YouTuber and YouTuber Oren McIntyre joins me to discuss the concept of control societies, and how they relate to the ideas of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. We also discuss the new movie, The Story of Possum Trot, starring Will Smith and Christian Bladt.
00:05:02.240Yeah, no, I think it's I've kind of made it a little bit of a pet project of mine to attempt
00:05:07.980to I call it like I call it the based baptism to take some of these postmodern ideas or postmodern
00:05:15.460thinkers and try to investigate how they're actually in many ways kind of more useful and even credible
00:05:23.600for people with right leaning dispositions.
00:05:27.840So the concept of the control society is actually a bit of an improvisation and an evolution that Deleuze makes off of a few ideas of Michel Foucault's, another French postmodernist.
00:05:43.800So Foucault had these these two notions.
00:05:47.620The first is the sovereign society and the discipline society.
00:05:52.840And these kind of map up more or less easily with what you could center could consider feudalism for a sovereign society and industrialization with a disciplinary society.
00:06:05.780So sovereign societies were very interested in sort of taxing their subjects.
00:06:11.880You can think of sort of, you know, fiefdoms or agrarian kind of feudal culture.
00:06:18.340And the disciplinary society really evolves alongside industrialization and the industrial revolution.
00:06:25.240And Foucault uses he has these concepts of what he calls institutions of enclosure that that typify the kind of institutions for a disciplined society.
00:06:37.820So he he names like the factory, the school, the barracks, the hospital, all of these institutions that subjects of disciplinary societies sort of pass in and out of throughout different stages of one's life.
00:06:59.900You can just he actually there's this kind of famous experiment that Foucault runs.
00:07:03.980It's rather depressing. But if you look at aerial photographs of prisons versus hospitals versus public school buildings versus, you know, military barracks, that it's it's impossible to differentiate them.
00:07:19.960They're all just sort of architecturally, visually synonymous, which explains how depressing most of us found high school.
00:07:27.480But so Deleuze takes these these ideas and he's not he's not counter signaling these.
00:07:34.460He's not saying that that Foucault's model is incorrect.
00:07:37.040But what he what he did do is he came out with this essay in the early 90s called Postscript on Societies of Control.
00:07:45.140And what he was pointing out in this essay is essentially that Foucault's model of the disciplinary society was very quickly becoming extinct.
00:07:54.840And this is happening as the West and America deindustrializes.
00:08:00.820This is happening alongside the the rise of the computer.
00:08:07.040It's not like the Internet is ubiquitous or computer technology has really taken over the way it has now.
00:08:14.020But he posited the control society to say that this is that we're entering sort of a new stage of political power where power and and power's subjects are going to be organized in a very, very different manner.
00:08:30.360It's no longer this sort of sequential sort of assembly line domination that you see coming out of industrial societies.
00:08:40.200And he calls it the control society because he feels that the methods of control are becoming much more sort of continuous and and diffuse and elusive and what he would call cybernetic.
00:08:57.520And I think it's a bit telling that this is just a few years before films like like The Matrix came out.
00:09:05.280You could sort of consider The Matrix as something that a bit of a synonym for a control society.
00:09:11.380So a control society is not it is not interested in controlling its subject or disciplining its subjects, I should say, in the manner of a disciplinary society where where they they want to extract, you know, 10 hours of labor for from you per day in an assembly line.
00:09:31.140They're not concerned with production or energy because that's no longer really the economy of the West.
00:09:39.240Control societies are are societies that do not want to give their subjects the impression that they are denying you any possibilities or or preventing you from doing something, something they and this this is what is somewhat Matrix like about them.
00:09:57.300They want to get provide you with a certain kind of illusion of freedom and and decision making and choice.
00:10:06.720So it's it's it's it's far more complicated.
00:10:11.140He also used words words like, you know, a a network and a web to control society.
00:10:17.460Again, very kind of prescient and telling given given given the rise of the Internet.
00:10:22.500But essentially he I mean, Deleuze always uses machines conceptually.
00:10:27.100That's that sort of symbolism, his imagery.
00:10:29.320And he would say that we're sort of we're moving away from the the the the machinic symbol of society being like, you know, industrialized equipment, per se, or like a fact, a factory machine, like a mill or a lathe into a society that's its closest sort of machinic analog is that of that of the computer.
00:10:52.380I do find it interesting, the shifts here, you know, you talk about the sovereign society and obviously this is feudal, mostly agrarian production is the way that this is ordered.
00:11:05.460And of course, people are bound to the land in many cases, their serfs or they're bound to the Lord.
00:11:11.380But the the idea that kind of the state itself needs to have a direct day to day kind of say over every one of your thoughts and your feelings is is kind of outrageous.
00:11:24.740Right. That doesn't really exist. And then it shifts to these societies of control and the industrial society.
00:11:30.300And in this scenario, humanity is more concentrated.
