All language subtitles for Gray Mirror of the Nihilist Prince

gry number one the general theory of

collaboration in 20120 everyone is

either a collaborator or a dissident

everything is about power everything has

to have a side everyone knows what side

they should pick pick it and you're a

collaborator reject

a

dissident nor are these labels chosen to

mean that dissidents are always right

and collaborators always wrong far from

it sometimes power is Right sometimes

power is wrong always and everywhere

power defines and is defined by what you

should think do and say if you wish to

flourish this is the only sure way to

know whether you are a dissident or a

collaborator are you or are you not on

the side of power if your actions were

completely selfish if you were an

utterly egocentric sociopath if your

only goal was to get ahead and make a

good impression what would you pretend

to believe what words what ideas would

drip from your mouth and to whose

newsletter would you subscribe this side

is the side of power to take power's

side is to collaborate to stand against

it is to dissent and this does not tell

us who is right or wrong real life is

not a movie if there was some cheap and

accurate formula for right and wrong how

would any wrong WR

remain both sides cannot be right both

sides can certainly be wrong most people

do just pick one side probably neither

is perfect every question can have a

different answer to get every answer

right you may have to be both a

dissident and a collaborator also most

people have both a conscience and a

career and while factional schisms

between collaborators are superficial

there are genuinely infinite varieties

of dissident most of them are extended

many have never existed that they all

disagree does not make them all wrong

just at least all but one you cannot

just trust some absurd internet grifter

Guru on everything or anything you may

have to recover the truth from a long

dead tradition you may even have to

invent it it is hard to be a dissident

but it can also be kind of fun you also

have your own life you have to care

about that too it's all very stressful

but also it's all very exciting

H this kind of stressful exciting

situation makes one sort of person ask

which side should I fight for or how can

the dissidents win or even how can we

crush the dissidence these are certainly

interesting questions another sort of

person asks how did we get here how can

I get out how can we get out what would

getting out even mean what else is there

what else could there be can we imagine

any possible way in which which all

these increasingly strange and dangerous

Manas could turn themselves off and

everything could just be sensible not

scary work and work well if you have

found yourself asking this other type of

question perhaps you are not interested

in spending the rest of your life as

either a collaborator or a dissident

this text is for you unfortunately I

don't see any short easy right answers

my answers are long hard and very likely

wrong maybe someone else can do better

with this same questions but the

fundamental problem is simply the

distance from here to sanity which I

believe is far greater than almost

anyone

imagines in the first chapter we'll

explain the nature and condition of our

current regime with a special emphasis

on why it's broken cannot be fixed and

merits neither your fty nor your odium

and how to be neither a collaborator nor

a

disident the crisis of universal

relevance in 2020 everyone is relevant

in 2020 anyone can be important in 2020

anyone's ideas can spread around the

world in seconds in 1990 this was

exactly what we wanted in 1990 anyone

with a uset account could see the future

perfectly in 1990 you didn't even need

to be John Perry Barlo in 2020 the

network would be the government for the

first time direct democracy would scale

in 2020 everyone would be their own

represent resentative in some planetary

assembly in 2020 we would have real

democracy routed over TCP IP to

everything on Planet 3 with two legs

that wasn't a bird and in 2020 everyone

would be relevant a new dream not even

slightly in 1842 Tennyson had pretty

much the same vision not in vain the

distance beacons forward forward let us

range let the great world spin forever

down the ringing grooves of

change till the war drum throbs no

longer and the battle flags are furled

in the parliament of man the Federation

of the

world they the common sense of most

shall hold a fretful realm in awe and

the kindly Earth shall Slumber lapped in

universal

law in 2020 the results are in it

happened in 2020 everyone is relevant

and in 2020 everyone is either a

collaborator or a

dissident in 1882 Tennyson wrote a

sequel to his 40-year old poem which

painted the outcome of his dream more or

less the dream of the European

Revolutions of

1848 pluck the mighty from their seats

but set no weak ones in their place

Piller wisdom in your markets fling

their aall in her face tumble nature

heel overhead and yelling with the

yelling Street set the feet above the

brain and swear the brain is in the feet

bring the dark old ages back without the

faith without the Hope break the state

the church the throne and roll their

ruins down the

slope it seems the dude had a change of

heart maybe we have something to learn

from him maybe we already learned it the

hard way even for its MPS it turned out

the parliament of man now AKA social

media is a terrible experience sometimes

even a terrifying one it does make

universal laws these are also terrible

and terribly executed it is superficial

and lazy to blame this nasty surprise on

the Internet or Twitter or whatever Tech

Tennyson got much the same Democratic

shock from rail broad sheet and

Telegraph new devices have brought old

dreams New Life the These Dreams made

