#atmosphere #architecture #psychogeography #capitalism #theology #SergeiBulgakov #atmospherictheology

Introduction

Ghost hunting has once again crawled out of the ether and is haunting much of pop culture. Television shows like Ghost Adventures, podcasts on the paranormal, countless internet hubs, as well as real-life expeditions seem to have gained a second life. Some interpret this phenomenon as symptomatic of how quickly America is given to fantasy thinking and delusions from reality. Others interpret this as a renewed longing for a spiritual dimension. And of course, there's the Bob Larsons of the world who claim that it's all just demons attempting to trick America away from following Christ. However, what interests me about the phenomenon is not so much whether ghosts exist. Instead, it seems to me that ghost hunting and ghost tours present an interesting form of psychogeography and cognitive mapping of urban and suburban environments. Within this new cognitive mapping of material environments, I believe it's possible to see cracks starting to form within our truncated, secularist milieu. And even though ghost hunting itself does not necessarily purport explicit theological or religious commitments, I think there is an interesting theology of space and material environments that could perhaps emerge from or exist in dialogue with cryptid psychogeography.

My Experience on a Ghost Tour

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It purports to be one of the most haunted hotels in America, and so, naturally, I took a ghost tour.

For background, I am not a materialist or a secularist. I am a Christian, and thus supernatural, preternatural, or spiritual phenomena are a possibility within my worldview. For example, I believe in angels and miracles. However, I'm quite skeptical about paranormal encounters. Perhaps that's a result of living in secular age or seeing firsthand how often claims of numinous encounters can be abused by church leaders. Additionally, despite having numerous religious experiences throughout my life, I have never had a ghost, demonic, or paranormal encounter of the explicit kind one would label as supernatural (at least, that I'm aware of). Nonetheless, I try to keep a critically-open mind because I do believe that the universe is filled with spiritual qualities and high strangeness.

The Crescent Hotel tour was a lot of fun. The genre of ghost tour storytelling was fascinating as well: a combination of historical narrative and the horror genre. Furthermore, the introduction of “scientific” language — such as ghost hunting technologies — is an interesting combination of more ancient spiritual phenomenology (ghosts and spirits) with modernity (technology and science), even if the “science” might make professional scientists pull their hair out.

Unfortunately, I did not have a ghost encounter. Neither did I even have an experience of the heebie-jeebies. But it was certainly fun, and the hotel is quite beautiful and features a dark academic aesthetic, which is certainly worth checking out. Additionally, the experience of navigating a material environment from the perspective of a ghost tour really got me thinking about the psychogeography involved in ghost hunting.

Psychogeography

Psychogeography is a concept that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s within the realm of avant-garde movements and cultural theory. It explores the relationship between the geographical environment and the emotions, behaviors, and experiences of individuals within that environment. Psychogeography seeks to uncover the psychological and emotional impact of urban spaces on individuals and how these spaces shape our perceptions and interactions.

The term “psychogeography” was coined by the Situationist International, a group of artists, intellectuals, and activists who sought to challenge the dominant capitalist culture and transform everyday life. They viewed psychogeography as a means to disrupt the prescribed patterns of urban life and create new forms of engagement with the cityscape.

Psychogeographers engage in a variety of practices to explore the effects of urban environments. For example, they often undertake “dérives,” which involve purposeful drifting or wandering through urban areas to uncover hidden aspects and unexpected encounters. Through dérives, psychogeographers aim to break free from predetermined routes and discover new perspectives on the city.

Psychogeography also involves the concept of the “psychogeographic map.” These maps deviate from traditional cartography and instead represent the emotional, cultural, and subjective experiences of individuals in a particular place. They may incorporate elements such as personal anecdotes, historical narratives, and symbolic representations.

The goal of psychogeography is to challenge the mundane and passive experiences often associated with urban spaces. By encouraging exploration, critical observation, and subjective engagement, psychogeographers aim to transform our relationship with the built environment and inspire new ways of perceiving and interacting with our surroundings.

Paranormal Psychogeography

It seems to me that ghost hunting and ghost tours represent a peculiar type of psychogeographical experience. Modern urban spaces are often not designed around spiritual matters, but rather upon the flows and accumulation of capital. One is meant to navigate an urban environment as primarily a cog in the machine of capitalism: either a consumer or a laborer. Of course, this is not entirely the case for every square inch of a city because one could contend that spaces like parks are centered around human interests more than capitalism. But these respites of human interest are still relegated to confined areas rather than permeating the urban space as a whole. The point of psychogeography is then to find ways of navigating a city in a way that brings a sense of the truly human, rather than a machine or zombie-like consumerism.

It seems possible to me that ghost hunting could be one such example of this alternative navigation — especially because ghost tours provide an alternative cognitive mapping of one's urban environment. A cognitive map is a mental representation or internalized image of a person's spatial surroundings, including landmarks, routes, and relationships between locations. It is essentially the way in which landscapes and urban geography — perhaps even one's own culture — exist within one's mind.

Thus, instead of one's cognitive map only being filled with points of consumerism, such as shopping malls, retail stores, and even necessary locations like grocery stores, ghost hunting creates new data points on one's cognitive map. Regardless of whether these places are actually haunted by paranormal forces, ghost hunting adds a sense of spiritual mythology to one's material environment. There is, at the very least, a potential for spiritual places, “thin places,” or locations of high strangeness to break through the cracks of the secular materialist mind into which we are all conditioned.

Ghost hunting trains one's brain to look for the spiritual dimension of a material environment. Even if there is no such thing as a location haunted by a ghost, the very act of delving into the mythological histories of haunted locations and contemplating the relationship between possible spiritual forces and one's material environment can be a means by which we leave open the door for religious materialism.

The Spiritual Dimension of Material

“Religious materialism” is a term I learned about recently while reading the essay “Relics” by the 20th-century Russian Orthodox theologian, Sergei Bulgakov. Bulgakov wrote the essay in response to vandalizes who had desecrated sacred relics of saints. Bulgakov uses the topic of relics to articulate the vitality of the material world from a religious perspective and how, from his perspective, there is no such thing as dead matter.

