Against Inevitability, Toward “Psychological Decentralization”: “‘The Psychopathology of Time and Life’ is a remarkable essay falling at the point where Marshall McLuhan is turning from a career in teaching poetry and literature to a career in studying media and becoming a kind of ‘anti-environmental activist’ in terms of the invisible shaping environment which is what hides the effects of technologies from us, actively reshaping us and our families and societies as we are ever-increasingly absorbed in their content, the creation and consumption thereof. It reflects a younger Marshall McLuhan, less careful to avoid strong opinions, a style very different from what readers of ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’ (1964) would expect.”
Electronic Fog of War: “Unconscious motives, massaged by cybernetic media, are the key to the spectacular reality of global conflicts. In the ghost parade of former current things, every urgent flashpoint becomes a temporary silhouette of psychic drama. The conditioned reflex of social media consumers mechanically asserting ideological or geopolitical allegiances should be submitted to the ‘school of suspicion’ for examination. What are the psychic and commercial angles to the shadow war of Left and Right? What is the cybernetic logic of projection and apophenic paranoia? Why are certain metaphors and words and symbols chosen, and not others? What is the strategic function of conformism, and the function of transgression in the attention economy? What is the unity of the unconscious, shattered, across a billion mirrored screens?”
Eugyppius: a Plague Chronicle 2024 Predictions: “No sooner did the pandemic end and the vaccinators withdraw their needles, than we were plunged into a series of new crises – the Ukraine war and the energy crisis, massive inflation and finally the war in Gaza. In Germany, paroxysms of Green insanity and deepening political chaos have made all of this much worse. I am nevertheless cautiously optimistic, if only because things cannot spiral downwards forever, and because as bad as things have been for us, they have been even worse for our rulers. In this regard, 2023 was not without hope; it witnessed a continuing if quiet repudiation of the vaccines, a further falsification and erosion of climate ideology and a decisive shift of political momentum away from the left, the likes of which I would’ve said were impossible even three or four years ago.”
Mirror Worlds and Shadow Lands: “What most interested me about [Steve] Bannon was his avowed interest in esotericism and the occult. I knew he was influenced in his thinking by ‘Traditionalists’ like Julius Evola and Rene Guenon, who believe we are in the final, degenerate stage of the Kali Yuga before complete destruction and eventual recreation. Bannon is also a fan of the Russian Apocalyptic philosopher Alexandr Dugin, an inspiration for Putin, who promotes Moscow as the ‘New Rome,’ destined to win the final war against the degenerate American Babylon. We also talked about Ken Wilber and Gurdjieff, whose work Bannon knows well.”
The Great Clarification: “We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality.”