Mencius Moldbugman

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.