Are you a disembodied consciousness floating in meat prison?

It is a tempting view in modern times. Sometimes as strawman, but sometimes sincere.

What’s the alternative, dualism? Mechanical materialism? Ancient non-dualism?

What if I told you this could be solved AND also give you a whole new POV on life. By that I mean everyday stuff, not odd philosophical questions.

On this blog I’m showing you what is Vitalism.

Why trust me on this? Summarising dense text is a skill I put some of my autism points into. Nick Land endorsed my summary of his article.

Let’s go back to the beginning - what is wrong with disembodied consciousness?

Tensions of modernity

These two views are erroneous:

  • we can explain the universe mechanically without free will

  • we are disembodied consciousnesses floating in meat prison

Both are equally repugnant. They are banished by the Universe itself. Even religions stressing things like immortal soul have many features embodied. What is more, they leave their believers weak.

List of problems with each

Vitalist Tradition

Vitalism is an umbrella term, a family-resemblance.

Vitalism is a outlook on life. It’s similar to Stoicism in a sense of being a life philosophy, not a religion.

Vitalist standpoint is close to pagan, pantheistic, animistic POVs. The main difference is what is stressed. With relatively few equivalences you can transform any of them into any other.

It is a tradition many contributed to. Borges said that every writer creates his own precursors. Vitalist precursors include Aristotle, Spinoza, Bergson and Deleuze, Bronze Age Pervert. I quote Nick Land often, too. Object Oriented Ontology.

Among the ancients Heraclit, ‘all is fire’ might be considered a precursor.

Henri Bergson and Elan Vitale? Bronze Age Pervert’s physique posting? Deleuzian libidinal materialism? Dionysian materialism? CCRU’s work on unlife?

What is Vitalism?

It’s about respecting the ‘life force in things’, the innate dynamics of systems. It’s like a capitalist saying ‘just trust the market bro’, taking market as a ‘alive’ entity, but applied to the Universe.

E/acc is not far away from the Vitalist umbrella, too.

Beff’s Newsletter
Notes on e/acc principles and tenets
The following are some quickly put together point-form notes following several of our public and private conversations on some of the basic thinking that eventually led to the formalization of effective accelerationism as a philosophy…
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Why subscribe?

What do you get for the free subscription:

  • reviews, summaries of the books I read - mostly contemprary philosophy of ontology and religion

  • the Vitalist System - drops of the fully operational philosophical System in a digestible format. It’s been in works for a couple of years, the last bit left to do now is digestibility.

  • occassional political & social commentary - I’m not that excitable about that stuff, so don’t expect much on current events

In other words, not everything is about Vitalism, but all is informed by it.

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