
let's THiNK about it
A cultural detective's journey into philosophy, art, sociology, and psychology with Ryder Richards. (Formerly known as "The Will to DIY")
Latest episodes

Dec 24, 2022 • 18min
Mimetic Desire
https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-69-memetic-desire/ 0:00 Intro1:22 What is mimetic rivalry? memtic desire.2:48 Mimicry as an internal set of neurosis.5:05 What we want is the attention and control that someone else wanted first.7:14 If somebody else wants something, our survival depends on us getting to it first.9:47 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.11:28 Accelerationism is a means to break out of the deadlock of capitalism.12:56 All of our focus is now embodied in winning the object.14:46 If the system is good enough, it will disperse the energies.16:37 How capitalism fits into all of this.

19 snips
Dec 10, 2022 • 33min
Malign Velocities (Accelerationism)
0:00 Introduction to this episode.1:53 In 1879 there was a horrible train wreck: the promise and cost of technology4:27 A cautionary tale about the influence of the machine on communism.6:53 What is the frame of Capitalism? (Marxism into desire) 12:17 The problem with capitalism is not just the machinery, but also our social and libidinal economy.15:04 Our desires are shaped by society, work, and culture, which are not easily overthrown altogether. 17:52 How do you manifest the spirit of man at his boldest while denying him his rude desires?23:33 Accelerationism as a “sadistic” approach to crisis: rush towards death. 25:49 Barbarism is the only way to get to socialism: nihilism of values. 27:53 Accelerationism grasps misery: The world of work is confronted as one of future horror.

12 snips
Nov 7, 2022 • 31min
Accelerationism & Futurism
0:00 Intro _ the Gods of Technology (Deus ex Machina) 3:56 Part 1: some context _ the capitalist trap, double binds, and looking for an escape, reality vs. abstraction11:27 Part 2: the futurists_ from industrialization to deregulation to cyberspace, 1909 manifesto, praise machines and war, but scorn for women17:41 Part 3: the accelerationists _ the 2008 crash, bailout, failures and no foreseeable changes, humans slow down tech progress, we have lost imagination and are dying anyway23:33 Part 4: the death drive and the implications, breaking the machine, following capital 29:54 Outro _ next episode on Malign Velocities by Benjamin Noys

Sep 24, 2022 • 25min
Cybernetics & Capitalism
Full episode in writing as well as video at:https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-66-cybernetics--capitalism/0:00 Intro 1:56 Part 1: cybernetics _ machines, feedback, and cascades 6:22 Part 2: one-dimension of capital _ Marcuse, consumerism’s false needs, subjecting justice to capitalism9:55 Part 3: deterritorialization _ Deleuze and Guattari, positive/negative energy, decoding the regulation valves14:00 Part 4: reterritorialization _ Mark Fisher, immediate recapture, mark fisher, refusal as lack of feedback 23:26 Outro

