Tony Gosling on his Nietzschen Accelerationist schoolfriend Nick Land - Richie Allen Tue29Nov22 - -
The maniacal 'ideology' behind the economic, climate, spiritual, democratic and WWIII crises devalues human life to that of an animal. It is obscure but has recently been pinned on the Accelerationists, led by ex-Warwick University Philosophy lecturer Dr Nick Land who coined the phrase 'Dark Enlightenment'. Tony approached Nick Land via a mutual friend who teaches fine art at Worcester College, asking him for an interview, but there was no reply Between 1976 and 1978 Nick and Tony were 'best friends' and Tony was round at Nick's house most Saturdays to play war board games such as SPI and Avalon Hill 'Strategy and Tactics magazine' games. ... Nick sat next to Tony in Maths 'O' Level which they both passed with flying colours and in other lessons. Nick set up the weekend 'British Free Army' irregulars which did fun teenage 'manoeuvrers' on Hayes Common opposite Warren Road where he lived. Previously known at Langley Park school as 'Nick the Nazi' Nick Land came back after the summer holidays in 1978 to announce that he was now a Communist. His father was a director of the oil company Shell in South Africa. His family had moved to Hayes in Kent from Sutton Coldfield. Nick Land was a charismatic young man with an incredible amount of knowledge which he definitely didn't learn at school. He was talking about the internet in 1979, fifteen years before it emerged to the public. Langley Park School for Boys was a Grammar School in 1973 when they both began their secondary education but within three years had become a comprehensive school under Labour Education Secretary (and Bilderberger) Shirley Williams. Nick went on to take an interest in hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and be a philosophy lecturer at Warwick University from where he was removed and now lives in China.
Here and now #16/17 (1995/6) Cover of issue 16/17 (1996) Double issue of Here and Now Leeds and Glasgow based sociolological/cultural magazine with articles in defence of humans, on the warfare of everyday life, 'Cyberdrivel' and more, with a supplement on Guy Debord. Contents Editorial Heresay - Peter Porcupine Revenge of the repressed - John Barrett Carnival of the depressed? - Mike Peters The Italian political crisis - Dario Padovan 24 hours from Tuzla - Jim McFarlane Caucasian Chalk Circle - Mike Peters Living of the edge of nowhere - Jim McFarlane The challenge of post-humanism - George Williamson Globalisation and liberal politics - Alex Richards Cyberdrivel - Mike Peters Feuds corner - Frank Dexter Tangled web - Anonymous Post modern feud - Martin Walker The truth about the Vehm - Phil Edwards Review: Machine music in an age of sweat - Twilight of the proletariat? - Steve Bushell https://libcom.org/article/here-and-now-1617
Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in (2017) The world is changing at dizzying speed – but for some thinkers, not fast enough. Is accelerationism a dangerous idea or does it speak to our troubled times? One of the central figures of accelerationism is the British philosopher Nick Land, who taught at Warwick University in the 1990s, and then abruptly left academia. “Philosophers are vivisectors,” he wrote in 1992. “They have the precise and reptilian intelligence shared by all who experiment with living things.” Iain Hamilton Grant, who was one of Land’s students, remembers: “There was always a tendency in all of us to bait the liberal, and Nick was the best at it.” Since Warwick, Land has published prolifically on the internet, not always under his own name, about the supposed obsolescence of western democracy; he has also written approvingly about “human biodiversity” and “capitalistic human sorting” – the pseudoscientific idea, currently popular on the far right, that different races “naturally” fare differently in the modern world; and about the supposedly inevitable “disintegration of the human species” when artificial intelligence improves sufficiently. Other accelerationists now distance themselves from Land. Grant, who teaches philosophy at the University of the West of England, says of him: “I try not to read his stuff. Folk [in the accelerationist movement] are embarrassed. They think he’s sounding like a thug. Anyone who’s an accelerationist, who’s reflective, does think: ‘How far is too far?’ But then again, even asking that question is the opposite of accelerationism.” Accelerationism is not about restraint. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in
Accelerating Toward Dark Enlightenment In one sense, the accelerationists are right. All of this is inevitable—if we continue to sleep-walk through our lives imagining that mummy and daddy state will look after us. They are also right that this is an emergency and that we must act. But they are the threat, and the cataclysm is of their design. https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/accelerating-toward-dark-enlightenment
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