00:11:34.120Everyone has to pour through these institutions.
00:11:36.060There's only so many ways to organize masses of humanity, which is why prisons and schools look the same, because whatever you can, you know, schools are functionally prisons for children.
00:11:47.160But even if they weren't, like just the necessity of housing that many people and organizing them and rotating them through different stations and everything that's involved in a factory or prison or a school shares this.
00:12:00.360And this is the one Foucault book everybody has to read in college.
00:12:02.500I had to read it, you know, when he talks about this and the way that all of these these different architectures are driven by the function of these different institutions to manage society in this particular way.
00:12:16.380But then the shifts to the control society seems to be one of dematerialization.
00:12:22.320It's the way in which we no longer need to exist inside perhaps these shared spaces on a regular basis, the institution and the idea that we would share as a mass man, these institutions starts to go away.
00:12:34.920But we need we still need to share the same idea space.
00:12:38.240And so the freedom like you're talking about from the control society comes from the idea that perhaps there's an illusion of constant choice.
00:12:46.060There's this, you know, the dematerialized institution no longer governs every one of your actions and no longer guides you in a physical sense from one place to another.
00:12:57.280But it hurts you mentally through the narrowing of these different ideas.
00:13:01.820Yeah, that's that's that's very well put.
00:13:03.720I think this is especially true since since COVID, since at least, you know, a very large share of sort of, you know, white collar information economy employees are just kind of working remotely from from home.
00:13:18.240So a lot of people's lives don't don't even sort of superficially resemble resemble this discipline society where you you're passing in and out of these discrete institutions of, you know, the office where you go from nine to five before you return to the to the household.
00:13:36.220You might, you might, you might, you might, you might, you might, you might, in some ways, physically, and superficially have more more freedom, and that you just have a home office, or what have you.
00:13:46.080But we are kind of dealing with this panopticon of being monitored via things like, like social media.
00:13:59.740And, yeah, so people's sense of being being watched and being monitored is not just simply limited to, to a factory or an assembly line.
00:14:14.500And the way I think the most helpful image that Deleuze offers as a means of kind of understanding that the control society, it's one I mentioned in my talk is the concept of, of the freeway, right?
00:14:30.200And I think the freeway is, it's the freeway, it's, especially within sort of like American mythos, it's got this kind of really powerful association with freedom and independence.
00:14:43.720You know, you know, you could, you just think of your standard sort of sports car commercial of somebody, you know, cruising down a, you know, five lane freeway.
00:14:53.420And, you know, seeing these beautiful vistas, you can, you can switch lanes, you can go at incredible speeds.
00:15:01.600However, it is, nonetheless, this, this mechanism, which is only really steering you in a certain direction, you're only provided, you know, certain exits.
00:15:16.740You know, you know, the, the freeway is usually kind of a donut, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's circular.
00:15:25.860So that there is actually sort of very limited prescribed creativity when it comes to something like a tree, a freeway.
00:15:34.920And yet it's presented to people as this, this image of, of kind of complete liberation and, and freedom when it's nothing but.
00:15:51.560It's one of my favorite things about that movie is he's so is the main character is so excited to like get out of the bureaucracy.
00:15:58.020He gets into his car, he's going to get to drive somewhere.
00:16:00.660So he doesn't have to, you know, sit inside the, you know, kind of the bureau and he gets under the highway and it's just a tunnel, you know, like he's out, but you could like, they show from the outside, you can see that he's out.
00:16:13.180It's, you know, he's outside, but inside the freeway, it's just nothing but billboards, you know, there's no way to see outside of the billboards.
00:16:20.360You're on the highway, but you're, the entire experience is still enclosed.
00:16:24.600You're, you're, you know, theoretically choosing your path, but every moment is still completely tunneled and guided into particular direction.
00:16:35.600I think it came out in the eighties, but there are a lot of films that I think are helpful tools for, for discussing and articulating the control society that came out in, in the nineties.
00:16:47.880Um, the other two, there's kind of a, a Trinity, um, alongside the matrix, um, there's fight club, which I discussed in my talk and, uh, office space.
00:16:57.420All of those movies actually came out in, in 1999, but Brazil was kind of ahead of its time.
00:17:03.020Um, George Bagby actually selected that, uh, film to discuss in the, the last picture shows film festival this year.
00:17:10.460Um, and it was, it was one of my favorites, but that, that absolutely is, you're, you're right, Oren, to, to have that come to mind.
00:17:18.080Cause it's 100% a control society kind of, uh, um, story.
00:17:24.500Um, but yeah, so, um, although there's not much, yeah, I mean, it's, it, it doesn't have a lot of internet, um, internet imagery.
00:17:36.560It doesn't, it doesn't capture maybe some of, some of the matrixes, uh, techno flare, but it, it is a precursor to a lot of that.