Aug 31, 2022 • 23min
The Path of Opposition (Failure as Transcendence)
PART 1: the path for the 2 to become 1the 2 is 1, linked through exclusionin the last season of “peaky blinders” Tommy Shelby is a socialist forced into plotting with the fascists… In one scene he says people think of opposing sides as two end-points as if they are on separate tracks. But Tommy says he finds it to be a circle, where the two sides start diverging. As they escalate and become more extreme, separating distance, they begin to arch back toward each other, sweeping around the central axis, as if in an orbit. As they extend further they gravitate back to a shared commonality: the goal of revolution and change unites them, making them uneasy allies. It is as if, after fighting for so long the only people you understand or respect are the other extremists. One way to think about it is that you “bind yourself” to your opposition as tightly as your cause… In the process of rejection, you tie yourself to that thing. As Anthony DeMello says, the priests who come to talk to him can only talk about what they have given up: sex. And the prostitutes that talk to him only speak of God. So, whatever you forego is what you bind yourself to. Your choices of exclusion, the distance you feel from the thing, relate you even more closely to it. Today, if we look at the most extreme fringe on each side of the political spectrum, let’s take the ultra-woke and the anti-woke, they appear to want opposite outcomes, yet on closer inspection, perhaps they are fighting for the same thing: According to David French, they both want an end to liberalism and pluralism. Which means they need dominance over the center. Not only do they share a battlefield, but the battle is to dictate behavioral norms.Upon closer inspection, we can see that both extremes stem from a contradictory ideology of the individual’s rights. “I want this, or this is my right,” to which the other side responds, “no, that infringes on my rights.” To fight for your rights, you dictate the rights of others. French says both sides have legitimate grievances against the other, which they are unwilling to forego or forgive. And in this way, in this very basic dialectic, by mapping out the antagonism and tactics, and considering the meta-motivation, the two begin to appear as one bound together in a deadlocked dance: hurt and enraged opposites react to the moves and cues of the other, mimicry to maintain a stalemate, leading not to victory but to a perpetual divisive communion. PART 2: The circle into the mobius strip 3 antagonistic motions: convergance, rotation, flipping sidesWhat we have looked at is a stalemate, where an impasse determines opposition or sets up and compounds antagonisms. Let’s return to thinking about this dynamic in terms of geometry, or shapes: To start, let’s look at the circle of the Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail. The snake’s movement goes in one direction, with the swallowing creating an eternal movement. This is like an eternal cycle or wheel of time. But we have talked of oppositional sides, so the one point of intersection where the mouth gulps the tail only represents one point… we need another snake. We need the danger doubled to represent two antagonists. Tommy Shelby, once again from Peaky Blinders, suggests the opposing points move in opposite directions, starting in the south, branching apart from each other, only for their goals to align at the North pole despite their mutual disgust. But, that is not our deadlocked dance… that is relatively easy 2 becomes 1.How about if our savvy antagonists are both reacting to each other, rotating clockwise, always maintaining distance? In this movement, a type of reactivity maintains their separation and thus their identity: they can never bridge their difference because there is no intersection. What if each argument can be flipped so it becomes its mirror opposite? Not jumping across the circle, but somehow the point itself inverts to its opposite? Can we use the circle, the topology of the argument, the battlefield if you will, to alter the antagonists? What if we take our two-dimensional repetitive, boring, deadlock dance on the circular path, and by twisting the path we flip each side into its opposite? The [[The Möbius Strip]] does this: It is a mathematical object, a one-sided surface that twists in space, a non-orientable topology. If you have ever looked at [[M.C. Escher]]’s art, you have likely seen one. The most popular image is a bunch of ants on what looks like a 3D infinity sign, some are walking clockwise yet not never encountering the ants walking counterclockwise even though it seems like they should. What is unique is that in a purely flat 2D realm an object traveling on the outside of a Mobius Strip will move through this mathematical twist appearing on the inside: it will be flipped to become a mirror of itself. If it is right-handed, all of a sudden it will become left-handed. Right becomes left. And even in a 3D realm, the points would move from interior to exterior, creating dynamism instead of a boring, repetitive state. To bring this into context, Remember Herbert Marcuse’s the one-dimensional man? This person is caught up in a totalizing system that reduces them, and any real rebellion or complexity is co-opted back into the system until the person has no substance left. They are essentially flattened, even their rebellions are reduced to slogans turned into cheap t-shirts or bumper stickers. In consideration of this, the points of antagonism in our society are likely reduced as well, making them easier to flip. In the last episode, step 64, Piccone would say they are “artificial negativity,” not real, and only staged simulations. As well, Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance” points out the contradiction in forcing people to be tolerant. When the good is bad and the rebellion strengthens the hegemony, what do we do? Well, let’s talk about these opposites, these antagonistic extremes that fundamentally can never agree… Individually, they are trying desperately to manifest their goals, to fully realize themselves. Just as you and I are. (or I assume we are.) On their path, they sweep outward to the furthermost point of differentiation to break free. But, unfortunately, they are ultimately incapable of fully becoming. Don’t worry, this isn’t as sad as it seems: nothing can ever fully be itself. When you consider it, as many philosophers have, this transcendent self fully becoming has lots of problems before we even get into the foibles of subjectivity. First, everything is made up of subsets, and subparts with their own wills and prerogatives, so no definition could ever be complete. That is, no definition of fullness could take into account the sum of the parts to explain the complete self. (Lacan would even say that to be whole, you must include the “exception to the rule,” otherwise, it is not a complete definition, it is non-total, or non-all encompassing. )There is another reason no one can ever fully become: Zizek says everything has within it a fundamental failure that denies the harmonious nature of its parts. It’s not only the broader system thwarting you while comprising you, but more importantly, your constitutive parts have been created to be in a fundamental contradictory deadlock. Take as a non-human example the state, as in the nation-state: it functions and still exists despite its deadlock… in fact, it seems to only exist because of the inherent contradictions in itself combat itself. Its becoming is precisely its embrace of its contradictions, its incompleteness: its totality is always caveated, contingent, and deferred, and yet always an immanent process of becoming without ever reaching it. Simply because it cannot be fully itself is not a reason to scrap it, we would never want it to become fully itself: total state domination, which is total stagnation. So, back to it: we have a Mobius strip, with two points racing around, reaching for extremes of difference, yet inevitably pulled back to the center, flipping over, changing polarity, and collapsing into each other: they fail to achieve their full becoming because of an inherent contradictory failure.We can say the path they are on is made to thwart them, that is the path of the Mobius Strip where the oppositions cross without ever coming into contact.Zizek calls this a crack, gap, or void because it is an insurmountable, unbridgeable opposition within us, and within the universe, that does not let us cross the horizon into transcendence. But he says this constitutive gap motivates our motion. That’s right, our failure to become -our inherent flaw- drives us. PART 3: Going Down to Get Through mining the ground, going through, donutsWith these Hegelian antagonisms or even Kantian antinomies, we are mapping the oppositions and the shape of their movement. This is brutally simplified, but here we go: For Kant, the idea was to point out how we could never perceive the really real world, the thing-in-itself, as it really was. But the goal for Hegel is to recognize these seemingly insurmountable polarities and in so doing sublate them to ascend up a spiral staircase of overcoming. This two-sided oppositional struggle is somehow considered ONE thing, one problem or category, to be overcome. But Zizek says not to think of this challenge as a “smooth becoming,” not as dialectics that you overcome, but rather we should think of them as “blocks and stoppages” that keep you from fully becoming. It is a never-ending battle, finding the two and sublating them to one, and in doing this repeatedly you may feel despair. A sort of [[sysiphean]] exhaustion. Last episode I brought up that if Hegel used donuts as a metaphor more people would consume his philosophy, so maybe it’s my turn to take us back to donuts, but this time specifically the donut hole: this is the void through which we must pass… enough of this circular orbiting: let’s go through. What if, instead of Overcoming, which is pictured as upward motion tackling bigger and bigger antinomies, this kind of existential Donkey Kong where the levels get harder and harder, what if we consider becoming as mining? More like Dig-Dug with a pinch of Fight Club. This would be a more [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] downgoing. But, sure, we can throw in Hegel’s notion of the ground as well, it’s just going beyond the ground. In our down-going we encounter the ground, where each blockage stops us, requiring us to chip away. Once the two sides are far enough apart we have created new unity, a hole or void, that is an absence ringed by a circle. Perhaps we have allowed the problem to expand. Given what we know of antinomies, they are fighting to stay apart, to differentiate each other, and are spending vast amounts of energy in this attempt… as they widen from each other, the sides of our hole will expand, opening up. We know that gravity or entropy will inevitably lead to the circle collapsing because nature abhors a vacuum or void, but for the moment, the energies of the extremes have opened a way through. And as we go down, we move from shallow to deep, further isolating ourselves in the darkness of the unknown. This would take bravery, not the group think conformity of choosing sides; this expansion into the beyond breaks foundational blockages, it goes through the metaphysical ground, like a prison break. PART 4: The Knot (tying it up, 2 is not 2, failure as the path)José Ortega y Gasset and Heidegger sort of say, this is life: it is not actually a binary, and your battle of contradictions is to battle the artificial binary, the game. To do this is to live, and it is a heroic undertaking. We are constantly enticed back into the black-and-white game, but remember, this is a process that cannot be separated from the context and circumstances you are in. “I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself.” José Ortega y GassetLife and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others”Alan WattsNow, considering this, it is not the individual, upward overcoming we should be focused on. That is just another binary. We have a failure within us, we are built with contradictions inherent to us: that is the exception inside us that -in a bracketed sense, sort of odd way- makes us dynamically whole and offers us the path. Slavoj Žižek says that failure is the path through: the uniquely human trait is not our addition of language or intelligence, but our ability to embody the very failure of the universe: we are inscribed with the impossibility of transcendence, and in embracing the failure as satisfaction we move outside or, beyond, the subject/object relation Zizek brings up here the example of the difference between humans and apes, where an ape is presented with an object Beyond reach we’ll give up and move on to something accessible, say a less attractive sexual partner, while I human will remain persistent and transfixed on the impossible object. He says this is why a person is hysterical: they pose ultimate happiness, delight, and ecstasy (jouissance) as an absolute, true goal. They make ultimate delight into unsatisfied desire. The very unsatisfaction with the goal is their joy. He says “such a subject is capable of relating to a term that is outside the limits of the game,” they support themself through their relationship to that which is “out-of-play”. By installing a point of impossibility as ultimate joy, you are hysterical, you are utterly human: our flaw is to find delight in the impossible, which is also our means to move beyond the binary oppositions that plague us.

