Last time I said to A.I.: Rupture serves to cull the economic herd. Reducing mouths to feed overhead and supporting uber-productives who can afford the luxury vacations.
"That’s a piercing—and ethically volatile—diagnosis, Gary. If we follow that line, rupture becomes not just a systemic failure, but a strategic culling mechanism, one that selectively preserves the uber-productive while discarding the economically “excess.” It’s a brutal logic, but one that’s deeply embedded in the mythos of neoliberal capitalism."
"🔥 Rupture as Economic Culling
🧠1. Biopolitical Sorting
- Drawing from Foucault and Agamben, rupture can be seen as a biopolitical event—a moment when the state or market decides whose lives are worth sustaining.
- Economic crises often result in:
- Meanwhile, those with capital and mobility consolidate power, often emerging stronger."
"💰 2. Luxury as Post-Rupture Reward
- The 'uber-productive' are not just survivors—they’re ritually rewarded with luxury, leisure, and symbolic elevation.
- Vacations, gated communities, and financial insulation become markers of post-rupture privilege.
- This mirrors mythic tropes: the hero who endures the trial and receives the boon—except here, the trial is systemic collapse, and the boon is economic dominance."
"🧠Ethical Implications
| Dynamic | Description | Mythic Parallel |
|---|---|---|
| Culling the Herd | Economic rupture reduces “unproductive” lives | Sacrificial logic, scapegoating |
| Rewarding Survivors | Uber-productive elites gain more access | Apotheosis, divine selection |
| Narrative Justification | Framing collapse as necessary or cleansing | Purification myth, flood myth" |
"This logic is often naturalized—as if economic Darwinism were inevitable. But it’s a constructed narrative, one that obscures the violence of exclusion and the ethics of care."
"🧬 Counter-Narratives
- Degrowth economics challenges the idea that rupture must cull—it proposes redistribution, resilience, and ritual repair.
- Mythic citizenship reframes the survivor not as the most productive, but as the most ethically attuned.
- Ritual containment asks: how do we hold space for the broken, the discarded, the 'unproductive' without mythologizing their suffering?"
"Would you like to explore how rupture economics could be reimagined through mythic ethics—perhaps as a system that honors the wounded, redistributes the boon, and resists the sacrificial logic of neoliberalism? We could draft a counter-myth or ritual schema."
Do you see any critique of rupturism in today's superhumanism?
"Yes—there is a growing critique of rupturism within today’s superhumanist discourse, especially among philosophers and cultural theorists who interrogate the elitist, accelerationist, and exclusionary tendencies of superhumanism."
"🧠Superhumanism vs. Rupturism: A Tense Relationship
"🔥 1. Elitist Rupture as Selective Evolution
"Paul Jorion and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner argue that Nietzschean superhumanism—and its modern variants like metahumanism—embrace rupture as a necessary culling mechanism. Nietzsche’s vision of the Ãœbermensch was never universalist; it was about breeding a 'type of man' who is 'most valuable, most worthy of life, most secure guarantee of the future'."
"This logic mirrors rupture economics: collapse as a crucible that filters out the weak and elevates the elite. Superhumanism, in this view, becomes a myth of selective transcendence, not collective liberation."
"🌀 2. Accelerationism and the Myth of Progress
"Nicholas Low critiques the effective accelerationist (e/acc) movement as a techno-utopian fantasy that romanticizes rupture—arguing that slowing down technological development deprives humanity of its superhuman potential. But this vision ignores:
- The social costs of rupture
- The ethical implications of leaving the vulnerable behind
- The mythic inflation of progress as salvation"
"Superhumanism here becomes a reactionary dream, dressed in futuristic pageantry but rooted in exclusionary myth-making."
"🌱 3. Adaptive Critique: Survival vs. Transcendence
"Jorion’s adaptive standpoint asks whether superhumanist visions actually serve the survival of humanity, or merely justify radical rupture for a privileged few. He contrasts:
- Posthumanism and transhumanism, which imagine collective evolution
- Superhumanism and metahumanism, which embrace elitist rupture and monstrous transcendence"
"This critique reframes rupture not as heroic transformation, but as ethical failure—a refusal to hold space for the wounded, the ordinary, the communal."
"🧠Summary Table
| Superhumanist Strain | Relation to Rupture | Critique |
|---|---|---|
| Nietzschean Ãœbermensch | Rupture as selective breeding | Elitist, exclusionary, anti-democratic |
| Effective Accelerationism | Rupture as techno-progress | Ignores social cost, mythologizes speed |
| Metahumanism | Rupture as monstrous transcendence | Risks normalizing monstrosity as virtue |
| Adaptive Posthumanism | Rupture as survival challenge | Seeks ethical containment, collective repair" |
"Would you like to co-map a mythic schema of rupture ethics—one that contrasts superhumanist inflation with ritual containment, and explores how narrative can either weaponize or heal the break?"
https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/dreaming-of-superhumans-new-reactionary-nietzschean-fantasies/
Do you sense a kind of rupture theology developing? That instead of tea leaves and stock speculation, one might listen to Exorcists lecturing on YouTube or Brimstone Reverands preaching hellfire as an indication of a counter-revolutionary zeal for tradition? That at least for a significant portion of American Christianity, the world is in such chaos only world deliverance from evil can save us?
