John Michael Greer has taken a hard right turn recently. If you decide to check out his work based on this interview, please do so with caution. While I find he has insightful things to say about ecology and the occult, he has a very reactionary set of politics and has become very cosy with elements of the alt-right. When I interviewed him he gave me a "black book of communism" argument against Marx. I was a bit too shocked that he went for this to respond. My attempts to point out the errors in his thinking have not been published in the comments section of his blog. I don't think he is open to discussion.
“Hard right turn” in modern newspeak such as “Rebel Bass” is using simply means that a person taken a position to the right of Michael Moore or Bernie Sanders.
@Wilbur Wafer "Hard right turn" in this case means literal Trump supporter, as Greer himself has openly stated on his blog (Honestly kinda saddening really considering Greer's beliefs would seem pretty much antethical to Trump's, but even that might not be so much the case given the stuff he's been saying recently)
I love JMG. It's cute to see all these new kids try to catch up with him. He's in his own little vehicle zooming along with stuff going by. Little nerds are trying to get a hand hold on the vehicle and can't seem to catch it.
Greer’s message reminds me a lot of the book Reign of Quantity by Rene Guenon, which is essentially a criticism of technology as both a symptom and cause of the increasing sacrifice of quality upon the altar of quantity
I just wanted to say that I do not agree with JMG about marxism. While I have my criticisms of it, 'marxism always leads to atrocities' is something I dealt with in my video on Peterson and marxism. I did not push back for reasons I can't articulate fully. Part of it is that I know that JMG advocates for a lot of things that marxists do (elements of social democracy that I brought up later) and partly because I have not read capital.
Well than with your obvious expertise please explain to me how Marx is Satanic. I mean where in Marx's writings does he make an appeal to Satan. If he is not Christian then he can only be Satanic in the eyes of someone who places faith in a specific religion over facts and reason. And if that is the case you are irrelevant. Do you have any idea how many Christian Marxists there are? How many people of various religions are Marxists? And I am speaking of Marx and not the dogmatic reductionist historical-materialism often passed off as the totality of his thought.
JMG - writes really awesome 'book subjects', but - do keep in mind... keep up with his 'fast responses' with another inquizative one... and it has to have a reason / purpose behind it. (( not much into Science Fantasy aspects --- more in the Historical Realm.))
23:56 Maybe they just don't have a brain. Maybe that's why they're so not human, because their overlords, the stupid alien predator is puppeteering them, and so you're not even dealing with a human to begin with. Get that through your comprehension, people, and then you'll be able to handle all of these situations MUCH better! (because you'll know what you're dealing with. The truth certainly does set you free. You see?) Hey, if you're not willing to take responsibility, if you're willing to fall under the wheels of greed, hate, envy, jealousy, lying, stealing, imitating, then you're going to be scraped up by the lower beings, the predators who will put you to use against your own self, and if you still don't learn, then there won't be much time or you left to learn. (In other words, you either learn to change your own diaper and keep clean, or you get dirtier and dirtier). There is a point where all that stuff deteriorates beyond use, beyond recognition. Ever heard of Cimmeria? You could call it a melting pot of consciousness without bodies, Mother's caldron of alchemizing useless energy into useful energies.
The snarky dismissal of the idea of progress makes no sense to me. I can see the argument of a constantly shifting moral sensibility that doesn't head in any particular direction. What I don't understand is how one can throw out the fact that there is a clear technological difference between humans in 20,000 B.C, humans living in Mesopotamia during the bronze age, the 1990s, and now. Yes there are horrific collapses of civilization. The Mongolian invasion of ... everywhere, Timur the Lame, the Black Death, the World Wars - they were all horrific and upended the respective civilizations that were effected. Yet food is abundant, humans today are the most educated than in all of human history, medicine keeps most of us (in "1st world" nations) living long lives. Are there injustices? Of course! Should we march, vote, and seek collective action to fix them? Yes! But things are *clearly* better. If you can't see why going into space is important, then I feel at a loss for words. The economic effect that something like Asteroid Mining or Nuclear Fusion will have is immense. It'll come with it's own problems, but we won't want for material goods for thousands of years. It just saddens me that progressives don't believe in building a future ...