Jul 27, 2022 • 19min
Artificial Negativity & Repressive Tolerance
https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-64-artificial-negativity--repressive-tolerancePart 1: Hegel, antithesis and sublation, the spiral, and the ground. Part 2: Paul Piccone & TelosPiccone was the editor of Telos, a journal. After being disenchanted by the "exhaustion of the left" he drifted from a Marxist/Hegel leaning ideology to embrace the ideas of the right, through the more totalizing illiberal Carl Schmitt. Artificial Negativity (Piccone and Lake) asserts the Herbert Marcuse's idea of the one-dimensional man was the final control necessary for totalizing control through consumerism. The elites allow for negativity because any system has excesses it must recalibrate towards (cybernetic theory), thus negativity is managed simulations, not organic but artificial. Repressive Tolerance (Marcuse) asserts that Tolerance can be used to repress people into conformity, thus denying actual tolerance in the name of tolerance. Used primarily by the Left, Piccone made use of this type of logic to squash critiques of artificial negativity. The Particular must be saved to save individuality and diversity. Yet, since we have all become the one-dimensional man, any organic negativity that can break the capitalist/consumer system must be grown from the outside. The particular rejects totalization. Piccone thought powerful authority was the only way to save the particular (diverse groups) from becoming flattened, but that smacks of totalitarianism, which negates all difference. Part 3: OutcomePiccone's movement from left to right hints that his rebellion did not find the true ground to sublate the antithesis. However, the ideas are interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we must keep in mind that negativity and staged displays, even the managerial new class, serve a function for the poor and disenfranchised and allow dissent against war.

