grow off world, or it'll be a cannibalistic holocaust, something very Soylent Green, perhaps. I don't think it will be the final expression of Islam OR Christianity - if anything, we appear to be smack dab in the middle of the Kali Yuga, having completely externalized every aspect of the human body (hence the above central nervous system of the earth) and that from here on out it's all going to be the rising sun of the golden age. I'm not saying we are the new modern myths, but rather the idea that we are the new myths is a new, modern myth - and it is shaping who we are becoming.



...oh, and a very happy birthday to the dead Dr. Seuss.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

The Dominant Species: Last Call

By James Curcio

Let me spin a little myth that some of you may interpret as apocalyptic. And certainly, within the context of the original meaning of apocalypse, lifting the veil, or dispelling the illusion - perhaps of an age, or of a conglomeration of myths - it is in every way both apocalyptic and revelatory. 

Consider the increasing possibility that in the next 50 to 100 years, we will see a transition not from peak oil to a superiorly positioned, cheaper solar power, but instead, a massive power-grab for energy resources that cannot possibly keep pace with the demands created by a population that continues to surge with no consideration of such arcane ecological ideas as "carrying capacity." 
Consider optimistic philosophies such as the convergence and singularity of transhumanism blunted and crushed under the heel of the international corporations which have leveraged control not only of slave labor forces world-wide but also resources which are plundered at an increasingly unsustainable rate. 
Consider oceans stripped of fish species to the point where the present "safe" species are themselves nearly fished out of existence. 
Consider corporations wisely buying up the rights to the very necessities of life, such as water, and shipping it out of the places where it is most needed so they can sell it at a ridiculous markup in bottles while the indigenous people die of dehydration or water-born illness because they can't afford it at $1.75 a liter. 
Consider a future where even genes are owned by corporations, and where even the supposed boons of technology, such as crops which produce much higher yields, are simply stop-gaps that allow the creation of yet more humans scrambling for what depleted resources they can manage, while assets are diverted with increasing openness from programs such as education and public health to those which provide the greatest benefits to the corporations themselves. This is the future, and I'm not even painting it as grimly as it could be painted. 
I highly suggest you watch this documentary - The Meaning of the 21st Century -  available for free online, among many others. Like many it tries to put a positive face on the possibilities of the future and for the sake of our species I hope they are right. 
Much of this was covered in several pieces I wrote for The Immanence of Myth, including Pretty Suicide Machine, the early version of which Reality Sandwich ran over a year ago. (I have since refined it though the position is, generally speaking, the same.) 

In other words I am painting a picture where it is only technological advance, itself, which keeps the population growth we presently consider the norm possible, and in fact it is the race of technology against the reality of resources which will spell the future of humanity. It seems inevitable that there must come a point when, no matter the advances made in terms of the genetic modification of food or our own genomes, we will have to as they say "pay the piper." 
I'm not sure who this piper is, but if we imagine that he is like a bookie with a big bat, the longer we dodge him, the harder he is going to slam it into our knees.

There is a rather poignant picture painted in the anthropology book Cannibals and Kings, a resource that we utilize on several occasions within the Immanence of Myth, which deals a great deal with cultural taboos and practices and how they tie into the distribution of animal proteins across the bulk of a society. It also makes a strong case for the unsustainability of capitalism, a system which both promises and depends on the idea of a never-ending increase of profits in the name of sovereignty. Growth and progress are not good unto themselves. Progress and growth cannot outweigh sustainability. 
At this point, most of this is not news to you - which in itself is a form of news, that we can look at this kind of bleak outlook and nod our heads with a sort of complacent, "yeah? So it goes." Alright, but coming out of this is a sense of guilt, and that too gets leveraged into our consumer society because, let's face facts, you need to go out to the store to get food, you need to get work, you need to survive and you haven't the time to consider such global problems if you want to just get by and survive. 
So we make what we consider to be "little concessions." We "go green." We try to buy into "fair trade." Maybe we shop organic. We do "what we can." Zizek has a video about this, "First As Tragedy, Then As Farce" and how capitalism has included capitalist guilt, as part of its marketing scheme for the future. 
Name a major industry you want to support, after you've looked into who owns them, who owns the company that owns them, and how they factor into the global politics of the countries they've entrenched themselves in. Look at where they buy their materials and how those materials are procured. Look at how the workers are treated at all levels through the supply chain. Dollars to donuts, the cheaper these things can be procured, the better. And to hell with all the middleman in the name of God profit. So we "do our best" we pick our pet corporations or industries that we avoid like we're doing a "good deed" and then go across the street and do business with another devil. Fuck it. Unless someone is living off solar energy on a mountain top, growing and raising their own food, it's just a means to offput that "consumer guilt" I was talking about. 

