NOTE FROM EDWARD: Greetings, internet friends. A deep-dive into the Tucker-Putin interview will be published next week. Until then, here is an interview with unapologetic pessimist Marshall Lentini, who argues that technology (and other things) are leading us to certain doom.
Have a nice Friday and see you on Sunday for the world-famous weekly news roundup & open thread. — Riley
“Every realistic assessment of the future that is not rigorously cheerful, or does not at least contain a ‘hail Mary’ coda, is dismissed as ‘doom-and-gloom’.” So writes friend of the blog Marshall Lentini — once described as “the dark lord of pessimism” — in his new book, Civilization Cannot Be Perfected. Pick up a copy on Amazon; the perfect Valentine’s gift for your special someone.
Channeling the great skeptical tradition of Gorgias of Leontinoi, Cārvāka, Jean Meslier, the Baron d’Holbach, Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche, Lentini’s thesis could be paraphrased as, “You’ve watched too many Disney films and now your brain can’t process the reality that we’re spiraling into the abyss.”
Or if you’re more of a visual learner:
After being gifted a digital copy of Lentini’s 37-page treatise, I immediately Ctrl + F’d for “BRICS will fix this”, which returned zero results. Despite the glaring hole in Lentini’s argument, I decided to humor him with a few questions.
Mr. Lentini, hello. Your book argues civilization is an “insolubly complex progress trap” that is doomed to fail. And a good day to you, too. Let’s start with the elements that sustain civilization and/or make it insoluble, and then we’ll address your main thesis, which I think is quite topical. First: Technology. This is a big one. What is technology and what role does it play in the development/Wagnerian implosion of civilization?
In the book, I assert that life and what I call the “technological arc of the species” are identical — that H. sapiens, and antecedent species such as H. erectus, are actually unthinkable without technology. There is no “man in himself”. H. sapiens is inextricable from its technologic arc.
By “technology”, of course I mean any tool exterior to man’s organism which allows him to harness or extract energy. So primitive technology, such as knapping and fire-starting, or even just throwing stones to scare off predators, onward.
And further, inasmuch as all life requires energy and thus must be selected for its ability to extract it, or disappear, one could say that life is also unthinkable without some “technique” of harnessing energy, i.e. that life and technology are identical.
I hasten to add that this does not mean I am a technophile. I can’t remember more than four or five keyboard shortcuts and would like nothing more than to bury myself in the woods and never come out.
And this is the problem with modern discourse, and I guess most discourse in all history — people expect that your argument reflects your values and preferences, which is logical; they don’t like when you argue something that doesn’t reflect your preferences, because it points to greater objectivity, and their own worldview stems largely from their preferences.
This theme of objectivity vs personal preference pops up throughout your text. For example, you write that Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab shouldn’t be viewed as villains or freaks, but rather as the “summation of technology — the capitalist become ideological, seeking to harness technology precisely to alter the trajectory of civilization.” Correct me if I am misreading you, but you’re basically saying Schwab and Gates are natural phenomena and moralizing about what they’re doing is like being grumpy at a caterpillar for completing all the stages of metamorphosis?
That’s such an elegant metaphor that I wish you’d come up with it before I put the thing on Amazon.
We all have a natural heuristic tendency to view things we don’t like as adventitious to existence — i.e. we focus on an entity or fact which irritates us and imagine that life would be better without it. That may be true, but of course we can’t think things away. If you hate wind, no matter how much you hate it, you probably have a feeling that wind is a necessary and natural thing, and that it simply must be borne.
Now, this isn’t true once we ascend the scale to ideology proper. In ideology, one is free to play with entities at will — adding or subtracting them and arriving at a picture of the world which the ideologues believes more consonant with its will. So when critics of the Great Reset talk about Gates and Schwab, or white nationalists talk about Jews, or Jews talk about “Nazis”, and so on, it gives these selected entities the illusion of being adventitious to existence — the formula, if spoken, would be something like “if not for x, the world would be y”.
And yet, of course, a moment’s reflection would tell us that Bill Gates isn’t adventitious, but a consequence of the same historical trajectory as everything else. What he is trying to do isn’t “wrong”, it is logical according to the entire development of technology to this point. We might not like it, we might try to resist it, and it might not work out for him, but it isn't “evil” or “unnatural”, and if it weren’t one guy, it’d be another.