Sergei Bulgakov's theory of religious materialism proposes that the material world is intrinsically connected to and infused with divine energies and attributes. According to Bulgakov, creation is not separate from God but rather a manifestation of God's presence and creative activity. Bulgakov emphasized the sacredness and spiritual potential inherent in the physical world, rejecting the dualistic notion that matter is inherently sinful or separate from the divine. Instead, he argued, based on the Orthodox doctrines of the Incarnation of Christ and deification of humanity, that matter is a vehicle for divine revelation and the realization of God's purposes, of which the Incarnation of Christ and sacraments like the Holy Eucharist are prime examples. As he wrote, “The spiritual bread, the heavenly, food, is also bodily bread and food; by no means does the spiritual sacrament become incorporeal — rather, it is corporeal to the highest degree, corporeal par excellence. [...] [Christ] came not to destroy the world but to save it. Therefore, in the gracious life of the church, all that is spiritual is corporeal [...].” (Bulgakov, “Relics,” page 9, Boris Jakim translation).

For Bulgakov, the materiality of the world is not dead, but rather something sacred, given that it is thoroughly infused with divine life. However, this picture contrasts sharply with our Cartesian-capitalist paradigm in which matter is a dead resource waiting for exploitation. Material environments, human spaces, and urban buildings become little more than cogs in a wider machine. However, from a Bulgakovian perspective, a psychogeographer can resist such a truncated imagination and cultivate a way of seeing the city as a spiritual entity as well. And perhaps ghost hunting — the investigation of haunted places — might be one means toward that goal.

Ghost Hunting and Numinous Experiences

Related to this notion, I think ghost hunting shows how many individuals within our society are still searching for religious experiences or “numinous experiences” as the theologian Rudolf Otto called them.

If you want to read a full engagement with the topic of ghost hunting as chasing the numinous, you can read this great article by Daniel Wise from the Journal of Gods and Monsters linked here: https://godsandmonsters-ojs-txstate.tdl.org/godsandmonsters/article/view/28

To give a shorter summary, Rudolf Otto invoked the term “numinous” to refer to a transcendent and mysterious quality encountered in religious experiences. It represents a unique and awe-inspiring encounter with the divine that elicits a sense of fascination, awe, and even fear in individuals. The numinous is characterized by its 'wholly other' nature, going beyond the ordinary and mundane. Otto described the numinous as a sense of creaturely finitude when confronted with the divine. He emphasized that the numinous experience includes both a tremendous sense of mystery and an irresistible attraction. It involves a paradoxical combination of both fascination and trembling before the divine presence — a type of theological sublime.

Ghost hunting is, for many individuals, both scary and exciting — terrifying and supernatural. To encounter a spiritual entity in the world is to encounter the numinous.

Paranormal Psychogeography as Cruciform Cognitive Mapping

Most likely, however, one will not encounter a paranormal entity whilst ghost hunting or walking a ghost tour — if such an encounter is even possible. Nonetheless, adding “haunted” locations to the cognitive map of one's environment can still be a worthwhile endeavor because the stories behind such hauntings often contain historical-mythological narratives of one's city beyond the conventional narrative of capitalist expansion. Instead, the stories often testify to the underlying trauma of our cities, focusing on the exploited and marginalized individuals who were failed by society.

For example, the Crescent Hotel's foundation for being (allegedly) haunted rests primarily with the original history of a wealthy con artist named Norman Baker selling a “miracle cure” for cancer. Of course, it was a total sham, and many people died horrible deaths under his watch while he shamelessly exploited their illnesses for personal profit. It's a horrific story of exploiting the most vulnerable for greed and profit. The hotel is thus haunted, if not by ghosts, by the history of America's failed medical system and our society's continued apathy toward the mistreatment of those who have illnesses. The full story is way crazier than I could describe, so I'll link the Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_G._Baker

The Cresent Hotel is not the only building in America haunted by tragedy. Cities are often built on trauma: environmental devastation, pollution, exploited labor, racism (such as red-lining), and even genocide (such as the treatment of First Nation and Indigenous Americans). Furthermore, there is tragedy and violence all around us, such as violence and poverty. Often in paranormal lore, places of tragedy and trauma are most likely to be haunted. Thus, by engaging with these stories — even if they are mostly mythological — one can develop a perception of one's material environment that pays special attention to those who need it most.

In this sense, ghost hunting or paranormal tours can possibly witness toward a cruciform hermeneutics of the city. Within the tradition of Christian liberation theology, there is a strong emphasis on God's special concern and favor toward the poor, marginalized, oppressed, and suffering. The crucifixion is often pointed to as a testimony to how God, in Christ, willingly enters into the suffering of humanity in order to co-suffer with them and bring about their liberation from the condition contributing to that suffering.

In a tangentially related vein, ghost hunting and ghost tours often focus on stories of suffering, tragedy, and trauma that happen within the modern city. Death in the workplace. Domestic violence. Murder. Depression. Suicide. Natural disasters. The prison industrial complex. These are all common phenomena associated with hauntings. Indeed, even if ghosts do not exist, our towns and cities are haunted by these tragedies. Ghost hunting and ghost tours ask us to confront these hauntings existing all around us. Now, I'm not claiming that ghost hunting is a form of liberation theology, but there might be a resonance here when both are applied to an analysis of the tragedies produced by human systems.

However, it's not the case that ghost hunting and ghost tours are the anti-capitalist praxis par excellence. Like everything, capitalism is perfectly capable of appropriating the supernatural into its system. A guided ghost tour costs money, and businesses often exploit the “haunted” label in order to attract more customers. But these seem like minor problems compared to other major issues within capitalism, such as climate change, supply chains, and privatized healthcare. Furthermore, visiting haunted locations, embarking on ghost hunting expeditions, or following ghost tours does not necessitate spending money. These activities can be co-opted quite easily through self-organized tours and independent research on the Internet. Doing so even opens up the possibility of meeting more people in one's community.

Against the backdrop of an ever-suffocating and truncating secularist materialism, I think it's great to imagine new ways of engaging with high strangeness so that the spiritual might break through the rusting machinery of modernity. Ghost hunting and ghost tours might be one small tool within our arsenal as we seek to move out of the secularist ennui. And the cherry on top is that developing a new cognitive map of one's urban environment is something that one can begin today. So start researching, start wandering, and let yourself feel a little spooky.

Appendix: As a final thought, I think it's important to mention how sacred spaces should not be neglected when it comes to developing a post-secularist cognitive mapping of material environments. Sacred spaces such as cathedrals, church yards, and prayer gardens (which are often neglected but more common than one might think) can likewise be spaces of high strangeness. Sometimes, they even overlap with ghostly hauntings. At least speaking for myself, I have stepped into several cathedrals and sacred spaces that were so beautiful that it was as if I stepped into another world.

