Precisely. Some consider this a third rail so to speak, which is probably wise considering (in the wake of the Snowden revelations) that almost all activity over cyberspace is monitored by someone. Of course, to keep it vague is the key, until the hour approaches.

The ability to take down the electrical grid doesn’t really raise the stakes from what they have been since the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Opportunistic military actions would result in the same catastrophe if they went to far. Mutually assured destruction has been, and still is the only thing preventing global conflict.

I’ve heard about that theory before, that it is fundamentally impossible for intelligent species to escape their planet or solar system. There are also other explanations, but it could certainly be one of them. I like to hope that we are simply the first, however naive that is it seems like the best thing to bet on.

By “technology rendering people unequal” I did not meant to say that they were not unequal already, but that it would become impossible for anyone with the name “scientist” to ignore the reality unless the government was actually dissapearing people who made contrary claims. Impossible for the public to ignore either. This wouldn’t change the mind of the fanatics, but it would be no longer possible to hide behind the idea that because we are all human we are all equal- or at least equal enough that it’s not worth causing trouble over the issue.

Even if countries “go bust” as you say, and there is a massive die-off, this does not inherently mean the end of civilization. Governments can revert to older methods of population control, or dissolve into more regional powers, and still retain a semblance of control. Once the shock from global economic collapse is overcome they can rebuild as long as there is no widespread nuclear war or some other mass destruction event.

Regardless, we can still be prepared. History has shown that in the case of an economic upset fringe elements have the chance to grab the reigns of power. I severely doubt they will go without a global military struggle.

The aspects that fascinate me are hacking, virus attacks, and EMP detonation at a high altitude. Crippling electronics in the Modern world would cause mass chaos overnight. I read an article somewhere about what would happen if the electrical grid of the United States was shut down, and a prediction had the number of deaths in the first two weeks alone in the millions. I assume this is a conglomeration of hospital shutdowns, inability of police and fire departments to respond to anything, and perhaps heating/cooling failures where the elderly are concerned, plus of course riots and looting. Just look at how certain African American precincts react when the SNAP card system is down for a day.

The electronic aspect, as well as globalization of economics, and what I would predict would be opportunistic military actions in certain places around the world, would create an ongoing catastrophe unparalleled in human history. I wouldn’t rely on current regimes becoming Reactionary (perhaps a couple, Hungary and Russia, maybe a few others), most regimes will simply die as the politicians run to hide in their chosen ‘safe places’ with plundered loot.

Someone once speculated as to why we had never picked up a signal from alien lifeforms. He said that once any such species got to around where we were technologically, they soon after saw either their worlds destroyed or such a disaster occurred as to send them back to square one technologically. They hit a kind of ceiling that will always render Star Trek a work of fiction.

“If instead technology renders people unequal”

It’s a possibility, but society is unequal anyway. It always has been and always will be. Technology I don’t think can scrub away ideology. Take the example of Consumer Capitalism which, on average, made people more wealthy, but less equal. The gap between what we consider poor (which isn’t really poor I know) and the rich is widening every day because rich people are really really good at making money while average wages are stagnant. The stock market is a massive cash cow for corporate CEOs and they don’t even really have to do much to make millions and millions every day.
In spite of this… the ideology remains. We are all equal. We must be treated equally. There can be no aristocracy. There can be no monarchy.

Communism met its end on the deathbed of entropy. Compounding problem after problem, things got worse and worse until the ideology itself saw a kind of spiritual death, and in tandem the Communist states started to fall apart. The caveat was, they had the rich and bountiful West to rush in and make big investments with their Capitalism, just look at Poland’s transformation.

If we see the implosion of Liberalism, there’s nobody there to come to the rescue. All the other players, even authoritarian ones like China, will go totally bust as well.

What I have put forth as the Ascendancy Theory for Reactionaries is to prepare for this and be ready, be organized, be intellectually sound with an iron foundation, and have an inquisitionesque zeal for seeing Liberalism gone for good. Evola advised in Ride the Tiger to wait, let the tide rush over you and when it is at its lowest ebb, then and only then is the time for action. The Tiger burns itself out. That is the time to strike. Our task will be to remove the shriveled vestige of tomorrow, not the monolith of today which by then will lie in a ruin of its own making.