00:17:44.280So what are some of the mechanisms beyond, uh, you know, kind of the obvious that we've talked about that would indicate that you're, you're in a control society.
00:17:55.440How is it, you know, we, we've talked a little bit about the dematerialization there, but what specifically is making sure that you're following kind of the ruling order while feeling like you have this,
00:18:06.380additional, uh, additional, uh, level of freedom?
00:18:12.220I think in some ways it's, it's almost easier to, um, to, to, to define the moments when you know that you, you are not.
00:18:22.460Um, I mean, really anything that, uh, I mean, I get, I mean, well, two, two concepts that Deleuze has, and I'm not going to get too deep into, you know, the theory cell waters here,
00:18:36.560Uh, Deleuze has the, the idea of two sciences that he presents, but there's one, which he calls royal science and another, which he calls nomad science.
00:18:46.400And royal science is really sort of science, like capital S science, as you would come to know it, which would be any sort of, um, any discipline, any, any STEM, uh, uh, discipline or, or subject matter expertise that has a kind of instrumental purpose within society.
00:19:08.400Whether we're talking about, you know, engineering or, uh, or chemistry or, or what have you, if it has a sort of, um, instrumental mechanistic utility, um, for a control society, uh, if it will kind of land you a job, if it will, if it will, um, you know, get you, get you a mortgage.
00:19:31.540If it will, um, you know, help, um, help support the economy.
00:19:36.820Those are all things that he groups under royal science.
00:19:41.620And I would say, even if you, and then that's not, and this is not to say royal science, bad nomad science, good, because there's, there's plenty of, you know, instrumental sciences, is, is, is necessary and good much of the time.
00:19:53.900Um, but the other category, which is a bit more elusive and strange is, is what he terms nomad science.
00:20:02.420And this is really, it's, it's difficult and it's elusive because he, he does mean, he is approaching this as, as a science.
00:20:11.540He's not, he's not, he's not labeling it science to be, to be, to be glib, but it is sort of what Deleuze considers to be the, the systematic study of liberation and, uh, non-instrumental subjectivity for human beings.
00:20:32.700Sort of how, like studying a human, uh, how humans can maximize their, their freedom and potential.
00:20:40.500Um, but he goes about it in a very, very, uh, systematized kind of scientific programmatic way.
00:20:48.820He does believe that sort of, um, um, one can study and articulate how to escape the machinations of a control society, um, in the same manner that you would study to earn like an, an, an engineering degree.
00:21:05.280There is, there is something, there is a like facticity about it.
00:21:10.020Um, there's a concreteness to the science.
00:21:12.080So what he's calling nomad science is really anything's, anything that maximizes one's, uh, escape velocity or freedom from a, a control society.
00:22:15.760It's something a little bit hard to pin down as well.
00:22:18.160Cause he, he talks about various different kind of nomadic groups.
00:22:22.660Um, he and his co-writer, uh, Guattari were very interested in like, like Genghis Khan.
00:22:28.620I got, that's probably the early instances of the, the nomad.
00:22:32.780Um, because he sort of juxtaposed the, the kind of nomadic, um, you know, uh, Mongol hordes that were very kind of fluid and, um, uh, occupied flat spaces.
00:22:47.640You know, the flat, uh, land of, of the Mongols, flat spaces are usually like, you know, a sign that it's something that Deleuze is keen on.
00:22:56.240And he can kind of contrast that to the, like highly bureaucratized and mechanistic sort of like Chinese empire that they were kind of constantly, um, at war with.
00:23:07.060But he also talks about, um, no, the nomadic people who like the journeyman nomads who, uh, in the medieval period built many of the, um, like the greatest sort of, uh, Gothic cathedrals.
00:23:23.260Um, I didn't actually know much about this in history at all until I, I, I started reading Deleuze, but a lot of the people, the, the most beautiful kind of, um, cathedrals that you see in, in Europe were created by these sort of the, these journeymen who would just travel from, you know, country to country or principality to principality and deploy, um, their, their art.
00:23:46.860And, and, and, and their science, um, and his point in kind of, uh, focusing on them is they are these, on the one hand, they have this very concrete skillset.
00:23:56.500You know, you don't build the Sistine Chapel just by being this kind of, um, uneducated, unrefined nomad.
00:24:06.240Um, but it is this level of artistry and engineering that is kind of deployed, uh, creatively, I mean, or in that sense.
00:24:16.860In that particular circumstance, like, you know, for the, for the glory of God, it's this beautification.
00:24:22.020It's just attempting to create the most sort of elevated, beautiful, um, structures that they can, that they can fathom or that they can achieve.
00:24:32.800And then they sort of go on and try to outdo themselves with, with the next cathedral that they, that they build.
00:24:38.800Um, no, no etymological relation between this Deleuzian Cathedral and like Moldbugs cathedrals.
