Mencius Moldbugman

So if just “being ourselves” leads to our goals, the implicit message is that if we don’t reach our goals (impossible as they constantly change) then the problem is in fact ourselves. When reality hits, the positive society means the ego takes the hit directly. Depression follows

The society of achievement and activeness is generating excessive tiredness and exhaustion. Only when we utterly break down and are mentally and physically exhausted are we finally finding the negativity and respite we so desperately require.

The ancients knew this. The Hebrews created the Sabbath for a reason. The Sabbath is a word that originally meant “stopping”. Without this rest nothing can be achieved. Civilisationcannot contemplate and advance. People don’t come together and form communities, bonds.. families.

Prometheus brought work to mankind when he gave mortals the gift of fire. Today’s achievement-subject deems itself free when in fact it is bound like Prometheus. Doomed to be tortured by the eagle of acceleration gnawing at its organs and never allowed to rest.

The sociopathic status seeker does not pursue works of duty. Its maxims are not obedience, law, and the fulfillment of obligation, but rather freedom, pleasure, and inclination. Above all, it expects the profits of enjoyment from work.

It works for pleasure and does not act at the behest of others. Instead, it hearkens mainly to itself. It is the ultimate self-starting entrepreneur - the start-up guy, the social media huckster. A person who thinks they are their own boss and is “empowered”.

However, such freedom others is not just empowering and liberating. “Freedom” means developing new constraints. Freedom from others switches into narcissistic self-relation, which creates many of the mental issues we see afflicting so many.

One thing you notice about sociopathic status seekers online and in the workplace is they have no character - no principals they stick to. Think how social media maximises this and adds to the sickness ever more, like by like.

Thousands of Facebook or LinkedIn frIends offers further proof of the late-modern ego’s lack of character and definition. They try to please everybody, strive to offend nobody, and in turn become nobody themselves. As always, think of capital’s unconscious motive here.

In positive terms, such a human being without character is flexible, able to assume any form, play any role, perform any function. This shapelessness—or, alternately, flexibility—creates a high degree of economic efficiency. The best worker bee has no values and thinks he is free

“In social networks, the function of “friends” is primarily to heighten narcissism by granting attention, as consumers, to the ego exhibited as a commodity.” - Byung-Chul Han.

Narcissism isn’t empowerment. Narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Let me quote the sociologist Richard Sennett about why this is so:

“Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it produces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other,” ever enters the self...”

“.. It is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other—and then it becomes meaningless.. The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking always for an expression or reflection of oneself... one drowns in the self.”

Depression & burnout follow overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted sociopathic status seeker grinds itself down. He becomes tired, exhausted by himself, and at war with himself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward.

Narcissists exhaust themselves in rat races they run against themselves.

Digitalisation is making this worse. There’s very little “reality” or consequence online which in meat world would warn a sociopath when their narcissism is getting out of control. Online, the narcissistic ego encounters itself first and foremost in everything it sees.

The real world makes itself known through resistance. Act like a dickhead and someone is likely to beat you or fire you. But our ridiculous overly-positive society is removing this resistance to the sociopathic.

I’m definitely waffling now so let me try and wrap this up...

Capital absorbs everything. What is capital but relentless competition? Our positive achievement society has created absolute competition because now we have narcissists competing with their own egos to produce/consume more. A destructive compulsion to outdo itself over and over

“You can do anything!” “Just do it!” These slogans of positive achievement create a society of self-exploitation, which is all good for capital until the obedient little narcissist exploits itself too much and finally burns out.

Auto-exploitation is more efficient than standard exploitation because it gives a deceptive feeling of freedom. The exploiter is also the exploited. Exploitation now occurs without domination. That is what makes self-exploitation so efficient. And in this way capital accelerates.

Let’s quote Nietzsche again: (From Thus Spoke Zarathustra) “All of you who are in love with hectic work and whatever is fast, new, strange—you find it hard to bear yourselves, your diligence is escape and the will to forget yourself...”

“... If you believed more in life, you would hurl yourself less into the moment. But you do not have enough content in yourselves for waiting—not even for laziness!” This is what Nietzsche called “The Last Man”

Our Clown World is sustained by the illusion that more capital/status produces more life. Concern about living the good life yields to the hysteria of surviving. The reduction of life to biological, vital processes makes life itself bare and strips it of all meaning.

Yet this doesn’t lead to more life. Quite the opposite. Sociopathic status striving leads to downward fertility, atomised individuals, and an autistic society. It means barren wombs. It means the opposite of life - it means death.

Given the atomization of society and the erosion of the family, all that remains is ego, consumption and work. Nothing else is left. We’ve never lived in a society so filled with positive messages, but this is why we are depressed, and the narcissists the most depressed of all.

I would hope that the increasing depression and burnout we see would lead people to question their values and what makes them happy. However, I have my doubts. Those that know not real life cannot truly die. They cannot be killed at all. Their life equals that of the undead.