Actaeon Journal

This idea of future shock - the overwhelming of time and territory by the advance of technology – is the law of the last man, the delimited man. In his hands technology becomes something more powerful than culture, its character resembles civil war, the toppling of monuments, and the burning of cities. Time marches on against positions of defense, and each city has an underworld which can erupt to the surface at any moment. Technology introduces this force into every space, and in every moment one expects a total, final assault.

The levelling of territory and culture can only coincide with a shift in their laws, their conception. That one can no longer anticipate limits is demonstrated in the first skyscrapers, which are not so much a symbol of hierarchical growth as the enormous eruption of underworld forces and delimited space. As with the abutment of a bridge the city centers must equal the forces of expansion – the neutralisation of every last space of the continents.

It is inevitable then that the loss of classical spaces will also change man's view of his borders, which at the very least represent a limit or boundary. As with the form of war which mobilises a total force to take the smallest lines of territory, the new law of space demands constant incursions – grinding away at territory, not so much against the enemy but the thin line which marks expansion. The borders are a type of sharpened knife, which requires the wearing away of crystalline material to keep its shape.

Endless expansion and neutralisation can only create permeable layers, not territories. And this is final, until the world comes down upon the last man, making a terror of his private life. Where there is nothing of law and character in a land man himself cannot be distinguished from its qualities. The titanic man is at home in any land; and any other man in his.

The inability to keep 4chan on 4chan and twitter on twitter is a microcosm of borderless spaces.As with periods of apprenticeship and ceremonial service one should demonstrate their own path towards dominion before condemning the new laws of borders and spaces. If a single man cannot defend himself from the incursions of nihilism how can an entire nation expect a greater result?
There are enough examples that it would serve no purpose to point them out. Rather than herd instincts, today we have only what is left behind after the stampede and constant evacuation.

"For all the discussion about what the WEF can and can't do, think of them as analogous to the Roman senate. Here was a body of men with no official power, no formal sovereignty, and yet the Roman state always consulted them and all but did as they said. The Romans called this auctoritas, and our word is almost the same."


There can be no comparison between Auctoritas as a virtue and authority in the technical-historical sense, its spirit acts against the need for all commutative justice – the nomos precedes and surpasses the conflicts of the will. Authority in our time is precisely the opposite of the senate or judicial counsel, it negates and neutralizes sovereignty, each man wants to be consulted so that the mass may never be overcome by any power, no matter how great.


For the ancient world, counsel served a higher function than law, to say that the very body which decides sovereignty exists without it is to lose sight of the state. One overlays the past with the historical conditions of one's own time, which always leads to mistakes of this type. It is not that the economic is a form of elite power in our time, where economic and technological thought becomes the standard there is the total mobilisation of spaces to this new thinking – it is applied to all things, even the opposed forms to which the economic is an inadequate justification. This is not a hierarchical justification, but lateral. Economic valuisation supplants all previous orders, but it is also its own order, it is not only a weakening. A new race of men is being formed of its levelling power, its unlimited sense of space speaks to this – the entirety of the world is its frontier. And from such a perspective it may not be enough to speak of race, nor even the human species, but of a new genus of being.

Can we say anything of these figures that is like the old elites? One cannot imagine a Marie-Antoinette in our time, for even the greatest elite in our time is less than the old plebeians and lumpenproletarians. He is a figure which desires total annihilation, and to witness it in comfort – as if his creations were freed of his hand. Total autonomy of the technical apocalypse. He could only offer cake literally, and without any sense of taste – this is a true test for him of standing with the people. He too eats the insects, the processed sludge with the direct lineage of 'fast food'. Or he will at least make a show of it, which goes to show that political leaders are only comic figures – they point to what is a mere anomaly while we wait for the return to the fields of self-carving meat.

Here too we see that Libya, North Korea, and Hungary, all the smallest nations where a sense of nationalism and the old order held out, are exceptions. One cannot use their example as the order of our age, they stand apart from it either through chance or industrious effort of their own kind. The dictator is the exception of democracy, yet he is also its highest example. To revere the man, to uphold heroics of iron is not anything ancient in itself. This may only be a technical representation of the great men, while standing apart from how they saw themselves. Indeed, the noble individual was without self-pathos, he had no sentimentality for his own private force – this arises with decadence and its revaluation of itself as eternal.

A mistake of historical thinking overestimates individual power over his time; another its general forces and laws. Here, both mistakes are made together, and conflated into the pathos of a new conservatism. Man himself becomes "an exaggerated system of general causes," one who promotes deeds but not works. Ideas and institutions have moved the world, often to a greater degree than any man, even the greatest – this is particularly true in our era. This does not deny the man. For the democratic man is his own type with his own power. He too overcame the old ideas and institutions, and the great men who were predicted to win by the conservatives only served as a type of museum of state power.

Economy is only ever a dominant form of life in moments of crisis, of total collapse – and it is here that the theological qualities are revealed. This becomes confused to the highest degree in our time since the economic appears everywhere, but this is rather like the appearance of medical services after an accident, or field hospitals set up for great battles. The mass distribution of supplies, the frantic work of doctors and labourers crop up as types of armament and response to crisis, but tell us little of the crisis itself. Neither its meaning nor its judgement can be understood from the surface activity.

Today, such forces become more powerful than ever and the polarity between them creates an empty space where thought and sight are both abandoned. This too accelerates the crisis, as the responses become confused with all the other frantic activity. Here it becomes necessary to situate the crises within the world order, however impossible it may seem.

If we are to see the great events which begin the millennium there can be no doubt that those in power abandoned all previous laws and values. 9/11, the declaration of a permanent emergency, the nationalisation of the economy, economic collapse, establishment of the total intelligence institutions, and the beginning of a world war all reveal a world order dominated by military decision, escalation of conflict, and subterfuge of political movements. There is no possibility of seeing our economic condition without first recognising the total crisis.

