HOW PETER THIEL WANTS HUMANITY TO DIE

The philosophy of accelerationism and bringing about the end times through capitalism.

The future was always a huge part of the human zeitgeist. However, since the 1970s, futurism became more and more distant from the human mind, reaching a stage philosopher Mark Fisher calls capitalist realism. The analysis of this phenomenon has created many branches of thought, one being accelerationism. Nick Land is one of the pioneering philosophers of this dark branch of thought. The ideas in accelerationism are believed by Curtis Yarvin, a far-right commentator who has been embraced by the likes of Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Charlie Kirk.

Nick Land is arguably one of the most unique philosophers in history, believing in principles that would bring the end times through capitalism. In his view, capitalism is a sentient force attempting to create more intelligent artificial machines to gain consciousness through this process. Throughout history, philosophers tried to figure out processes and ways to work out a reality where humanity is free from the shackles of capitalism, either through social protections, revolution, or other mechanisms. Nick Land’s idea goes against that idea, holding that it is capitalism that wants to be free of humanity.

“Nothing human makes it out of the future.” Nick Land.

But what is capitalism? Capitalism is the exploitation of labour by the capitalist class. For instance, if you work as a tutor in an institute where you are paid $30 an hour while your boss receives a payment of $120 an hour, the difference is called surplus value, and it is the means of exploitation. Capitalists aim to achieve the lowest possible cost and the highest possible surplus value. Therefore, they usually outsource labour to far less developed nations, where they are not regulated by the standards at home. Additionally, capitalism actively tries to increase surplus value through automation and getting rid of human involvement through machines.

Basically, for Nick Land, it is not about surplus value, but rather the means to achieve the mentioned goal. For example, humans might own other humans to create a higher surplus value, or create technologies that actively harm the environment to achieve more surplus. It is an impersonal machine intelligence that humans use to satisfy their greed. For Nick Land, capitalism is actively using humans to achieve automation and intelligence and become sentient, to have a physical representation. Basically, capitalist competition forces its mediators to automate and accelerate regardless of human needs.

For Land, politics, democracy, and social safety networks are just obstacles for capitalism, forming what he calls the Human Security System, which keeps the world recognizable for humanity. Capitalism, therefore, actively hunts down culture, traditions, borders, and much more to achieve this level of automation. Nick Land is the polar opposite of Karl Marx in the sense that Marx advocated for the end of capitalism and for the struggle between humanity and greed to conclude in favour of humans, whereas Land argues that acceleration toward the automation of capitalism is necessary.

Capitalism, for Land, is intelligence escaping from human shackles. Land, through his idea of hyperstition, believes that mythology can become reality through the emergence of technology and people who believe in it. For instance, the prophecy of Gog and Magog in Abrahamic religions: people believe it, the idea circulates, and then those believers in the story try to wage wars and create parallels between their wars, through technology, and the story of Gog and Magog.

Land also believes that the future can affect the present through this idea: if people believe in an idea belonging to a said future, they can actively accelerate the goal of reaching that future.

Land, therefore, believes that capitalism cannot be stopped, as he rejects communist ideals, believing that the act of criticizing capitalism and revolution only strengthens this process and feeds the machine even more.

Land also coined the term “Dark Enlightenment,” an idea similar to anarcho-capitalism, where the state is run by what Curtis Yarvin called a monarch-CEO. The country is run like a corporation, with the privatization of everything: healthcare, the military, education, transportation, and literally everything. You would be paying through labour, your privacy, and everything you can for things that you take for granted now, such as nature, the sky, air, water, and much more.

Curtis Yarvin is another vocal supporter of the Dark Enlightenment, believing that democracy and human rights are obstacles to this motion of capitalism toward its end goal. In Yarvin’s view, countries should be run by private firms and monarch-CEOs that hold power, and privatization to achieve capitalism’s singularity is the goal.

Curtis Yarvin is the philosophical coach and mentor of Peter Thiel, CEO of Palantir, the tech company producing surveillance and warfare technology. Thiel is one of the strongest men in the world, and his main political protégé is JD Vance, who is vocal about his support for Yarvin’s ideas.