00:24:45.740That's a different, uh, schema, but so I, that's, that's part of what a couple examples of why he's always fixated on like the, the nomadic as the, like the truly, the truly liberated, um, person or tribe.
00:25:01.380Well, I definitely want to dive deeper into some of these, uh, connections to the total state.
00:25:07.480I think that we're, uh, approaching a observation from two different directions with it, which I think is always useful, but I also want to talk about what he suggests possibly to escape these societies of control.
00:25:18.700Because obviously, uh, you know, he's not going to introduce this term in this understanding, uh, unless he's going to tell us that there's an alternative or a way to, to kind of rupture this, this current status quo.
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00:26:59.120All right, so something I was thinking about, of course, when I was looking at the societies of control is that this observation probably wouldn't sound strange to most right wingers.
00:27:13.380This is not in this increasingly while this would have been a mostly left wing critique of our current society when it was first made in the 90s.
00:27:23.700I think that it became, you know, became pretty obvious to everybody that this is a real thing.
00:27:29.660You know, most when I talk about the shift, you know, we obviously we talk about, like you said, these sovereign societies.
00:27:38.260This is usually the feudal model that this original understanding a lot of people have.
00:27:43.980And that gets undermined by the control society or, you know, Sam Francis would see this as the shift between the feudal and the bourgeoisie order and the way that that shifted into kind of the original capitalistic mode of production.
00:28:00.040But then, you know, Sam Francis identifies the shift into what we're now calling the society of control as a shift into managerialism.
00:28:09.180Right. And and this is where bourgeoisie capitalism because something becomes something different.
00:28:14.380It becomes a different mode of production, a different mode of control, a different way to order society.
00:28:20.520I wonder what Deleuze would would call this shift, like how he would see this, who he thinks is now in control.
00:28:46.340And there are plenty of through lines that there's plenty of resonance with a lot of Deleuze's ideas with some of the the thinkers that you profile.
00:28:58.240Well, in your various chapters, and I think that it's it's it's it's a challenge.
00:29:06.840I don't think that Deleuze would necessarily.
00:29:12.760Point the finger at a specific human human agency in the way that, you know, the capitalist is the boogeyman or for for Marx or other leftists.
00:29:26.380It's it's it's really just sort of the the fact that a control society and the the systems.
00:29:34.940The machine itself just kind of takes on a logic of its its own.
00:29:42.300And so people are things aren't driven so much as so much by by conscious actors who are, you know, delighting and exploiting people's labor.
00:29:55.680As it's really just everybody attempting to kind of keep pace with the control society.
00:30:03.320It is this. It has it has, I guess, this lack of formalism, like you talk about in the book where there's not.
00:30:11.520But I mean, there are certainly, you know, very powerful people, there are entrepreneurs, there are, you know, people that own.
00:30:18.620Corporations, but I think he does kind of differentiate between the, you know, I guess the the factory owner of the disciplinary society or sort of like, you know, maybe the big if you're in like a company town and the big man in town is a just the one that happens to own the factory where everybody works.
00:30:41.620Works, whereas the control society, it's much more about the, you know, the entrepreneur that has this sort of portfolio of various companies across different industries that he uses the imagery of surfing quite often, which is a bit a bit strange as well.
00:31:04.720But, you know, but, you know, the most powerful people within the control societies are sort of people that exist above and outside the means of production in some way.
00:31:17.800So I think it's it's much harder to for anybody to to to point the finger at anybody as as somebody that's that's holding the reins.
00:31:28.260So with this distributed system, when you don't have a particular person to target or a class to target, what then does he think should be the solution here?
00:31:39.980Does he offer one? Does he give any kind of escape, any kind of way to reorder things or for the individual to take action?
00:31:49.360So I would I would I would say that I think at least from my reading of Deleuze and I'm not trying to claim to be a Deleuze scholar or an expert, I would sort of describe him as somebody who is a pessimist for the many, but an optimist for the few.
00:32:08.540I think he he does always feel like there is a minority of individuals or tribes or groups of people that can achieve a kind of escape from the the control society.
00:32:25.720I mean, the other major concept and one I touched on in my talk that he sort of sets in in juxtaposition and contrast to to the state or the machine or the control society is this concept of the nomad war machine.
00:32:44.240And again, one thing that's very complicated in Deleuze is with most thinkers, whether they're right wing or left wing, it's like, you know, machine bad, you know, non machine good.
00:32:54.620Right. Like, you know, we're human, we're human beings, we're, you know, we're part of nature.
00:32:59.820If there's anything that's trying to render us into a machine, it's it's it's usually, you know, a sign, a sign of evil.
00:33:08.500But for Deleuze, whether he has machines of captivity and he has machines of liberation.
00:33:14.060So even when he's describing something that is, you know, a positive trajectory for people,
00:33:21.440it's still couched in this kind of technological language.
00:33:25.880But but the nomad war machine is essentially, again, a very slippery concept.
