Hyperstitions — the ability of humans to create their own future. But is this one genie we don’t want to let out of the bottle? There’s a word that has buzzed for years through futurism circles: hyperstition. The definition of which is roughly as follows: as superstitions are irrational fictions that humans create around things from latent fears or misunderstanding, hyperstitions are the logical extensions of that. They are preconceptions about the future, which are ‘self-fulling’; fictions that become reality, simply because we have subconsciously driven them into life by way of imagining them.
The past and the future don't exist outside of your mind. The masters of the universe in every field have failed us and have no clothes and feet of Clay. They keep proving their incompetence, mendacity and venality on a daily basis and still they exist and live in splendor while the lumpenproletariat plebes continue to bow down to them as they produce the the wealth they extract from from us while serving no socially useful purpose. If we continue as we have, the future is dystopia.
“…why is the pharisaical intelligentsia class, which makes up academia and the cultists of ‘Scientism’, always so keen on steering humanity towards some greater good, in their vision?” - an interesting way to explain this drive is proposed by Jan Patočka, Czech phenomenologist. He speaks of ‘Nadcivilizace’ - Supercivilisation, where vertical relations of previous civilisations (between humans and Gods) is replaced by horizontal - formal reasoning, the system of models, pretending to subjugate all other civilisations. In the Supercivilisation, all relations become interchangeable and hence manipulable. The most insidious part of this management of the world is ‘engineering of human relations’.
futurists (and most western elites) are typically full of s--t because they see the world (progress) as a line (linear) rather than a circle.
virtually everything is cyclical which is in part why the western world (usa/europe/etal) finds itself imploding having run out of road on its naive thelma and louise belief the road ahead is a continuation of the road behind.
like the dinosaurs and every other dead civilization western civilization never saw it coming.........they have run out of ....TIME ......yet still ever more feebly protest their efforts just need to be redoubled to succeed
The main problem is that mediocre intellects are now able to spawn and propagate trendy bullshit to bamboozle the masses and clog up information channels. People need to be taught how to understand their own and others' basic needs and not buy shiny stuff from strangers. I don't have any magic general solution for avoiding dystopia. It will either happen or not. Like every other species, we will eventually go extinct--perhaps tragically because of uncontrollable stupidity.
Living the last few spins around the blue marble, awakening. Hum, today? John Kerry….speaking to Uganda’s passing of the trans law….either economic or military sanctions are now headed their way. Leave them alone, last thing they need is more meddling from the woke. Stay the course🧡🔥🧡
What typically gets overlooked by the forward-thinking intelligentsia is the importance of knowledge that is dispersed through the system. They simply cannot accept that millions upon millions of locally made decisions will lead us to a better result than all of their central planning.
A major reason is the chaotic nature of global systems that they most seek to alter: the economy, and the climate. Their understanding of both systems is sadly lacking, and central planning in these fields is more likely to lead to the deaths of millions than any kind of utopia
By that, I mean I don't care what the PTB - or their critics - want to do. I intend to do what I want to do - and anyone who gets in the way of that better have good body armor or the 82nd Airborne on speed-dial.
I really don't have time for this level of "navel-gazing" and "post-modern analysis."
The future is going to evolve out of the actions of everyone and will not be directly influenced by the actions of anyone, left, right, up or down. And absolutely no one can predict the outcome at any given point, except on a very localized level.
Concentrate on your own possibilities for surviving the cyberpunk future that's coming and don't waste time considering "hyperstitions" - which is a made-up bullshit term with zero referent in reality like most o the terms used in social discourse these days.
I'll be blowing through this sort of thing over at "The Five Essentials" in the future, after I get past this bloody Ukraine crap.
Mar 24, 2023·edited Mar 24, 2023Liked by Simplicius
1. always stating that reason is to 'improve' things out in the future - but fail to act in simple transparent ways to fix current problems. e.g. Epstein ramifications.
2. read 'Confessions of an economic hitman' - quite clearly describes how evnts/history is created at a banal level, all the time, right now.
3. manufactured consumerism - yes, but as long as you had a choice not to buy a product you still had 'free will'. But the next, current level, is being mandated to take an injection or wear a mask....or take out insurance for various reasons. You are compelled to consume, choice is not a factor.
4. worse, is the 'shaping the battlefield' approach of, for example, making people sick in order to then sell treatment (never a cure).
5. has this been covered way back by Asimov's 'Foundation' series - psychohistory?