And it is here that we see the collision of the imperial and domestic economies, the neutralisation of territories based upon distribution of emergency supplies. It may not seem this way in the domestic sphere, but one can look back to the image of the door-to-door salesmen with their shopping carts filled with junk. These street capitalists were no different from the homeless and refugees. This suggests a dissolution of identity which preceded the fanaticism of the new progressives, and total pauperism was the only possible response.

Here we see that the mobilisation of non-citizens serves two functions: first, in giving the new pauperism a sense of continued growth and progress. Second, in the total dispersal of the crisis away from the political. Just as the colour revolutionaries are a sort of forward unit of the neutralisation in foreign territories, the new progressives act as human shields within the social war at home. Both are a development from the partisan within the world civil war, they are a result of impossible earth forces, not their cause.

"As was already mentioned, the meaning of publicity and propaganda is understood by only a very few people. The public by and large sees only their business aspects and explains them by the rules of competition, the economic struggle which is conceived as part of the struggle for survival. But why is it that advertising and propaganda are marching apace with technical progress? Why is it that they are becoming the foremost exploits of that progress and spread all over the earth? Why is it that publicity experts and professional propagandists begin to practice psychology in order to increase still more the penetrating, insinuating, enchanting power of their claims? Finally, what is the greatest obstacle which impedes the success of these endeavors? It is simply that the promises are not credible, and that it is not easy to hide the large portion of humbug they contain. Hence that pasted-on, poster-like quality of these claims; hence also their invariable appearance as fillers of bare spots and empty places."

This helps us understand 'woke capital' better than anything else. The promises of capital were no longer credible to the average person, middle class and working class Westerners. To maintain the promises and hopes of bourgeois governance new figures were needed, and the simplest practise was to mobilise all groups previously outside of chance and promise. Of course, the occupations and general dissent also forced a second crisis upon the government, which accelerated the process into madness.
At the same time, the focus on refugee economics offered a level of enchantment, and displacement for a failing war. The collapse of empire can only be replaced by a dead mythology, to which the refugee offers the promise of return.

Herder's image of modern philosophy is an apt one. The philosopher's cave of retreat, his grotto, comes under attack. The common man surrounds all that he inhabits, and drives him out with explosives – seeing in the grotto nothing but a trench. It is worth noting the proximity to Nietzsche's methods here.
Philosophy as general education takes up the tools of the engineer and archaeologist. A great many things are uncovered, only to be deprived of the forced passage of light and shadow in the grottoes – all that is revealed is abandoned to the great open spaces, the blinding rays of the sun.
It is not only the cities that become museums, but nature itself. Before the Asphodel Meadows there are shadows, and behind it the blinding white light of what can only be forgotten by the sun.

Interesting discussion on leadership and legitimacy in democratic times. Do we stand for commutative justice or social plutocracy? One can discuss illiberalism, the sigma male, dedication to service and hierarchy all they want, it is meaningless without real world results. If nothing else there must be a strengthening of character and spirit.

Social media has the effect of levelling all ideas and action to the point that world leaders cannot be distinguished from the common man or strumpet – and as we have seen they are often one and the same. No amount of views, the most basic sharing of information, can amount to real engagement, and certainly not virtue.

Judgement remains central, there are simply far fewer today who are willing and capable. This, however, implies that our judgement and actions carry more weight than ever, with great comfort and ease the ruins are closer than ever. Physical ruins bring relief, opportunity – it is why democratic man is never far from them. Otherwise it may be said that the interim period which is modern times, that is the forestalling of all judgement, may be God's greatest punishment. God has retired, because only man can create immortal punishment.

To speak of virtue is cheap in a cheapened world, yet we must make our attempts. There may not be a greater virtue for us than the recognition of our defeat, that in the face of nihilism there is nothing but the illusion of the will. To overcome death is its own type of death; to overcome struggle is its own type of struggle. Nothing is left behind but the total figure, the total individual, the total organisation. Ruins can never appear to such a man, they would never be enough for him. Immortal ruination is one of his great values. Titanic man exists equally in the dance hall and the prison – every moment is to him the last.

As tempting as it might be to return to the oldest values, the original hierarchies, an impossible danger lies in waiting for us, we risk the tyranny of illusion, of virtues which only exist for the private man. Total representation can never be anything more than a type of ballot or economisation, and it is this that is mobilised by the new media. Communication technology increases in formation because its end goal is absolute consensus – a lone figure equal to the Leviathan in every way.

One of the great mistakes of revolutionaries is to assume weakness, decline. More than anything, man today exceeds himself, what he has created surpasses his capacities, his ability to control and temper what erupts of his hands. The simultaneous perfection and illusion of technology speaks to this impossible power, the material pf the technical world os little more than a vast system of measurement – as with the lines on a wall marking out a child's growth. To be a pessimist, a curmudgeon at the end of time, I must say that pedagogy, education can amount to little in the face of such power. Apart from the select few who are most certainly already chosen to succeed the apocalypse, little is to be learned. Our education can only be for this man, he who has endured the struggles of the last man and now exists in conflict with the ultimate man. No previous value system is appropriate here, or at least it cannot be merely transposed onto our time. Values have more weight, more destructive power than ever – even in their absence. So it is only appropriate that our education will have to endure the death of the Last Man, the ruins of a millennium which we are only beginning to witness.

Perhaps we are even facing a new myrieteris, which would only be appropriate for the end of history, the end of the species, the end of the Iron Age. Our education, our art then must search out the form of this new period of time. What shape, what new spaces will be forged by the hands of this dead yet still wandering man?

Victory demands the embrace of potential defeat.