Iron Age Newsletter #1 [Sep. 22nd, 2021]
Iron Age Newsletter #1 [Sep. 22nd, 2021]
Theme of the week: Chaos, Order, and Political Control
Some Thoughts on the Chaos of Social Media, from the Editor-in-Chief:
When we think about the ways in which modern day social media has been ‘scrambling’ our brains, we often make allusions to various types of observed phenomena, such as our shortened attention spans, our over-stimulated dopamine systems, and our ever-increasing focus towards certain forms of ‘hyper-real’ sensationalism, and while these are all perfectly valid and rather alarming concerns that highlight the nature of the problem, there are also actually a number of more subtle effects that this medium of the age has had on the ways in which we pay attention to the world…
Take any typical minute spent on any typical social media platform, for instance, and you’ll very likely find your attention being pulled in a myriad of wildly different, sometimes vacuous, and often incongruous directions. For example, at any given moment on social media you could easily come across a video of a sprightly young woman doing a highly-provocative dance routine, which then might be followed immediately by a fairly predictable yet still socially-comforting ‘hot take’ from your favorite online political activist, and then, maybe some memes will pop up about the latest round of Hollywood celebrities who’ve decided to ‘inject themselves into politics’, followed by a post from your high school classmate who only recently discovered (and is currently very enthusiastic about) cross-fit… Furthermore, sometimes these things that you encounter on social media will actually sync-up with, and map nicely onto, a number of larger grand-narratives and trends that seem to be unfolding right before you in that moment, but other times, they will also just appear as random events that simply pop in and out of your news feed… In any case though, the subtle effect that this way of receiving information tends to have on our collective way of seeing the world, is that it ultimately bolsters the perception of a world in which order actually emerges out from chaos, instead of the other way around—a world in which events simply burst onto the scene and then create a perceivable order out of the patterns in which they form...
In direct contrast to this perception of the world as ‘order from chaos’ then, we here at the Iron Age Archive would instead like to bolster the perception from the opposite viewpoint—that it is indeed, chaos which actually follows from order, not the other way around, and that the patterns we perceive were really always there to begin with, simply awaiting affirmation from the events! In accordance with our way of seeing the world, we would actually posit that it is ultimately not the case that the various events within the world simply just ‘happen when they happen’ (chaotically), and then thereafter, pop in and out of your news feed, waiting for someone like you, ‘the observer’, to make sense of (and thus, order) them all, but rather that the seemingly chaotic events of the world that take place within it are really just emergent expressions of the way in which the world is ultimately ordered; with each event revealing an all-encompassing ‘pattern’, at the very highest level.
In this sense then, the aforementioned e-thot, e-pundit, e-culture, and e-lifestyle phenomena, can all really just be seen as various emergent expressions of a larger, all-encompassing ‘e-order’, which itself is just an expression of the ordering of man’s fundamental relationship with technics, and which then, furthermore, is just an expression of an all-encompassing pattern that traces all the way back to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden… Simply put, all of these phenomena emerge from the same (God-created) order, and express the same pattern, because everything is ultimately just an expression of that very first original order, even when these expressions threaten to bring chaos to the order from which they emerge… Or perhaps yet, to put it in even another way: God’s created order is really what makes chaos possible at all in the first place—chaos merely affirms that order!
Now, there is probably a lot of tracing that needs to be done in order to help the average person understand just how all of these lower patterns connect together with that aforementioned ‘pattern at the very highest level’, and this is one of the major tasks that’s been put before us as ‘Iron Age Archivists’. How do we ultimately tie together Lucifer, and technocracy, and hyper-reality, and chaos, and e-thots, all as different emergent expressions of an all-encompassing order (from God)?…
Well… let’s just say that we probably won’t be able to trace it all out today, so perhaps, we could just consider today’s message a start, and our continued work here at The Archive (TM) an ongoing inquiry. We do live in some seemingly chaotic times (hence, the “Iron Age”), but what we’ll continue to try to provide is a thinking and attention space where the patterns of order which govern this world can be seen the clearest. Instead of trying to pull your attention in a myriad of wildly different, sometimes vacuous, and often incongruous directions, The Iron Age Inquirer (this Substack), in conjunction with the Iron Age Archive YouTube channel, and of course the website, will only try to focus your attention such that even the sight of chaos will merely affirm that everything is indeed in perfect order.
... BUT WAIT! There’s more!