What drives me nuts is the high horses these people climb on, so they can posture themselves like they are morally superior to you because they picked supplier X over supplier Y. Look, I buy almost all of my meat and produce from local farms. I do it both because it is slightly better than going to industrial farms - Monsanto is one of my "personal blacklist companies" - and I do it because the meat just plain tastes better. But if I was to dig in their dirt deep enough, I'm sure I'd find all kinds of things I couldn't get behind from an ethical standpoint. The whole system is based on faulty premises that can't be avoided by nibbling around the edges. It's not that its not good to look into where your food or products come from, and it is certainly good to look at consuming less, and purchasing more locally and to buy things with less packaging. But it's not going to change the world. Writing and creating media is how I enter the world, not changing the nature of industry singlehandedly. Nor am I doing a "good deed" by shopping at Wholre Foods or picking a fish that just happens to not yet be overfished. Give it time people. They'll be next on the chopping blok. We eat them and move on to earthworms if we can find a way to make it palatable. There are 2x as many humans on this planet as there were when I was born, and there will likely be 3x or even 4x as many by the time I check out. 
Here is the final point, and this is where I'm really going to piss some of you off so thankfully I've buried it beneath the fold of the attention span of the average blog reader: no one is talking about the reality here, and the fact that NPR and PBS and Planned Parenthood are on the chopping block too is a really, really bad sign for the future of anything except for a world of uneducated worker drones. (Read that link. I fucking dare you.) 
This is not a Swiftian satire, though I am prone to those. For once I am being, sadly, dead serious. Let me paint it very clear: the ONLY, and I mean ONLY, way we are going to survive as a species is if we either implement some serious restrictions on reproduction, or if we or nature herself kills a lot of us off. I mean a lot. I mean, half the world population, or more. And if that isn't done along with a considerable overhaul of our technology and societies which fall in line with coming into accord with the environments we live in, I hate to say it people but... even a student in ecology 101 knows what happens when a single species far outstrips its role within an ecosystem. It does kill off some of the other species but you know what happens after that? They die off. Not just some of them. All of them. A population growth that looks like a straight line up quickly turns into a straight line down, and it doesn't end until there isn't a goddamn member of that species left. And then stasis slowly returns. 
In other words, since we are now a species that does not naturally operate within a stasis with our environment, we either need to plan for it, or we're going to have to pay the highest price for our Hubris: our own extinction. 
Call me alarmist if you want. That's fine. God, I hope you're right. But I don't think I am. It's last call folks. And I'm not talking about for planet Earth. The Earth has weathered plenty of die-off events. Smoke 'em while you've got em. The clock is ticking. 
Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Apocalypse, Undercover : Living After the End of History (I)

By Prof Rowan

The zombie apocalypse heralds not just the end, but the annihilation of history. The mutism of the (post) modern zombie signifies the irrevocable loss of language – that fickle mistress that first led human civilization from primordial Chaos to the Cosmos of myth, then from exile to the millinery Kingdom of Judeo-Christian theology, and thence into our times. Of course, the sum total of this inheritance has since passed into and come to give shape to the practices of both history and politics: eschatology – secularized – takes the form of the ideology of progress that has long deluded “the left.” In Germany, during the 1920s and 30s the SPD remained convinced until the bitter end that Hitler and the Nazis represented a temporary aberration and that the country would “come to its senses.” This history continues to repeat: we on the political left in the United States have a long way to go and much work to do so as to reverse the damage done by failing to recognize the stark differences between the Neoconservatives and just about everyone the fuck else. Georges W. Bush and Al Gore were the same so you voted for Nader. Fuck you!