flesh have whips and fangs we never

dreamed we never ordered any nightmares

we're not dreaming these lashes Burns

and stings should we question the tech

the tech is here to stay no we must

summon all the courage we have and

question our

dreams how do we actually know they

weren't nightmares all

along stop trying to change the

world there is is nothing historically

unusual about all this we are just

living in a total State nor is this new

it has been true our whole lives it's

just getting harder to hide in a total

State everyone and everything is infused

with power everyone matters everything

is important everyone has to care

everyone wants to change the world

everyone must be engaged everyone is

pushing power forward or pushing back

against it everyone is either a

collaborator or a dis

power has turned the whole country into

a political cult Anyone who reads VAV

Havel's power of the powerless will be

struck by Havel's portrait of

Czechoslovakia 40 years ago with its

voluntary window slogans its endless

parade of Crusades is inexorable

Machinery of human cancellation hav had

the right strategy for the subjects of

the total State first they must teach

themselves to be powerless they must

fully inhabit their private arrest

relevance above all they must stop

trying to change the world whatever

power they think they have now it is

power in a fantasy until they check out

of this fantasy they are powerless in

reality and this is true even of the

most successful people in the world

today engagement and

Detachment this is a weird Theory let's

define some jargon to make it more

precise engagement is any voluntary

relationship with power to assist or

resist power whether in action or just

desire if you are trying to change the

world even if you just want to change it

maybe even if you just want it to change

you are engaged the opposite of

Engagement is Detachment to be detached

is to be consciously irrelevant to

inhabit the world as it is to know that

it is likely to continue on its current

path and to separate yourself from any

action or desire to change it no one can

achieve perfect attachment which is the

point of

trying engagement is not compliance

compliance is involuntary action

engagement is voluntary action or desire

for Action compliance is paying your

taxes engagement is putting a sign on

your lawn Detachment is weird anything

weird in your lifestyle will commend

your attorneys to the most meticulous

possible

compliance Detachment is not dissidence

Detachment never resists it does nothing

against any person or institution legal

or illegal violent or nonviolent it does

not even try to influence public policy

or public opinion it is never angry it

never cares and it always obeys both the

formal laws and the informal

rules Detachment is a hard spiritual

task in which no one can succeed

perfectly it is not a fact or even an

idea Detachment like Zen is a practice

and while while serious Zen practice

involves hours of painful sitting that

can cause hemorrhoids and even nerve

damage how hard can it be to practice

not giving a [ __ ] achieving Detachment

has both individual and Collective

benefits it is good for you if you can

do it it is good for everyone if

everyone can do it we'll see how this

works as we move forward but hav 10

years later was president of

Czechoslovakia the irony of Detachment

it's the first step on the One path to a

different government and while that path

is long its first step may be the

hardest evolution of the total state but

before the path to the Future the road

from the past how did things even get

this way let's start by looking at why

everything in 2020 is so political if we

go back to the early plista scene we

should have the root causes covered we

will have to indulge in some really

sweep inaccurate

generalizations pre-vet were total

States everyone was relevant the unit of

power was the tribe everyone was a

soldier or worker of the tribe everyone

was about the tribe so everything was

political many human social instincts

evolved in this period not all these

instincts are assets

today premodern civilizations were

partial States in which power only

concerned a small set of rulers or regim

regime everyone else was a subject under

the regime's unconditional sovereignty

the invention of subjection was the

invention of

civilization it lets State and Society

scale beyond the size of a tribe A pure

subject has no emotional relationship

with power power demands nothing but

physical compliance minimal compliance

is non-aggression plus taxation Le

libertarian Paradise while Real History

was never so pure this abstraction is a

normal civilized condition that we can

call Natural

Detachment modern civilization thanks to

Innovations in communication from

Gutenberg to Pornhub has returned to its

beginning in 2020 everyone is totally

connected so everyone can and must be

engaged with power just like when we

were

chimps the total state is no longer

content with physical compliance it

demands emotional security power is not

just obeyed power must be loved and this

reversion to the total State our most

ancient form of government makes the

modern regime despite all of its toys

and transistors seem somehow

surprisingly

barbaric the modern total State we never

love power directly as such we love some

good that only Power can achieve or that

nothing can achieve but only Power can

try to achieve we feel that power as in

some sense ours such as always and

everywhere the mindset of the

collaborator who never understands that

his enemies are enemies of power not

enemies of

good when we collaborate we are acting

like normal humans paying homage to

power when we pay homage to power we

think we are making the world a better

place sometimes we even are but we are

always paying homage to

power but when power has our emoluments

