This is genius. Excellent framing of the issues. I wish I could remember how I even stumbled on your substack in the first place but this is a great essay.
I read a lot of articles that try to explain our current situation and I think yours stands out for its originality and insightfullness. Though I have come to a different conclusion I find much to admire in your analysis.
In my view the analysis leads to the black pill rather than the green. By black pill I mean acknowledging that old idea called fate. I don't see the green pill as an option because there is no solution, there is no progress, and there is no return. There is only a working out of the natural cycle as it inevitably expresses itself.
This natural cycle of civilizations has long been observed by writers of the past: from Polybius to Ibn Khaldun to, more recently, John Glubb in his excellent "Fate of Empires". The cycle is simple: success in war leads to wealth and power, wealth and power corrupts, decline and dissolution follow. We just think it doesn't apply to us, as I imagine all the others did before.
In your "Why The Right Always Loses" you describe this unfolding very well: "Technology leads to birth control leads to feminism leads to promiscuity leads to porn and isolation and single motherhood." All good but don't stop. This then leads to what? You see the inexorable logic of events, yet the green pill idea implies that at some point we can interrupt the process and "fix" it. If, however, you don't recoil from the abyss then you can see that the internal forces will play out as they must, as they are destined to.
Since we are well into the corruption and decline phase, the ideas that are currently most adaptive (i.e., reproduce the best) are the ones that help us pretend we aren't drowning in corruption and decline. All copium. Asking the kinds of soul-searching questions that we do (myself included) is itself a symptom of decline. Those that won the founding successes in the early part of the cycle didn't ask such questions; they acted and acted with absolute conviction.
I would add one last thing. I think the black pill is the start of wisdom, not the end of it.
I agree. Except the black pill isnt far enough. Once you realize that it’s always been like this and always will be like this, that there is nothing to lose because it was all already lost, there is a relief and the blackpill becomes a white pill. Rome fell. And yet here we are. The US will fall. And yet here we are. You are now free to stop worrying about saving the west or whatever big giant uncontrollable problem you are worried about and finally start focusing on things you can control. Macro things will happen as they do whether you do anything or not. You will suffer. We all will. Everyone will forever. But It is like gravity. Are you constantly blackpilled that you cannot fly? No. You just accept it as a law of reality. Acceptance of how things are is the first step to tolerating existence. As it is the first step to finding something useful thats makes your suffering worth it.
Very good. I like that path: from Red to Black to White. Not an easy path, then again why should we expect easy? I suspect those who can help others find what is worth it will do well. We already see a great demand for meaning and direction. Sadly, its almost all grift now but I think that may change. Look to those who are incorruptible.
"Until the latter begin to treat the lies with respect, until they take the green pill, we will remain in this downward spiral of degenerative retardation."
Are we really in a 'downward spiral of degenerative retardation'? Do you think society is actually more retarded than before? I'm not sure about that, most people have always been retarded and ignorant. Are you referring specifically to the increase of extremism in the left and the right? If this is the case I'm also not sure if it's something that's worse *now* considering even in the 20th century we had literal nazism and communism all over the place.
If you could further explain this point I'd be interested.
Something else I want to add: considering that the masses are and have always been retarded, the green pill as you call it is only reserved for those that have enough iq (90th percentile+) to think as you do, a high degree of emotional intelligence (I'm not even sure if that should be called intelligence but you get the idea) to admit they were mistaken for decades of their life (going from bluepill->redpill->greenpill takes decades), AND the necessary openness of experience(ox) to explore different ideas. This combination of high iq + high eq + high ox is *extremely* rare. You are literally 1 in millions. An outlier. The green pill is for outliers. It's for the 'few'.
If it's for the few how is this a solution to anything else but to help us understand and feel better about ourselves and the world? I say this because in the end you present the green pill as a solution, but a solution to what? We have no say or power over the masses or even the institutions, unless we become extremely powerful individuals (which may be your intention for all I know), and I even wonder, does an extremely powerful individual actually has any real power over how the masses think and work? If the blue/red pill dichotomy is the natural way our society function, then it means that it's impossible to change. It's just how it works. What do you think about this?
>Do you think society is actually retarded than before
Not really. However
1. Most people do, particularly the ones who are actually smart enough to help me solve this problem, and you cannot influence anyone who you cannot empathize with.