The above was written merely to set up and introduce our regular segment here, which is the newsletters that we expect to be sending out 3-4 times a month. In each newsletter, we’ll highlight a couple of recent videos selected from the in-nah-net that are centered around our ‘theme of the week’. This week’s theme was ‘Chaos, Order, and Political Control’, and here were some videos from the week:
Carl Schmitt: Legality and Legitimacy (Clip #3) from Michael Milerman [Sep. 10, 2021]
“If legality and illegality can be arbitrarily at the disposal of the majority, then the majority can above all declare their domestic competitors illegal…The majority would be permitted to use legal means to close the door to legality, through which they themselves have entered, and to treat partisan opponents like common criminals.” – Carl Schmitt
Continuing on from the Milerman’s School series, Michael Milerman continues is dissection into the works of Carl Schmitt to outline the unjust against the legal. Traditionally, people recognized the right to stand against unjust laws, even though the methods of standing may not always be legal. However, if society is based on the majoritarian calculus, the idea of injustice simply disappears. The consequence being that you have no right to resist when the majority turns on you. An enemy of the state. An enemy of the people. Whoever controls 51 percent would be able to legally render all oppositions criminal. The 49 percent are all but left kicking on the doors that have been closed to them.
YOU ARE THE VIRUS from Academic Agent [Sep. 12, 2021]
“The security measures incorporated into our lives are both sources of comfort and reminders of our vulnerability.” – George W. Bush
Where do we stand when our leaders declare war on their own country? After September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush not only declared war on three countries, but enacted a war on domestic terrorism. In this 12-minute short, Academic Agent sheds light on how the idea of domestic terrorism is used to turn the citizens on each other.
“I urge you not to hate the cattle. To do so would be to chastise a cow for chewing on grass.” – Academic Agent
From 9/11 to 1/6 we witness real people signaling their status to the elites and the regime. Every step has been taken to dehumanize those who do not stand with the ‘right side of history.’ Their history.
Destroying Two Communist On the Killstream | Ketih Woods & Joel Davis vs. Infrared & Logo from Keith Woods [Sep. 12, 2021]
From Marx to Xi, this two-hour stream delves deep into the ideology of communism versus the material history of communism. A look on the past brings different lessons to different leaders, and why a single cookie-cutter ideology often has to be perverted to suit the geographic and ethnographic identity of a nation.
While Davis doesn’t deny the statesmanship of communism’s most prolific leaders, the political situation inevitably led them to commit crimes against their own people. When Hitler did not gain the support of the industrialist, he took them over by force. What would a modern-day attempt on a classless and stateless society look like, and how long would it be before it succumbs to authoritarianism?
What is China’s role in the future of communism? From Mao’s Chinese Nationalism to Xi’s Han Nationalism, the guys take a look at the role of race in communism. Mass immigration, liberalism, and modernity take highlight in the latter part of the debate. Will modern China’s economic success be a blueprint for less gulags in future of communist regimes?
The ideology of socialism serves nothing more than a focal point in its broad definition. Tune into this debate for a detailed breakdown of communism from well-read thinkers on both sides of the fence.
Killstream Post-Mortem w. The Boys from Keith Woods [Sep. 12, 2021]
“If there is some kind of truth in the claim, we should be able to substantiate it through some kind of fair inquiry into it. We shouldn’t have to appeal to these circular logics to make sense of it.” – Joel Davis
After the debate, Keith Woods and Joel Davis fire up the mics for an after show to go even deeper into the rabbit hole. Starting off once again with the ideology versus the material history, Davis points out the inconsistencies throughout the communist leaders.
The ideology of communism puts the working puts the working class into a mystification that disables them from centrality. The history of communism shows that the bureaucracy eventually becomes the center. The will of the people must be taken away for the will of the people in order to protect the will of the people.
How does a Marxist cope with the inconsistencies of their ideologies and their infamous leaders? Davis and Woods dissect the retroactivity of their rationalizations, even though at the time of history, there was no consistency in the ideology.
Communism strives for a classless and stateless society, which on a global scale leads to a hollow and cultureless society. Where does communism go when its citizens want spirituality, culture, and humanism? Most importantly, what has history revealed? Politics, unlike science, has no laboratory. When experiments require the upending of the current state, history is your only guide to what may come.
And there it is, friends. Issue #1 of the Iron Age Newsletter is in the books. We’ll be popping into your email inbox again real soon, as long as you remember to…