At no point did me or JMG deny the vast amounts of technological progress humans have made. What we do question is the idea that it can keep going on. We also question how much longer we can maintain our current level of technology given the scarcity of resources. You point to the abundance of food, but that is currently made possible by our dwindling supply of fossil fuels. Industrial agriculture depends on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides made possible by fossil fuels. To say nothing of farm machinery and systems of (often climate controlled) transport that also rely on fossil fuels. Then you bring up fusion and astroid mining to try to suggest that we can keep using resources at our current rate. People have claimed fusion is just 50 years away for at least 60 years. Asteroid mining? The cost of asteroid mining would be astronomical. Why? Because the earth's systems provide resources that if we needed to bring them into space (to say nothing of the cost of fuel and other technologies) make doing anything in space four times more expensive than doing it on earth. I do believe in building a future. In order to do that we must abandon the fantasy that we can do whatever we want because we feel like it and instead look at what the earth will actually sustain. Daydreams about fusion and asteroid mining seem irresponsible as neither of these technologies have any kind of proven track record. So please don't talk about the benefit of something that does not exist outside of dreams. This reminds me of the people who claim that self-driving cars will be safer. I don't understand how someone can make a claim about the safety of something that does not exist yet. By that logic I can scold people for not believing in how awesome star trek replicators will be. If you really want to build a better future, start thinking about how you/we can make do with less energy. That will go much further than dreaming about asteroid mining and fusion power. If you really would like to preserve the advances we have made we must get rid of these fantasies.
John Michael Greer has taken a hard right turn recently. If you decide to check out his work based on this interview, please do so with caution. While I find he has insightful things to say about ecology and the occult, he has a very reactionary set of politics and has become very cosy with elements of the alt-right. When I interviewed him he gave me a "black book of communism" argument against Marx. I was a bit too shocked that he went for this to respond.
My attempts to point out the errors in his thinking have not been published in the comments section of his blog. I don't think he is open to discussion.
“Hard right turn” in modern newspeak such as “Rebel Bass” is using simply means that a person taken a position to the right of Michael Moore or Bernie Sanders.
@Nick Andrews I've taken a turn right since 2014. I still can't believe it myself.
@Wilbur Wafer "Hard right turn" in this case means literal Trump supporter, as Greer himself has openly stated on his blog (Honestly kinda saddening really considering Greer's beliefs would seem pretty much antethical to Trump's, but even that might not be so much the case given the stuff he's been saying recently)
@John Doe See above ^
@@jasonroberts2249 See above ^
I love JMG. It's cute to see all these new kids try to catch up with him. He's in his own little vehicle zooming along with stuff going by. Little nerds are trying to get a hand hold on the vehicle and can't seem to catch it.
Ah, but you're right there in the passenger seat next him, yeah. 'coz you really get him like the others don't. Wanker.
Greer’s message reminds me a lot of the book Reign of Quantity by Rene Guenon, which is essentially a criticism of technology as both a symptom and cause of the increasing sacrifice of quality upon the altar of quantity
Fascinating interview and very grounding. Thank you!
Great discussion. Thank you!
@52:00 into the video = fascinating viewpoint about Star Trek as a series, and it's Technology seemingly - too out there.
Brilliant!
Thank you.
I just wanted to say that I do not agree with JMG about marxism. While I have my criticisms of it, 'marxism always leads to atrocities' is something I dealt with in my video on Peterson and marxism. I did not push back for reasons I can't articulate fully. Part of it is that I know that JMG advocates for a lot of things that marxists do (elements of social democracy that I brought up later) and partly because I have not read capital.
Can you name an ideology that doesn't lead to atrocities?
Marxism is Satanic.
Well that is some stupid shit. Obviously never read Marx.
Obviously, you aren't well read or understand the full context or even sat down and looked around.
Well than with your obvious expertise please explain to me how Marx is Satanic. I mean where in Marx's writings does he make an appeal to Satan. If he is not Christian then he can only be Satanic in the eyes of someone who places faith in a specific religion over facts and reason. And if that is the case you are irrelevant. Do you have any idea how many Christian Marxists there are? How many people of various religions are Marxists? And I am speaking of Marx and not the dogmatic reductionist historical-materialism often passed off as the totality of his thought.