2. We have certainly "thrown the bath out with the bath water" for the vast majority of implicit knowledge (non scientifically derived things like religion, meaning, low time preference social norms, etc) which is certainly hampering a massive amount of human intellectual capital. Moving the ball even a little toward solving the problem of how much time and energy people waste because they are depressed, aimless, addicted to cheap dopamine, etc is IMO the single most important problem that can be worked on (imagine what other problems we could solve if all the SD2+ boys were motivated to get up every day and do something useful rather than sit on their phone and argue about politics and coom)
>You are literally 1 in millions. An outlier. The green pill is for outliers. It's for the 'few'.
Yes. But the 1% doing this define the next millenium.
>I say this because in the end you present the green pill as a solution, but a solution to what?
This is chapter one in what could easily be several books. If you wish to solve a problem you must first figure out what the problem is. Figuring out what that problem is does not solve the problem, it is only the first step. The green pill is the first step. The purpose of these series is to get 1%ers to begin THINKING properly about these problems, so that we can then solve it. Step 1 is get us assholes even looking in the right direction. Step 1 will take me a solid year to get right. Step 2 is to figure out how to scale. That comes later.
I agree there's too much wasted potential, specially with "autistic" high iq people lurking on the internet, it's usually harder for them to find a place in society and they easily get trapped in endless negative loops.
Do you think the solution is through the free market? Do you believe in the sovereign individual idea? I feel like all/most political solutions and ideologies have been exhausted, I also spent a large amount of time reading political theory throughout my life, to finally realize that most of it is actually useless and non applicable, I've had serious conversations with respectable and knowledgeable marxist-leninists (a professor who defended it fervently), ancaps, fascists, anarchists, etc, I listened to their arguments patiently and with an open mind. But at the end there were literally no serious arguments for anything, there was always some fundamental problem with their ideologies, it was all a farce. I wanted to find what kind of society was the best one and the more just one, to then defend it, but at the end I realized they were all, like you like to say, fake and gay. (tangent: I wanted to do the same but with morality, to find the 'perfect' morality so I could follow it and then preach it to the rest of society. Obviously after reading several philosophy books I realized It was a futile effort, as impossible as finding the perfect political system to implement).
I know at this point it sounds like a meme because of crypto, but ultimately I've been drawn to the free market and technology as the only real mechanism for societal change, but not in a lolbertarian way, more like in a 'this is the only place were we can innovate and discover, mostly through trial and error and voluntary transactions, what works best for society, because the State and its representatives have become completely corrupted", I literally believe there is no other choice. Obviously this is not the case for every innovation or product (most are shit), it's not magic, I 'believe' and like the idea of what happened with the crypto-anarchists that ended up inventing btc, even if they had a political ideology, they *TESTED* it through the free market (which is a very effective mechanism to immediately destroy a useless product, service or solution) and That actually makes them different to all the other shitty ideologies that were tested through the use of force(the State) while killing millions, or that could never be tested because they are just impossible to implement. I suppose this is what you're referring to when you say "But the 1% doing this define the next millenium"...
>Do you think the solution is through the free market?
To some degree yes. I believe one of the few things we can be certain of is that Darwinian selection will always select the best survival strategies, and the free market is just darwinian selection applied to goods and services.
>Do you believe in the sovereign individual idea?
I think the conclusion of the sovereign individual is probably correct. Whether it is "good" or whether it is complete is another conversation.
>But at the end there were literally no serious arguments for anything, there was always some fundamental problem with their ideologies, it was all a farce. I wanted to find what kind of society was the best one and the more just one, to then defend it, but at the end I realized they were all, like you like to say, fake and gay.
Correct. Top down never works. Top down is a by product of a bottom up; where the bottom with the right strategy rises to the top and then either enforces it or it spreads organically because it is such a better strategy. But all the shit we've figured out about reality in the last 300 hours have destroyed all our core foundations for justifying existence (thus post modernism) and nothing good will come from top down until this is fixed, and a new foundation is installed and then rises to the top. This is partly what I am working on. In the meantime, all you can do is try to find meaning and freedom and wealth in your personal life to offset the fact that we no longer have macro level justifiable reason for continuing as individuals, nation, or even species.
>crypto
I think crypto is definitely a decent way to make money for some (it's how i make my money). Whether most crypto projects will actually end up useful is TBD. But, as a Darwin fag, I support the experimentation. Bitcoin will almost certainly solve a huge problem and is probably unstoppable at this point.
TLDR: Build more, think less. Become happy, wealthy, competent, fulfilled, and free first. Only after the world has validated your strategies as actually useful and productive will you have any chance of solving the macro level problems you care about it, and will your contributions have any chance of not just making things worse.
