Author: Chris Khatsch

There must be a little art in everything I create, even if my creation is as cold as a machine and follows empirical data.
Book Review and Quotes from Nick Land's The Dark Enlightenment

Five Quotes from Nick Land’s The Dark Enlightenment

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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
Quote from Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

Quotes from Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling

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Here are five great quotes from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling:

One became great through expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became greater than all.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Whatever one generation learns from another, it can never learn from the predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh, has no task other than that of any previous generation, and comes no further, provided the latter didn’t shirk its task and deceive itself.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Fools and young people talk about everything being possible for a human being. But that is a great mistake. Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

All that can save him is the absurd; and this he grasps by faith.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Genesis: On the first day, the day was created

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On the first day of creation, God enabled repetition. Prior to (the initiation of) repetition, the earth was formless and engulfed in darkness. There was no time; there were no days. Without the spirit (or essence) of repetition, time and space could not have existed — or, more specifically, spacetime and everything in it could not have been activated. God said, “Let there be light,” and that was when time began. He liked what He saw. From then on, light had its turn, and darkness had its turn. He called the former Day and the latter Night, and they were set to repeat: night to day, day to night, night to day, day to night, ad infinitum. Accordingly, (a representation of) repetition was the start of creation. On the first day, the day was created.

Then, on the fourth day, God commanded more lights to appear in the heavens. These lights, the stars and the moon, did not only illuminate the world and the universe, but they made time observable, (referential), and measurable. They gave us days, seasons, years, et cetera — (cycles of) units of time. [There’s a correlation between time and light, but does that mean anything?] God planted repetitions within repetitions, cycles (of days) within cycles. And when He created all living things, he planted the seed of multiplication in them and commanded them to multiply — i.e., to bring forth repetitions. Furthermore, God made man in His own image; and in that sense, man is a repetition of God programmed to repeat. [But does that mean that man is equal to God? No, not necessarily… because repetition = the repeated subject/object + difference. And difference can be negative, positive, or equal to zero.]

Let us evoke Gilles Deleuze here and accept repetition as a process that generates difference. We can also quote Richard Dawkins who, in The Selfish Gene, wrote that, if he wanted to guess (and put his money on) one fundamental principle, it would be this: “that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.” In other words, the spirit of repetition provides an ecosystem in which difference gets a chance to actualize its potential. So, it is only natural for repetition (and difference) to be at the core of the fundamental principle(s) of the universe and, therefore, at the core of the story of creation.

[In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins (who, let’s not forget, is probably the most famous atheist in the world today) says that “the only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator.” And I ask myself here, “Is this not God, the enabler of the spirit of repetition?” Who wrote the code of the immortal replicator?]

The spirit of repetition allows copy-pasting and, more importantly, it is the source of the nested loops and adaptive algorithms of the universe. A universe without repetition is unperceivable. Perceiving already involves the act of repeating the perceived object in one’s mind. Moreover, without repetition, God would not have rested on the seventh day because he would have to keep creating new, unrepeated things and beings until the end of time. The spirit of repetition puts chaos in a system then lets it unfold automatically (and purposively) without the interference (or piloting) of the Creator. Repetition is the power that tames chaos, guiding it with laws and systems, (although chaos cannot be tamed absolutely). [Note: The spirit of repetition “automates” the universe but does not turn it deterministic. Man, like anything else in the universe, is chained to the repetitions allotted to him but is simultaneously free thanks to the irregular, uncontainable bursts of chaos.]

Can we remove the spirit of repetition from the code of the universe? No. What happens when we remove it? We already have the answer. We’ll go back to square one. We’ll go back to (timeless) chaos. The absence of repetition eliminates the possibility of a systematic universe; therefore, it eliminates the possibility of living organisms; hence, to make all things possible, God enabled repetition on the first day and made it the first day.