and our compliance why does it need our

homage why must it pester us so for the

mere trinket of

love because it feels

insecure power always feels insecure

everyone wants power so it should feel

insecure and the worse its performance

the more insecure power feels because

the more insecure it is so the more

homage it must man of course there is no

conspiracy this is historical Evolution

not intelligent design this is why we

should and do distrust orw in total

States it's not because big lies are so

bad in and of themselves the problem is

whatever makes the lies

necessary systematic mcity and poor

governance are common comorbidities the

closer a regime feels itself to death

the worse Its Behavior must become the

worse Its Behavior gets the closer it

comes to death and the harder it must

work to look good and every regime to

almost everyone looks absolutely

Immortal till the day it

dies psychological security and

political

formulas orwellian is a bit of a slur a

more objective way to describe our late

modern regime is that it finds itself

heavily invested in psychological

security all regimes depend on the

affection of their subjects in some this

affection flows naturally from

consistent performance and customer

satisfaction almost no security is

needed in others it must be more

engineered this can never be done

perfectly so physical security is always

necessary but psychological security is

always

cheaper an aging regime has a face like

a boot a face only a mother could love

power still needs everyone to love it at

least everyone in the ruling class since

no one will openly kiss a boot power

needs its Jedi Mind Tricks in the modern

world the general pattern of these

tricks is to project some illusion which

makes you yourself feel subjectively

relevant objectively you are delegating

power to others you do not literally

love power you love the good when you

collaborate you generally win your good

can even win but Power always

wins the 19th century Italian political

scientist Gano Musa named these tricks

political formulas an oligarchy is not a

conspiracy no one designs today's

political formulas they evolve the

proper concern is neither the formulas

nor those who follow them it is the

structural landscape that makes them

inevitable and

successful one aspect of that landscape

will always be our power seeking chimp

psychology as regretted by American

Statesmen as venerable as John Adams

neighborhood Lincoln which is

unfortunately all too well adapted to

the total State since the human brain is

an invariant the only variable aspect of

the landscape is the structure of the

state the home inspector's

diagnosis our structural problem is

systematic power leakage everything is

political because everything in the

government leaks power a power leak

confers Sovereign power on an individual

or institution not formally entrusted

with it this is like leaking nutrients

into a lake its ecosystem becomes

specialized for disgusting nutrient

loving algae blame the leak not the lake

at the organizational level power

leakage grants many institutions outside

the formal government substantial

effective sovereignty over public policy

at the individual level it lets everyone

feel important outside their formal

powers like the right to vote

systematic power leakage lets everyone

feel important even outside their legal

political rights and many institutions

outside the government proper hold an

enormous amount of power over

it it seems completely normal to

everyone it is not it is evil mere power

leaks just an engineering problem in the

structure of our government if a quite

unfixable one cause most of the evil in

the world today most evil is done by

accountable power most of most modern

governments is already mostly

unaccountable but a state outside the

state is profoundly inherently

existentially and utterly unaccountable

his job security makes Louis the 14th

look like a part-time dog

catcher and this is just about

non-governmental organizations which

often in practice combin Sovereign

Authority with private immunity The Best

of Both Worlds worse yet unor organized

forces or those whose organization is

not visible to the state can practice

direct state-like action a failure to

suppress such extra-legal action is

itself a power leak only collaborators

can operate this way dissident forces in

this vein are quickly crushed and

punished severely the force is once

again operating as an arm of power quite

unconsciously its dependence on power

can be concealed even from its own

members who feel they are cool Rebels as

they operate as The Irregular

auxiliaries of the Imperial Guard these

kinds of Power leaks let a lot of people

feel like they matter they mean that

Society is not formally divided into

those with power and those with none it

remains actually divided in fact almost

no one actually has any power in the

sense of affecting government policy and

those who do have little each but since

anyone could be important

anyone can feel

important still most of the importance

this system supplies is fake it is

certainly true that everyone

instinctively wants to feel important

also everyone instinctively wants to eat

donuts empty calories and delusions of

grandeur are not healthy these

motivations amongst the ground Apes of

the Pline did evolve for coldly rational

biological reasons those ancient reasons

are not compelling in our current

nutritional and political contexts when

we all eat donuts all the time we all

get fat when we all feel important all

the time our government becomes

dysfunctional and often actively vicious

and socially and even professionally we

all start behaving like R speier's

teenage

girlfriend is it the purpose of life and

history to gratify our atavistic

instincts the long-term consequences of

