“Condensed Moldbuggery” is a very poor overview of Moldbug’s ideas, and I would say that it deeply mischaracterizes many of them. Moldbug never said “progressivism always wins in the long run”, or that “progressives are dangerous and creepy maniacs”, or that progressives “try to bring down the military through proxy wars”. As far as I can tell, this is all nonsense that comes from the conservative blog post author biasing his account of Moldbug’s views in his own desired political direction.
“An open letter to progressives” is not the best place to start with Moldbug. It’s unusually circumlocutory, even by MM’s standards, and contains a large helping of off-topic rambling. I recommend “A formalist manifesto” for a clearer and less hyperventilated introduction to his views.
I haven’t read all of his output but a fair amount of it. I realize that I misinterpreted the last one to mean actual wars when he must have meant propaganda wars against the military, which Moldbug has probably actually claimed. The first two seem really odd as 1) Moldbug repeatedly refers to progressivism as the default modern Catholicism and doesn’t imbue mania on progressives, just status quo thinking, 2) I’ve never seen him have an attitude defeatist towards his own ideas like “progressivism always wins in the long run”. If it always wins, then what would be the point of writing hundreds of pages about the possibility of moving towards other systems? I am also drawing from the experience of having met and talked to Moldbug in person.
I thought R.A.G.E. was a gedankenexperiment meant to demonstrate the actual extent of power of the cathedral. If he really believes it is a plausible path he is farther down the crackpot path than I thought.
“Condensed Moldbuggery” is a very poor overview of Moldbug’s ideas, and I would say that it deeply mischaracterizes many of them. Moldbug never said “progressivism always wins in the long run”, or that “progressives are dangerous and creepy maniacs”, or that progressives “try to bring down the military through proxy wars”. As far as I can tell, this is all nonsense that comes from the conservative blog post author biasing his account of Moldbug’s views in his own desired political direction.
“An open letter to progressives” is not the best place to start with Moldbug. It’s unusually circumlocutory, even by MM’s standards, and contains a large helping of off-topic rambling. I recommend “A formalist manifesto” for a clearer and less hyperventilated introduction to his views.
Are you sure? I’m guessing you’ve read all of his output. Those statements seem to match my memories of his material.
I haven’t read all of his output but a fair amount of it. I realize that I misinterpreted the last one to mean actual wars when he must have meant propaganda wars against the military, which Moldbug has probably actually claimed. The first two seem really odd as 1) Moldbug repeatedly refers to progressivism as the default modern Catholicism and doesn’t imbue mania on progressives, just status quo thinking, 2) I’ve never seen him have an attitude defeatist towards his own ideas like “progressivism always wins in the long run”. If it always wins, then what would be the point of writing hundreds of pages about the possibility of moving towards other systems? I am also drawing from the experience of having met and talked to Moldbug in person.
I thought R.A.G.E. was a gedankenexperiment meant to demonstrate the actual extent of power of the cathedral. If he really believes it is a plausible path he is farther down the crackpot path than I thought.