I think we may be surprised how weak resistance is at the end of it all.

It would only take one military grade nuclear weapon going off in a major Western city to sweep away any public tolerance and drive politicians to legislate democracy’s death alongside the 24 hour news coverage of radiation burn victims being dragged from smoldering buildings. If this trend of destruction continues, as you predict it will, then states would be driven to genocide to re-establish order. This alone wouldn’t reestablish virtues of honor and courage, but it could easily destroy progressive politics. Times of crisis and war tends to drive people to the right out of necessity, and the technological crisis does not inherently have to be a one-off event of global destruction.

I welcome this turn of events. Yes, the losses will be tremendous, but this ascendancy theory that I have called ‘Prophetic Catastrophism’ is fully in line with the predictions of the Vedic Tradition concerning the end of the Kali Yuga and the renewal of the cycle. ‘Re population of the earth” is even specifically mentioned, hinting at some kind of mass scale disaster. In such a condition, Reactionary politics will be the only viable option. Liberal outposts may exist, but like many maladaptive cultures in the early years of civilization, they will be swiftly overrun by those that realize the Traditional ideal in heroism and asceticism. Modernism’s technological advantage ripped from its heart, it will be exposed for how weak it truly is.

The greater the power of technology becomes, and the more diffuse and easy to obtain that it becomes (3D printers are really revolutionary in this regard), the pool of people who could bring cataclysm to civilizations expands. There was a time when virtually no man held such power, then with the advent of nuclear weapons, a minor handful of heads of state. Not so anymore. The development of defensive technology has never kept up with offensive technology, and in the Modern world, offensive technology has left defensive technology in the dust. It’s sprinting ahead towards its own immolation.

It’s just the end of a cycle. Things naturally do not continue as they are forever. They terminate at a point, and something new comes about. When Aleksandr Dugin gives the prime directive for his Eurasianist movement as “uprooting the accursed Tree of Knowledge” and realizing in Russia “the last thought in the mind of God, that of the end of the world”, he views this in a Messianic sense of the final apocalypse. I view it differently, as the beginning of another age, bleak and forbidding in many senses, but rich and beyond our wildest dreams in others. Over half the ancient writings we dismiss as legend, fable, and myth. But soon enough, we will see this age again, we will live in the age of legends, the age of Solar man, the age of heroes, the World of Tradition. That is… if we can just survive what is coming.

I think this process will continue until we hit one of three scenarios. The first is collapse of civilization. Whether it is from social decay, nuclear war, or the environment is irrelevant- that would set back the process and reward older behaviors, perhaps even turning opinions against scientific progress negative for thousands of years. I see this as a negative outcome simply because of the widespread damage causes to our populations regardless of the results.

The second scenario would be in the reaching of the end-game for technological advancement. The creation of God in the form of an artificial intelligence. This would be tied up in the pseudo-spiritual idea some people have about the “singularity”. In this scenario some super-computer in a lab somewhere surpasses human intelligence and becomes the doomsday AI that recent movies have featured (Transcendence). There is no guarantee in this scenario that humanity would survive at all, much less be catered to and made happy, so in my opinion this is a negative outcome.

The third scenario is a bit like the second, but if cybernetics and biotechnology develop before the creation of a stand-alone strong-AI then we could see a reverse in the trends against our individual value in muscle and mind. While this certainly wouldn’t be applicable to the vast majority of the population the achievement of being able to melt human minds and technology would enable us to incorporate the machines and computers into our being instead of having the function of our beings be replaced by their existence. Then again, this scenario does go off into trans-humanism and doesn’t solve the issue of depravity. Perhaps the problem is that we have become fat and lazy because of our success, and the only solution is create our own wolves in order to pick the weak from the herd. Or perhaps genetic modification can solve this problem for ourselves- but god help us if those who decide the traits of the next generation are progressives.

There. That’s the tease. The whole thing very … err, GROK-able (!) for us Westerners once you take a look at the details, and the role that trust plays (good ole trust: no stranger to the best of the West, eh!?) means I’d take a stab at explaining it in further detail to any well-meaning NRx’er who cared to hear my pitch. Name your terms.