#atmosphere #consumerism #capitalism #architecture #psychogeography

In the famous novel “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski, a family moves into a new house that, at first, appears unremarkable from the outside. But soon, the family begins to notice strange and unsettling things about the architecture: the house is filled with shifting and expanding dimensions, which seem to defy the laws of physics. The family discovers that the interior of the house is much larger than the exterior, with rooms and hallways that seem to appear and disappear at random. The walls of the house also seem to be made of shifting and unstable materials, with staircases that lead to nowhere and corridors that twist and turn in impossible ways. As the family explores the house, they become increasingly disoriented and paranoid, with each member experiencing the house's strange properties in their own way.

I was reminded of this story during my most recent trip to IKEA. There is something about the staging and atmosphere of IKEA that gives it a similar feeling to the house in Danielewski's novel. The winding, labyrinth-like journey through which one must travel takes on a surrealist or “psychotronic” atmosphere as each region of the store is staged with faux living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms that continuously shift in design and affect.

The way in which one must navigate the terrain in an unconventional manner — the long, snaking path weaving through seemingly every crevice of the building — creates an effect that, to me, feels as if the building is larger on the inside than the outside. Of course, the building itself is large to begin with. However, if the labyrinth were not there, it would only take a couple of minutes to get from one end of the building to another. But in its current design, it can take perhaps more than an hour to get through the store. The labyrinthian interior staging is also combined with an element of questing. People go to IKEA looking for bedding, furniture, decor, and interior design inspiration.

To me, the element of questing/searching combined with a winding labyrinth structure creates a dreamlike, quasi-surreal atmosphere. I say “quasi” surreal because I would hesitate to call the atmosphere fully surrealist. Surrealism, in my use of the term, refers to a deliberate effort to create art within the genre of surrealism and requires a well-honed skill in the craft of artmaking. This genre of surrealism is usually characterized by non-sequiturs, archetypal imagery, and the breakdown of rational logic, resembling the logic of dreams more than conventional reality. Or, more properly, it is the combination of dream and reality into a higher reality — a sur-reality.

However, it is also possible to accidentally create something that produces surrealist affective responses, which I call “psychotronic.” Psychotronic is a term used in the film world to describe films that often include bizarre or unconventional content and are typically characterized by low budgets, over-the-top acting, and a cult following. They often feature elements of horror, science fiction, and exploitation films and are intended to elicit strong emotional responses from viewers. I once heard psychotronic films described as “naive surrealism” (I tried to track down the original source of this to credit them, but I could not find it). In other words, a psychotronic film is one that is so bizarre, jarring, or poorly constructed — along with disjunctive, visceral affective qualities combined with long periods of nauseating boredom — that the film creates a dreamlike atmosphere, though completely unintentionally.

Though I wouldn't necessarily call IKEA shocking, I do think it exhibits something of a psychotronic and naively surrealist atmosphere. In a sense, it's like a capitalist parody of a holy site. IKEA is not on every corner like Walmart. Thus, for many people (such as myself), one has to make a long pilgrimage to reach a towering warehouse (like a cheap parody of a cathedral) wherein one traverses an eerie and unpredictable landscape to the point of physical exhaustion — all in order to acquire a new TV stand.

Perhaps this is all a stretch, but I think it showcases how many of our spaces of consumerism mimic sacred spaces of worship. It's as if our drives toward the holy and sacred have been co-opted and redirected toward consumerism. This is something I've written about previously, so if you'd like to know more about this, I'll link the article below.

https://write.as/nathaniel-metz/non-places-muzak-and-george-bataille-losing-oneself-in-atmosphere

#horror #filmanalysis #capitalism #theology #Moltmann #NickLand #Deleuze #JasonHickel #JacquesEllul #SpiritualWarfare

In this article, I'm going to create a rough sketch for a modern notion of spiritual warfare by providing a narrative of the networks and systems in our world that auto-create themselves through a traumatic parody of divine providence. For lack of a better term, I will refer to this auto-organizing system as “Capitalism,” while also acknowledging the limitations of that term, given that what I will say applies also to Sovietism and Maoism. Again, this is a blog where I experiment because I find that often it's only through writing that I'm able to make connections and study new ideas.

What is Spiritual Warfare?

The Christian concept of spiritual warfare generally refers to the belief that there is a realm phenomenologically experienced but outside of our direct perception in which believers are engaged in a constant battle against evil forces, who are trying to oppose the will of God both through systemic superstructures of oppression and violence as well as through more individuated “temptations,” such as corruption, vice, greed, and not loving others the way one ought to. This concept is based on various passages in the Bible, such as Ephesians 6:12, which states “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Christians have interpreted this in a variety of ways. Some think Satan and demons are, in some sense, real. Others take this language to be more metaphorical about how corruption, oppression, and violence can be destructive forces in the world, moving us toward a different end than the Kingdom of God.

Why am I Talking About This?

Reinvoking the language of spiritual warfare might seem like an odd and slightly crazy decision. After all, it’s an old Christian concept that, unless you are in certain Christian circles, is not talked about very much. But I have a hunch that the language of spiritual warfare might be fruitful for a narrative of Capitalism as opposed to the Kingdom of God.

I think we need a deeper sense of myth and narrative in our world today. However, by using the language of spiritual warfare, we might be able to build a bridge for conversation with more evangelical or even fundamentalist Christians, for whom critiques of Capitalism sound like Marxism, which immediately turns them off and prevents dialogue. Furthermore, the language of spiritual warfare allows us to bring in more scriptural resources to talk about the state of the world today, which could help preachers more easily address issues like climate change from the pulpit. Finally, I think our cultural analysis and critique could potentially be bolstered by spiritual warfare theory.

Opening Illustration: Stranger Things and the Upside Down

In the TV show, Stranger Things, there is a parallel dimension called the Upside Down harboring evil creatures against which the main characters must fight, which occasionally requires the characters to traverse inside the strange new dimension. The Upside Down is a decrepit parody of the real world, where, instead of humans, the town of Hawkins is filled with monsters, toxic air, and rhizomatic vines. This dark, parallel dimension is tethered to the real world but is also distinct from it. It is a conditioning force in the real world, but most people don’t have direct experience with it except for rare occasions. But even when people don't experience it directly, the Upside Down still lingers as an outside force breaking into the real world, creating violence and trauma. Several monsters within the dimension, such as Vecna and the Mind Flayer, want to break into our realm and corrupt or 'de-create' all of reality to be under their control — kind of like Lord Sauron with the One Ring of power in Lord of the Rings.

The Upside Down itself is somewhat confusing and the rules of how it works are not fully parsed out. Visually, it’s full of rhizomes, vines, and creatures that humans don’t fully understand, who exhibit strange powers not accessible to (most) humans.

