On Walls and Passes

There was never any illusion of true freedom on the PRC's internet. But maybe, that illusion existed on the US's. That illusion has become more difficult to justify in recent years, but it appears that we have recently hit an inflection point.

On March 13, the House passed the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,"
https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Protecting%20Americans%20From%20Foriegn%20Adversary%20Controlled%20Applications_3.5.24.pdf
ostensibly in the name of national security.

I don't know precisely how much more enthralling TikTok is compared to the likes of Meta and Google, but what is for certain, is that TikTok is used by a surprisingly large number of small businesses in the US.

In Dylan Levi King's article, China's Exit to Year Zero, the author discusses online political philosophizing on the PRC's internet. A point that I found interesting, especially as we are reading about Selective Breeding, is Ru-kuanism. In Dylan's words:

> In recent years, the most durable keyboard politics phenomenon has been Ru-kuanism: "entering the pass studies." Ru-kuanism analogizes contemporary China's relationship to the liberal international order with the Jurchen people's breaching of the Great Wall—during which important battles happened at the Shanhai Pass—and their later takeover of the leadership of China as the Qing Dynasty. The Chinese are the barbarians, kept outside the wall and forced to make a living selling ginseng. But with proper strategy, they can topple the corrupt Ming represented by Western hegemony. Although the metaphorical breaching of the Shanhai Pass is more philosophical and academic, this vision of the world sees a military showdown with the Western powers as imminent. Preparing for war is certainly one way to handle economic directionlessness.

Of course, the powers that be have far better tools than physical threat nowadays. It seems that TikTok may face itself soon confronted with a wall it can't squeeze through. In my view, two powers have each erected their own great walls, and will probably continue to manage the walls with their bureaucracies. What finally allowed the Jurchens to enter the pass (breach the wall) was a Ming defector. Regardless, I don't think any of us want to be within the walled, demilitarized interiors at the moment.

Nurhaci's Eight Banners began as hunting parties, gradually organizing various nomadic peoples outside the wall. Until the moment arises, the task is for us to determine what to do outside the wall.

>>1154
>Regardless, I don't think any of us want to be within the walled, demilitarized interiors at the moment.
Well I continue to be a proponent of one-foot-in-one-foot-out doctrine. We do want to be inside the walls in the sense of benefitting from, being able to speak the language of, and navigating the institutional landscape of the system. We also want an existence and base of power independent of the system that is not some variety of slavecoin. Even Alaric the goth, until he was repeatedly betrayed by the system, was trying to work with the romans within their system. It was only when they did him dirty too many times and too incoherently that he went ape mode with his independent power.

The question for us is what form each of those feet takes. This is why Selective Breeding was a fun read for me; it asks this question with the weight of Plato and Nietzsche. On the question of ideological sovereignty, it implicitly proposes a strategy despite itself: put forth a frame of legitimacy that could actually work as a social mythos within which philosophy has a strong or leading place in society, but in private and anonymously maintain the true much more radical nature of philosophy. I like "governance futurism" from Palladium as an attempt on the former.

Governance Futurism proposes somewhat paradoxically that ideologies are constructed things which can be examined for utility, deconstructed for parts, and built up deliberately by philosophers. It proposes that at this time in history we need to empower radical philosophers to do this responsibly and pro-socially with the end of constructing a new and better legitimate frame for society.

For the latter, BAP, Moldbug, Land and others have done an admirable job sponsoring a philosophy that has a power level worth hiding. But this is lacking (necessarily?) in institutionalization. I am very interested in whether this platform will be able to strike the synthesis of being able to host and really develop both a legitimate and responsible official philosophy and a wild and irreverent radical philosophy.

>>1159
>The Americans don't combine their censorship regime with a program of picking domestic winners, either, it seems
Is this true? America does plenty of picking winners it seems to me, but the regime is rather incompetent and picks them for dumb reasons (Like Biden praising GM as leader in electric cars because their worker's union supports him) and without much overall strategy other than the paranoia of the ruling class.

> We do want to be inside the walls in the sense of benefitting from, being able to speak the language of, and navigating the institutional landscape of the system. We also want an existence and base of power independent of the system that is not some variety of slavecoin.

I agree, devising an solution to the second part of the equation is what everyone is having trouble with.

> Within the 5eyes wall, coordination can only be considered in terms of individual financial gain, i.e. slavecoin. I'm not entirely sure what the best model for coordination within the ccp wall is.

This analogy doesn't quite work since 5 Eyes/MSS are spy agencies. Despite the coordination of the chinese elites, they haven't found a solution to the slavecoin problem. If anything, something may have forced them to restart the use of a tool they would rather avoid.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3256967/xi-jinping-chinas-central-bank-restart-treasury-bond-trade-after-2-decade-hiatus

Announcement regarding the publication of "Excerpts of Xi Jinping's Speeches on Finance Work" (《习近平关于金融工作论述摘编》): http://www.mohrss.gov.cn/SYrlzyhshbzb/dongtaixinwen/shizhengyaowen/202403/t20240325_515518.html

>>1165
> it implicitly proposes a strategy despite itself: put forth a frame of legitimacy that could actually work as a social mythos within which philosophy has a strong or leading place in society, but in private and anonymously maintain the true much more radical nature of philosophy.

Implicitly, yes. Alamariu, following his interpretation of Nietzsche, withholds even pragmatic endorsement of any nomos as the failed Platonic strategy. But one can concur with most of his analysis, yet depart on this point.

> I like "governance futurism" from Palladium as an attempt on the former. Governance Futurism proposes somewhat paradoxically that ideologies are constructed ... deliberately by philosophers. It proposes that at this time in history we need to empower radical philosophers to do this responsibly and pro-socially with the end of constructing a new and better legitimate frame for society.

This is the exoteric (= ideology, nomos) vs esoteric (= philosophy) strategy.

>This is the exoteric (= ideology, nomos) vs esoteric (= philosophy) strategy.

Yes. The interesting thing about governance futurism is that it wears this on its sleeve to some extent. It is openly and exoterically an ideology-construction operation. Of course ideology can't quite be constructed like that, as it is the water that the fish swim in prior to any possible argument. You can't ever argue for an ideology, only inhabit it. But still, I am hopeful for this process of engineering-grade ideological self awareness where we can take our ideology apart and put it back together again with our eyes closed, and also believe it.