Astral Flight Simulation

We discuss Yarvin's essay "Monarchism and Fascism Today" (its decidedly anti-fascist, sorry liberal media). In the spirit of Moldbug, Yarvin shares a futuristic vision of an absolute monarch in which a cyberpunk CEO president has all sorts of high tech gadgets at his disposal to administer the government - but can be taken out at any time by a shadowy cabal of ominous "shareholders." We also discuss the passage prize for poetry, of which Yarvin was a judge, and Zero HP Lovecraft, a former guest on the Astral Flight Simulation podcast.If you like what you hear, please subscribe to my substack, where you'll find long form essays of literary analysis, cultural criticism, and more, as well as exclusive podcast episodes reserved for subscribers. And if you become a paid subscriber, you'll have access to even more content, including long-form analysis and exclusive episodes and early-releases.My substack can be found here: https://astralflight.substack.com/And you can follow me on twitter: @afscast for even more exclusive content

A deep analysis on the essay "The Question Concerning Technology" by Martin Heidegger, elucidating the key concept "Enframing" via The Terminator.  Special quest Athenian Stranger.  Visit my substack for a long-from essay crystallizing the key points of this discussion, and also visit me and Athenian Stranger on twitter for updates on our work and access to lots of other content on philosophy, film, and culture.Subscribe to my substack here: https://astralflight.substack.com/If you become a paid subscriber you'll have access to extensive content that is otherwise unavailable, including long form essays on philosophy and literature by myself and guests, as well as podcast episodes that are unavailable anywhere elseFind me on Twitter at @AFScastFind Athenian on Twitter at @Athens_Stranger

Follow me on twitter @astrikos10Follow me on Substackhttps://astralflight.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profileIf you like my discussion of digital age science fiction, I insist you read “God Shaped Hole” by Zero HP Lovecraft, found here.https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/god-shaped-hole/Part 1: The Dark Enlightenment and the Digital Prison.Platos cave is an allegory for the liberatory power of rationalism, however as history shows, rationalism isn’t always enough. Once rationalism fails, humanity regresses into what Nick Land calls a “dark enlightenment,” in which people revert to pre-rational mindsets. However, we can never really go back to the way we were in Platos Cave, and we enter novel forms of delusion. Philip K. Dick says we become trapped in the “iron prison” or rigid thought forms, however we are beyond even that - now we find ourselves more and more locked in the Digital Prison of an always online world.Part 2: The Astral Flight SimulationWe trace the trajectory of several Science Fiction stories concerned with Artificial Intelligence antagonists, from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neuromancer, Tron, and The Terminator, to The Matrix, Ex Machina, and God Shaped Hole. In so doing, we see how humanities will is superseded by that of technology, how like Faust we hand over our autonomy - our eternal souls - in exchange for the promise of technology, and are thereby locked in the digital prison. Once there we are in a new Platos cave, in which digital shadows play out on the walls, in a mimicry of the fulfillment of a religious or even a rational world.All music herein used with permission by Turn Knight, check him out on YouTube

War propaganda in America is in full swing....yet America is not engaged in a war. Is this the run up to our next conflict, or is this pure propaganda and the disappearance of war? Because of our ever accelerating technology, the nature of warfare has changed over the last 50 years, and conflict as we know it is morphing into something totally different. By examining some of the ideas and observations of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudriallard, and Deleuze and Gattari, we may  better understand the nature of "war" in the digital age, in which the spectacle becomes more real than the event: war disappears and propaganda replaces it. Soon we shall find out if America is using this media blitz as a pretense to enter the next global conflict, or if the future of American warfare will play out exclusively in the media.