While we’re on the subject of technology and morality: Some of the liveliest intellects of our time have postulated that Moscow uses technology for social uplift and a brighter tomorrow, while the West abuses technology in a conscious effort to make everything terrible. Assuming this is true — and why would anyone assume otherwise? — this means the digital ruble will save civilization. Care to comment/unpublish your book?
Prison of two ideas, needless to say — our tech good, their tech bad. In the end, it’s all the same web of resource exploitation and world-scale tragedy of the commons. Can technology be used for good? It depends on what you consider good. The invention of synthetic fertilizer has fed and in fact created billions of people. It’s unfortunate to have to argue the rug out from under one’s own existence, but is life among 11 billion plus “long pigs” enjoyable? For how much longer? Do you want to be around for 13 billion?
“Do you want to be around for 13 billion?”— well, I’m not volunteering to cull myself so if I had the choice: yes? But since you brought it up, I guess I’ll ask: Is it correct to say you hold the view, “Malthus did nothing wrong”?
This glib refrain over the last century that “Malthus was wrong” is so uninformed and retarded I hardly know where to begin.
Wrong about what? That population increases exponentially while the food supply increases arithmetically? At the time he wasn’t wrong. It was only after the Haber-Bosch Process and the Green Revolution that food production also became exponential — result: world population went from 2 to 9+ billion in seventy years.
I believe it’s more than that now, but I’m not an expert. And although growth has flattened, that leaves population momentum, which means it’s still growing, just not at an exponential rate — so the problem obviously remains and there must be a reckoning, because land, fertilizer and food will never be unlimited.
If you believe they are unlimited, you’re simply insane.
And if they were unlimited, do we want even more billions of people? You see the problem.
It’s funny that relentless techno-optimist Bill Gates, even, has proclaimed Malthus to be “wrong”, even as he was buying all the farmland in the US. If that isn’t a hedge, what is it — he just loves to have productive land for its own sake? Come on.
Let’s return to Klaus. You claim that the Great Reset has been “modestly successful” but has run into difficulties. I’m interested to know why. But first: how would you define the Great Reset?
First, let’s agree that the Reset, as envisioned in Schwab’s book of the same title — published, let me remind everyone, a few months after the “pandemic” was declared — has either failed or is preparing for a next phase, so my definition will sound superannuated.
In the book, I define it as a “reshuffling of the global portfolio”, i.e. a way to more closely manage global resources. This is why they call themselves “stakeholders”. I’m not sure if the architects or “stakeholders” have ever thought of it in those terms, but I don’t think they would be opposed.
But not only is it obvious that that is the point of the thing, I also assert that it was inevitable — the advent of things like the League of Nations, the EU, and a technocratic elite made it inevitable that elites would get together, notice problems with the global tragedy of the commons, and ask themselves a simple question: What can we do about it?
The form their answer has taken, colored by “liberalism”, doesn’t please us, but that’s what it is in essence. One could even appreciate it — if there is going to be a collapse because a) resources will run out and “free energy” isn’t going to save us and b) no civilization, however big and impressive, can last forever, then why not an elite concerned with forestalling the worst? Pseudo-vaccines and lockdowns aren’t how I would do it, but whatever.
Pseudo-vaccine? Excuse me. I think you mean “safe and effective miracle of expedited science”. Speaking of which: You described the Worldwide Vax Drive as “the ultimate submissive ritual in an age of impending collapse; the holy wafer of the technocratic age”. So the clot-shot represents blind devotion to our techno-overlords? I feel like a lot of people who lined up for their genetic slurry didn’t think too hard about it; they just did what their Screens told them to do. But I guess that’s the technocratic age?
Did they think when they were lining up for the body of Christ? I’m sure some did, most didn’t — the usual Pareto principle division. It’s just bandwagon effect, pretty much everywhere. I don’t think it was Screens so much as Neighbors. Peer pressure, herding should not be underestimated as a major force in mammalian, and especially eusocial, life.
The pseudo-vaxx drive is unique in that it ranged a majority of the planet against you if you resisted — it wasn’t just your friends or family or community, but everybody at once. People internalize that and get scared.
In my mind I usually liken it to being a pagan when christianization took off around 500-900AD. Imagine everyone you know accepting this bizarre rite and talking about eternal life, Jesus and so on. Everywhere you went you found this, and everyone regarded YOU as the bad guy for not doing it.
