When I read Nick Land’s The Dark Enlightenment for the first time, I was not impressed by it at all. In fact, I was so disappointed that I commented on it on social media. I wrote, “I expected this book to be more than what it turned out to be. I was expecting the Nietzsche of the 21st century; I got a Hobbesian net surfer instead. Nick Land’s The Dark Enlightenment is the tea time chatter of a person you really don’t want to hang out with. Thankfully, the book is less than 100 pages. The only purpose this book can really serve is as a light commentary on Menius Moldbug’s (Curtis Yarvin’s) blog posts.”
That’s what I said then. So, if it’s so bad, why am I reading it again? Well… There is something so right about it, you see, but I don’t know what it is. (Of course, I do not agree and don’t have to agree with his politics to admire his texts, even if it’s a political text.) The Dark Enlightenment just has this magnetic power that pulls you, makes you want to chew the cud, and — what?
Quote from The Dark Enlightenment
Since winning elections is overwhelmingly a matter of vote buying, and society’s informational organs (education and media) are no more resistant to bribery than the electorate, a thrifty politician is simply an incompetent politician, and the democratic variant of Darwinism quickly eliminates such misfits from the gene pool.
– Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
Anarcho-capitalist utopias can never condense out of science fiction, divided powers flow back together like a shattered Terminator, and constitutions have exactly as much real authority as a sovereign interpretative power allows them to have.
– Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
Democracy consumes progress.
– Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
The left thrives on dialectics, the right perishes through them.
– Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
When only tolerance is tolerable, and everyone (who matters) accepts this manifestly nonsensical formula as not only rationally intelligible, but as the universally-affirmed principle of modern democratic faith, nothing except politics remains.
– Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment
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