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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12352161
"The Chinese Communist Party, once famous for pillaging from the natural world, has set to protecting parts of it. But the country’s “eco-authoritarian” approach deserves scrutiny"
"Yes, China is saving the environment while we in the West continue to destroy it, but at what cost?!"
it is a textbook victim inversion story. the poor poor enterprising businessmen in their humble peace loving kingdom who and I quote "bravely pitch [their] barely adolescent technology against ancient magic" of those squatters on valuable land "picking lice in their log "castles" [sic]"
spoiler
in other words total disdain for the savage obsolete Other who refuse to see the brilliance of mordor's civilization (a thing described in terms that would fit on the Colosseo Quadrato) and are therefore best depicted as a bloodthirsty and oppressive existential threat. Fascist stuff. Theil said it was good because "in mordor things work"
I've only ever seen the book praised on here so the fresh perspective is nice.
TBH, it is not that good. Just okay.
I don't think the book is fascist. It is instead rooted in the liberal tradition of medieval historiography and is very strongly pro-industrialization and pro-modernization, because Yeskov hated Tolkien's own preference for pre-industrial society. It is basically capitalist lib shitting on feudalism fan.
(cw: harry potter) if you scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds what happens if you scratch a turbo-liberal?
this is key, because i combine that, when i read about it, with my experience of a species of material that is written by and for the far right and leaves the kind of residue that's all over this book, from its themes and narrative to its prose. i obviously can't speak for the broad content of the book but from these quotes and the synopsis it, unless it jarringly changes in the details, is a book about how technology is a moral good, unconditionally, therefore it must be accelerated and interference with that imposes tyranny. no-one is allowed to complain about industrialization or indulge themselves in a lesser mode of existence, and the culture that does modernize the fastest is necessarily supreme. get in the way of capital and you are evil and want to hold back "progress". remind you of anything? it has the smug, snide and frothing arrogance of a sociopathic edgelord who's totally confident in the righteousness of his intellect and his lust for more of everything. they only join communists (which remember yakov isn't) in punching down on feudalism because the peasants are in the way.
it suits billionaire ghouls because it's TESCREAL fanfiction. perhaps you'd like harry potter and the methods of rationality. i definitely read that myself. if you can look past the transphobia there's a story about how a scientist raises harry and now that he's a rational Bayesian three finker he can almost single-handedly unlock the true potential of magic with his fellow slytherins (they're the coolest and he gets to be a real rationalist with them) for like a billion chapters. between his investigations he goes on other romps such as him enthusiastically describing how he'd dismember his schoolmates for improvised weapons should he need to defend himself.
lesswrong pattern utilitarians are really dangerous. they might act like they want to help the most people they can but they have no limits to what they'd sacrifice for their maximizations. eugenics, nukings to protect datacenters or the virtual 10^kajillion superhuman citizens of "the vast and glorious cosmic future", lobotomizing the public to improve the efficiency of pleasure, and they'd never ask permission if they had the power. don't let them fool you
Please read the book, if you want to criticize it. In the book elves deliberately suppress technological development of men to maintain their own hegemony. And Mordor is not portrayed like some unconditional good, just as an ordinary state that was dehumanized by its enemies as part of genocidal campaign against it.
I read it and it was okay-ish, if you can tolerate high levels of libness.
Please don't make me defend this book, but it is obvious that you heard some massive misrepresentation of the plot.
!!MASSIVE SPOILERS!!
Because is a sort-of amnesiac copy of Voldemort, and this is one of the early clues.Look, I agree with you that they are pretty much techbro equivalent of priests, whose ideology revolves about justifying billionaire rule, but please don't make stuff up, when criticizing then, it is counterproductive.
i read the whole thing (eventually).
spoiler
i didn't give a proportional description of the plot but he did befriend malffoy and join slytherin to find out fastest how magic worked so he could export it to muggle society. he spend chapters experimenting with time turners, successfully transfigures part of an eraser or something upon visualizing the matter as wavefunctions and fawning over the apollo program. he spends a chapter talking with malfoy about his weakening magic hypothesis.i promise you with my hand on my heart i didn't make up any of that besides how i depicted the hedonium swarm as lobotomies.
At this point I think we read different books.
maybe we dwelled in different circles years ago but i know TESCREAL and i know my roko's basilisks from my... basilisks.
spoiler
(i did double-check and yes it is the same man responsible for that and the book, how do you think he feels about the us adding months or years to the singularity by embargoing perfectly good datacenter equipment because its chinese?)