Jul 17, 2022 • 11min
The One-Dimensional Man
https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-63-the-one-dimensional-man Part 1: Captialism absorbs everything: even your rebellion against it becomes a published book, which feeds capitalism, and generates pro-capitalists books. In a dynamic system, each tactic has a counter, and this generates (cleverly) more capitalism. A famous example is of Che Guevara’s rebellion sold as a cheap t-shirt: a purchasable identity of rebellion. Part 2: The On-dimensional man is a book by Herbert Marcuse in the mid-60’s about our wealthy industrial nation orienting citizens into consumerism by developing “false needs” which we pursue. This drains our energy for cognitive activity as well as our desire for rebellion, which is channeled back into social status through material goods. This is a tactic of control by the affluent (the 1%) who increase luxury and comfort only to pair it up with increased exploitation. The dynamic of flattening values to a universal is that we no longer have polarity or dialectic controversy, which is the ultimate form of control. Marcuse says we don’t even question “technological rationality” anymore. Part 3: Cybernetics is a theory of how systems moderate themselves, taking in feedback and adjusting. Philosophers use these ideas to discuss capitalism in terms of “negatives” and “positives”: the negatives are the check valves or regulating systems that contain or diffuse the positive energy that can get out of control and break things. Deleuze and Guattari refer to the negatives as “territorialization”, such as a fence or limit, and the positives are efforts to “deterritorialize”. Mark Fisher says capitalism now instantly reterritorializes deterritorialization. This is just some vocabulary to help us move forward. 0:00 Intro 1:46 Part 1 capitalist absorption 3:39 Part 2 the one-dimensional man 7:20 Part 3 cybernetic systems theory 10:11 Outro

