The NPC Question 2

Part 2: Constructing the Public, Resignation, Electronic media, Friendship and Intimacy

Constructing the Public

The public sphere is a complex operation, based on a series of concepts, working parts. Recognition of the Other as Other, as an other-self, but also more subtle things such as: Death, and danger. A recognition that the world is dangerous, that we are both killers capable of violence, that the natural state of the world is war, and that we are always negotiating a peace. This latter part is part of why the public-being (“speaking in public”, “social skills”) is inherently anxious. It's the difference between being a child and living in a magical, safe world, and being a Man, who lives in a dangerous world where death reigns, and who must, in turn, yourself become dangerous. In this way, recognizing your own agency, your own capacity for danger, is a prerequisite. If you feel, think yourself, impotent - regardless of whether you actually are or not, you cannot take part in “public life”, mechanically.

There is a further limiting factor in that there is a kind of, for lack of a better term, mathematical aspect to it, of scaling. The public space category is upscaled private space, because it must be, since it contains both my own private space, and yours, within it, downscaled.

I am not suggesting that everyone performs this process consciously, reasoning “oh so if I am a person and he is a person”, etc, but consider it all an unconscious development you only potentially recognize after the fact. I only draw these pictures as means to illustrate something, create a map for it, not intending to create a literal “photo-realistic representation” of it.

The ability to scale a known object by means of abstraction, although it can definitely be trained and honed, also has a hard biological limit in each individual. I do believe the biological hard limit is quite low on the IQ scale, and although I call it a “complex” operation, that’s only in technical terms, as opposed to a simple linear calculation. It is in fact one of the basic geometric shapes.

I Wish I had positioned the circles so it would have been a Equilateral triangle, but you get the idea.

Beyond theory of mind

The “entirely private space” world, or, lacking the public space theory, is Hobbes’ state of nature, the sate of “war of all against all”. If you don’t have a theory of public space, even if you have theory of mind, your private space is always rubbing up against others, bumping into each other, and all human interaction is a little border skirmish - even familial, friendly, or loving. This is McLuhan’s “tribal mindset”.

The critics of bourgeoisie mindset in the 19th and 20th centuries claim that its all arbitrary ritual, which is all void and meaningless, serving only to conceal repressed vulgarities, base animal natures.

But the boon of civility is not in its content, but in its second order effects. And, terribly, the ability to understand and see this, requires introspection, which in turn requires “being taught the very manners one revolts against”. The child being taught experiences the rules as arbitrary and cruel, because you can only see the second order effects once you gain the ability of introspection and reflection, by learning the arbitrary rules, and objectifying yourself to yourself.

That is to say, when people today say that “objectivity” is an aspect of “European chauvinism”, perhaps the answer is not no. They have indeed identified this process instinctually, but simply reject it, and call for you to also reject it. Because as discussed in part 1, objectifying yourself to yourself is always inherently humiliating and painful. Stepping out of the private sphere and into the public sphere is always painful, the pain of birth, of breaking through a barrier. In the case of this birth, you are breaking through yourself, and your mother cannot bear the pain of birth for you.

You can be a very high IQ NPC. In fact, there is a sweet spot of intelligence where you are smart enough to see that a given ritual is “arbitrary”, but not smart enough to calculate second order effects. But I think that to a much larger degree the limiting factor is courage.

The NPC is someone who chooses to not have a “public identity”, only a private one. Someone who does not recognize public space, and treats all space as private, and lives in a paranoid delusion, because any negative emotion, fear etc, is preferable to the threat to one's ego of participating in Public Life. Self imprisonment in a solipsistic hell.

Emotions are certain - they impress themselves, they are always-already the case. Taking action is however always uncertain, always a leap of faith. It is uncertainty that is intolerable, and any negative emotion is worth paying as the price for not suffering that uncertainty. The NPC is not defined by a lack of intelligence, then we would not have needed a new name and category for him. The NPC is in infinite resignation, because our practical, “real life”-public life, has indeed become intolerable to any man of taste.

The electronic media aspect

NPCdom spreads across individuals and generations and is enabled, encouraged and accelerated by our common technological media environment. The interface and game design of “Social media” makes the demands greater, more formal: You must have an opinion on everything, always be right, never admit you’re wrong, never make mistake, always look pretty, always look young, and so on.

As discussed, there is an aspect of acting, “performance”, in all public space behavior, but in the accelerated environment of electronic media, new gamified insensitive structures provide a perverse inversion: Not only must you put on an act, but you must also believe your own bullshit. You must not admit that its an act, even to yourself. You are prohibited from admitting it to yourself, “breaking character”. Because you are still in your private space, “breaking character”, means (ego) Death.

That is, you must not actually reflect on yourself, objectify yourself to yourself. You are actively disincentivized to do so, by the interface design of modern media and “social”-computation. You are, rather, incentivized to be immersed in the experience of yourself.

The Instagram profile takes precedence over your mirror and even your face: The virtual has supplanted the Real. And as stated earlier: The virtual experience is an entirely private experience.

The infantile vulgarity of the millennial, the dril “lolsorandom” tweets, the cumtown fan, the Rick and Morty enjoyer, the “wholesome” redditor, all equally vulgar, primitive, offensive, childish. I say, all these things are not the result of his alienation and resignation, but the cause of it. Every Reference (see part 1), every snarky non-joke, is a curse upon one-self. The infantile vulgarity is the active rejection of bourgeoisie politeness perceived, and slandered, as the cause of all our psychological anxieties. Actively participating in this rejection, is the cause of alienation.