JMG - writes really awesome 'book subjects', but - do keep in mind... keep up with his 'fast responses' with another inquizative one... and it has to have a reason / purpose behind it. (( not much into Science Fantasy aspects --- more in the Historical Realm.))
Nice interview. Rome didn't fall in a day, exactly!
Its a travesty that John Greer is not more listened to.
Don’t worry, the aliens in their flying saucers will get involved at the last minute and save us from ourselves
An old crt tv really makes a lousy oscilloscope. Terribly limited bandwidth is just the beginning of its shortcomings
brilliant!
The historical cycle hypothesis is too simplistic of a model. History has a lot more complexity and nuance to it.
Map is not the territory. No model of the world takes into account even 1% of the complexity of the world.
37:00 Good points on Trump
23:56 Maybe they just don't have a brain. Maybe that's why they're so not human, because their overlords, the stupid alien predator is puppeteering them, and so you're not even dealing with a human to begin with. Get that through your comprehension, people, and then you'll be able to handle all of these situations MUCH better! (because you'll know what you're dealing with. The truth certainly does set you free. You see?) Hey, if you're not willing to take responsibility, if you're willing to fall under the wheels of greed, hate, envy, jealousy, lying, stealing, imitating, then you're going to be scraped up by the lower beings, the predators who will put you to use against your own self, and if you still don't learn, then there won't be much time or you left to learn. (In other words, you either learn to change your own diaper and keep clean, or you get dirtier and dirtier). There is a point where all that stuff deteriorates beyond use, beyond recognition. Ever heard of Cimmeria? You could call it a melting pot of consciousness without bodies, Mother's caldron of alchemizing useless energy into useful energies.
The snarky dismissal of the idea of progress makes no sense to me. I can see the argument of a constantly shifting moral sensibility that doesn't head in any particular direction. What I don't understand is how one can throw out the fact that there is a clear technological difference between humans in 20,000 B.C, humans living in Mesopotamia during the bronze age, the 1990s, and now.
Yes there are horrific collapses of civilization. The Mongolian invasion of ... everywhere, Timur the Lame, the Black Death, the World Wars - they were all horrific and upended the respective civilizations that were effected. Yet food is abundant, humans today are the most educated than in all of human history, medicine keeps most of us (in "1st world" nations) living long lives. Are there injustices? Of course! Should we march, vote, and seek collective action to fix them? Yes! But things are *clearly* better.
If you can't see why going into space is important, then I feel at a loss for words. The economic effect that something like Asteroid Mining or Nuclear Fusion will have is immense. It'll come with it's own problems, but we won't want for material goods for thousands of years.
It just saddens me that progressives don't believe in building a future ...
At no point did me or JMG deny the vast amounts of technological progress humans have made. What we do question is the idea that it can keep going on. We also question how much longer we can maintain our current level of technology given the scarcity of resources.
You point to the abundance of food, but that is currently made possible by our dwindling supply of fossil fuels. Industrial agriculture depends on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides made possible by fossil fuels. To say nothing of farm machinery and systems of (often climate controlled) transport that also rely on fossil fuels.
Then you bring up fusion and astroid mining to try to suggest that we can keep using resources at our current rate. People have claimed fusion is just 50 years away for at least 60 years. Asteroid mining? The cost of asteroid mining would be astronomical. Why? Because the earth's systems provide resources that if we needed to bring them into space (to say nothing of the cost of fuel and other technologies) make doing anything in space four times more expensive than doing it on earth.
I do believe in building a future. In order to do that we must abandon the fantasy that we can do whatever we want because we feel like it and instead look at what the earth will actually sustain. Daydreams about fusion and asteroid mining seem irresponsible as neither of these technologies have any kind of proven track record. So please don't talk about the benefit of something that does not exist outside of dreams.
This reminds me of the people who claim that self-driving cars will be safer. I don't understand how someone can make a claim about the safety of something that does not exist yet. By that logic I can scold people for not believing in how awesome star trek replicators will be.
If you really want to build a better future, start thinking about how you/we can make do with less energy. That will go much further than dreaming about asteroid mining and fusion power.
If you really would like to preserve the advances we have made we must get rid of these fantasies.
Aren't you being of "capitalist realism"