Why Some Billionaires Are Actively Trying To Destroy The World

what if I told you that billionaires are actually trying to destroy the world like have you ever seen some of the decisions that the rich and Powerful make and think to yourself what are they thinking are they trying to make everything worse actually yeah some of them anyway but why why would somebody actively try to bring on the collapse of society well there is a kind of logic to it let's say you have colon cancer you got a tumor one way or another you're going to have to have surgery it's going to be painful it's going to be scarring it's going to suck but you have to do it would you rather do it early when the problem is small or wait till it gets huge and the surgery becomes life-threatening early obviously that's why they push the har for colonoscopies well some people believe for reasons that we'll get into that societal collapse is coming that it's inevitable that our current path is unsustainable and if it's going to happen anyway you might as well do it early and as fast as possible believing of course that a better world is on the other side a world where we can fix the mistakes that we inherited and remake it in our own image this belief system or philosophy whatever you want to call it is called accelerationism and it's a whole thing yeah it's a strange kind of political philosophy because it's being embraced by the extremes on both sides like you know they say you can go so far right that you wind up going left again and vice versa well this is where the two extremes meet so since we're about to head into yet another most important election year ever I thought I would take a deep dive into accelerationism who's behind it where it comes from and why it's the worst kind of Doomsday Prophecy the self-fulfilling kind so before I jump into this I just want to say this is not a political Channel I generally try to keep my political views out of my videos though it does pop up every once in a while I know because I hear about it and for the most part this isn't going to be a political video uh it's really more about society and the future and where things are going but there's definitely political elements in it so if you're the type of person whose comments explode into all caps that the mere acknowledgement of an idea that you don't agree with I suggest maybe you take an aspirin and here they help prevent Strokes despite the ism in the name accelerationism isn't so much a movement as a concept a concept that can be applied to any political leanings hence the fact that it's been embraced by both sides of the political Spectrum yeah if left is blue and right is red then accelerationism is Magnum the basic gist like I said at the beginning is that if a system is doomed to fail accelerating that system will help it fail faster exactly how you do that will vary on the system but the goal is the same accelerate the system to the point that it can no longer sustain itself and watch it collapse the ter itself is fairly new but this concept's been around for a long time actually one early example that we can point to is none other than KL Marx in the same year The Communist Manifesto debuted he released a set of statements that might be surprising today because they're actually very Pro capitalism in free trade but they make a bit more sense next to his belief that capitalism quote pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the Bourgeois in other words by favoring free trade he was hening the revolution he advocated accelerationism long before it had a name he targeted capitalism as many modern accelerationists do but the same Concepts been applied to all kinds of societal systems including racism sexism wokeism just to name a few one could make the argument that there's a kind of technological accelerationism inherent in the talk around the singularity from people like Ray KW Elon Musk Sam mman all those guys U you know the idea that the singularity is coming that super intelligent AI is inevitable and the better option is to help it come about so that we can shape what it's going to become and then whatever problems arise from it we need to start working now to innovate our way out of it and so far this might not sound too crazy um wait for it but stepping back the actual term accelerationism has been attributed to a 2008 blog post by critical theory Professor Benjamin noise in the post he cited marks in some of his own earlier writings though he did later admit that he may have accidentally gotten that term from someone else yeah there's a fantasy novel called Lords of light from 1967 that uses the term uh it was written by Rogers elzi although uh he uses it a much different way in the book it's really more about like accelerating human development to a more higher level Godlike status and the accelerationists in the book of the people working to make that happen noise ad miss that he read the book and that maybe it kind of you know snuck into his brain subconsciously who knows it happens by the way if the name Lords of light sounds familiar um you might be thinking of the movie Argo that's the one where Ben affle played a CIA agent and they produced a fake movie to get into Iran and rescue some us diplomats that were being held prisoner there um in the movie The Script that they were using to make the movie off of was called Argo but it was an adaptation of Lords of light so now you know that so it Benjamin noise who gave the idea a name but it was English philosopher Nick land who took the name and ran with it it was an idea he'd been playing with for decades but he just didn't quite have a name for it now he did it was Nick L who made the Karl Marx connection that I talked about earlier um he wrote about it in a article that he wrote called a quick and dirty guide to accelerationism he