00:33:32.900I'm not going to get to theory cell here, but the idea, broadly speaking, is it's.
00:33:41.080Well, the first thing to say about it is that it doesn't actually have anything to do with with war.
00:33:45.180I know, like nomad war machine, it sounds like a rage against the machine album or something.
00:33:50.720Right. Like you would immediately think, oh, like the war machine, like, you know, Raytheon or the Pentagon.
00:33:57.600But I would like to see it as the as the next Mad Max movie.
00:34:40.020Yeah, I'm always tempted to use concepts like, you know, like the the the id or libido to talk about it, even though like Deleuze hated Freud.
00:34:48.880He wrote a book called Anti-Oedipus, which is about how he's not a Freudian.
00:34:52.360But it is it is sort of this aspect of human nature that just rebels and recoils and refuses from instrumentality or being becoming mechanized.
00:35:06.240It's this kind of primordial force that that people always have that just tries to shake off any kind of chains of of control or or or discipline.
00:35:19.560So that's the nomad war machine is sort of what he describes.
00:35:25.380And I guess they're kind of different kind of subroutines to it or different aspects to it.
00:35:30.300But the nomad science, for example, I suppose, would be the study of the nomad war machine and how it operates.
00:35:38.980It's I don't know if you have a different take on it or in or if you've I know you've read a fair amount of Deleuze.
00:35:46.780I don't know if you've read into the nomad war machine.
00:35:49.040I really only read Anti-Oedipus, but I guess the main thing that I think about is when I kind of hear his strategy.
00:35:59.600Is this this makes me think of perhaps kind of the Bapians right on Twitter?
00:36:36.260It's done in spaces where it's still safe to be absurd or it's you know, you can push these limits and you can generate these contradictions without, you know, that's that's.
00:36:54.140Yeah, I think that's a that's a that's a great example.
00:36:57.020You know, part of why I talked about Fight Club in my talk is that, you know, this Fight Club and eventually Project Mayhem and even sort of the figure of Tyler Durden to do to some extent present us with these kind of nomadic kind of kind of elements.
00:37:17.160I do think that one other term that we could introduce is Deleuze's notion of the line of flight and the line of flight is I've found no better way of just articulating it than than than Justin Murphy does.
00:37:34.520I think he does it in his book based Deleuze where he did basically describes a line of flight as the the galaxy brain moment.
00:37:42.360Like if you remember the meme or essentially a line of flight is when you have an idea, it could be an idea.
00:37:50.240It could be an idea to become like a anonymous Internet philosopher.
00:37:56.420It could be the idea for a startup company.
00:37:59.900It could be the, you know, love for a group of people or or a woman.
00:38:08.120But it is basically a an idea that is not instrumental or is not systematized and and exists.
00:38:17.820It's it's sort of this eruption of creativity and what Deleuze calls kind of an affective drive, A-F-F-E-C-T, affective, like it's coming from within you.
00:38:30.100If you go back to Brazil, think about all of those kind of dream sequences where the protagonist is has wings.
00:38:37.100Right. He's kind of engaging in this daydream of this this line of flight.
00:38:40.680But it's it's a creative endeavor. It's some sort of vision that exists completely outside of the structure of the control society.
00:38:52.040It's not something like, you know, becoming more effective at your job.
00:38:56.100It's something that really does break through, gets you off of the freeway.
00:39:00.540I think the thing that Deleuze cautions us about is that a lot of line lines of flight do ultimately prove to be kind of doomed, like they don't achieve an escape velocity.
00:39:16.980Um, another example of this is in in Fight Club, um, Tyler Durden's sort of initial creative energy, his line of flight devolves into this project mayhem, which really kind of becomes this, uh, it becomes what Deleuze would call re-territorialized.
00:39:35.980Um, they just sort of become these vandals and this terrorist organization, um, and instead of kind of continuing to pursue a real kind of authentic existence and autonomy free from the control society, they just become completely destructive as opposed to truly creative.
00:39:58.920Um, and I think Deleuze, to tie that back into Deleuze's concept of, you know, pessimism for the many, uh, and optimism for the few, um, a lot of, a lot of lines of flight do end up getting, uh, re-territorialized, uh, by, by the state, um, becoming, um, reincorporated into the freeway system of, uh, of the logic and, and mechanistics of a control society.
00:40:28.340But, um, but he does feel like there are, are people out there, unfortunately, because he was writing, you know, in a time of kind of hegemonic left-wing thinking, the only examples that I, concrete examples that I know that he gave were of like burgeoning, like hippie communes in Europe, which have probably all completely disintegrated.
00:40:50.820Um, but he does have, I, I, I do consider him to be a bit more of an optimist than somebody like Nick Land.
00:40:58.240Um, I don't think that Deleuze is, uh, an accelerationist, but I do think he, he, he feels like there are just these kind of pockets of potential freedom for, for very kind of creative and wit and willful individuals or groups.
