Mr. Moldburg and the Eye of Thiel

A Land Darkly

Sadie Plant

an emblem designed by the Ccru

Mark Fisher

Crowley

Conclusions





Let us then return to the quote that opens this piece, which concerns emerging AI as being something akin to the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft's fiction. This is a notion that Nick Land has been prophesying about since roughly the mid-1990s. But is this something that we should really be concerned about? After all, Land is still largely a fringe figure.





Peter Thiel, however, is not. And while Thiel has never been directly linked to Land, he has certainly supported other such fellow travelers, as was noted above. And this raises some truly disturbing prospects.









Robert Mercer These men are a far cry from the Christian fundamentalists who are often associated with the far right, and arguably far more unsettling. After all, men like Thiel and Mercer have the resources and potentially the inclination to bring about the post-human future envisioned by men like Land. This is precisely why I find many of the scientific-related revelations concerning Epstein so unsettling. The scientific community is often seen as progressive and forward looking. This is especially true of the tech sector. And yet William Shockley , the alleged inventor of the transistor (which essentially laid the foundation for the modern computer revolution), dedicated much of his later life to the rehabilitation of eugenics (noted before here ). Thiel himself made his fortune investing in tech companies such as PayPal and Facebook . He is now one of the principal patrons of the alt-right, along with hedge fund manager Robert Mercer . Before delving into finance, Mercer was a computer scientist who worked for IBM for decades. As I noted before here , he contributed to the development of AI in this capacity.These men are a far cry from the Christian fundamentalists who are often associated with the far right, and arguably far more unsettling. After all, men like Thiel and Mercer have the resources and potentially the inclination to bring about the post-human future envisioned by men like Land. This is precisely why I find many of the scientific-related revelations concerning Epstein so unsettling.





My concern with this piece, however, is with Lovecraft's influence on the Dark Enlightenment, and that is nowhere more evident that with the movement's other founder, former Warwick University professor Nick Land. While Yarvin may have been the originator of NRx, it was Land who elevated it to the level of a true philosophy. This is hardly surprising, given Land's background as a philosophy professor.During his time at Warwick, Land became involved with a student-run research group dubbed the " Cybernetic Culture Research Unit " (Ccru). This peculiar group was established in October of 1995, when self-described " cyberfeminist Sadie Plant joined the faculty at Warwick. Land co-founded the Ccru with Plant and several others. Its relationship with Warwick was always rather ambiguous, however. It was active on the campus between 1995 and 1997, but was officially shuttered after Plant resigned her post in '97. At the time, some school officials claimed the Ccru never even existed It continued on, in some form or another, for at least six additional years. Land had resigned from Warwick himself by '98, and would continue the group in a room above the Leamington Spa Body Shop for a few more years. Drugs had always been a major influence on the group, but by this point in time they had become epidemic. As such, the post-Warwick Ccru has been described as "quasi-cultish, quasi-religious." This is hardly surprising, given its pursuits. The Ccru's purpose was to study a host of arcane topics --French philosophy (especially of the Deleuzian school ), jungle music , science fiction (unsurprisingly, cyberpunk was a huge influence, especially Gibson 's Neuromancer ), cryptography , the occult (the group was especially fond of the kabbalah and Crowley , who was born in the same city that Warwick University is located in), rave culture cybernetics , and, of course, Lovecraft. From this heady brew emerged a cyber-age version of " Accelerationism ."First conceived of by French philosophers in the wake of May of '68 , the Ccru laid the foundation for the popularization of this particular philosophy in the English speaking world during the twenty-first century. The Ccru's version of accelerationism essentially called for the rapid speeding up of capitalism and technology in equal measures. In theory, this would lead humanity towards some type of techno-utopia resembling notions of the Singularity . By unleashing capital, silly relics of the past such as national borders could be dissolved. This would, in theory, release human potential and speed up technological advances. Ominously, some proponents believed that this would eventually liberate human potential from the human form all together Land certainly subscribed to these beliefs. As I noted before here , Land had happened upon the notion during his Ccru days that capitalism was the creation of an artificial intelligence from the future, which in turn had used the market to gradually assemble itself over the centuries. This would end with the glorious usurpation of humanity by this new intelligence. And Land apparently believed that we should be doing everything within out collective power to speed up this copious process. Whether this is still the case is unknown to this researcher, but he is still insisting on the similarities between capitalism and AI This was not the only strangest notion Land happened upon during this era either. At the height of the Ccru days, Land began heavily abusing "the sacred substance amphetamine" and subsisting on little to no sleep. During his final days at Warwick, he became known for amphetamine-addled lectures, which at times Land delivered while laying on the floor and accompanied by a jungle soundtrack. Eventually, he came to believe that he was being inhabited by various entities, which he dubbed "Cur," "Vauung," and "Can Sah."Predictably, Land had a breakdown by the early part of millennium. He disappeared from public life all together for a time, and relocated to Shanghai. Nor was he the only Ccru that danced to close to the flame. Many members would struggle with depression for years afterwards. One of the most prominent members, Mark Fisher , eventually committed suicide in 2017, reportedly over concerns that Britain had entered into "stasis." Throughout all of this, Lovecraft weighed heavily on Land and has continued to do so. Together with the Ccru troop, Land developed the notion of "hyperstition." Combining superstition with hyper, this concept is difficult to define. It has been described as that which is "equipoised between fiction and technology." In a sense, this is simply describing science fiction in its earliest incarnations. At least one former Ccru affiliate described Land's hyperstition as " quasi-Lovecraftian mythologies ." Reportedly , Land came to believe that theitself was being sent back in time from the future, piece by piece, beginning with its appearances in Lovecraft's fiction.Another concept that Land and his Ccru cohorts became obsessed with was the notion of " theory-fiction ." In essence, it help that the writing of theory could fictionalize and produce reality. Such a notion would have had quite an appeal in the '90s, when imagined cyberpunk futures were beginning to become the reality. Now, we're effectively living in a cyberpunk novel. William Gibson, in essence, took scientific theory concerning future technologies, fictionalized it, and provided a template for our present reality.The same could be said of Lovecraft, who was clearly more knowledgeable concerning the occult than scholars would have you believe . His fictionalized mythos, in turn, arguably did as much to mainstream the occult in popular culture as anyone, with the possible exception of Crowley. And Crowley himself frequently resorted to fiction to expand upon his theories.Naturally, Land himself has written horror fiction as well, and it is firmly in the Lovecraftian camp. He seems to have first taken up this interest during the late '90s, when he wrote. This work was allegedly the first time he rolled out the hyperstititon concept . His Lovecraft obsession has continued in recent works such as 2014's short storyand 2015 novella. Indeed, it would seem that when Land isn't championing the Dark Enlightenment, he is crafting neo-Lovecraftian weird fiction.