also named friederich n GES Delo and Felix gari as members of the same group N needs no introduction uh but I'll take a moment to explain the other two whose names I'm sure I'm murdering delus was a French philosopher and guari was a French psychoanalyst and in 1972 they published a book together where they introduced the concept of deterritorialization this is the opposite of territorialization which refers to restraints that keep a system in check deterritorialization means removing those restraints so you can see why Nick L drew a line from deterritorialization to accelerationism could we cram more syllables into these words Jus in the 1990s land was part of a group that was found at Warwick university called the cybernetic culture Research Unit or the ccru uh which sounds like some kind of evil organization from a Terminator movie or something that might have been on purpose they fancied themselves as a collective of renegade academics who came together in part to quote undermine the cheer utopianism of the time according to one of the group's co-founders STI plant they published numerous articles held in-person conferences and reportedly did a lot of drugs is that not everybody's college experience in the '90s no the ccru eventually burned itself out and its members went on to do other things but this is where the leftwing right-wing split started to happen another influential member named Mark fiser started blogging under the name KP Punk he attracted a following and eventually co-wrote a Manifesto that became the foundational document of left-wing accelerationism or LX it's Nick Lan's writings that are considered foundational to right-wing accelerationism or RX both sides Envision a post capitalist future and a technological singularity LX is concerned with producing more equal more just World After the revolution and they believe that technology is the key to improving The Human Condition which isn't really that far off from the original meaning from Lords of light if you think about it Nick Lyn meanwhile has gone further to the right since 2013 he's actually been associated with a far right Neo reaction movement also known as nrx nrx was spun out of the blog of a software engineer named Curtis yarvin who posts under the name menus mul buug they're anti-democracy and pro authoritarian to the point that some of the nrxs actually criticize Donald Trump for not declaring himself King yes the collapse of Western Civilization brought to you by Kong and mous mul buug so obviously there's some dangerous ideas that we're walking into here but it helps to keep in mind that at least most of these people think that they're actually getting us closer to a better world and that's based on the idea of the four turnings I've been reading this book lately uh not for this video I've had this for a while I'm about halfway through it but I feel like I can talked somewhat coherently about it it's called the fourth turning is here and it's written by Neil how and it's a followup to a previous book from 1997 called the fourth turning by how and the historian William Strauss now seeing me hold up this book is costing every single one of you guys to have at least one of three reactions right now yes Jesus Christ yes finally yeah just do this this is a polarizing book to some people This is Gospel to others it's garbage on par with the writings of Nostradamus but to those who are unfamiliar the basic gist goes like this the theory of the four turnings which is also called Strauss how generational Theory basically makes the argument that Civilization is cyclical that it operates in Cycles this mostly applies to Western civilization but very specifically to the United States these Cycles last for about 80 to 90 years roughly the length of a Long human lifespan and they name these Cycles seculum which is an old Roman word that has a similar meaning each of these Cycles is made up of what they call for turnings uh kind of like seasons of a civilization they name those Seasons the high The Awakening the unraveling and the crisis and each of these last about 20 or 30 years it works like this each culum is defined by a major crisis point a world changing event that upturns established institutions and is usually punctuated by a massive war a total war in their Parliament this is the last turning in a seculum so they call this the fourth turning many proponents of this Theory consider World War II to be the most recent crisis era following the crisis is the high period the first turning of a new culum this is when peace returns and society's on an upswing it's a optimistic era social cohesion is high Community involvement is strong and a collective vision for the future is widely shared in the US the postwar years of the 50s and the early 60s were our most recent High period which is why it's often romantic ANZ as the good old days when people say they want to make things great again this is the time period they're often talking about the second turning is called The Awakening this is when the strict social Conformity of the high period starts to wne and people start to search for more individual autonomy often through spirituality and cultural Rebellion whereas the crisis years are marked by political upheaval The Awakening years are marked by cultural upheaval this is analogous to the Consciousness revolution of the hippies in the 60s and 70s the third turning is the unraveling period this is basically the opposite of the high period where Collective energy is at its lowest point and individualism is at its height it's marked by a lack of trust in government and institutions and as a result inequality begins to grow and divisions form in society divisions that eventually lead back to a crisis period bringing a close to the culum and the cycle starts all over again now the reason this works