6. re. intelligentsia - world is populated by naive 'do gooder' types, who still believe the system works and pitch-in to do-the-right-thing. Feckless do-gooders have done more harm to society, collectively, than the mafia IMO.
Sorry to be so negative, but another thought provoking article.
I cant quite put my finger on it, but the overlap among the rainbow ideologues, the covidians, the climate taliban, the permanent bureaucracies, and of course the legacy media...I'm not sure how they all feed off each other but they all seem to be inexorably driving things in one direction. And most of us are powerless to resist, aside from turning inwards in some hermetic defiance
There is a common undercurrent among the elements of the new priesthood. This, I perceive, stems from the fundamental idea that reality stems primarily from the human mind and not from an external observer.
In other words, the rabid emphasis on narratives hemming us in is not an exercise of social battlefield shaping, nor of narcissistic habitual lying, nor of calculated self-defense; but it is literally the point: belief in the narrative creates a new reality. Obviously, a new reality that benefits the narrative-creator.
It is, if you will, the logical extension of Karl Rove's sinister quote: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The idea of fervent belief in a lie--accompanied by the right actions, creating a different reality is of course not new. We even have a word for it: sorcery.
A thought-provoking essay indeed! There's one aspect to this which deserves a closer look. Yes, the intelligentsia - certainly ever since the Bolshevik revolution - regard themselves as the obvious drivers of 'progress', of showing the benighted masses where to go and how to go to reach the fabulous sunny uplands of eternal happiness and equality. However, more than ever before they have lost touch with the people, the masses which they proclaim they're guiding.
They have forgotten that 'politics is downstream from culture' - pop culture, that is, as Andy Breitbart said all these many years ago. Thus, while the intelligentsia and academe wallows in celebrating AI, we the peasants have already been there and rejected it. Think of films like The Matrix or Robocop. Meanwhile, people are reading 'foreign sci-fi' pop literature, e.g. (look up the words) 'wuxia' and 'xianxia' novels which are about single people becoming powerful through hard work on themselves. I find this trend very interesting indeed, deserving of more analysis. The more western 'thing' is called 'LitRPG', involving overarching AI systems which drive single people to develop themselves, by their own efforts.
This is a trend overlooked by academe and the scientistic intelligentsia because it's 'only pop' and beneath them. I think it's a prospective counterweight to their overarching ideas of making us into willing lemmings.
Societal progress can be defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs where your society allows the most people to the self realization level, whatever that means, perhaps writing a book. The irony is that our rulers intend to take us back down to the bottom with war and plague. I worry they worry about something more dire in our future. Many say we are due for a cataclysm. I'm not the "end of the world is coming" type, but that is what our techno rulers are acting like with their united, world-wide efforts to depopulate us (agreed to by the United Nations?) What if our end is in fact dystopian, and the metaverse run by AI is the best they can imagine.
A wonderful essay, providing valuable information and discussion, as always.
"Techno-Pharisee" is an unfortunate phrase, identifying hyperstition with Judaism. The illustrations/images make this exact identification, in a crude Elders of Zion fashion.
A better illustration of the agents of hyperstition would be the scientists of the floating island of Laputa (Gulliver's Travels, Book 3), able to rule and punish the peasants below via advanced technologies.
Speaking of religion, what is the fate of religion in the age of hyperstition? Christian theology defers the ultimate Kingdom to a later age, but the Kingdom is always immanent (as St. Paul says) in love, truth, and understanding, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Of course the capitalists are very artful in commoditizing and etiolating (thanks, Simplicius!) the Kingdom.
Russia presents an important iteration of the relationship of religion and nationalism in culture. the Russian revival reminds me of the revival of Catholicism in Poland during Solidarity movement, a movement that has had long-lasting positive effects in Poland, but is increasingly marginalized by Euro-elites. I don't know how much the Orthodox revival in Russia is religious and how much is nationalism.
In the U.S., the narrativists are increasingly marginalizing trsaditional religion by using a broad brush to paint it as "Christian nationalism." The reality is the opposite. In the past, U.S. Christians were hopeful about the promise of the U.S. as a Christian nation, but that hope withered quickly among most Christians during the Obama years. Many denominations, flailing about for a purpose, exist now to advance a hyperstitional agenda, and the membership is dropping quickly. In my denomination, weekly service attendance is projected (by seminary faculty) to drop from a high of 3.5 million in 1985 to 50,000 in 2035. That 2035 number is probably an optimistic one.