00:41:13.940Not to challenge your authority as the, as the movie guru, but I always, uh, thought of the moment of re-territorialization in Fight Club being when he basically kills that drive in himself to like rejoin himself to Marla, right?
00:41:30.540Like that's, I feel, it feels like that's the end of the, uh, the end of that.
00:41:36.380See, I think that that, that, that's, I mean, that's a very common interpretation of the film.
00:41:41.000And, and I think, uh, a more pessimistic interpretation of the film than I have, Oren, um, I think that part of there's, it's actually a, a kind of a victorious moment.
00:41:52.580And when his, when his line of flight achieves escape velocity, when he kills Tyler Durden, um, or when he kind of turns the gun on himself, because if he stayed, if he stayed kind of tied to Durden and tied to, um, project mayhem, which again, like it's sort of, there's two slaveries that the narrator experiences in that there's like, you know, he, he's a slave to his job at the insurance company.
00:42:19.320You know, he's, uh, you know, very unhappy, caught in this control society, but then, um, project mayhem, which eventually, which kind of becomes this line of flight.
00:42:32.900Uh, it too turns, it starts to become, uh, what Deleuze would call axiomatized or re-territorialized and that it becomes like really bureaucratic.
00:42:44.800And the members of project mayhem are still acting very slavish.
00:42:50.260It's just now, um, uh, Edward Norton is their dear leader and they're looking, I mean, I've read Paul Gottfried or, and I know we both have.
00:42:58.500So I understand that like fascistic is a like pretty overused term, but there is something that becomes very fascistic about project mayhem.
00:43:08.500Um, you know, they're just, they can't seem to make any decisions without their dear leader.
00:43:12.620They've sort of just become slaves to, um, this, this arbitrary authority of Tyler Durden, as opposed to the diffuse authority of, um, of the control society.
00:43:26.020And I think that, um, you know, if that's one sort of step towards his liberation, the second step towards liberation that, uh, Edward Norton has in that film is when he sort of, um, leaves Tyler Durden, leaves the, the kind of ego ideal that he's created for himself, uh, through that, um, that, that, that character and the, um, and, and project mayhem.
00:43:52.680Um, and, uh, you know, uh, I, I think that I have an optimistic reading of the film and that I think that he and Marla Singer, um, are going to become, uh, a kind of a nomadic couple.
00:44:07.040Like, I don't think they're going to return.
00:44:09.140I don't think that he's going to return and just rule in Tyler's stead as the, um, you know, supreme dictator of project mayhem, nor do I think that he's going to go back to his insurance company job.
00:44:22.000And they're going to get a house in the suburbs and he's going to have a 90 minute commute while Marla chain smokes.
00:44:27.740I think, um, maybe I'm being too romantic, uh, feel free to tell me if I am, but I think that, uh, a positive reading of the film is that he, he now has a sort of, um, an understanding of him, circumstance, his circumstances, and he's been empowered to, uh, bring.
00:44:48.360His kind of full creativity and, um, effective drives to bear on his life.
00:44:55.560And it's a life that he's going to, um, to go forward and, and, and make with Marla.
00:45:02.160Um, I know, and like when I saw it as a, I mean, the movies, I've been watching it since I was a teenager.
00:45:07.400I probably had a very similar reading on it when I was younger.
00:45:10.840I think it's only after reading a lot of Deleuze and being middle-aged that I've, I've come to consider what the film points to.
00:45:20.140And granted, it's not, it's not conclusive, but, um, the older I get, the more of an optimistic read I have on Fight Club.
00:45:27.500Um, last thing I want to ask you about before we go to the questions of the people, uh, you know, a lot of Deleuze is about liberation, as you say, uh, it's about, you know, basically shattering all these connections.
00:45:39.740Deleuze is not a fan of territorialization.
00:45:43.460In fact, you said you don't think he's an accelerationist, but of course, the, the several accelerationism is born inside of his quote about the, uh, you know, maybe, maybe we need to increase the flows.
00:45:55.920Maybe things are not de-territorialized enough.
00:45:58.860Maybe we need to, uh, move, you know, move even deeper into this process in order to go ahead and, uh, create the, the level of kind of, uh, schizophrenic, uh, interactions that we need to, to break free of this.
00:46:14.700Ultimately, he's hoping that enough radical, you know, de-territorialization will allow you to basically have none of this.
00:46:21.980Because we, as people who are on the right are, I think, ultimately looking for a territorialization.
00:46:31.100We are actually not looking to escape all control.
00:46:35.260We are not looking, you know, while we may disagree with the current control society and its ends and maybe even its means, we're not looking for a complete liberation from our duties to each other.
00:46:47.400And our hierarchies and the things that kind of make us human, I mean, land in, you know, Nick land is in, in many ways, talking about an acceleration of this process that leaves the human behind, uh, which is not.
