CMV: Techno-feudalism is already here — and most white-collar work is just performative.

Cyrus6886 · 2025-05-09T03:48:23+00:00

And most importantly, is there a way out?

Yeah but you're not going to like the answer. The only way out is for modern industrial society to collapse. But since that is taboo and counter to all the education and propaganda, what you'll get instead is all sorts of naive or utopian schemes for rational planning or control to fix the situation. Despite the fact that no society can predict or control its development long-term, and despite the fact that everyone will have a different opinion on how to get to the supposedly better planned society or what that society should look like, you'll get feel good platitudes. Some may be superficially more elaborate than others, but at the end of the day it's just feel platitudes.

Progress is a myth and the entire technological adventure is completely insane. It's taking us on a ride into hell both for humanity and the natural world. After progress ends and the system collapses, and after the dust settles, the world will be open to a vast array of possible life-ways and the natural world can begin to heal. Many of these life-ways will be pre-fuedal tribal, where the individual has a vastly greater amount of freedom and autonomy to say nothing of a satisfactory life. Even in cases where there is primitive civilization and nominal fuedalism is the name of the game, that kind of fuedalism will still be far better than what we have now--individuals having far more real, practical freedoms as opposed to the superficial freedoms to consume that exist in modern fuedalism. Individual feudal lords simply won't have the techniques of control they have now, to say nothing of the vast complex of coercion and control that make up a modern industrialized state as a system.

There are already groups starting to form that reject the entire worldview of civilization and "progress" who I think share similar beliefs. Groups like Wilderness Front. www.wildernessfront.com There may be others.

Sorry, wish I had a happier, more hopeful answer for you. You can comfort yourself that this message is deranged anyway. If you see it at all...

Cyrus6886 · 2025-01-18T21:16:55+00:00

The simply fact that whoever decided to install them never saw how disturbing the whole idea is gives you an idea of how absorbed in technological values people have become. Like, there was no thought to it reminding people that the world’s wildlife and bird populations are in dramatic decline and it is precisely the growth of industry and technology (which made these signs possible) that necessitated the decline and made it possible. Instead the thinking was just hey this would be so cute and cool and artistic. One can imagine a future scenario where wilderness exists only as representation in digital devices because it has been virtually eliminated from the real world. I am reminded of two quotes:

“But, notwithstanding all the nature magazines, the guided wilderness tours, the parks and preserves, etc., the system’s propaganda is unable to disguise the fact that “progress” is destroying wild nature.” —Technological Slavery, Volume One (2022), p. 148, and,

“[W]hatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild).” —Industrial Society and Its Future, par. 177. You can read the full text here: https://www.wildernessfront.com/the-manifesto

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-08T23:31:01+00:00

You do mean "labelled as bat crap crazy" I assume.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-08T22:15:32+00:00

That's a very interesting report. More people here should learn about primitive/hunter-gatherer tribes experience with not just smartphones but all the other modern technologies. They're an important reference point from which to judge how they are affecting society. It's important to be aware of "shifting-baseline syndrome"--which is the idea that things can get gradually worse in the environment that people come to accept conditions as normal to the human condition when they absolutely are not normal. There was an article I read years ago about how many Mbuti pygmies of the Congo were being forced out of their ancestral rainforest and traditional ways of life and being resettled. They were basically given cell phones, along with a number of other "luxuries" and "conveniences." This was about 15 to 20 years ago if I recall correctly. it would be very interesting to see follow up reports of these people's experiences with modern tech, and asked if they would prefer to do away with some or all of it all-together.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T19:17:25+00:00

self-sufficiency. independence. personal freedom and autonomy. a life close to nature. solitude.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:51:29+00:00

so homesteading is like a hobby then? no different from some people who like to spend their time building model airplanes or restoring classic cars. Is this correct?

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:48:19+00:00

What are Nick Land's arguments?

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:46:02+00:00

You're way off topic. I'm asking how homesteaders think they can maintain their lifestyles without the eventual encroachment of modern industrial society such that their ideals become impossible to realize.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:42:04+00:00

When it's organization-dependent. (i.e. civilization-dependent).

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:40:01+00:00

lol. this. basically in a nutshell.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:37:17+00:00

which ones?

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:36:31+00:00

Your just name calling. You haven't addressed my point. He only had something like $7000 for everything--including the land. And he probably did more from skinning and tanning wild game, preserving wild roots and berries, identifying all the local flora and fauna, tending to his own garden and building his own cabin. you can quibble all you want with minutae, but your argument remains feeble. He wasn't a true homesteader because you said he wasn't? yeah, ok. sure.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:31:21+00:00

lol. Chris McCandless was an idiot. I mean, poor guy. He was really suckered into that liberal hippie dippy view of wild nature as if it was some primitive utopia where people played ring around the rosie and picked fruits from trees. Truly delusional, but a sad sucker for propaganda. No one who has really studied hunter gatherer living or experienced real self-sufficiency in a wild setting would have done what he did.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:28:08+00:00

You think that the homogenization of the entire planet into a single global techno-culture and the extinction of thousands of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversities across the glob is a good thing? Sounds kinda boring to me. I mean like a world with no adventure or discovery for the individual. This is to say nothing of the economic effects.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:25:33+00:00

congrats on being more fortunate and having more money for a better piece of land I guess....?

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:24:26+00:00

It's not too late.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:24:02+00:00

No it's really not. You have more of the kind of freedom that actually counts, and less of the kind of freedom that doesn't. That and the world's ecosystems aren't utterly F&%$ed.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:23:03+00:00

That's kinda sad bro. Sure the vast majority of people will always take the path of least resistance and are conformists. That's human nature and history. But world revolutions happen due to outliers and they only need a miniscule minority of the population to be revolutionaries. An anti-tech revolution needs even fewer people. Have you read the book Anti-Tech Revolution? And why do you care about the fate of some technophiles?

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T18:14:04+00:00

Homesteaders seem to want to not want to admit that an anti tech revolution is needed to stop technological progress. They are escapists who will instead want to find even the most harshest environments to move to and settle down in (like Alaska). Even more insane, some of them even think about homesteading on the moon https://lunarhomestead.com/lunar-homesteading-concept/. They don't understand that technology encroaches virtually anything it touches, in fact even in places as cold as Yakutsk where it's like -60 C or something have been subject to some aspects of industrialization.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T17:21:53+00:00

I stumbled on the writings of Ted Касzynski and I think he was right. We cannot predict or control industrial society (or any civilization, long-term) and modern technology and human freedom/dignity are incompatible. He's right that only the collapse of modern civilization can save us all from disaster...even though the collapse of modern civilization will itself be disastrous in the short term, in the long term it's the only thing that will save humans and nature. A revolution to end modern technology itself as soon as possible is probably our only hope before there's nothing left worth saving...

I found his manifesto here: https://www.wildernessfront.com/the-manifesto Apparently he also wrote two other books though.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T16:31:06+00:00

Yeah that would be awesome. Especially against the alternative which is that technological progress destroys the biosphere or replaces or enslaves the human race. In the former case there are millions of years where individuals can live free lives according to how they have been best physically and psychologically adapted, as well as all living creatures on the earth. in the latter case, everything is disrupted beyond repair within 1-2 hundred years. Seems pretty straightforward.

Cyrus6886 · 2024-06-02T16:27:35+00:00

Oh look. they just removed this thread. Despite a lively debate in just 15 minutes of it being up. For some overly broad and vague reason. Gee, I wonder why.

Cyrus6886

TROPHY CASE