Occultationism or neocameralism

The democratic battle-cry: every man a king! With the throne comes power, or, in the language of the omniregal age, responsibility, which must naturally be exercised responsibly. The personal is political, every act is a political act, and every Johnny Dickweed who acts like it ain’t so has failed in his responsibility. To the true panbasilist, everywhere is Podunk, pervaded with depravity, mad syphilitic Henry the Eighths dooming Demostan to irresponsible misrule.

When voice rules, every speech act is an act of war. Truth is no longer a criterion; a true speech-act may have wrongteous power-vectors, undesirable consequences perceived as following from it. The occult force of the age demands occultation—worse, total suppression—of all speech-acts pointing ellandward in position-space. Speech-acts are seen as vectors, not arguments, and nothing that points outside may be suffered to survive. Thus is Rod Dreher unwittingly led to the conclusion: occultationism, neocameralism, or Auschwitz.

My point is simply that all of us believe that some facts are too dangerous to be known; they are like the Ring Of Power, in that the temptation to abuse them is too great for our natures to bear. Admittedly, this puts me in a tight spot. Am I saying that we should ignore reality? I suppose I am. …

Again, for me, moral and spiritual equality is a fact, but it’s not one that can be grounded in science. If everybody believed that moral and spiritual equality was a fact, I would be more comfortable with the discussion of genetic differences and their effects on us. But you don’t have to go far in the HBD discussion to find some pretty nasty stuff. This does not, let me be clear, demonstrate that what the HBD people claim is false (though it may be, or parts may be); but it does demonstrate to my satisfaction that it is impossible for most people to talk about this stuff without using it to justify some nasty prejudices. Within living memory, we have seen where this sort of thing goes. You start out exploring the science of genetic differences, which is, or ought to be, a neutral thing, and before you know it you have the greatest scientific authorities in the world coming up with eugenic theories supporting the idea of “life unworthy of life,” and then you end with Auschwitz.

Occultationism, like anti-abortionism, is barred from leading to rivers of blood only by compartmentalization, the adoption of unprincipled exceptions. The logic leads straight to total war, as Arthur Chu admits:

I do, in fact, believe the war is very very real and has very very real stakes and the people who stand to be hurt by losing the war matter more than my abstract comfort with my “principles”.

Arthur! This is America! It’s not hard to get guns! Why are you on Facebook?—the war is very, very real!

One great victory of omniregalism (limited war is still preferable to unlimited war) is its provision of a compartment for exactly this. Arthur Chu, you see, is a king—and kings are not insurgents, and have no need for their methods. It is the powerless who are most likely to take up arms, and omniregal nanopower is still power—effectively insignificant power, but enough to prevent Arthur Chu from getting a gun. Discontent is directed to /dev/null; it only emerges on a large, statistical scale. One vote is mathematically insignificant, but ten thousand votes are not.

Neocameralism, seen as a concept, a goal, rather than a specific architecture, is simply the destruction of popularchy. The goal is to to engineer away the political necessity of lies. “They say what they want, I do what I want.” To Dreher, occultationism is the necessary consequence of omniregalism: there are true things with harmful vectors, and therefore there are true things that must be suppressed. To Chu, occultationism is simply a demand of morality:

Endless self-criticism about whether your values are in fact right or wrong guarantees that you will lose and someone else’s values will win anyway. …

I’m not saying there’s no place for rational engagement ever. I am saying that there are lines in the sand and people beyond those pales are in fact enemies and should be treated as such, and that if you never draw those lines in the sand you will spend your whole life in an agonizing haze of introspection and never do anything. …

I think, to put it bluntly, that when there is a real war going on, yes, search your conscience to decide what side you’re going to be on, but those doubts should be out of your mind by the time you’re actually putting on a uniform and walking onto the field. Otherwise you’ve lost before you’ve begun fighting. …

I *am* talking about not giving quarter to truly toxic ideologies like sexism, racism and the whole “reactionary” movement, about not legitimizing them by making them the subject of a FAQ, about not letting them colonize your headspace and letting their trolls endlessly barrage you with their tendentious arguments.

I’m talking about treating memetic cancers as what they are rather than as reasonable worldviews and as something to be excised and cauterized, not engaged with. …

So yes, to momentarily borrow Yudkowsky fanboy terminology, I wear black robes. I am a practitioner of the Dark Arts. I rigorously manage my own thinking and purge myself of dangerous “unthinkable” thoughts — “mindkill” myself — on a regular basis.

This is what you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive, i.e. a social justice stormtrooper, You have to recognize that there is no neutral culture, neutrality is impossible, that culture is a cutthroat war of memes and that you have to commit to picking a side and setting yourself up as a neutral arbiter of memes is impossible and is a form of surrender.

Under omniregalism, of course, every man is born a king: every act is an act of power, and demands responsibility. The practice of epistemic rationality is something that one must always keep to oneself; to so much as write a blog post considering ideas with ellandward vectors is to act irresponsibly and wrongteously. Unconcern for truth is built into the system as a necessity. (To which the seeker of truth may respond: fuck you, liar, of course I’m not playing your game. Or, as Carlyle put it: “No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease.”)

Unless selection effects favoring the search for truth can counter the pressure toward occultation. But that doesn’t seem likely—and would Chu like that, were it actually the case?