00:46:59.820The way in which Deleuze was hoping to liberate people, but is, I think probably the more realistic understanding of where this process takes us.
00:47:08.980So as people who are not looking for actually the radical liberation of society, but actually the, the healthy regrounding of it, the, the healthy territorialization and things that, uh, could, could survive the kind of current onslaught.
00:47:23.620Uh, what do we make of Deleuze's, uh, solutions and how, how could we think about them?
00:47:29.920Yeah, that's a great, I mean, that's a great question.
00:47:32.980Or, and I guess I would say we're all, we're all looking for territory, but I don't know if we're looking to be re-territorialized or at least not, not re-territorialized in the sense that we get kind of re-subsumed back into the, uh, you know, the grid or, or the, the mega machine.
00:47:54.300Um, you know, and I know it's, I've, I've caught a bit of flack for this and granted, you know, nomad, the word itself just implies this very kind of transient, um, you know, people that like, you know, follows, uh, herds of, of, of buffalo or is, is, you know, uh, uh, constantly in, in, in, in motion.
00:48:15.580Um, but you know, a lot of people nowadays talk about, um, digital nomadism.
00:48:21.540Um, um, I think that the, the concept of the nomad, given the fact that we're in a digital, uh, era does not need to imply, um, like physical mobility.
00:48:36.100Um, or being constantly in, in, in, in flux.
00:48:39.860I think there is something, I know it sounds kind of like a paradox, but there is something slightly nomadic about, you know, digging your heels in somewhere.
00:48:52.080And, and, and forming a, a community or, or a micropolity.
00:48:56.460Um, I think that Deleuze would be, would be sympathetic to that.
00:49:00.260And I guess I'd also just turn people back to that example of these, you know, these journeymen, um, uh, nomadic craftsmen that built the, the cathedral.
00:49:11.920Cause like these were certainly, uh, traditionalists, you know, these were people that were building, um, building churches and, and, and cathedrals and, um, monuments to their very, uh, very traditional society.
00:49:27.580So, um, I don't think that there's anything at odds with, uh, looking to the past or, um, maintaining a tradition that's, that's directly at odds.
00:49:41.920With, with, with Deleuze's concept of, um, escape.
00:49:48.580It doesn't have to be future oriented, I guess is what I'd say.
00:49:53.620All right, guys, well, we're going to go ahead and transition, transition over to the questions of the people before we do, uh, last things, where can people find your excellent work?
00:50:02.380Yeah, well, I should mention, I believe old glory club is planning to, um, uh, publish my speech on their sub stack.
00:50:09.840Um, I don't know if they've done that quite yet, but if you, um, if people want to keep their eye on the old glory club sub stack, um, they should be publishing the talk.
00:50:18.540It's called, uh, uh, uh, becoming the nomad war machine.
00:50:22.180You guys can also just find me on, um, on YouTube.
00:50:25.620If you just type in last things, um, I think I'm, um, uh, top result along with a handful of, uh, uh, Catholic, uh, YouTuber, you know, old Catholic videos.
00:50:49.080Unfortunately, with the massification of everything, including the mega church, uh, I think that you're right.
00:50:54.540That in many ways, uh, sadly, even places of worship, uh, have adopted.
00:51:00.120This is a, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a Protestant, uh, but there, there is a little something to the, uh, you know, the, the way that, uh, you know, Catholic churches or others that have that specific structure where there's only going to be, uh, so many, you know, uh, institutions inside a parish or something that there's a, there's a particular way that those things get divided means that you don't perhaps have this accumulation of humans into these, these mega organizations in quite the same way.
00:51:30.120Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you could probably find some churches that in church communities where you, you, you sense readily that these people are, are on a light of line of flight, or you can kind of sense that, that these people are captured.
00:51:43.860I mean, one thing to mention quickly in response to that is, you know, one, one thing that Deleuze points out for knowing when you're on a line of flight is, um, is just, uh, a sense of love.
00:51:54.620Like, and if people, uh, if you're, if you're involved with the church community or you're beginning to attend a particular church, I think, you know, check your own affects, check your own motives and attitudes and, and those of your fellow parishioners.
00:52:10.340Um, and that, that could kind of help determine what sort of, uh, environment you're, uh, you're getting involved with.
00:52:17.000Hello in the dark here says anything overly artificial isn't good for humans.
00:52:22.520Even if we seek comfort of, or luxury, as much as people want to deny it, we are part of the ecosystem.
00:52:29.140Uh, there is certainly a lot of truth to that.
00:52:31.200There is a rhythm, uh, to people's lives that is tied to the land that is tied to the ecosystem.
00:52:37.020Um, there, there is, uh, there's a reason that Spangler always said that the end of the civilization is always the return to the land.