While Neoconservatism has fallen out of favor and is scarcely taken seriously outside of a few remaining enclaves, its theoretical underpinnings and fundamental myths have not. The political philosophy and philosophy of history to which Neoconservative thinkers and politicians have subscribed are in truth a particularly theatrical and shamelessly bare-assed instance of the dark inverse of the ideology of Progress, by means of which many cling to the wreckage of Modernity and the Enlightenment project. While for the progressive, justice, utopia, apocalypse, etc, etc, are thought to be part of an inevitable future End of History – a Last Judgment that will brook no more delays, the Neoconservative, begins with and builds upon the extremely ideosyncratic reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit developed by Alexandre Kojève in his 1933-39 lecture course at the Sorbonne, later published as “Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,” in 1947, as transmitted through Leo Strauss, Francis Fukuyama, etc, etc. According to this line of reasoning, the vanguard of humanity has, in fact, already reached the end of History, and all that remains to be done as a political task is to bring the rest of the world “up to speed” (c.f. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. Now that all went according to plan, right?)

Kojève was, in fact, a spy in the French government

Here, Kojève's words are every bit as intelligible as my own:

The disappearance of Man at the end of History... is not a cosmic catastrophe: the natural World remains what it has been from all Eternity... it is not a biological catastrophe either: Man remains alive as animal in harmony with Nature or given Being......the end of human Time or History – means quite simply the cessation of Action... the disappearance of wars and bloody revolutions. And also the disappearance of Philosophy; for since Man himself no longer changes essentially, there is no longer any reason to change the (true) principles which are the basis of his understanding of the World and of himself. But all the rest will be preserved indefinitely; art, love, play, etc, etc; in short, everything that makes Man happy.

    - A. Kojève – footnote to the first edition of Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, pp. 158-9.

Post-historical humanity would thus be “happy zombies,” as it were. For, with the cessation of Action, the disappearance of Philosophy and the end of Becoming, language would become superfluous, mere glossolalia.

According to a footnote added to the second edition, which happened to appear during that fateful year that saw both Kojève's death and the release of Night of the Living Dead, this apocalypse signifies the post-historical epoch during which the Lion of American Capitalism shall lie down with the Lamb of Soviet Marxism (or vice-versa): One can even say that the United States has already attained the final state of Marxist “communism,” seeing that, practically all the members of a “classless society” can from now on appropriate for themselves everything that seems good to them, without working any more than their heart dictates.

...I was lead to conclude that the “American way of life” was the type of life specific to the post-historical period, the actual presence of the United States in the World prefiguring the “eternal present” future of all of humanity. Thus, Man's return to animality appeared no longer as a possibility that was yet to come, but as a certainty that was already present. (161)

Now, I am absolutely exhausted. My next piece will pick up precisely where I leave off today. For now, I need sleep lest I begin to crave sweet, succulent brains.

Hey, James, old Kojevnikoff says that Philosophy is over. He's wrong, but he makes a damn good case.

“In the idea of classless society, Marx secularized the idea of messianic time.” -Walter Benjamin - “Paralipomena to 'On the Concept of History,” XVIIa, Selected Writings, Vol 4, pg. 401.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Auguring The Technocalypse

FP announced my upcoming participation in their Terra:Extremitas event in Amsterdam in August. Guess I'd better get to work on that script...

About 'Terra:Extremitas':
"In many ways the United States are inhospitable to artists. This isn't to say that the case is otherwise elsewhere, but most of my life experience comes from living here. At the extreme, I think there is an underlying, subconscious belief in many people that true commitment to art and creativity is a cultural crime. In my opinion, 'Terra: Extremitas' brings that belief to the forefront, it embodies it as a form of revolt on our part, and mixes it with the now ubiquitous myth of the apocalypse. In a fit of incoherent caffeination I said that my last novel (Fallen Nation) was a cultural apocalypse. Now I know what the hell I was talking about- and can thank the FoolishPeople for it."

The G-Spot 31: Michael Dean

In this episode, Joseph Matheny concludes his conversation with Michael Dean (part 1 here), and discuss how to make money by releasing things for free, the coming apocalypse, a secret underground lair, and much more.

We're hoping to make the Gspot better with your input, we'd dig it if you'd fill out the Standard Audience Survey to help us do that. As always,
if you have questions, comments, rants or suggestions, call (213) 784-1035

Listen.

Fallen Nation 2nd edition released in time for the Holidays.

(This message was previously sent to a list of individuals through private email. I wanted to make most of it public, since I almost without a doubt forgot some people that I wanted to get it to.)

After months of wandering around in a caffeinated haze with crumpled manuscript in tow, inadvertently alienating friends, and keeping my editors up well past their bedtimes, the second edition of my novel Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning is complete. This edition is 16 pages lighter, even after the addition of the 8 page black and white CC "Welcome To The Apocalypse" comic. Most of what went was dead wood. In the process the structure was re-worked somewhat.