This is genius. Excellent framing of the issues. I wish I could remember how I even stumbled on your substack in the first place but this is a great essay.
🙏
I read a lot of articles that try to explain our current situation and I think yours stands out for its originality and insightfullness. Though I have come to a different conclusion I find much to admire in your analysis.
In my view the analysis leads to the black pill rather than the green. By black pill I mean acknowledging that old idea called fate. I don't see the green pill as an option because there is no solution, there is no progress, and there is no return. There is only a working out of the natural cycle as it inevitably expresses itself.
This natural cycle of civilizations has long been observed by writers of the past: from Polybius to Ibn Khaldun to, more recently, John Glubb in his excellent "Fate of Empires". The cycle is simple: success in war leads to wealth and power, wealth and power corrupts, decline and dissolution follow. We just think it doesn't apply to us, as I imagine all the others did before.
In your "Why The Right Always Loses" you describe this unfolding very well: "Technology leads to birth control leads to feminism leads to promiscuity leads to porn and isolation and single motherhood." All good but don't stop. This then leads to what? You see the inexorable logic of events, yet the green pill idea implies that at some point we can interrupt the process and "fix" it. If, however, you don't recoil from the abyss then you can see that the internal forces will play out as they must, as they are destined to.
Since we are well into the corruption and decline phase, the ideas that are currently most adaptive (i.e., reproduce the best) are the ones that help us pretend we aren't drowning in corruption and decline. All copium. Asking the kinds of soul-searching questions that we do (myself included) is itself a symptom of decline. Those that won the founding successes in the early part of the cycle didn't ask such questions; they acted and acted with absolute conviction.
I would add one last thing. I think the black pill is the start of wisdom, not the end of it.
I agree. Except the black pill isnt far enough. Once you realize that it’s always been like this and always will be like this, that there is nothing to lose because it was all already lost, there is a relief and the blackpill becomes a white pill. Rome fell. And yet here we are. The US will fall. And yet here we are. You are now free to stop worrying about saving the west or whatever big giant uncontrollable problem you are worried about and finally start focusing on things you can control. Macro things will happen as they do whether you do anything or not. You will suffer. We all will. Everyone will forever. But It is like gravity. Are you constantly blackpilled that you cannot fly? No. You just accept it as a law of reality. Acceptance of how things are is the first step to tolerating existence. As it is the first step to finding something useful thats makes your suffering worth it.
Very good. I like that path: from Red to Black to White. Not an easy path, then again why should we expect easy? I suspect those who can help others find what is worth it will do well. We already see a great demand for meaning and direction. Sadly, its almost all grift now but I think that may change. Look to those who are incorruptible.
"Until the latter begin to treat the lies with respect, until they take the green pill, we will remain in this downward spiral of degenerative retardation."
Are we really in a 'downward spiral of degenerative retardation'? Do you think society is actually more retarded than before? I'm not sure about that, most people have always been retarded and ignorant. Are you referring specifically to the increase of extremism in the left and the right? If this is the case I'm also not sure if it's something that's worse *now* considering even in the 20th century we had literal nazism and communism all over the place.
If you could further explain this point I'd be interested.
Something else I want to add: considering that the masses are and have always been retarded, the green pill as you call it is only reserved for those that have enough iq (90th percentile+) to think as you do, a high degree of emotional intelligence (I'm not even sure if that should be called intelligence but you get the idea) to admit they were mistaken for decades of their life (going from bluepill->redpill->greenpill takes decades), AND the necessary openness of experience(ox) to explore different ideas. This combination of high iq + high eq + high ox is *extremely* rare. You are literally 1 in millions. An outlier. The green pill is for outliers. It's for the 'few'.
If it's for the few how is this a solution to anything else but to help us understand and feel better about ourselves and the world? I say this because in the end you present the green pill as a solution, but a solution to what? We have no say or power over the masses or even the institutions, unless we become extremely powerful individuals (which may be your intention for all I know), and I even wonder, does an extremely powerful individual actually has any real power over how the masses think and work? If the blue/red pill dichotomy is the natural way our society function, then it means that it's impossible to change. It's just how it works. What do you think about this?
>Do you think society is actually retarded than before
Not really. However
1. Most people do, particularly the ones who are actually smart enough to help me solve this problem, and you cannot influence anyone who you cannot empathize with.
