Michael Downs

Michael Downs, an insightful theorist and author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog, joins to delve deep into accelerationism and its implications. He discusses Žižek's critique of progress, contrasting accelerationism with degrowth communism. The conversation touches on cyber-positivity, the zero point of modernity, and the philosophical horror of AI. They explore the tensions of nostalgia in politics and examine how accelerationism is reshaping ideology in our tech-driven world, probing the complex relationship between modernity and humanity’s future.

In this discussion, Michael Downs, a working-class autodidact philosopher and author of "Capital VS Timenergy," dives deep into the provocative ideas of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. He unpacks right-wing accelerationism and examines the concept of 'timeenergy' as a potential foundation for socialism. The conversation also touches on automation's impact on labor, contrasting capitalist ideals with the push for meaningful work, while engaging in a thought-provoking critique of contemporary philosophical landscapes, including the dynamics of ideology and reality.