such gratifications are usually bad

maybe they are are bad here

too the ultramodern partial

State a partial state is any state whose

inhabitants are clearly divided into

subjects and officials and the latter

hold unconditional sovereignty over the

former there are two principal

advantages of a well-designed partial

State first it tends to work much better

second its subjects since their opinions

don't matter at all can think and say

what they want ideally the subjects are

not even tempted to ambition which

leaves them free to dispassionately

observe analyze imagine and discuss so

not only is a well-designed partial

regime more effective but also more free

the partial state is the regime not of

Tennyson but of Pope who wrote in

1733 for forums of government let fools

contest whatever's best administered is

best but isn't this autocracy dangerous

what if the officials oppress the

subjects this is absolutely a great

danger it is so great a danger that it

is happening right now since every total

State as measured by emotional

engagement with power remains very much

partial as measured by objective

relevance to

power every time you ride in a car your

own body is surrounded by forces and

energies that could crush you like a

cricket that risk is not low at all we

are just used to it it but also that

risk is carefully engineered to the

lowest possible level by many

generations of technical craftsmanship

or at least it should be and today is

none too early to start does anyone

believe polling the TV audience of 2020

is an effective safety measure every

state whether it admits it or not has

its officials and its subjects every

state has far fewer officials than

subjects creating an inherent security

problem for the former a bad regime is

insecure with lower inconsistent

performance it must constantly engineer

public opinion a good regime is highly

secure with predictable high performance

at most it must now and then nudge its

fickle subjects towards reality war is

not peace hate is not love but security

not Anarchy is

freedom what does high performance in a

regime mean this is a whole chapter on

its own most readers come in with a lot

to unlearn here it is better to start

with an impressionistic unscientific

negative just some examples of things

that are bad a bad grade in any of these

fields and many more should disqualify

any

candidate here are some random and

randomly ordered indicators of poor

regime performance imperfect physical

safety of property or person day or

night in any public spaces systematic

conflict resentment or dependence

violent psychological or material

between any two groups inability to

secure the public health and safety

against all biological threats inability

to utilize all its human capital at all

or near its human capacity inability to

produce goods and services on which it

systematically depends inability to

Prevail in military conflicts there are

others is this not enough but the

ultramodern partial state is not the

premodern partial State the subjects of

the past were naturally detached

ignorant peasants to put it crudely

since the future cannot uneducate itself

it cannot resurrect this phenomenon it

needs some doctrine of conscious

Detachment intentional and informed

renunciation of power it is a long way

from here to the end of the path but

here is an interesting symmetry we need

this Str feature Detachment both for the

first step and the

last a unified theory of

collaboration yeah okay sure but how can

we get from here to this Nifty future

ultramodern State slow down we have to

start by perfectly understanding where

we are right now no plan can succeed

unless conceived and executed in the

coldest truest possible reality if you

have to set your alarm Now set it for at

least a couple decades decades from now

sorry we promised a unified theory of

collaboration and have delivered no such

thing because we've spent too long

totally ignoring our friends the

dissident obviously any unified theory

must be a theory of both collaborators

and dissidents the former are also our

friends of

course we can solve this problem in a

simple painless way by revising our

vocabulary let's just consider dissident

special kind of collaborator we can call

collaborators who aren't dissidents

volunteers the difference becomes the

collaborators polarity volunteers are

positive and dissident are

negative when they act plan to act or

just fantasize about acting volunteers

and dissidents are devoted to the same

type of action either controlling the

regime or which amounts to the same

thing exercising Authority outside it

they are both trying to govern to drive

power's car volunteers want to drive

straight ahead but faster or better

dissidents want to turn break or even

reverse assertions on the modern

regime while the above may have taught

you a bit it has two serious flaws first

The Poetry is slightly tinkered with

just for 21st century punch sorry

Tennyson second while I normally try to

be very concrete I can't help using the

word power in a rather ethereal even

Continental way third anyone who has

read this far may have noticed polemical

statements catchy hypotheses stated

without evidence all of this is slightly

dirty pool and needs to be apologized

for and I apologize the next chapter

will drown you like a fish in evidence

which is not the same as data as for

power it is like the wind easier to know

which way it is blowing than where it is

blowing from the next chapter will give

you a picture of where power comes from

but first let me put these

unsubstantiated claims in one place try

agreeing with these hopefully you will

anyway since volunteers and dissidents

are opposed it's easy for us to ignore

what they have in common one both

obviously are collectively engaged with

power two both not at all obviously

