Accelerationism and the Exponential Function

The current geological “Holocene” epoch began ~11,700 years ago, after the Last Glacial Period. The Holocene/Anthropocene extinction is an ongoing extinction event caused exclusively by human activities during the Holocene epoch. This extinction event spans numerous families of plants  & animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, impacting both terrestrial and marine species…Many of these extinctions are undocumented, as the species are often undiscovered before their extinctions. Current extinction rates are estimated at 100-1,000x higher than natural background extinction rates,  and are accelerating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Physics professor Albert Allan Bartlett (1923-2013) regarded human overpopulation as "The Greatest Challenge" facing humanity. He lectured over 1,742 times on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. Relating to sustainability, he said: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

Honeybee colonies in the United States are projected to decline by up to 70% in 2025, entomologists at Washington State University said Tuesday. Einstein might not have said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left” but, considering that bees pollinate 75% of the fruits, nuts & vegetables grown in the world, the hypothesis might turn out to be correct—for the 99%, at least.

The term “Accelerationism” (reactionary/revolutionary ideologies that call for the destabilzation of existing systems to cause radical social transformations), in a manner strongly distinguished from original accelerationist theorists, is used by right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists to increasingly refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict…to violently achieve a white ethnostate.

In 2017, English right-wing philosopher and writer Nick Land, commonly credited with creating and inspiring accelerationism's basic ideas and concepts, cited, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche, who argued in a fragment in The Will to Power that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it." Land’s position has been summarized: "since capitalism tends to dissolve hereditary social forms & restrictions, it is seen as the engine of exploration into the unknown. So to be ‘on the side of intelligence’ is to totally abandon all caution with respect to the disintegrative processes of capital and whatever reprocessing of the human and of the planet they might involve."

Land's involvement in the neoreactionary movement has contributed to his views on accelerationism. In The Dark Enlightenment, he advocates for a form of capitalist monarchism, with states controlled by a CEO. He views democratic and egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity…and has advocated for accelerationists to support the neoreactionary movement. Benjamin Noys has described Land’s philosophy as “Thatcherism in its Maoist phase…Accelerationism turns on fantasies of integration & immersion, with capitalism, with [machines], and with the abstract…dreams of ecstatic enjoyment” with a sado-masochistic element, because Land’s accelerationists know that mass-suffering is required to realize their dream.

Back to the Holocene extinction. The magnitude of the current extinction crisis is underestimated owing to three key factors: (1) the lack of attention given to this existential threat; (2) most people, even many scientists, assume incorrectly that the problem is primarily one of the disappearance of species when it is in fact the existential threat of myriad population extinctions; (3) only some scientists advocate one fundamental, necessary and ‘simple’ cure…Only a giant change in human culture can significantly limit the extinction crisis. Humanity must face the need to reduce birth rates further, especially among the overconsuming wealthy and middle classes. In addition, a reduction of wasteful consumption will be necessary, accompanied by a transition away from environmentally malign technological choices such as private automobiles, plastic everything, and treating billionaires to space tourism. Otherwise growth mania will win; the human enterprise will not undergo the needed shrinkage, but will continue to expand, destroying most of biodiversity and further wrecking the life-support systems of humanity until global civilization collapses. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2021.0378

Now let’s connect these two dots, by looking at today’s news. Mass public-sector layoffs, now being followed by private-sector layoffs, are destroying US society, especially for the non-rich. As RFK dismantles HHS and badmouths vaccines, a measles outbreak becomes an epidemic, with more Covid and worse on the way. Masked men without badges or uniforms are abducting legal residents and deporting them, sometimes to notorious gulags like the one in El Salvador. Wall Street’s stock market is crashing, which will result in many more layoffs/firings; Trump, a big fan of the Gilded Age, is deregulating and giving more tax cuts to the rich. Housing, healthcare and education are already unaffordable for the average citizen. Now the prices of consumer goods, like groceries, are spiking higher. The EU may stop all trade with the US; China, Japan & South Korea have made a trade alliance, and the dollar’s status as global reserve currency in in question.

What comes next: extreme poverty, Hoovervilles, and the brutal suppression of mass protests by militarized police and/or private security, after Trump invokes the Insurrection Act of 1807, labeling all protesters “terrorists” and sending them to gulags somewhere in the world. There is speculation that this invocation will occur as early as April 20 which, by the wildest coincidence, is not only the deadline for SecDef Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to submit a report and recommend whether or not to invoke it, but also Hitler’s birthday.

Historian Quinn Slobodian: “We are witnessing the convergence of 3 strains of politics…the Wall Street–Silicon Valley nexus of distressed debt & startup culture; anti–New Deal conservative think tanks [plus Christian theocrats]; and the online world of anarchocapitalism and right-wing accelerationism.” Said President-elect Trump, just prior to his inauguration on January 20, “Your head will spin when you see what’s going to happen.” Said Trump-appointed FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino: “Power is the only thing that matters…Liberals are not ready for what comes next.”

Nearly all species on planet Earth are in the midst of a massive die-off. What comes next, imo, is a loosely-managed die-off of the humans who can’t afford to buy food, medicine, etc. To the Powers-That-Be, in an era when AI robots can do nearly all the jobs that have until now required humans, the 99% are “useless eaters,” a term used by the Nazis to describe people people “requiring assistance from society but offering nothing in return.” Elon Musk has called them “the parasite class.”