and the reason it's called generational theory is because each generation is kind of shaped by the turning that they're brought up in and as they get older they seek to change the world away from the values that were imposed on them when they were young you know everybody wants to undo the problems that they inherited so there's an idea um or a saying I don't think it's really tied to this book or anything but it's that you know a generation that goes through war and experiences all the terrible things that war you know brings about U you know they come out of it wanting to never see War again and then their children grow up having heard all the stories about how terrible things were what their parents went through and they actually see some of the scars physical and emotional that they carry with them so they avoid war as they get older but it's the grandkids come along and of course they want to rebel against their parents and and they begin to romanticize the purpose and the greatness of their grandparents generation and then war and conflict become attractive again anyway according to this Theory the different Generations fit into different archetypes based on the turning that they were brought up in and these archetypes are prophets Nomads Heroes and artists and as time progresses through the different turnings each generational archetype has a different role to play in those turnings and I think at this point I'm going to step back from it a little bit because this does get really granular and really detailed and frankly exhausting um and there's actually like two actually three different books that they've published that break all this down but I think you get the point but just to bring this point home they consider World War II to be the most recent crisis point 80 years before that was the Civil War about 85 years before that was a revolutionary war 75 or 80 years before that was a Glorious Revolution in England and it keeps going but the proponents of this Theory have tracked all the way back to the 1400s and for those keeping count World War II was the last crisis so 80 years after that would be um now clearly this is where the theory breaks down because in no way are we experiencing any kind of societal crisis right now so look I I get why this is interesting and compelling I do have my criticisms of it I'll get to that later but it's this kind of thinking that fuels accelerationist ideas you know if there is this great Wheel of Time on which a crisis is inevitable and it's followed by a great High period I mean I can I can see why it's tempting to just rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with everybody wants to get high it's especially appealing if you're in a position of privilege and power be it Financial political or otherwise and you know that not only do you have the means to survive the crisis but you can shape what comes after it it's kind of like a belief in a secular Rapture but these kinds of ideas where the ends justify the means the end being a promise of a better world have been used to justify horrific acts from the beginning of time on May 14th 2022 a man walked into the Tops Friendly Market in the predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo New York and open fire killing 10 people and injuring three the killer whose name I won't broadcast because that guy not only live streamed the massacre on Twitch but had written a Manifesto explaining his actions and by the way I feel the need to point out that um he later plad not guilty in court after you know live streaming himself doing it and writing a Manifesto about it serious question has anything good ever come from a Manifesto can't think of anything anyway one line from this particular Manifesto read quote stability and comfort are the enemies of revolutionary change therefore we must destabilize and discomfort Society whenever possible the heading for that section that that quote was in destabilization and accelerationism tactics for victory this quote by the way was basically taken from another Manifesto written by the guy who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christ Church New Zealand in 2019 H many people point to Charles Manson as an early accelerationist Manson and his followers thought that a war was inevitable and figured that the best way to come out on top was to help it get started to do this they murdered at least nine people including the actress Sharon Tate they thought that the grizzly scenes would incite fear in white people who would blame black men for the crimes and declare a war against the entire race but now before you start thinking they were crazy they actually thought that whites would lose the war and be eliminated all of them except for the Manson family of course cuz they were prepared for it but then Charles Manson would be able to rule over all the black people because obviously they wouldn't be able to rule over themselves okay yeah they were crazy and and racist they were crazy racist not to be outdone in the crazy racist Department acceleration is language has been adopted by a lot of Neo-Nazi groups in recent years and a number of them have been arrested for stockpiling weapons and explosives as well as committing and planning violent crimes I'll put a couple of links to places like the West Point combating terrorism Center and the foreign policy Research Institute that talk about the specific groups and the threats they pose um you can go read it it's uh sobering yeah when it comes down to it accelerationism and the four turnings Theory are just another justification that terrible people are using to do terrible things you know and like everything else it's it's on a spectrum you know from from people who probably have good intentions wanting to reduce the amount of suffering that a crisis would create to