The Lovecraftian Cosmic Perspective is the horrifying realization that the interests of a natural, emergent Gnon overall do not coincide with those of man, and that man is vastly outgunned. The correct response to this knowledge is a sanity-cracking fear, followed by a frantic and blasphemous search for a way to defy or capture Gnon. A useful model of Gnon thus becomes a prime research objective.

Within Gnon in the context of sociological happenings here on contemporary earth, we can identify a few semi-distinct subprocesses, each with their own characteristic tendencies. Their sum is Gnon, but their individual tendencies do not always run parallel. We have given the most prominent of them names from various mythologies, to help illustrate and remember:

Azathoth. Death. Evolution. The blind idiot alien god that shapes our biological nature and guides our genetic destiny according to who lives and who dies. Contrary to popular belief, the telos of evolution is not progress to more “advanced” forms; it will ruthlessly twist organisms for a few points of inclusive genetic fitness, and abandon “important” features of an organism (eg. our intelligence) as soon as they stop being critical to fertility.

Cthulhu. Pestilence. Hosted Evolution. Memetics. Epidemics. The tendency for popular forms to be those most able to propagate themselves by capturing transmission institutions and getting repeated. Contrary to popular opinion, the “marketplace of ideas” does not select for truth and good, but virulence. Truth/good selection only happens if the mass idea-propagation systems structurally favor truth and good, which they often do not. The current result being that “Cthulhu may swim slowly, but he only swims left.”

Mammon. Famine. Capitalism. Techno-Economical Optimization. Production. When a form succeeds by exploiting a technological resource-use opportunity, that is Mammon at work. Thus we have an efficient and recycling biological ecosystem, and human capitalism has driven the creation of great works of technology. But Mammon will ruthlessly recycle forms not contributing to the cutting edge of production, including us, if it comes to that.

Ares. War. Conquest. Empire. Agricultural Civilization won not because it was “better” in our sense, but because 100 malnourished toothless peasants with sticks beats one of even the healthiest and best trained tribal warriors. War is computation with weapons, and the truth thus revealed is simply which sociomilitary group is stronger.

And then there’s us. Man has his own telos, when he is allowed the security to act and the clarity to reason out the consequences of his actions. When unafflicted by coordination problems and unthreatened by superior forces, able to act as a gardener rather than just another subject of the law of the jungle, he tends to build and guide a wonderful world for himself. He tends to favor good things and avoid bad, to create secure civilizations with polished sidewalks, beautiful art, happy families, and glorious adventures. I will take it as a given that this telos is identical with “good” and “should”.

Thus we have our wildcard and the big question of futurism. Will the future be ruled by the usual four horsemen of Gnon for a future of meaningless gleaming techno-progress burning the cosmos or a future of dysgenic, insane, hungry, and bloody dark ages; or will the telos of man prevail for a future of meaningful art, science, spirituality, and greatness?

Shifts in power between competing components of Gnon are nothing new, and neither is the view that the triumph of man in this struggle is possible and desirable. The Enlightenment, which previously took this position, failed, but the lesson of the 20th century is not that the goal was bad, but that we were naive and that this is harder than we thought. The horsemen are more insidious and powerful than ever. Still, give man a clear understanding of this process it is fully plausible that this could go either way. And either way, Gnon overall will be satiated.

Each component of Gnon detailed above had and has a strong hand in creating us, our ideas, our wealth, and our dominance, and thus has been good in that respect, but we must remember that each can and will turn on us when circumstances change. Evolution becomes dysgenic, features of the memetic landscape promote ever crazier insanity, productivity turns to famine when we can no longer compete to afford our own existence, and order turns to chaos and bloodshed when we neglect martial strength or are overpowered from outside. These processes are not good or evil overall; they are neutral, in the horrorist Lovecraftian sense of the word.

Instead of the destructive free reign of evolution and the sexual market, we would be better off with deliberate and conservative patriarchy and eugenics driven by the judgement of man within the constraints set by Gnon. Instead of a “marketplace of ideas” that more resembles a festering petri-dish breeding superbugs, a rational theocracy. Instead of unhinged techno-commercial exploitation or naive neglect of economics, a careful bottling of the productive economic dynamic and planning for a controlled techno-singularity. Instead of politics and chaos, a strong hierarchical order with martial sovereignty. These things are not to be construed as complete proposals; we don’t really know how to accomplish any of this. They are better understood as goals to be worked towards. This post concerns itself with the “what” and “why”, rather than the “how”.

Thus we arrive at Neoreaction and the Dark Enlightenment, wherein Enlightenment science and ambition combine with Reactionary knowledge and self-identity towards the project of civilization. The project of civilization being for man to graduate from the metaphorical savage, subject to the law of the jungle, to the civilized gardener who, while theoretically still subject to the law of the jungle, is so dominant as to limit the usefulness of that model.

This need not be done globally; we may only be able to carve out a small walled garden for ourselves, but make no mistake, even if only locally, the project of civilization is to capture Gnon.

http://www.moreright.net/capturing-gnon/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2665382&forum_id=2#26266764)