(Note: these examples were absolutely not intended to irritate Christians.)
As Nietzsche said somewhere, those who resist this leveling process are going to be the strongest of all.
Let’s circle back, Jen Psaki-style, to the Great Reset. What is causing problems for Schwab & Co.?
As I say in the coda, it’s just a combination of human factors — too many variables in play for tight control of the global masses. The very migration these Swiss technocrats support is one of the main countervailing forces; if they won’t do birth control, they’re not going very far with anything else. At any rate, it introduces even more chaos into society, and a chaotic society isn’t going to look like Singapore. And, you know, even in China people cracked and tried to revolt. That doesn’t mean the authorities can’t or won’t get more oppressive, and I believe they will, but it will hasten the coming energic breakdown and obviously won’t look anything like whatever utopia they — and the Kremlin, for that matter — are selling.
And maybe there is no master plan — maybe Schwab’s book was an ideological spasm that the human venality of the technocratic elite itself won’t live up to.
What about Putin’s shadow war against the World Economic Forum? You didn’t mention the shadow war.
This sounds like something Putin fanboys in the West just made up. If he opposes the WHO, all he has to do is say so. Why would he need a “shadow” war? Anyway, they did the so-called vaccines and lockdowns. I was there for that. Not as bad as many countries, but it didn’t look like a shadow war to me.
Well, you can’t see a shadow war. It’s in the shadows. Anyway … You claim modern discourse can’t be saved because it’s based on optimism bias and doublethink. The anonymous Twitter account with 1.5 million followers that files daily reports about the White Hats preparing a Supreme Court case against Hillary Clinton would strongly disagree with you.
I keep forgetting what these White Hats are. Anyway, yea. Haven’t you noticed that anytime you come out with a pessimistic thought people get uncomfortable, dismissive, even angry and abusive? That doesn’t prove the weakness of pessimism; it proves the weakness of those who merely believe.
I don’t consider myself a pessimist but on several occasions I have been severely reprimanded for not interpreting highly worrying events as secretly good developments that are part of the Plan. You’re not even allowed to suggest that things are precarious or ambiguous. That’s info-terrorism. But I digress. Here’s a question for you: According to NAFO, Russia is days away from total collapse. At the same time, according to Zanon, Ukraine will cease to exist in the very near future. Your book argues we’re all doomed — so doesn’t that mean Zanon and NAFO are technically correct? I’m trying to end this on a reconciliatory, Malthus-free note.
Definitely not tomorrow. This is another problem with ideological thinking — it tends toward immediate doomsday scenarios. “I don't like x, so it's all over / going to collapse tomorrow.”
And yet, paradoxically, it also tends to postpone the end when it wants to pretend there is still hope. “If we don't act NOW, then y will occur in z years.”
There are actually two ways to look at this. One is that no, these countries and civilization on the whole are not going to collapse tomorrow. Obviously. It could happen, but probably won’t. And if it did, it’s not as if everything turns to dust and people don’t try to pick up the pieces.
The other, far scarier and more obvious in my opinion, is that we’ve been on the collapse trajectory for a long time now, and are looking for an event horizon to latch onto, heuristically. In other words, we entered this slope at any arbitrary point one cares to select — which goes back to algal mats and before that, in the ultimate analysis — and must see it through without hope of salvation.
In that sense, “the collapse” has already occurred. There’s no sense engaging in what I’ve called elsewhere temporizing fallacy, i.e. projecting a fixed point in the future to avoid admitting that this was in the cards all along.
People don’t want to hear this kind of thing and that’s natural. All I say is that ideology is not reality. What’s real, fundamentally real, is the energic basis of society and civilization as a whole — and sustainable yields must and will bottom out.
Of course, smarter men than me (theoildrum.com, defunct) have concluded that we reached EROI a long time ago, for example, and we’re slowly seeing the effects. When an undeniable breaking point occurs is someone else’s guess. The point of the book is simply that we inhabit a reality of limits, that reality is limits, and only the metabolically cheap plasticity of the human mind allows us to imagine otherwise.
Alright, FINAL QUESTION: Your book is under 40 pages. Aren’t you skimping a bit if your thesis is that doom is preordained? My high school math teacher always said it was important to show your work. Otherwise, 10 points off the final grade.