I’ve been working with expanding the concept of ‘ugly progress’ given to us by Du Bois. If you haven’t read or listened to chapter four (I believe) from The Souls of Black Folk, run don’t walk to its content.
Indeed.
The past and the future don't exist outside of your mind. The masters of the universe in every field have failed us and have no clothes and feet of Clay. They keep proving their incompetence, mendacity and venality on a daily basis and still they exist and live in splendor while the lumpenproletariat plebes continue to bow down to them as they produce the the wealth they extract from from us while serving no socially useful purpose. If we continue as we have, the future is dystopia.
“…why is the pharisaical intelligentsia class, which makes up academia and the cultists of ‘Scientism’, always so keen on steering humanity towards some greater good, in their vision?” - an interesting way to explain this drive is proposed by Jan Patočka, Czech phenomenologist. He speaks of ‘Nadcivilizace’ - Supercivilisation, where vertical relations of previous civilisations (between humans and Gods) is replaced by horizontal - formal reasoning, the system of models, pretending to subjugate all other civilisations. In the Supercivilisation, all relations become interchangeable and hence manipulable. The most insidious part of this management of the world is ‘engineering of human relations’.
futurists (and most western elites) are typically full of s--t because they see the world (progress) as a line (linear) rather than a circle.
virtually everything is cyclical which is in part why the western world (usa/europe/etal) finds itself imploding having run out of road on its naive thelma and louise belief the road ahead is a continuation of the road behind.
like the dinosaurs and every other dead civilization western civilization never saw it coming.........they have run out of ....TIME ......yet still ever more feebly protest their efforts just need to be redoubled to succeed
The main problem is that mediocre intellects are now able to spawn and propagate trendy bullshit to bamboozle the masses and clog up information channels. People need to be taught how to understand their own and others' basic needs and not buy shiny stuff from strangers. I don't have any magic general solution for avoiding dystopia. It will either happen or not. Like every other species, we will eventually go extinct--perhaps tragically because of uncontrollable stupidity.
Living the last few spins around the blue marble, awakening. Hum, today? John Kerry….speaking to Uganda’s passing of the trans law….either economic or military sanctions are now headed their way. Leave them alone, last thing they need is more meddling from the woke. Stay the course🧡🔥🧡
What typically gets overlooked by the forward-thinking intelligentsia is the importance of knowledge that is dispersed through the system. They simply cannot accept that millions upon millions of locally made decisions will lead us to a better result than all of their central planning.
A major reason is the chaotic nature of global systems that they most seek to alter: the economy, and the climate. Their understanding of both systems is sadly lacking, and central planning in these fields is more likely to lead to the deaths of millions than any kind of utopia
Let me clear: "I don't give a shit".
By that, I mean I don't care what the PTB - or their critics - want to do. I intend to do what I want to do - and anyone who gets in the way of that better have good body armor or the 82nd Airborne on speed-dial.
I really don't have time for this level of "navel-gazing" and "post-modern analysis."
The future is going to evolve out of the actions of everyone and will not be directly influenced by the actions of anyone, left, right, up or down. And absolutely no one can predict the outcome at any given point, except on a very localized level.
Concentrate on your own possibilities for surviving the cyberpunk future that's coming and don't waste time considering "hyperstitions" - which is a made-up bullshit term with zero referent in reality like most o the terms used in social discourse these days.
I'll be blowing through this sort of thing over at "The Five Essentials" in the future, after I get past this bloody Ukraine crap.
1. always stating that reason is to 'improve' things out in the future - but fail to act in simple transparent ways to fix current problems. e.g. Epstein ramifications.
2. read 'Confessions of an economic hitman' - quite clearly describes how evnts/history is created at a banal level, all the time, right now.
3. manufactured consumerism - yes, but as long as you had a choice not to buy a product you still had 'free will'. But the next, current level, is being mandated to take an injection or wear a mask....or take out insurance for various reasons. You are compelled to consume, choice is not a factor.
4. worse, is the 'shaping the battlefield' approach of, for example, making people sick in order to then sell treatment (never a cure).
5. has this been covered way back by Asimov's 'Foundation' series - psychohistory?
6. re. intelligentsia - world is populated by naive 'do gooder' types, who still believe the system works and pitch-in to do-the-right-thing. Feckless do-gooders have done more harm to society, collectively, than the mafia IMO.
Sorry to be so negative, but another thought provoking article.