While watching the show, part of me couldn't help but think of Gilles Deleuze's and Nick Land's transcendental materialism. Deleuze was a French philosopher who developed the concept of “transcendental materialism” as an alternative to traditional forms of materialism and idealism. Deleuze's theory is a form of ontology that asserts that reality is composed of an interrelated and constantly flowing multiplicity of immanent, dynamic processes or “flows” rather than fixed, substantial entities. Deleuze argues that traditional materialism, which posits that there is a single, underlying physical reality that can be objectively known, is limited in that it does not account for the ways in which reality is constantly in flux and shaped by human perception and thought. Similarly, he argues that traditional idealism, which posits that reality is a product of mind or consciousness, is limited in that it does not account for the ways in which the material world shapes and constrains human perception and thought. Instead, Deleuze's transcendental materialism posits that reality is a constantly flowing multiplicity of immanent processes that are both shaped by and shape human perception and thought. He emphasizes that reality is not a fixed, objective thing, but rather a constantly changing process that is both shaped by and shapes human subjectivity. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding how these flows or multiplicities are connected, relational, and mutually affecting each other, which he calls a “rhizomatic” structure.

The idea that reality is a constantly flowing multiplicity of immanent processes that are both shaped by and shape human perception and thought is (with some exception) a decent metaphor for the Upside Down. The rhizomatic vines, storms, and sludge of the Upside Down are constantly flowing, fluxing, and transforming; however, the work of humans also impacts what goes on in the Upside Down. I'm sure Deleuze would object to how easily distinguished the two realms are from one another, but the inter-penetrating and mutually corrupting nature of the realms might be satisfactory enough. The Upside Down is thus, in a sense, a sinister aesthetic depiction of a transcendental materialism that has gone into darker territory, especially when we consider how Nick Land (and the CCRU) developed Deleuze's theory.

Nick Land is highly influenced by Deleuze’s transcendental materialism and coined the term “fanged noumena” to describe the monstrous, destructive, and uncontrollable forces that he believes are unleashed by the acceleration of technological progress and the intensification of global capitalism. Fanged Noumena is a combination of Marx, Kantian transcendental philosophy, and H.P. Lovecraft. For Marx, capitalism is vampiric: “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” In the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, cosmic, extra-dimensional monsters exist in a manner that is beyond the comprehension of humans, which is like the Kantian concept of “noumenous,” the reality that exists independently of our phenomenological experience and thus cannot be “known” directly but only inferred (according to Kant). In Lovecraft, this outsideness and beyondness leads to madness, destruction, or both. Land combines these notions and thus theorizes capitalism as a type of Lovecraftian monster rearranging our world in order to be devoured; it is fanged noumena.

Even more broadly, fanged noumena refers to the idea that the world contains monstrous entities that exist beyond human comprehension and control. These forces are not only beyond human understanding, but they are also hostile to human life and well-being. Land sees these forces as emerging from the acceleration of technology, capitalism, and the intensification of global processes, representing a growing threat to human civilization. Fanged noumena are a product of the intensification of global capitalism, which creates a situation in which the economy, technology, and culture are all in a state of constant and rapid acceleration. Land believes that these forces are breaking down traditional forms of social organization and creating a new reality that is fundamentally different from anything that has come before. These forces are pushing humanity towards a state of hyper-modernity and a new form of barbarism — a situation in which traditional forms of morality, ethics, and humanism will be no longer applicable.

As he said in his famous essay “Meltdown,” “The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.” For Land, capitalism is a cybernetic, self-organizing system created by a Lovecraftian Artificial Intelligence from the future.

Wow. Yeah, I know, but stay with me. Again, this is narrative-building, and whether or not Land truly believes this as a literal picture is beside the point.

What’s interesting to me about Land’s theory-fiction is that it is a type of parody or “shadow” of eschatological ontology. In the eschatological ontologies of theologians like Jürgen Moltmann, God’s transcendence is not primarily one of space, but of time. The total and complete redemption of all things being reconciled to God in Christ (Colossians 1) is a future reality that is breaking into the present, shaping our world to bring about the Kingdom of God. It’s like the common saying in theology: The Kingdom of God is both here and not yet. God’s Being — the highest form of reality, reality itself — is both immanent and transcendent to Creation, and is the ground of our being providing the ultimate conditioning factors upon our existence.

Now, compare Moltmann to Land.

God’s Kingdom is manifest through peace, justice, reconciliation, and, above all, the work of the Holy Spirit. Contrarily, Land’s Lovecraftian AI kingdom is manifest through destruction, death, acceleration of autonomous technique and technology, as well as the meltdown of reality into the control of the transcendental monster of techno-capitalist singularity. To quote Land's Meltdown essay again:

“The body count climbs through a series of globewars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace. By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. … Converging upon terrestrial meltdown singularity, phase-out culture accelerates through its digitech-heated adaptive landscape, passing through compression thresholds normed to an intensive logistic curve: 1500, 1756, 1884, 1948, 1980, 1996, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011 ... Nothing human makes it out of the near-future.”

To bring us back to Stranger Things, there's a sense in which, Capitalism, from a Landian narrative, is like the Mind Flayer — a monster from another realm breaking into our world to re-create the Earth according to its own vision. It is a type of fanged noumena conditioning our world through violence, destruction, and trauma. Just like how creatures from the Upside Down want to break into the world and transform it according to their own purposes, capitalism wants to manifest itself through the acceleration of horror. In the virtual sphere, television displays more horrendous material than we could imagine through cable news coverage and some forms of popular entertainment. When this wasn’t enough, the internet pushed the pedal to the floor, showing us every form of depravity and violence known to humanity. Imagine what could be next.

In the non-virtual spaces, the fanged noumena system exerts its manifest destiny through trauma and violence in even more hideous forms. It is not just the traumatization of humans via colonialism, slave labor, alienation, etc., but also the traumatization of the non-human facets of Creation via slaughterhouses, factory farms, deforestation, and climate change. All of Creation gets reterritorialized into these new traumatizing and brutalizing systems. This is also why Soviet and Chinese communism ultimately fell into similar plights: they exerted a manifest destiny of trauma via mass executions and brutal, merciless rule. The communist goal for the end of Capitalism ( a type of immanent and materialist Kingdom of God or heaven on earth) was sought after through means and techniques similar to the techno-capitalist system itself, such as mass violence and brutality. Thus, it’s no wonder that “brutalist” architecture was one of the core icons of Soviet communism. In this sense, we can see that “capitalism” isn’t a broad enough term because both Stalinism and Capitalism operated under this “traumatic providence.” Both are instances of spiritual warfare.

