If one thing can be said of George Friedman’s book “The Next 100 Years: a forecast for the 21st century”: it is that it’s provocative. It was published in 2009, and summarized the author’s views on what could be expected in the following century. One of the most interesting theses it asserted was the idea that, contrary to some people’s beliefs, the 21st century is … Continue reading The worst thing to come out of 2020
The Gross Domestic Product of the People’s Republic of China was worth 14,342.90 billion USD in 2019, according to official data from the World Bank and projections from Trading Economics: almost the 12% share of the world’s total economy. This makes it the number 1 economic power of the global capitalist world. Such impressive results are not obviously not only due to the adventurousness and … Continue reading The friendzoning of the West
Capitalism is eternal, will never fall, and will not be replaced by any kind of socialism. Such was the accelerationist message encoded in the Communist Manifesto: a message intuited by Veblen and which was not difficult to decipher for Trotskyist James Burnham (1905-1987). At the core of Burnham’s view of communism was one notion: that the progress of capitalism depended not on the owners of … Continue reading Age of the Corporate Drone
Hitler: one of the few people in Modern History who have ascended to almost purely memetic status. Che Guevara and Mahatma Gandhi come close, but none of them have gone so far in their transfiguration; perhaps because Hitler serves as the contemporary incarnation of Evil. There are already more than 120,000 books and articles that have been written about the character, so any new approach … Continue reading Birds of prey have no friends: the first anti-Capitalist War
As an interpretation somewhat removed from mainstream Marxism, the natural synergies between Communism and Capitalism are a favorite topic of this blog. This trait was best recognized by no other than an American, organic anti-capitalist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). Veblen had been a keen student of Marx’s ideas, and he was not at all convinced. He considered that Marxism, while critical of some tenets of Liberalism, … Continue reading The leisure class, techno-conspirators and the leftovers
I recently wrote a guest post for possibilities broker Sonya Mann, whose blog boasts the coveted Seal of Approval of The Outpost. You can find it here. Continue reading At the edge of the abyss: looking for a katechon in 2020
The working definition of “meme” is somewhat dry, and less innovative than it might seem. Although the term was coined by Richard Dawkins, the notion that ideas are subject to evolutionary pressures is much older, dating back to the origins of evolutionary theory itself. As zoologist and philosopher Thomas Henry Huxley (nicknamed “Darwin’s bulldog”) asserted in 1880: “The struggle for existence holds as much in … Continue reading Experiments in fiction and reality: Catalan Separatists and Reckless Meme Necromancers
The War in Afghanistan is the longest conflict the United States has ever been engaged in. Despite what the diminishing media attention it gets might lead to believe, it is still ongoing. Following the successful invasion of the country in 2001, a coalition of 40 countries, including all NATO members, formed a security mission to fight the insurgency that was still controlling much of the … Continue reading Contemplation and Weapons of Meme Destruction
In the last post we introduced the idea of conceptual and sensual memes. In general, sensual memes are more infectious than those based on concepts. This idea (this meme!) is nothing new: an image is worth a thousand words, they say. This is because sensual stimulation appeals to a more primitive part of the brain, which requires less processing. It is energetically cheaper: sensual reactions … Continue reading The Fool archetype as an agent of evolution: an introduction to Internet meme ecology
The Futurist Manifesto was first published in 1909. It was written by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a celebration of speed, youth, violence and technology. It was also a declaration of the author’s hopes for his country in the 20th century: a country of industry, innovation and dynamism, fully engaged with the world. It decried Italy’s main identity as the seat of a long-dead culture, … Continue reading Futurist rioting, conceptualism and sensuality