collectively support

power volunteers generally intend to

assist a cause defined as a concrete

public goal whose achievement will mean

the world has become a better place

while achieving a voluntary goal is by

no means unheard of success is unusual

enough that many popular goals are

rationally impossible or even undefined

the universal objective effect of

volunteering is to support a party a

party of power goals which would benefit

the public good but cannot generate

power do not attract

volunteers dissidents generally intend

either to resist some powerful cause or

to oppose power in general being weaker

than power dissidents tend to lose to it

their Superior honor and intelligence

can Prevail in an ambush or even a

battle but almost never a war and

obviously losing to power is a way to

advance power and obviously this is only

the beginning of the many many ways

power can deploy the existence of

dissident even the most talented and

sincere of dissidents to help tell a

more convincing story all regimes are

like fairies they exist if people

believe in them they all specialize in

processing faith into sovereignty this

Factory can process more than one kind

of belief in more than one kind of way

pal forp our regime probably draws more

energy from its opponents than its

supporters so everyone should disengage

volunteers should disengage they are

probably just propping up a bad

government dissidents should disengage

they are probably also just propping up

a bad

government and there really is only one

kind of collaborator just two different

brands each crafted lovingly by

Evolutions inhuman hand for a different

culture or personality both sides are

objectively supporting power which is

why power is so

strong a final

intervention I have by no means proven

these hypotheses but it is easy to

demonstrate them we will do so in

considerable detail but if the case is

so clear why hasn't it

prevailed because whether you are a

dissident or a collaborator or a bit of

both engagement creates a sense of

meaning valid or bogus which secretes a

dopamine drip that leaves you scrabbling

like a junkie for any

rationalization however tenuous of your

ridiculous pathetic and onanistic

addiction to importance in this absurd

world you cannot bring this addiction to

the Future you will feel better without

it you don't need to matter at all just

to be administered best it was always is

a monkey brained status thing under a

regime that doesn't leak power no one

outside the government proper can be

addicted to power or needs to be even a

government job is just a job an

ultramodern partial regime is possible

because it can become popular even

before it exists it can become popular

because power addicts are junkies

junkies don't want to be on heroin

junkies want to not need to be on heroin

never try to take anyone's power away

instead understand why they feel they

need that power if you can give them a

way to let go of it they are often happy

to do so power is fun power is a burden

over time fun decreases and burden

increases one day the regime Falls

peacefully even joyously as soon as it

has some next regime it can surrender to

and designing that regime

is neither dissidence nor

volunteering subscribe for the full Saga

this premium content is absolutely free

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free subsequent chapters will be or

entirely walled it's a shitty world and

rethinking all of this crap isn't cheap

so please excuse the grift

hey guys it's your boy Nick with the

unist thank you guys so much for

watching listening I really do

appreciate it um we're getting close to

800 Subs so we might make it to 1,000

pretty soon uh and you guys are all to

thank I was going to I had about 20

minutes of commentary that I was going

to put at the end but it didn't seem

right I'm sure there are people that

don't give a [ __ ] about who who we are

or what we're doing they just came here

for the visual audio book or the just

the audio itself so I didn't want to

bore those people I am putting out a

video that gives my response in short in

a nutshell I really changed my mind a

lot on this text when I first read it I

immediately started making it and I hope

when you're watching the visuals that

the irony isn't lost on you a lot of the

images conflict with the perspective

he's coming from now that's intentional

I know moldbug has attempted to distance

himself from his earlier reputation and

perhaps rightly so um but I do feel that

if even though this is a very recent

work I don't know that it was recent

enough to take into account some of the

events that are depicted uh and I do

believe that according to his own

theories the true Nexus of power in our

state are not the elected positions they

are in fact the university the

intelligencia the mainstream media those

are the real organs of power in this

state or you tell me I mean

who's in power when you look at this

clip of police standing by 10 ft away as

looters ransack a shop and Chaz or chop

the Seattle autonomous Zone and Portland

attempted to do the same like there's no

longer a monopoly on violent force in

America and so we know he's a monarchist

we know he's a technophile there's a lot

of ways in which he just out right

denies a technologically skeptical

mindset um so that's part for the course

I've got a lot more to say I'm not stay

tuned for the video but just wanted to

say if you guys want to hear more about

unism what our take is on this there's

going to be a video that we're going to

link in the description otherwise you

guys are the best you can follow us on

Twitter Instagram at theists TH

UNS you can also go to the un.

boards.net and join our forum

other than that though there's not much

else to say but we will see you in the

circle

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