Objections

I’m sure many are rolling their eyes right now, which is fine. Again, I’m writing this more experimentally than dogmatically to see if this line of thought is fruitful or not. There are, of course, the obligatory notes about Land not being a good person and who should not be idolized, and I should note that I denounce his racism, political views, and his gun-ho endorsement of these traumatizing forces. It’s as if he sees the horror of techno-capitalism, but then endorses it, which is crazy to me. He's like someone who learns about Cthulhu and then joins the cult to worship him. Likewise, I’m skeptical about whether one should introduce Landian theory to American White Evangelicals, who, at least at this time, are quite prone to losing themselves in conspiracy theories.

Putting Land’s misanthropic character aside, the first object to all of this techno-capitalist fanged noumena mythos is simply that it is more like science fiction than actual analysis. One can get so caught up in a mythology of capitalism as a monster from Lovecraftian fiction that one ends up ignoring the real world around us.

I’m sympathetic to this objection. After all, Nick Land lost his mind worshiping what he thought was the coming techno-capitalist singularity as if he was in the cult of Cthulhu. Plenty of impressionable people on the internet follow in Land’s footsteps, and it seems that many of them are losing grip on reality, which can be seen in how they so willingly give themselves into every kind of conspiracy theory. It’s a type of self-induced schizophrenia (which, in a way, almost proves their theory).

Nonetheless, I don’t want to entirely dismiss this line of thinking only on the grounds that it is mythological and narrative-driven. I think humans need more myths, if by “myth” we mean something like our deepest meanings and understandings of the world set in narrative form. Developing a myth allows one to relate to complex phenomena, and myth is especially important when trauma is involved because trauma is, by its nature, difficult to talk about. (Neurologically speaking, trauma shuts off or slows down many of the language-making parts of our brain, which then makes the traumatic event difficult to verbalize).

However, even if we insist on more empirical analysis, it seems to me that the fanged noumena myth of techno-capitalism isn’t too far off from the truth. If we look back on the history of capitalism, from the death of feudalism, through colonialism, slave labor, industrialization, and to the present day, we see enormous amounts of death and destruction. Of course, death and destruction existed before Capitalism, and many important and life-saving innovations have come about through Capitalism, but it certainly has not been a peaceful walk into utopia.

Jason Hickel in his book “Less is Moore: How Degrowth will Save the World” provides a fantastic analysis of capitalism and its history of violence. Hickel’s work is quite empirical and I recommend it as a companion piece to this writing. As a general summary, Jason Hickel wrote that the origins of Capitalism can be traced back to the 16th century, after the violent suppression of peasant revolts during the death of feudalism and when European colonizers began to extract resources and labor from colonized territories. He argues that the accumulation of wealth and resources through colonialism and imperialism created the conditions for the rise of capitalism as we know it today. According to Hickel, the wealth generated through colonialism and imperialism allowed capitalist economies to grow, and this in turn led to the development of new technologies and the expansion of markets. To feed these expanded systems, Capitalism utilized a foundation of systemic racism and exploitation, particularly through the enslavement of millions of people of African descent, and the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Furthermore, as an example, the colonization of British imperial capitalism led to the death of around 100 million in the years 1880 to 1920, which is greater than all the famines that occurred under communist governments combined (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169?via%3Dihub). The legacy of imperialism and exploitation continues to shape the global economy today, and it is a major factor behind the persistent inequality, poverty, and devastating environmental conditions that exist in the world today.

What I like about Hickel’s work, in contrast to Land, is that Hickel sees Capitalism as related to systems of production and the manner in which resources are extracted and then commodified within an economic system that demands constant growth. A system that requires infinite growth using finite, fragile resources — including transforming colonized humans into resources — is bound to generate major problems, such as the current climate crisis. Hickel notes that phenomena such as markets and trades existed well before Capitalism and are not necessarily the problem. So the whole objection of “You don't like Capitalism and yet you bought something from a store” is beside the point. The point is not engaging in trade or purchasing items, but the systems and supply chains behind the construction of those items. Land, however, seems to ascribe the label of Capitalism to anything that is rationally organized and generates a surplus, which I think is too broad a definition.

Nonetheless, the narrative of Capitalism as spiritual warfare is useful because it can transform the empirical facts of the devastation wrought by techno-capitalist systems into a narrative, grounded in familiar scriptural motifs, which is easier for us average folks to relate to. As the scholar Rune Rasmussen often argues on his “Nordic Animism” channels and writing, the mass public desperately needs such meaning-making myths in order to properly orient themselves to these problems. When scientists, for instance, talk about the science behind climate change, they are doing great work and producing great science. However, the language of scientific studies is often quite technical and difficult to understand. One struggles to build a relationship with it. What is needed, Rasmussen argues, is the transformation of such technical material into a broader story — a myth if you'd like — to which average people can relate.

A Literal Myth?

One probably wonders: Is the spiritual warfare language literally true, or is it a type of fiction that is merely good at expressing other factual statements? I think either option is reasonable, and I’m sure some people, who don’t believe in something like actual demonic entities, would want to follow the latter position. Admittedly, I bounce back and forth between the two. Nonetheless, as I’m writing this article, I’m increasingly intrigued by the picture of demonic, satanic forces as a dark, shadowy, “upside down” transcendental that is wreaking havoc in our world through traumatizing systems of destruction (deforestation, climate change, slavery, colonialism, factory farms), which is like a privation of divine providence. If Satan exists, I think that’s a more compelling picture than what one hears of in conspiracy theories like QAnon or the motifs often depicted in Christian movies.

Finally, I think such a narrative of Capitalism as spiritual warfare presents interesting implementations for our spiritual lives. When evaluating different religious practices, we can now ask: Which kingdom does this practice benefit? Additionally, I think it holds insight for our religious services. By participating in liturgy, we are taught to live into a different narrative — i.e., the “true myth” of God’s future redemption which is breaking into our present.

Furthermore, the spiritual warfare of Capitalism mythos provides intriguing insights for the spiritual practice of prayer. One such example is the book “Prayer and the Modern Man” by Jacques Ellul.

Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher and sociologist who wrote extensively about the role of technology in society and the impact it has on individuals and communities. Ellul argued that modern society was characterized by the proliferation of technology and the growth of bureaucratic structures, which reduced individuals to mere cogs in a larger machine. He claimed this threatened to rob people of their ability to think for themselves and act freely, leaving them feeling disconnected from each other and God.