I cant quite put my finger on it, but the overlap among the rainbow ideologues, the covidians, the climate taliban, the permanent bureaucracies, and of course the legacy media...I'm not sure how they all feed off each other but they all seem to be inexorably driving things in one direction. And most of us are powerless to resist, aside from turning inwards in some hermetic defiance
There is a common undercurrent among the elements of the new priesthood. This, I perceive, stems from the fundamental idea that reality stems primarily from the human mind and not from an external observer.
In other words, the rabid emphasis on narratives hemming us in is not an exercise of social battlefield shaping, nor of narcissistic habitual lying, nor of calculated self-defense; but it is literally the point: belief in the narrative creates a new reality. Obviously, a new reality that benefits the narrative-creator.
It is, if you will, the logical extension of Karl Rove's sinister quote: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The idea of fervent belief in a lie--accompanied by the right actions, creating a different reality is of course not new. We even have a word for it: sorcery.
A thought-provoking essay indeed! There's one aspect to this which deserves a closer look. Yes, the intelligentsia - certainly ever since the Bolshevik revolution - regard themselves as the obvious drivers of 'progress', of showing the benighted masses where to go and how to go to reach the fabulous sunny uplands of eternal happiness and equality. However, more than ever before they have lost touch with the people, the masses which they proclaim they're guiding.
They have forgotten that 'politics is downstream from culture' - pop culture, that is, as Andy Breitbart said all these many years ago. Thus, while the intelligentsia and academe wallows in celebrating AI, we the peasants have already been there and rejected it. Think of films like The Matrix or Robocop. Meanwhile, people are reading 'foreign sci-fi' pop literature, e.g. (look up the words) 'wuxia' and 'xianxia' novels which are about single people becoming powerful through hard work on themselves. I find this trend very interesting indeed, deserving of more analysis. The more western 'thing' is called 'LitRPG', involving overarching AI systems which drive single people to develop themselves, by their own efforts.
This is a trend overlooked by academe and the scientistic intelligentsia because it's 'only pop' and beneath them. I think it's a prospective counterweight to their overarching ideas of making us into willing lemmings.
Thanks again for this essay!
Societal progress can be defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs where your society allows the most people to the self realization level, whatever that means, perhaps writing a book. The irony is that our rulers intend to take us back down to the bottom with war and plague. I worry they worry about something more dire in our future. Many say we are due for a cataclysm. I'm not the "end of the world is coming" type, but that is what our techno rulers are acting like with their united, world-wide efforts to depopulate us (agreed to by the United Nations?) What if our end is in fact dystopian, and the metaverse run by AI is the best they can imagine.
A wonderful essay, providing valuable information and discussion, as always.
"Techno-Pharisee" is an unfortunate phrase, identifying hyperstition with Judaism. The illustrations/images make this exact identification, in a crude Elders of Zion fashion.
A better illustration of the agents of hyperstition would be the scientists of the floating island of Laputa (Gulliver's Travels, Book 3), able to rule and punish the peasants below via advanced technologies.
Speaking of religion, what is the fate of religion in the age of hyperstition? Christian theology defers the ultimate Kingdom to a later age, but the Kingdom is always immanent (as St. Paul says) in love, truth, and understanding, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Of course the capitalists are very artful in commoditizing and etiolating (thanks, Simplicius!) the Kingdom.
Russia presents an important iteration of the relationship of religion and nationalism in culture. the Russian revival reminds me of the revival of Catholicism in Poland during Solidarity movement, a movement that has had long-lasting positive effects in Poland, but is increasingly marginalized by Euro-elites. I don't know how much the Orthodox revival in Russia is religious and how much is nationalism.
In the U.S., the narrativists are increasingly marginalizing trsaditional religion by using a broad brush to paint it as "Christian nationalism." The reality is the opposite. In the past, U.S. Christians were hopeful about the promise of the U.S. as a Christian nation, but that hope withered quickly among most Christians during the Obama years. Many denominations, flailing about for a purpose, exist now to advance a hyperstitional agenda, and the membership is dropping quickly. In my denomination, weekly service attendance is projected (by seminary faculty) to drop from a high of 3.5 million in 1985 to 50,000 in 2035. That 2035 number is probably an optimistic one.
I’ve been working with expanding the concept of ‘ugly progress’ given to us by Du Bois. If you haven’t read or listened to chapter four (I believe) from The Souls of Black Folk, run don’t walk to its content.
Brilliant. "The arc of the universe bends toward justice," and all that bullshit.