2. We have certainly "thrown the bath out with the bath water" for the vast majority of implicit knowledge (non scientifically derived things like religion, meaning, low time preference social norms, etc) which is certainly hampering a massive amount of human intellectual capital. Moving the ball even a little toward solving the problem of how much time and energy people waste because they are depressed, aimless, addicted to cheap dopamine, etc is IMO the single most important problem that can be worked on (imagine what other problems we could solve if all the SD2+ boys were motivated to get up every day and do something useful rather than sit on their phone and argue about politics and coom)
>You are literally 1 in millions. An outlier. The green pill is for outliers. It's for the 'few'.
Yes. But the 1% doing this define the next millenium.
>I say this because in the end you present the green pill as a solution, but a solution to what?
This is chapter one in what could easily be several books. If you wish to solve a problem you must first figure out what the problem is. Figuring out what that problem is does not solve the problem, it is only the first step. The green pill is the first step. The purpose of these series is to get 1%ers to begin THINKING properly about these problems, so that we can then solve it. Step 1 is get us assholes even looking in the right direction. Step 1 will take me a solid year to get right. Step 2 is to figure out how to scale. That comes later.
Thank you for your answer.
I agree there's too much wasted potential, specially with "autistic" high iq people lurking on the internet, it's usually harder for them to find a place in society and they easily get trapped in endless negative loops.
Do you think the solution is through the free market? Do you believe in the sovereign individual idea? I feel like all/most political solutions and ideologies have been exhausted, I also spent a large amount of time reading political theory throughout my life, to finally realize that most of it is actually useless and non applicable, I've had serious conversations with respectable and knowledgeable marxist-leninists (a professor who defended it fervently), ancaps, fascists, anarchists, etc, I listened to their arguments patiently and with an open mind. But at the end there were literally no serious arguments for anything, there was always some fundamental problem with their ideologies, it was all a farce. I wanted to find what kind of society was the best one and the more just one, to then defend it, but at the end I realized they were all, like you like to say, fake and gay. (tangent: I wanted to do the same but with morality, to find the 'perfect' morality so I could follow it and then preach it to the rest of society. Obviously after reading several philosophy books I realized It was a futile effort, as impossible as finding the perfect political system to implement).
I know at this point it sounds like a meme because of crypto, but ultimately I've been drawn to the free market and technology as the only real mechanism for societal change, but not in a lolbertarian way, more like in a 'this is the only place were we can innovate and discover, mostly through trial and error and voluntary transactions, what works best for society, because the State and its representatives have become completely corrupted", I literally believe there is no other choice. Obviously this is not the case for every innovation or product (most are shit), it's not magic, I 'believe' and like the idea of what happened with the crypto-anarchists that ended up inventing btc, even if they had a political ideology, they *TESTED* it through the free market (which is a very effective mechanism to immediately destroy a useless product, service or solution) and That actually makes them different to all the other shitty ideologies that were tested through the use of force(the State) while killing millions, or that could never be tested because they are just impossible to implement. I suppose this is what you're referring to when you say "But the 1% doing this define the next millenium"...
I'll be waiting eagerly for the next parts!
>Do you think the solution is through the free market?
To some degree yes. I believe one of the few things we can be certain of is that Darwinian selection will always select the best survival strategies, and the free market is just darwinian selection applied to goods and services.
>Do you believe in the sovereign individual idea?
I think the conclusion of the sovereign individual is probably correct. Whether it is "good" or whether it is complete is another conversation.
>But at the end there were literally no serious arguments for anything, there was always some fundamental problem with their ideologies, it was all a farce. I wanted to find what kind of society was the best one and the more just one, to then defend it, but at the end I realized they were all, like you like to say, fake and gay.
Correct. Top down never works. Top down is a by product of a bottom up; where the bottom with the right strategy rises to the top and then either enforces it or it spreads organically because it is such a better strategy. But all the shit we've figured out about reality in the last 300 hours have destroyed all our core foundations for justifying existence (thus post modernism) and nothing good will come from top down until this is fixed, and a new foundation is installed and then rises to the top. This is partly what I am working on. In the meantime, all you can do is try to find meaning and freedom and wealth in your personal life to offset the fact that we no longer have macro level justifiable reason for continuing as individuals, nation, or even species.
>crypto
I think crypto is definitely a decent way to make money for some (it's how i make my money). Whether most crypto projects will actually end up useful is TBD. But, as a Darwin fag, I support the experimentation. Bitcoin will almost certainly solve a huge problem and is probably unstoppable at this point.
TLDR: Build more, think less. Become happy, wealthy, competent, fulfilled, and free first. Only after the world has validated your strategies as actually useful and productive will you have any chance of solving the macro level problems you care about it, and will your contributions have any chance of not just making things worse.
fd