Ellul saw prayer as a form of resistance against the technological and bureaucratic structures that dominate modern society. Prayer is a way to connect with the divine, reclaim one's humanity, and resist the often dehumanizing forces of technology and bureaucracy. He saw it as a form of meditation that allows individuals to disconnect from the distractions of the world and focus on their relationship with God. Through prayer, individuals can find peace and solace, and they can gain a deeper understanding of their place in the world and their role in society.

In his view, prayer is also a form of social resistance because it allows individuals to challenge the dominant ideologies and values of society and reject the status quo. He believed that by praying, people can reclaim their autonomy and challenge the structures of power that threatened their freedom and dignity.

Now, I'm not saying we can just pray away Capitalism. We do need broader systemic change, and here, I'll point back to Hickel who offers many concrete suggestions for change. Nonetheless, if Capitalism is, in some sense, partially a spiritual battle, we will need to invoke spiritual weapons like prayer and worship in order to combat it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the spiritual warfare of Capitalism refers to a mythos of Capitalism as the fanged noumena of a dark transcendence that is breaking into our world and wanting to corrupt Creation through a traumatic anti-providence, which is a parody of God's eschatological providence of love and redemption that is breaking into our present from the future. By conceiving of Capitalism as spiritual warfare, we gain insight into how these techno-economic systems grow themselves through exploitation, brutality, and trauma, and we also see different insights for how spiritual practices can help play a role in resisting them.

#atmosphere #Bataille #capitalism #consumerism #architecture #atmospherictheology #AndyWarhol

For starters, let's consider a quick definition of the concept of “non-place”:

Non-places are spaces that are not specifically designed for or associated with any particular social or cultural activities. They are often characterized by their lack of history or unique character, and are used by people for transit or as places to perform simple, practical tasks. Examples of non-places include airports, highway rest stops, and chain stores. Non-places are often seen as being anonymous and lacking in local or cultural significance. They are often contrasted with places, which are spaces that are associated with specific social or cultural activities and have a sense of history and character.

In this sense, a non-place is quite similar to a liminal space, which is likewise associated with transition and waiting, such as a hotel room or a shopping mall during closing hours. A liminal space can be a non-place, but I don't think they are precisely identical because a liminal space can still have a coherent sense of identity. For example, I remember when I was a kid, I once had to make a trip to my elementary school on a weekend. Walking through those abandoned, lifeless halls was certainly liminal, but it was not devoid of identity. My elementary school had a firmly established identity, which was connected to a broader historical development and narrative. A non-place, on the other hand, specifically lacks such an identity and historical narrative within a specific culture. The ubiquitous presence of a non-space provides for it something like a quasi-omnipresence that dissolves any particularity or presence itself.

The example of an airport mentioned above reminds me of Andy Warhol, who once said that he loved going through the airport. Apparently, he would go through security and traverse the terminals multiple times without ever intending to board the plane. In his book, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol,” he said,

“Today my favorite kind of atmosphere is the airport atmosphere. (...) Airplanes and airports have my favorite kind of food service, my favorite kind of bathrooms, my favorite peppermint Life Savers, my favorite kinds of entertainment, my favorite loudspeaker address systems, my favorite conveyor belts, my favorite graphics and colors, the best security checks, the best views, the best perfume shops, the best employees, and the best optimism. I love the way you don't have to think about where you're going, someone else is doing that (...).”

Ironically, this is pre-9/11 airport travel, and going to an airport has only gotten more stressful with so many added security measures. Nonetheless, it's interesting that Warhol notes how one can, at least in his time, traverse an airport without thinking, as if one is a cog in the machine.

The machinic nature of going through the non-space of an airport fits well with the themes in much of Warhol's art — namely, the de-subjectifying power of commercialism and capitalism. As Warhol famously said, “Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. Wouldn't you?” Additionally, it is said that Warhol would create his art in a state of consumerist “zero-consciousness” where he would achieve a quasi-meditative state by simultaneously running the television and radio while thumbing through a magazine. When creating his art, Warhol would allow his consciousness to be thoroughly saturated by the mass consumer pop-culture of late capitalism, and thus you have Pop art. It seems to me that such zero-consciousness or de-subjectivity is the pure phenomenological experience of non-places.

Now, if I asked people to pick the ideal form of music to fill the atmospheres of non-places, they would perhaps suggest “smooth jazz,” elevator music, or corporate muzak. Muzak is a brand of background music that is played in public places, such as stores, offices, and hotels. It is typically designed to be unobtrusive and to create a pleasant or relaxing atmosphere for people who are working or shopping. In a sense, it is created to be “heard” but not listened to, existing purely for the sake of supporting the atmosphere of a non-place.

Because muzak is typically meant to point away from itself, it is a form of art that rejects itself as art. This is why I think vaporwave — and especially its subgenre “mallsoft” — is so interesting as an art movement. Mallsoft severs muzak from its original architectural, non-place location, and forces the listener to engage with music itself. In a sense, mallsoft tries to capture the atmosphere-in-itself of non-places.

For a sample of this type of music, here is my favorite mallsoft album: https://disconscious.bandcamp.com/album/hologram-plaza

Non-place and Religious Experience

Under the proper atmospheric conditions, when a non-space is combined with muzak, the result can be a type of regulated de-subjectivity, prompting the individual into a Warholian machinic behavior. In many cases, such as chain stores, the desired behavior is consumerism.

I don't mean to be too deterministic in my assessment. Atmospheres are composed of many agents, and people relate to spaces in different ways that are not a priori controllable when establishing an atmosphere. However, I think many of us could relate to the experience of getting “lost” in a dreamlike state while out shopping, moving on autopilot the way we sometimes unconsciously drive cars. Through this phenomenon, I think we can see that non-places operate as a type of sacred space for capitalism.

The religious nature of non-places might perhaps be linked to the feeling of continuity with the atmosphere brought about through (however brief) a disruption in the distinction between self and the external world.

The disruption of the distinction between self and the external world was a topic that fascinated French philosopher Georges Bataille. He placed this phenomenon within a dialectic between “discontinuity” (think “individuation) and “continuity.” Discontinuity is defined by Bataille as that which makes the individual distinct from the rest of the world—i.e., not in continuity with other beings, the ability to say, I am not identical to other things, but I am a unique being. In Bataille’s words, 

“This gulf (of discontinuity) exists, for instance, between you, listening to me, and me, speaking to you. We are attempting to communicate, but no communication between us can abolish our fundamental difference. If you die, it is not my death. You and I are discontinuous beings” (emphasis original). 