The soul, in a vacuum, wants to move upwards. The choice to remain stagnant, paradoxically, is an active choice. Like floating in water, you have to fight gravity to drown.

The Tiktok-outrage pendler, the travel blogger, the climate activists blocking roads or desecrating bourgeoisie classical artworks, the modern architecture school of destroying everything that’s beautiful and making it ugly and annoying on purpose, the candy for breakfast, smoking pot and watching cartoons in your 30’s, it’s all the Ordeal of Civility universalized. Because, again, when we instruct and initiate a child into manners, he experiences the rules as arbitrary, and only after internalizing them, objectifying himself, does he achieve the higher consciousness to understand the value of those rituals. To one who has not been instructed in this way, the manners continue to appear arbitrary.

Acting out the rituals of politeness does indeed not guarantee intelligence or good character, but, having at some point internalized them, it is a prerequisite. As always, “you must know the rules before you can break them”. We teach children to say please as a Wittgenstein’s ladder. I think that Intimacy is not the absence of politeness, but it’s transcendence.

The people who insist that civility is arbitrary rituals covering up for the “real” underlying atomic vulgarity, are mostly cowards who, for whatever reason, don't dare face the Public. Higher Existence. As mentioned before, in the exclusively private sphere universe, there can be no real intimacy, because you are always having little border skirmishes with others’ domains. You can never really feel safe or put down your sword.

Examples: Hippies insisting that you should just live like animals and roll around in your own filth, "sex positivists" reducing the concept of love to material orgasm, and so on. (which is the Freudian position - “love” is a spook, created from arbitrary European court rituals, covering up for repressed animal rape-lust)

Freud is a quack!

Behold, a Man

Here I use again my much referenced “friendship test”. I think the simplest example is the hand-wave, as greeting. You are showing an empty hand, signalling: I am not wielding my sword, nor am I making a fist. I am showing you a little itsy-bitsy tiny amount of vulnerability, exposing myself to the risk of you exploiting it, by hurting my soft inner hand full of nerve endings. And then you do the same thing to me, and we generate a small truce between us, in a world that is ruled by death and war. The crazy thing about this one is it even works on animals.

Intimacy is not the absence of ritual, but it’s integration.

The problem of the “nagging woman” is not that she enforces rules as such. All associations have social rules. Even on the 00’s 4chan, the allegedly most rude place on earth at the time, or in racist book clubs, there are expectations towards behavior and custom in public space, which you are punished for not following: “Lurk More”.

This is the Social Club, which is always exclusive, and excludes by a code of conduct: behavioral norms and social rituals. The free expression in such a place is not a blanket abandonment of politeness, returning to the private and vulgar on a little vacation, until we put on our masks and acts again in the “normie, real world” - but a transcendence of politeness, a stepping beyond and above it. A stepping up, not a stepping down. We do away with certain formalities, when we know by experience that the people in our group share the deeper abstract principle, a deeper internalized civility, a deeper charity, humility, temperance, patience, diligence, and so forth: also known as virtue.

This is why infiltration is so dangerous: On the internet, the punishment can only be, by mechanical necessity, ridicule and belittlement, exclusion. This is a major flaw in social organization, as I mentioned in part 1, because this only works in a majority civilized society, where exclusion is a punishment. It does not work if you are a minority. And if the only means you have exclusion is shaming, then you are powerless against the insolent. That sword cuts both ways.

The cheeky in-jokes and teasing of a close-nit social group is not the abolishment of the social mores, but rather, the social mores are a ladder you set aside after climbing it. Abolishing it will not make all mankind “friends”, because mankind does not exist in a state of universal friendship, which we return to once no longer repressed by arbitrary bourgeoisie christian morality. Friendship is the fulfillment of that morality. When we ask, why are men and women today incapable of intimacy, why is there a “loneliness epidemic”, why is social trust at an all time low, and so on, we are always ultimately asking the same question.

The alleged vulgarity of the “new right”, the racists and sexists of internet fame and infamy, is an irony. Their not playing by the rules, their “open misogyny” and the like, is more a case of, an aesthetic act of “revealing what is already the case”, than any attempt to create more vulgarity. The expressions are not to create, but an attempt to reveal, and a call to recognize, vulgarity.

The allegedly “extremist” vulgarity is an Act, big A, a theater act, an aesthetic act, designed to reveal the hidden suppressed truth of what they feel is already the case: that we live in a state of unacceptable, unendurable vulgarity. The “open misogyny and racism” has always ultimately been, structurally, ironic. Not because they “actually secretly respect women deep down,” as that term respect is used in mainstream society today, this is exactly the vulgarity they react against. But in tone: its always a snarl.

It doesn’t really matter whether any one person “respects women” or not - The irony being expressed, is, “I am not the one being vulgar, despite everything”. The “open, vulgar racism”, the same thing. Even if you believe it - the most dyed in the wool hardcore race realist, racism scientist, is never a flat, boring, rigid “scientist”, but an ironist and a cynic, holding up a plucked chicken and saying: “behold a man!”