00:52:44.500People get exhausted with the artificial constructs, uh, that have, uh, pulled them away and pulled them deep into these sclerotic, uh, societal phases.
00:52:53.580And they yearn to go back to something that is, uh, more, more in tune with the rhythm of the land.
00:52:58.240Spago says, uh, what should be done about central banks financing the evil, corrupt central government without collecting taxes or borrowing from the, uh, real people?
00:53:11.480Well, uh, this is one of the reasons that, uh, you know, a lot of people are big on Bitcoin, right?
00:53:16.400Because it allows, uh, freedom from this mechanism.
00:53:20.080But as long as you have mass scale production and consumption, you're going to have centralization, uh, and, and long-term planning inside of states, uh, which also necessitates, uh, central banks, right?
00:53:32.960That's, that's, as long as we, we have our current setup, I don't see, uh, that ending, uh, it might have a natural end.
00:53:40.180It might naturally implode on itself, but until there's a radical shift and maybe Bitcoin is part of that destabilization, but until there's something like that, uh, then I think you're going to probably see that.
00:53:52.260I'd only add to that, Oren, that like many people, many theory cells, let's say, consider, uh, cryptocurrency to be like the biggest sort of de-territorialization or, or potential de-territorialization, um, in, you know, that's, that's happened since we've entered the control society.
00:54:11.600Uh, Nick Land has a paper on this called Crypto Current.
00:54:15.320Um, you can find many, many people, um, spurging out about, uh, the implications of, uh, of Bitcoin for, uh, philosophy and, uh, um, this kind of stuff.
00:54:27.840If you, if you just kick around YouTube for a while.
00:54:31.060There's a video of him, like, uh, desperately trying to like squeeze into some kind of talk about Bitcoin, like why it establishes the Kantian, uh, understanding of Apple.
00:54:40.720Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, Bitcoin is a currency to you, to Nick Land, it's an entire, uh, like metaphysic.
00:54:48.900Uh, let's see, glow in the dark, uh, says nature as the Greeks described, it was like, uh, outside of town, the wild, uh, uh, the wild grown, not complete, uh, not complete other entity, uh, most see it as today, removing yourself from nature too much will not have good results in mass society.
00:55:09.540Uh, again, I would, I would largely agree with that, uh, kind of commented on that already, but yeah, I think that that's, there's, there's a lot of truth to that.
00:55:17.620Uh, Robert Weinsfeld says, uh, fight club, uh, can I move it be, uh, incubated in the jujitsu community?
00:55:24.360Uh, from my grappling experience, it's quite a right wing group.
00:55:27.220Uh, Gordon Ryan equals Tyler, Tyler Durden.
00:55:30.840Uh, yeah, there's always, you know, it's, it's funny.
00:55:32.940There's always like this attempt for several guys at, uh, at the conferences, you know, like the old glory club conferences to like find a place where people can roll because so many guys are jujitsu guys.
00:55:44.140Um, it is of course a great practice to get, to get into, I did jujitsu and judo for, for several years.
00:55:50.880Um, it is a, it is just an excellent discipline.
00:55:57.440And you're right that it is, there's a inherent right wing bias.
00:56:00.200There's simply, uh, there's, there's only so long that you can continue to throw people, uh, you know, and choke them out and continue to be a leftoid.
00:56:10.140Every, every other guy I meet is, uh, is a BJJ guy, uh, in this space.
00:56:14.740I would just add to that, that I think in some ways you get the virtual, the virtual analog for fight clubs is just like, you know, Twitter group chats where men are with men yelling at one another.
00:56:27.320I feel like, uh, Twitter group chats are like, uh, the most feminine spaces, you know, like it's, it, they, there's, because there's no actual, uh, physical contact.
00:56:41.320They can, they can get a little, uh, um, pouty, but yeah, the, the ad mixture matters a lot, you know, that, that can change it significantly.
00:56:50.480Uh, Paladin YYZ says, uh, you can read about the Archons, watch the Star Trek episode on the Borg, or just smoke a ton of D&T.
00:57:00.040The shock is not that these allegories all involve machine intelligence, but that their presence is unfolding as described.
00:57:06.920Uh, Nick Land would call that hyperstition.
00:57:09.060Um, and so, or, you know, the, did, did observations about, uh, the inevitable nature of humanity, uh, create these narratives or did these natures create a, uh, a future that humanity eventually, uh, brought into reality?
00:57:24.280These are the questions that will leave you scratching your head, uh, or doing a lot of drugs.
00:57:31.360All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.
00:57:33.920Thank you so much for watching today, guys.
00:57:36.660Of course, you should be checking out last things.
00:57:41.660I was a part of, if you didn't catch those, make sure to do so.
00:57:44.660There's a lot of fun interviews there that I found very fascinating.
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00:58:07.840And of course, if you would like to pick up my book, the total state, you can go ahead and do that on Amazon.
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