By “continuity,” Bataille simply means the parts of the external world that are devoid of sentience or subjectivity, whereas discontinuity arises from subjectivity. For Bataille, the chief example of continuity is death, in which the individuation of the subject passes, and the physical body is transformed into a corpse—a continuity with the rest of existence, subjectless and subsumed without resistance into the external order of things. The continuity-discontinuity dialectic is what makes atmospheres (and non-places) so interesting: in some cases, an atmosphere can inextricably link self and non-self. In most cases, the link is not so extreme, but it is still enough to cause a sense of wonder because it calls one’s discontinuity into question.

Bataille linked discontinuity with eroticism and continuity with death. As he said, “The transition from the normal state to that of erotic desire presupposes a partial dissolution of the person as he exists in the realm of discontinuity.” One becomes aware of one’s own individuation from the world and subsequently longs for a deeper connection beyond oneself—chiefly exemplified by the eros of romantic encounter with a beloved. Death, on the other hand, brings the loss of self to the order of the external world. To push the erotic to its extreme can even induce a type of ‘death,’ such as the loss of oneself in the most passionate of romantic encounters. In Bataille’s famous work Erotism: Death and Sensuality, he provides numerous examples in which death and eros, though distinct, are frequently intermingled, often resulting in states of ecstasy or fervor. The implication for atmospheric studies is as follows: By linking subjectivity and objectivity, atmosphere can be an avenue for blending discontinuity (eros) and continuity (loss of self) together into an ecstatic or surreal experience that is both spatial and emotional. Atmospheres can influence experiences of transcendence through the expansion of bodily space, resulting in a deeper connection to the surrounding world.

However, being subsumed (in whatever degree) into a space brings about danger: If the self is being, in some sense, disrupted and reconstituted, then into what new sense of identity is one emerging? In the case of non-places, it seems that one's identity is being reconstituted into that of a consumer. In a less-radical interpretation, we could say that this reconstitution might be trivial at best or only slightly harmful in that too much consumerism perhaps distracts us from more important matters and can lead to too much waste. In a more radical interpretation, non-places can be seen as “sacred” spaces in which the individual experiences a (brief) apotheosis into the capitalist machine god that is seeking world-domination and devotion, a type of spiritual warfare attempting to usurp the rightful rule of God. But again, that's a pretty extreme reading. At the very least, I think we can see that capitalism bears with it a certain type of truncated and immanent religious modality.

Between Meritocracy and Marx: An Analysis of “Christmas Evil”

#movie #filmanalysis #philosophy #capitalism #christmas #advent #JacquesEllul #MartinLutherKing

If I had to pick a Christmas movie to list as my favorite right now, I think I would say the 1980 film, “Christmas Evil.” Because of the title and a few of the tropes related to slasher films of that era, many are quick to dismiss this film as another cash grab trying to imitate the success of John Carpenter's “Halloween.” Though I'm fine with this film sitting within the horror genre, and I'm not trying to minimize the artistic possibility of slashers, I think this film encompasses much more than people often give it credit for when they keep the discourse at the level of “cheesy Christmas horror film.” In fact, and this is perhaps my boldest claim, I think this movie is almost more related to a Shakespearean tragedy than a conventional slasher.

“Christmas Evil” follows the plot of an alienated, unstable, middle-aged man, whose delusions and identification with Santa Claus overtake him, ultimately leading him on a quest of mayhem, violence, tragedy, and surprising amounts of sincere love, kindness, and the true spirit of Christmas. Imagine Hamlet meets Taxi Driver meets Frankenstein, and you have “Christmas Evil.” This film was not released to critical or audience acclaim back in the 80s, though now it has received a bit of a re-appreciation, taking on something of a cult status amongst horror enthusiasts on the Internet. Some might find this movie campy or silly, but I personally think it is a well-made film with competent acting and unabashed sincerity, showing our main character as both hero and villain. In what follows, I will sketch out my interpretation of the film as depicting the tragedy of alienation and the need to form a collective movement beyond the meritocracy of capitalism.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Here is a more in-depth summary of the main plot points.

Harry Stadling lives on his own and works in an assembly-line toy factory for a large company. His relationship with his family is strained, and it seems as if he has no friends — often being the object of teasing by his colleagues in the factory.

Quite early on, we learn that Harry believes that he himself is actually a type of Santa Claus figure — even going so far as to spy on the neighbor's kids and keep his own “naughty and nice” list. In the first scene of the film, we learn that, as a young boy, Harry's father dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve to surprise Harry and his younger brother, Philip. Philip understood that the man in the Santa costume was really their father, but Harry wholeheartedly believed it was the real Santa. To prove that it was the real Santa, Harry went back downstairs, whereupon he found Santa (his father) kissing and fondling his mother. Harry experienced this moment as the ultimate betrayal and came to believe that Santa Claus is of ill repute. For Harry, this betrayal is experienced as a “death of God” moment. To cope with this loss of his divine hero, Harry takes up the mantle of Santa for himself — to be the figure of good the “real” Santa could never be.

In the present, Harry is busy creating his own Santa suit and fake beard, becoming overjoyed that he has finally completed the ensemble and found his true self. As part of his new Santa identity, he discovers tremendous joy in making his own toys by hand rather than the cheap plastic ones at the factory.

For the rest of the film, we witness instances of great joy and horrendous tragedy. Harry finds out that one of the leaders of the toy company is making empty promises about donating toys to a children's hospital, using these promises of charity as a PR stunt to make more money without concern for the children. Enraged by this duplicity, Harry goes to the hospital himself, dressed as Santa Claus, and delivers the presents he made by hand (as well as some he stole from the factory). As an aside, I think this is a sincerely beautiful moment, and I’ll admit I actually teared up during this scene.

Soon after visiting the hospital, Harry finds the owner of the company at a Christmas Eve church service. Harry plans on killing the owner in revenge but ends up killing three other people in the crowd who harassed him. Harry then flees the scene and escapes to a Christmas party where he spreads Christmas cheer and brings joy to those around him. Again, a beautiful moment.

However, the police are out looking for him, and the next day while Santa Harry is walking through a part of town highly decorated with Christmas lights, families see him and suspect him to be the killer that the police are looking for. However, the children in the families sincerely believe he is the real Santa. One of the fathers tries to attack Harry, but Harry manages to escape.

The police and town catch up with Harry, and he is chased through the streets like Frankenstein's monster. Harry tries to escape in his van, and he accidentally drives off a bridge. But instead of falling to his death, Harry's van flies in the air, and he glides into the night sky like Santa Claus. We are then left to wonder if this is merely Harry's final delusion or if he really was Santa Claus all along.

I left out a few elements from the summary, but that should be more than enough for us to talk about the themes and philosophy at work in the film.

