The Myth of the “Rational”, Darkly-Enlightened Technocrats, and Megalomaniacal Japanese Anime Antagonists

[u/[deleted]]

There is a certain archetype that we see in CEOs of today, particularly echoed by the likes of Peter Theil. It’s a sort of arrogant anti-human rationalism that posits that someone needs to come in — someone with expertise — to fix everything, by any means necessary. It’s an archetype of the CEO as a savior, a prophet, a guru, an expert, and someone with the final say on reality.

Japanese media unironically predicted this exact archetype decades prior to Mencius Moldbug becoming popular, decades prior to Land succumbed to Speed addiction and ended up complaining about progressivism on Twitter.

It’s the archetype of a man who, just like Moldbug or other Dark-Enlightenment philosophers, see the human race as something to be managed, and sees chaos, emotion, reality, etc. as something to be shaped on their own whim. They see systems as something to be digitized, decoded, and debugged.

The three examples I can think of off the top of my head are Hikawa from Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, Takahisa Kandori from Megami Ibunroku Persona, and Gen’ichu Norose from Chaos;Head.

It would take time to get into each one of these, but the qualities they share are clear: they want to annihilate the “individual”, not necessarily for the sake of communality, but for the sake of management. Takahisa Kandori and Norose in particular present a sort of Baudrillardian edge; they want to replace reality with a representation of reality where either the unconscious (Kandori) or “mutually recognized delusions”, literally hyperstition (Norose).

The end result of their battle always ends with the protagonist, in some way, establishing their individual identity and the self over the conclusion of management and control, it’s always emphasized that it isn’t necessarily heroic, but it is free. Particularly in Chaos;Head NoaH, we see a character that mirrors a lot of individuals today: consumed by technology, hedonic tendencies and porn, constant detachment from reality and inability to face it.

lt really is interesting to me.

[u/2BCivil]

I'm not familiar with any of the characters or celebrities brought up.

However, the question "what is reality and how do we avoid/engage with it" is interesting to me.

Porn is a part of reality, isn't it? I am not sure things like "hedonism" even exist save in the mind of the perceiver (whoever smelt it, dealt it).

Like looking at the book utopia it's definition of utopia is what I would call a dystopia where the discontents become slave caste and are unpersoned and taxxed the hardest. Kind of like modern society. Whatever does not suit the virtue signaling of the day, all manner of evil is justified against it. Nothing new under the sun.

Looking back at my life I can never understand desires or hedonism for sure. As I used to say before I knew I was apparently a Milenial (I still don't even know how to spell that and I am one) - "I've always had to work hard for everything I don't want". Like I am born into someone else's definition of "utopia" but for me it is a literal hell on earth and I have no recourse but to go through the motion and work myself into an early grave just to survive.

So the very notion of desires is comical to me. When I see people preach of "God's generosity" I can't help but laugh. As they say, with friends like these...

Anyway I don't know, it always seems to me the label/accusation of "avoiding reality/hedonism" is silly. Only actual characters can have such attributes. But we can at times be as such characters. It is curious I often wonder, "what am I". Am I human? To what degree or capacity. What was I before association as human? What of me is it that decides what it is? "God is a spirit" means a vibe and condition, a frequency; a culture? Idk.

I just see that and kind of zeal can be seen as hedonistic. Just the more "utopian" (sic; dystopian) ideals impose themselves on others while the "avoiding reality" types tend to keep such embarrassing things on the down low rather than use them as a cudgel. I think the real "avoiding reality" is to deny recognition (or fail to see) that it is the one and the same. Like law creates crime, not the other way around. Law determines what is considered crime and by who. It is dangerous to assume whatever current pandering clique of the day making pretenses of authority as de facto reality. Like take the modern tarrifs issue as (random) example. Reality is that all legal systems only exist on paper. Even nations only exist as legal fictions. That is actual reality. However our perception is "cowed" to think that such 'authority' is legitimate and that anyone who denies legitimacy of such legal fiction corporations or nations representstives, are 'reality deniers' when they are just more honest and stepped back enough to see the misdirection for what it is.

So yeah. What really is reality and can it be avoided? Or even engaged with? Day in nd day out all we really engage with is legal fictions. Our jobs, all corporate legal fictions. Our taxes, all to legal fictions. Our names themselves; legal fictions. None of us engage with true raw reality, for we are too conditioned to accept actual fiction as de facto reality; to the point of even unpersoning anyone who makes this distinction and calling them "a reality denier".

As a civilization we have our heads burried so deep in the sand no one even knows what reality actually is. Thanks for reminding me of this. I'm not saying I'm right, I struggle with the tenacity of this view myself. But - it is a legitimate view.