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The enlightenment political formula, "consent of the governed", such an obviously right and radiant idea, has proven to be a basilisk, a serpent that kills with its gaze. It stares now at thee
The idea of consent as a substrate for authority is irrecoverably broken and contradictory. Authority that requires consent is no authority, itâs like claiming that chastity derives from the promiscuity of the fucked
But note here that we can in fact make an argument that chastity derives from the promiscuity of the fucked, or for any other contradiction we desire; the treachery of philosophies is the joy and the horror of postmodernity https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1108742066094239746
We can create an apologetic for any contradiction using a Derridean argument to the effect that such a thing as chastity can only ever be conceived in opposition to promiscuity, and that in order to construct any meaningful theory of chastity we must ground it in its opposite
& this is a fully general formula for constructing what I call holy contradictions, which are, if you like, strange attractors in human cognition space, & we can build them around any antipodal pair at all, whether suffering/pleasure, redemption/damnation, or chocolate/vanilla
The holy contradiction is a structure that all ideologies have in common. It is a divine mystery, not so much a mental stopsign as a mental black hole, a juxtaposition of ideas with a gravity that creates an event horizon in the mind, a vanishing point of thought
Humans need holy contradictions in order to function, and when we canât find them, we invent them, voluptuous thoughts to use as objects of meditation and reverence https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1072671659411279873
The role of a priest is to descend into the fluid underworld of words and philosophies, and to choose which concepts to deconstruct and which to reinforce, in order to build a philosophical space for his flock. This is called theology
Christianity has holy contradictions: Jesus is both fully God and fully Man. Buddhism has holy contradictions: All desire (even its satiation) IS suffering. Liberalism has holy contradictions: the consent of the governed; that we can be both free and equal in simultaneity
Everyone on both sides of the political aisle has realized that freedom and equality are irreconcilable opposites, so we end up with this eternal tension between, roughly, liberals (republicans) and egalitarians (democrats)
Note however that egalitarians still cry for emancipation and liberals still cry for equality because, as with all holy contradictions, each finds its grounding in its opposite.
Equality is an ideal of resentment, but it's understandable; egalitarians long to submit to an authority. Liberals hate the tyranny of egalitarians, but both groups believe that their salvation lies in the destruction of all authority. Their common denominator is consent
Even if you manage to queer the freedom/equality binary, you're still fucked unless you can also turn your back on the vortex of "consent of the governed", a void so ravenous it has enveloped all of moral and sexual life
Last week someone told me that murder is wrong because the murdered party did not consent to die. How embarrassing! And yet how consistent and appropriate to a worldview that makes consent of the governed its cornerstone
This is the gaping maw of liberalism, its many shining teeth exposed: the only reason not to die is that you donât want to? What of obligation, what of duty, what of passion? Such people have no taste for death, and so their lives have little taste as well
The problem with consent becomes obvious when you earnestly try to live according to its mandates, e.g., feminists who tried to build their god out of "what we permit men to do to us" quickly discovered that men could trick them to consent
Feminists were forced to add epicycles to their moral philosophy such that consent became impossible under certain conditions, and in this way they rescued a sliver of eroticism from otherwise total oblivion, sacrificing the legitimacy of consent in the process
The erotic is only and ever in the purview of power; sexual excitement is a relation surmounted on a power inequality, as all bdsm fetishists know. And yet bdsm eroticism is entirely fake, because when everyone consents, power can only be simulated https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1103346223891673088
The libertarian political compass is badly mislabeled, the y axis is supposed to be authority <-> consent, which makes it crystal clear that no one in America is an authoritarian except for whoever is organizing pride parades
It has been a century since Walter Lippmann wrote: persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government...knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Yet our faith is unshaken
We are all naive consentitarians, but the scale and the speed of society and the decentralization of broadcasting have enabled us to see some of the subtler problems that arise in consent-based governance, because we can watch the process in real time
We do not consent to the mainstreaming of bacha bazi, we do not consent to the rapid changes being made to our sexual mores, we do not consent to the continuously escalating campaign of propaganda against American whites, and we were never consulted, though many were tricked
Our consent to our rulers is not something that we give, it is something that is incepted in us, a command underwritten by deception rather than strength. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1051974092176293893
It starts to feel like some kind of mental disorder to be resistant to the factories of mind control that Lippmann predicted all those years ago.
And worse still: because our system is based on consent, there is no genuine authority to blame. We thrash around from scapegoat to scapegoat, trying to find someone to hold accountable, but we only ever find simulations of accountability
In the same way, we float groundlessly from one sexual encounter to another, looking for power, looking for TRUE eros, which is to say true power, but we only ever find simulations of eros, because we only find simulations of power, because we think power comes from consent
Consent-based philosophy will always converge on suicide, because there is no getting around the fact that children never consented to be born; this is the sincere argument of angsty teenagers and anti-natalists, and given their axioms, what do you expect?
Consent is fickle; that which is easily given is easily revoked. Feminists are right when they say all sex is rape: having made authority impossible, they have rendered all sex illegitimate
Freedom is the acid that dissolves all bonds between people; equality is the resulting sterility; consent is a retardant that keeps those bonds from forming again, because there is no trust where the only power is lies.
Most people fear Eros; they do not want her to find her way back into the world. If she ever comes back to us, bringing love and beauty and power and cruelty, I promise you this: she will not ask for your permission