you know Mad Men Who just want to watch the world burn I mean the whole four turnings thing it's it's not necessarily bad on the surface you know some of it kind of even makes sense um like I said before though I I I do have my criticisms like I feel like a lot of the the theory behind this is that they basically saw a pattern over the last century or so and then just kind of looked for evidence that fit their Theory going back in time um but they kind of leave out things that don't fit their model like World War I has just kind of skipped over as a minor War which I don't agree with that at all I think it might have been more consequential than World War II I mean far more people died in World War II but World War I ushered in a whole new era of nation states especially in Europe it it ended the monarchical system that had been in place for hundreds of years six monarchies fell around the time of World War I including the Russian monarchy which brought in the Soviet Union and communism an entirely new economic model that we would be competing with for the next 80 years maybe you could call that the Russian seculum by the way there's a great video from historian Sean Munger that I'll link below that uh he talks about how the six monarchies fell around World War I it's a very long video but it's worth a watch in fact I think there's a compelling argument that World War II was just a reverberation from World War I because a lot of it was based on you know grievances from that first war uh it's a massive reverberation but still it it kind of finished the job plus I feel like generational theory is kind of overblown um in the first place I mean yeah people are born in various time periods are going to have shared experiences that shape them in similar ways absolutely you know but but to say that you know you're a millennial so you're like this or you're a gen xer so you're like this I mean eventually just turns into zodiac signs and this Theory by the way it has been heavily criticized by some historians as being um closer to astrology or prognostication and for you know like I said leaving out things that didn't fit the theory hey future Joe here so uh there's something that got left out of the video originally and the more I think about it I should probably include it there is a kind of subset of accelerationism that's becoming really popular right now it's called effective accelerationism and um it's different from what I've been talking about throughout the rest of this video because it's not so much focused on the collapse of society this is really more about wanting to to just unleash technology and let it progress as fast as possible because that's the best possible way to get out of the problems that we have right now even the problems that come with you know unleashing technology now I can't help but notice that most of the people who ascribe to this are um sort of tech Bros and venture capitalist that do have the most to gain by unleashing technology um they tend to identify themselves on social media with the tag EAC people like y combinator CEO Gary tan VC fund billionaire Mark Andre and the infamous Pharma bro Martin scy these guys aren't necessarily politically motivated as much as they are harboring almost like a religious Devotion to the idea of Technology as the savior of mankind um although they do tend to lean a little bit more authoritarian just because Democratic institutions tend to move more slowly on these things in fact in October Mark andrees posted a blog post that sort of laid out the tenants of effective accelerationism and he called it the Techno Optimist Manifesto it includes an enemy list so that's cool I'll put a link to it down below as well as a link to a sort of rebuttal post so you can read it and make up your own mind on it but I felt like it was worth mentioning because like I said it's not really so much about the collapse of mankind although the people who argue against it would say that their policies would have the same result anyway that that's all linked down below but you can't deny that it does feel like we're at a bit of a crisis point right now in history and and and reading this does feel a little bit validating in kind of a scary way um but if you want to call it my hot take I would say that it's not so solid that we should you know destroy civilization over it and I'll be honest with you guys I have a lot of anxiety about the future right now um I do think things are going to get worse before they get better it's just we're so extremely divided right now and I don't know how we get out of it without something historic awful happening like seriously how bad would something have to be to get everyone in the United States to put down their Grievances and and come together to fix it I can't think of anything and that's kind of terrifying and whatever that thing might be I'm pretty sure the answer is not to accelerate it all I can say is that history's going to do what history's going to do and all we can do is just take care of each other I don't know call me a naive if you want but I think that's how we get to a better world and if you want to create a better you maybe invest in making your brain sharper with today's sponsor brilliant to the brilliant guys I'm sorry actually you know if we're talking about predicting the future here believe it or not they have a new course on that kind of brilliant has a whole 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this video made it sound but uh you guys all go out there have an eye openening week have an eye opening rest of the month while you're at it stay safe and I'll see you next Monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 1,530,947

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: CQmoQEeNYrs

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023