Tuesday 11 September 2018

Our Ahrimanic computer consciousness

I was rewatching a marvellous video interview of Jeremy Naydler in relation to a review I am writing of his new book on the 'ancient' history of the computer concept: In the Shadow of the Machine.


I should say that I regard Naydler as one of the most insightful people thinking and writing in modern Britain, and this was confirmed when I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, at 22 minutes he begins to talk about the Ahrimanic influence on modern consciousness; and how computers and bureaucracy are training/ compelling Men to think like machines.

That's an alternative way to conceptualise the failure of modern consciousness that so obsesses me; the way that Western Man did not take up the true Romantic Revolution around 1800; but instead - for what were basically sin-full reasons to do with the pursuit of worldly pleasures - we embarked on the continuing project of reducing and assimilating the human mind to the machine; with Luciferic, mainly sexual, interludes for R&R.

Jeremy's books and publications are listed at: http://www.abzupress.co.uk/webcat.htm

Everything Naydler writes is at least interesting, and some of it is exceptionally original and important - my favourite is probably The Future of the Ancient World (2009).


2 comments:

Rich said...

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. May I ask, what DID you two discuss when you went to visit him?

Bruce Charlton said...

@ads - We had a very pleasant conversation sitting in the garden and eating a lunch he made, then just inside the house, and a heavy and warm summer day. At one point, Jeremy went and collected some salad leaves from plants growing nearby, and put them straight into the serving bowl. As far as I recall, we discussed the kinds of matters discussed in his books, and 'the state of the world' generally. We had similar views, although I was more extreme and hard-line.