I had a lot of outside editorial input, from readers, from people I've worked with in the past, but I have to say that the edited copy that Jason Stackhouse gave back to me was the most useful- that is, what I could read through the smears of Chinese food and pages of red lines and chicken-scratch. Thanks for not kissing my ass, Jason.

So, why am I contacting you? You either asked to be notified, or are a past friend, accomplice or associate that I thought should be notified. This is not part of a mailing list, it is a one time only email, so you do not need to hunt around for the "DO NOT WANT" button. But I do hope you take the time to read this letter, this project is going to be quite a trip.

As many of you know, we're now living in a time when it has never been easier to produce independent media (which is not to say that it is easy), but it has probably never been harder to sell it. At least not in the substantial quantity required for sustainability. So, this is likely going to be an uphill battle for Mythos Media (www.mythosmedia.net), one which could benefit from your help. For the creatives amongst you, we can offer some support in return. (More on that in a second.)

Here are some of the ways you can become an "early adopter" and still keep your day job and/or cherished addictions:

* Enjoy and share the prologue podcast: That's what it's there for. This podcast contains original music and readings by P. Emerson Williams (Choronzon) & Tara Vanflower (Lycia.) It is released under a creative commons license, which means it can be added to other people's podcasts so long as it is included in its entirety. If you or people you know run podcasts, feel free to use it for that purpose, to fileshare it, or freak out your friends by playing it for them once you've gotten them so drunk they can barely walk. (It's a pretty creepy episode.)

If you like what you hear, you'll be happy to know that we are going to be producing the entire book as an audiobook of this nature. Keep an eye peeled on Alterati.com, we'll be releasing episodes as they are produced.

* Put the Fallen Nation banner on your website, blog, etc. The code is:

{a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Nation-Babylon-James-Curcio/dp/1419672657/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-4077266-8569725?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187938907&sr=8-2 " target="_blank"}
{img src="http://www.joinmycult.org/media/fallennation/fn_top_banner.jpg"}
{/a}

(Replace with proper HTML 'carrots.')

* If you are also engaged in clusterfucks such as myspace, facebook, etc. refer your friends to the book. This can be done through a bulletin, or through applications on facebook such as Visual Bookshelf. Applications such as bookQube provide other means of sharing your readings preferences with others.

* If you have friends in the press, distribution, or media production as I know some of you do, send the electronic press kit their way. It is online here, and contains art, and excerpts from the first chapter and RealitySandwich interview.

* Blood sacrifice. I'm not going to give instructions here but I'm sure "Witchcraft for Dummies" has all the information you need. Every drop counts!

* Add tags or put up a review on the Amazon page.

* If you can make use of them, I can provide full color 4x6 Fallen Nation fliers to you. Just email me privately with your mailing address and I will have them shipped.

* Feel free to forward this message to others you know who would be interested in this project.

For fellow independent producers & artists in this list, my hope is we can continue to create a network here. One step in that direction has been alterati.com, which you should check out if you're not familiar. (We've interviewed some of you there in the past year.) If you are presently working on a creative or cultural work and would like press, contact me regarding that. The united we stand divided we fall cliche has some validity when it comes to independent media.

Finally, some of you have asked me this question, so let me answer it... This is indeed the edition of the book that we will be offering for a while, and later editions will simply contain very minor revisions (such as typos that invariably popped up in the process of fixing the typos in the last edition.) It is available now through amazon.com & for order through bookstores. In store distribution is pending a positive sales response through the Internet.

Most of all, I hope you enjoy the book.

Happy Holidays-
James Curcio.

Postmodern Apocalypse

2012 is a meme on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days.

An an example, Daniel Pinchbeck just launched the site “Postmodern Times,” which is:

"…a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Our first episode, “Toward 2012″, introduces the project, explaining concepts from the best-selling book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Pinchbeck, in the author’s own voice. Future segments will focus on shamanism, sustainability, alternative energy systems, the Mayan Calendar, quantum physics and synchronicity, human sexuality, and a host of other subjects."

This explosion, of course, is not restricted merely to Pinchbeck, though he seems to have positioned himself well atop the wave. For better or worse, it is a cultural movement, and it is happening now.

(Alterati.com article.)