I'm glad you asked (even though I asked you to ask).
First let me admit that it’s possible I couldn’t write anything longer if my life depended on it — I am neither so academic nor diligent.
But second, if you look at the subject, does it require a longer treatment? I don’t think so. If I hired someone, it could be loaded up with footnotes and figures and statistics, and what would it change? (If you want numbers, check out Mark Mortimer’s book Civilization’s Future — one of my main influences, obviously.)
Let’s say someone really academic finds that hypothetical book and is impressed. He writes a review and it becomes a bit famous. What then? If I’m correct, if my thesis is correct, nothing changes — civilization still cannot be perfected and we are still headed for collapse of some kind. “Proving” it is useless.
Third, this whole modern insistence on “proofiness” in writing is pure fetishism — gatekeeping for those given over to the cult. We can’t make reasonable observations, use plain logic to make assertions about the world unless we stuff our writing with parenthetical citations and footnotes?
Bullshit. It’s merely a way for the bookish to signal to each other – “Don't worry, I am also a slave to proof.”
Peer review was a good idea and I guess still has its place, but it’s also obviously taken over the very ability to advance an idea and be taken seriously. Fortunately, I don’t care. Read it or don’t, agree or don’t — it all comes to the same thing.
My feeling is that if anyone truly believes one is not allowed to advance an idea that isn’t totally absurd on its face, that at least sounds reasonable, without bowing to a bunch of other people and “sources” hardly anyone truly cares about because all they really want to see are those parentheses so they can feel safe, then they might have a problem, not me for keeping it brief.
Thanks for the chat, I think. Have a nice day?
CIVILIZATION CANNOT BE PERFECTED by Marshall Lentini. Kindle: $8.99; Paperback $12.00
Don’t forget to read and reread Edward Slavsquat’s previous interviews:
Moscow vs. Davos? Let’s ask Russian alt media (Anna Rudneva)
“Russian medicine is controlled by the WHO” (Dr. Alina Lushavina)
The fall from liberalism to global technocracy (Iurie Roșca)
“Peace” has become a dirty word in closely watched Czechia (Cecílie Jílková)
How’s life in rural Russia? We asked an expat villager (Ekaterina the village-dweller)
Russia’s neoliberal elites are thriving (Karine Bechet-Golovko)
The revolution will involve fermented cabbage (Gavin Mounsey)
I disagree with Marshall's reductionist, deterministic, mechanistic world view of the relationship between humans, technology and the natural world.
Destruction and degeneration are not inevitable. Humans are not inherently parasitic and extractive as this man implies.
Humans have the capability of either being takers/consumers (extracting from the Earth but giving nothing back) or givers (living within a web of reciprocal gift exchanges). Both choices can be observed in individuals in our lives and cultures throughout history.
Here are some examples of when cultures decided to use their genius, technology, horticultural/botanical knowledge and ecological literacy to define themselves as givers living within a web of reciprocal gift exchanges:
“Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Food Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History” https://www.proquest.com/openview/17597a179528716e1a9e8515ca76ec77/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Here is a video presentation that touches on some of the content in her dissertation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxRV44-wZ0
Some other examples of technology serving as a regenerative tool that fostered increased biodiversity, increased human habitation and permanent food production systems that do not require fertilizer:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ancient-indigenous-forest-gardens-still-yield-bounty-150-years-later-study
http://www.daviesand.com/Papers/Tree_Crops/Indian_Agroforestry/index.html
https://returntonow.net/2018/08/01/the-amazon-is-a-man-made-food-forest-researchers-discover/?fbclid=IwAR0-XsOZCldwRzlMG_mkBxxqqYAeZ90TAVEsO4nB-noboHGqX1TZS_nn0xo
https://www.sdvforest.com/agroforestry/the-fascinating-story-of-human-made-forests?fbclid=IwAR3OVHhCywwzOiCSBMWyk6_Bdy_q-GRRN2N7-525iqdnYmc_BqtKeyu6Wz4
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol26/iss2/art6/
https://canadianfeedthechildren.ca/what/food-security-projects/indigenous-food-forests/
https://www.sdvforest.com/agroforestry/the-fascinating-story-of-human-mad
Civilization is destruction and domestication. Collapse is not a bad thing. Probably it is the only way to defeat the system.