Why, Tech Bro's, why?
I mean, blowing the whole thing up don't make sense
We can go in circles. And then we can stand back a bit. And when we do, several questions tend to nag. One of them is, What ultimately motivates the Musks and Marc Andreessens, Brian Armstrongs and Peter Thiel's of the world?
Their nihilistic behaviour defies reason. As I ask in The Collapse Book, why would you simultaneously be working to preserve your life (cryogenics; ice baths) and continue your gene pool (pronatalism) while concertedly destroy the human experience and your home (singularity; transhumanism; the rape and pillage of the planet)?
I’ve been reflecting on this for years, trying to connect the disparate dots, to understand the psychology and to pick patterns. No doubt you have, too.
Writer
puts it down to addiction. We discussed it when we met in a Paris a few weeks back. He wrote just today:“The tech broligarchs are pursuing this not out of any need, but for their entertainment: They enjoy playing a high-stakes, winner-take-all game on a global scale. As men in their fifties with jaded appetites after decades of getting whatever they want, they can only experience more of a thrill by upping the ante. Like any poor crack head or pathetic street junkie, they seek the dopamine hits that comes from working together with a transnational oligarchic mafia to build a techno-fascist planetary prison where they and their cronies get to do whatever they want while everyone else has to grovel and beg.”
I agree it’s tied to dopamine. But my take is this:
These men have an insatiable appetite for more. They have chased money and power, and it has dialled up their dopamine system, programming it to chase ever more and more. But money and power fails (per all the studies) to give them what they want. And when you are that rich and powerful, more money and power won’t make a dint on anything anyway. So what’s left to chase, to own, to conquer?
Being right.
Boiled down, these tech billionaires want to win conclusively. To have the final, final, final say. Full stop.
They are myopically committed to this end goal, as they’ve been myopically committed to their various tech projects.
I have covered what this looks and smells like (see the resources and links below). And I recommend listening to “The Rise of the “Cognitive Elites”, a recent New Yorker podcast with Gil Duran to learn more.
In essence, going by the blueprints and texts (Project 2025, The Butterfly Revolution, The Sovereign Individual) that they are working and quoting from very openly, these men feel that their particular and superior knowledge and abilities (in the tech/AI realms) and their sheer wealth renders them most fit to run the world. These “cognitive elites” are working to create a “Network State” that would end countries as we know them (decentralise governance in the same way that crypto seeks to decentralise finance), get rid of democracy (only the cognitive elites should have a say) and be run by billionaires with an autocratic CEO at the helm.
Of course, to do this they must get rid of anything that gets in their way. Which is how they tend to run their businesses - in narcissistic, destructive, risky sprints.
Empathy is not a problem. The more wealthy you are, the less empathy you have. Indeed, as Musk told Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.”
Intellectuals, scientists, dissidents, annoying minorities, the bleeding hearts, the heads of military who aren’t in your camp…they must be disappeared, defunded, bullied into submission. We are seeing very real and quite comprehensive evidence of this happening at warp speed in the US.
Oh, and women. You tie them up in knots. You impose conservative norms on them (have you been following the rise of the post-Trump conservative look?). You incentivise procreation (speaking of his desire to have more kids, Musk said, “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.”) You make it harder for them to vote, per Trump’s SAVE act.
I spoke to a very powerful voice in this space a few weeks back and he is working with insiders in Washington who claim the Tech Bro’s big picture goal is retribution. For what? And against what? Against women, he replied. Mostly Hilary Clinton.
Which is insane.
But it fits with this picture of a bunch of emotionally limited, insecure men needing to be…right.
Being vindicated is kinda cool. Most humans like the smug feeling. But I think there’s a few more layers of psychology at play. Like sunk cost bias. They’ve put so much into this trajectory, they must stay the course, even if the outcome is grisly. I’ve also heard commentators refer to the Tech Bros as notorious “first order” thinkers - they simply don’t work through to longterm consequences. It suits them not to. Last week
and I also talked about how the psychological phenomenon of extinction burst is also contributing to what we’re seeing unfold.
A friend asked me last week, Do these bros think they are really going to be spared when shit goes down? I think they do think this. I mean, obviously the logic doesn’t stack. When money has no value, how will they pay the pilots that are meant to whisk them to their New Zealand bunkers, the bodyguards once there? Who’s going to grow their food? And yet I really get the sense that they still hold on to the idea that their superiority will save them. And this in itself, I feel, motivates them to push things to brinks and to relish the nihilism.
In destroying everything they get to prove just how right they are.
What do you think?
Some extra background reads:
Read about The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington (Who) Has Very Weird Beliefs.
You might want to listen to this podcast with Luke Burgis in which we talk about the philosophy of Rene Girard who informs much of Peter Theils’ work.
In this
chat and this one with Kory from Breaking Down Collapse I cover the other philosophical texts that the broligarchy are modelling their takedown on.Read
’s post today which explains how Peter Thiel’s Palantir business is operating behind the scenes.I did this chat with Doug Rushkoff some time back about prepare billionaires, in which he argues that “fleeing to Mars is fear of the feminine”:
Again, I recommend listening to “The Rise of the “Cognitive Elites”, a recent New Yorker podcast with Gil Duran.
Sarah xx
Aren't they just a subset of all of us?
There is like a global wide shared insanity. We see what we are doing but we keep doing it somehow in denial of what is really happening. Our society, schools, parenting, workplaces, social media is all ruled by more. Get more wealth, higher paying jobs, owning more, growth, promotions, a new car, latest fashion, travel .... the list gos on and on. The most righteous of us fly to COP meetings and a multiplicity of events to argue against .... emissions .... with the obvious knowledge that we could equally do it online while secretly loving the whiskey and wine with comrades each evening to discuss and agree how terrible it all is.
Thank god for Trump and Theil and Musk and Vance and all the others. It's them. It's not me.
Let's go back to before when we could fight the good fight while shopping on Temu, researching my new investment property, a trip to explore the wilds of the alps and my new 'electric' car while mammals and tiny critters become no more.
We love to point the finger. "It's them" ... absolving our own role. We expect them to be leaders so we can scroll on reels and online shopping, posting and complaining about the state of the world.
Their addiction is my addiction. The first step has to be "they are me." Seeing with love and understanding without judgment. Seeing we are all part of this shared insanity. Now I see them and see me, now what?
I studied Rene Girard in theological college about 20 years ago, specifically his thinking about Christ and the idea of the scapegoat. It’s bizarre and horrifying seeing these ideas be employed as instruments of control and exploitation, currently. It makes me think that the tech bros en masse seem to fear spirituality, tenderness, and vulnerability (all conventionally feminine traits and Christ- like traits) and the idea that there could be a divine force dwelling within the world that can’t be quantified or controlled. If they are trying to exploit society’s vulnerabilities and use these vulnerabilities to consolidate their own power, they are in for some pretty hard lessons when they finally do have to face their own mortality and the depth of their own need in that moment.
Making a person or group a scapegoat (it sounds like they feel this way about women?) strengthens the scapegoat’s capacity for moral courage, self knowledge, and wisdom. And the oppressor makes themselves so desperately in need of love — so pathetically hungry for it but too terrified to submit to its healing power. It really all comes back to that idea of justice, love, forgiveness, and mercy, and taking responsibility for one’s self being inviolable parts of what it means to be human.