Jul 6, 2022 • 15min
The Double Bind
https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-62-the-double-bind/PART 1Ryder discusses Alan Watt's interpretation of the "tough-minded" and "tender-hearted" as "prickles and goos" that need each other, yet are confused by each other and lash out. Of course, like Alice in Wonderland, we can refuse to play the game: the competitive rules laid out by another in a grid, but Watts says to remember that life is a game... when our ego gets involved we tend to forget and become serious and demand "off with their heads." Using Buddhist insights may not help. It tends to be a meta-move, like a kid trying out some Marxism to attack their dad. It may be true, but will likely not change anything. Yet, what the kid is doing is practicing the utility of ideology: now a Pawn can check a King. It is local practice for the global revolution. PART 2The double bind is being told to "act natural": a paradox forcing performative conformity. Thus our identity is shaped by society. Slavoj Zizek cites the Paris riots of 2005 as a double blackmail, where the ghettoized citizens are called animals and treated as animals, thus in rage, they burn cars and part of their homes. To some this reinforces their barbarism (they can never be integrated into Paris society) while to others it is an anguished cry or rage that is all too human. Capitalism and Bureaucracy tend to these double binds: where to be famous like Elvis, you sell out your rebellious rage. Capitalism utilizes and capital-izes on energy, converting any attack into sustenance for itself and punishment for you. It is claimed to be a hydra, but more accurately - as Foucault has said of power and its dispersal - it is amoeba-like slime with no head to lop off. PART 3Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" has many examples of contradictory, nonsensical paradoxes in the military making it into a dark farcical comedy. The primary paradox is you cannot escape the military: if you want to save yourself you are sane (it is sane not to want to fight or die) so to be declared insane you must want to stay and fight... in which case you would never claim you are insane. Eventually, the main character does go insane, and the military rewards his bravery. Insanity is the preferred outcome. In Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cockoo's nest" Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) trades prison for the mental ward, only to find by declaring insanity his welfare has been turned over to Nurse Ratchet, a petty tyrant who works to break this spirited man. Her target: his head. As Foucault has stated, the body can be imprisoned in circumstances, but the goal now is to have you internalize the contradictions until our shared insanity seems sane. the escape: off with your own head

Jun 18, 2022 • 20min
Escape from Freedom (pt 2)
Why would anyone want to escape from Freedom?Psychologically freedom is a tremendous burden, especially in a competitive society commoditizing your individuality. Erich Fromm in “Escape from Freedom” maps out three means to escape the anxiety, isolation, and doubt of the Modern Age: Sadomasochism (aka authoritarianism), Destruction, and Automaton Conformity.The burden to be uniquely you within a society demanding submission or conformity leads people to want freedom, and one response is “negative freedom” which is like a man on an island, free from external restraint, governments, or social life. However, if his goal in life is to be beneficial to others, he must re-enter society while finding a way to maintain his individual integrity and find the means to realize his goals. This is “positive freedom,” or internally motivated agency.People often want both positive and negative freedom, but in a society, the freedoms of others constrain your freedoms. As well, positive freedom often takes the path of libidinal desires being liberated, but if we are manipulated by mimetic desire, then our desires are not truly our own.In short, how can an individual be assured they are authentic and thinking genuine thoughts, instead of pseudo thoughts? And how do we protect democracy from those escaping freedom? Fromm says it is through integrated individuals practicing spontaneity.

Jun 12, 2022 • 24min
Escape from Freedom (pt 1)
Why would anyone want to escape from Freedom? Well, in a complex system, any move will produce countermanding forces, and humans are slow-evolving creatures, and by merely shouting “you are free” we encounter some problems: 1) now what? and 2) it doesn’t line up with the reality of working every day and still falling behind.While freedom is held up as an ideological holy grail, the reality on the ground is different: People do want to escape from freedom because having to “know who you are” is a tremendous strain when you are supposed to be an “authentic autonomous individual.” The strain to be free conversely leaves us feeling like frauds, isolated and alone, which hurts our socially evolved self. Written around 1941, Erich Fromm‘s “Escape from Freedom” compares Socialist, Fascist Nazism and Hitler to America’s Liberal Democracy and the types of people it produces and those, in turn, who produce those systems. But he starts out with some history, so we can see what it looks like to move from (as Karl Popper calls it) a tribal ‘closed society‘ to a free ‘open society’ and why that move causes so many problems. In the next episode, Escape from Freedom (pt 2), we will look at these “escape mechanisms” and Fromm’s solution: which is to be a genuine individual, an authentic self, which involves independent thinking (which most of us don’t do) and spontaneity (which I have some arguments against.) But until then, this episode maps a historical path that lays the groundwork for why modern man has so many problems. We cover medieval feudal society altering into a competition for middle-class ascendency, contenting between the crown, the tradesman, and risk. This is echoed in Martin Luther's character, as a stand-in for the psychological and social character of the times, and his confusion and hatred giving rise to reformation. The dissolution of the church authority came at a higher cost: the need to lovingly submit to God, giving away your newfound freedom from authority. In modern times, we have confused merchants in an industrial capitalist society attempting to find their "self" but viewing themselves as a commodity. This highlights the strain of individuality in a socially competitive world, leading to a burden of freedom and unique autonomy that many people shed, as they feel hollowed out and left behind by progress. Mickey Mouse, created by Walt Disney, is an apt character for the times: a tiny creature combating nature and predatory with near escapes. Part 2 will cover the psychological escape mechanisms people undertake to justify giving away their freedom.