Santa Claus is a deeply embedded archetype within American society. On the one hand, Santa reveals the ideological meritocracy of society — that the good should be rewarded and the bad should be punished without exception. But on the other hand, the figure of Santa stills holds an excess of quasi-liberatory principles outside of that ideology, which is perhaps grounded within the archetype’s origins in the St. Nicholas mythology. Let's break this down more.

Within the Santa mythos, those who are deemed good are rewarded with commodities. Those who are bad are punished with coal. However, the criteria of moral evaluation are left vague. What exactly is it that determines who is good and who is bad? What virtues should the children possess? Should they be following the categorical imperative or maximizing utilitarian good? Goodness and badness are simply assumed standards that perhaps are merely regurgitations of wider capitalist values like working hard, being obedient, submitting to authority, and not complaining. Furthermore, the reward and punishment system neglects material circumstances that might influence a child’s behavior. Growing up in abusive homes will often lead children to certain behaviors deemed bad. But to dismiss the child as merely a bad kid without working to end the abuse and bring healing to the trauma is grossly unfair and disingenuous. It seems that Santa’s evaluations are lacking in this essential nuance.

However, at the same time, there is something positive about the Santa archetype. Santa represents gift-giving instead of industrialized capitalist exchange. This is especially the case when the Santa lore is engaged with the more original and less modernized depictions of Santa in his toyshop making toys by hand rather than in a Fordist factory. There is a gratuity and excess within Santa in that, in its purest form, he wants to bring joy to children by giving them gifts that need no financial reciprocity. Perhaps this is the leftover sense of Christian charitable love from the original St. Nicholas mythos, in which Nicholas gave gifts to children in need. In the Christian understanding, gift-giving is a form of relation that mirrors the grace of God, who gives salvation freely out of God’s abundant love. Indeed, all of Creation is considered to be a gracious gift from God. Of course, charity in-itself is not the death blow to capitalism, but it perhaps shows a type of relation that could help us imagine a post-capitalist mode of relating to one another and to society as a whole.

Additionally, there is something admittedly appealing (at least to me) about Santa's insistence on goodness. The philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that freedom emerges from our knowledge of conformity to the categorical imperative — a universal moral law. In other words, we are free because we are moral agents. Freedom is linked to morality. There are certainly problems and objects to Kant's theory, but if one applies this to the Santa mythos, then there could emerge a possibility of helping children gain a deeper appreciation for their own agency. And helping children become empowered by understanding their own agency — especially that this agency can be used for good — seems to me like a necessary and good aspect of raising children.

But one of the main problems with Kant's theory, as well as the Santa mythos, is that Kant is too individualistic. In order to experience the true flourishing and freedom of a just society, we need each other's help. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

Santa’s failure is not exactly a call to virtuous living (albeit an undefined call), but a call to virtuous living without taking into account humanity’s interdependence upon one another and how moral living cannot truly flourish without communities addressing issues of material, emotional, or spiritual scarcity.

Santa is a naive Kantian, and so is our main character, Harry. But instead of the universal law of the categorical imperative, we have the universality of capitalism. This film hits hard on the alienating effects of capitalism. Toward the beginning of the film, Harry expresses the tragedy of how industrialization and Fordism have separated the laborer from the results of production, resulting in flimsy objects and planned obsolescence. As Harry says, “Nobody here is interested in good toys. ... You've never felt the thrill of making a good toy. And how could you in this (factory)? ... Don't you understand how useful rigidly constructed toys are? How inspirational? Their value goes way beyond making money.”

Capitalism within the film brings about an alienation within labor and a devaluing of craftsmanship, but the narrative also shows the devasting impact of alienation on mental health. There is an unfortunate trope in films (especially the horror genre) where neuro-divergent people and those with mental disabilities are portrayed as monsters or threats. One might initially assume that “Christmas Evil” falls prey to this same trope, but I think the film actually is critical of how capitalist societies treat neuro-divergent people. As we see in the scene at the hospital, it’s entirely possible for Harry to flourish in society. In a better society, Harry would have a community that supports him, helps him, and encourages his gifts, heart, and craftmanship. I’ve seen it happen before in a church ministry that fed the homeless. A neuro-divergent man was one of their top workers in the charity, and his unique gifting was able to flourish and be celebrated. Neuro-divergent people offer a unique gift that could be received by society, but, as we see in this film, more often than not, neuro-divergent people suffer the most from alienation.

Furthermore, “Christmas Evil” shows how the marginalized and needy are neglected by society, and how easily charity can be co-opted for capitalism’s own self-interest. The children in the hospital are neglected on Christmas, and the toy company exploits this reality with pseudo-charity aimed at increasing their own profits. In the eyes of the factory owners (the purest archetype of the bourgeoisie), the children in the hospital are nothing more than a PR stunt to improve the company’s repertoire with consumers. I don't think charity isn’t wrong in-itself. In fact, as I said before, charity radicalized toward a gift-giving relation to society might be a virtue that could help move communities toward post-capitalism. But often, charity is reduced to merely treating symptoms without engaging with the structural causes of those symptoms.

When the alienation of capitalism and the death of God within society (as I mentioned earlier regarding the incident with Father-Santa) are combined, it leads to tragedy. Without a social support system or a wider vision of the Kingdom of God, Harry becomes a law unto himself. In Kantian philosophy, this ought to be a point of freedom: the individual gains autonomy by following the categorical imperative which is given to oneself through the faculties of practical reason innate within the human mind (or something like that). But instead of freedom, Harry becomes his own law is a form of vigilantism that merely radicalizes the meritocracy of his society. The good are rewarded and the naughty are punished. Harry takes that meritocracy and then flips it back onto the people who are most responsible for maintaining that ideological system (as well as some other bullies). If you want only the good people to live and the bad people to be resigned to death, then the exploitive greedy bourgeoise should be punished. However, the film also shows the perils of trying to maintain this revolution using the ideological forms of meritocracy — or, as Jacques Ellul often pointed out, when one’s means are not in accordance with one’s ends. One needs a revolution that no longer abides by the capitalist bourgeois ideology.

Meritocracy is empowered by structural and systemic violence against those deemed “naughty” or not fitting the cultural ideal. Thus, violence can be easily incorporated back into the ideological system. As Martin Luther King said, “You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.” The pleasure we get when Harry is about to kill that greedy capitalist who exploited children in the hospital shows just how internalized this absolutist and merciless meritocracy has conditioned our consciousness. When the other petty hecklers are killed instead of the factory owner, and their friend is left screaming in pure traumatic horror, we are forced to recognize the misguided ways of this form of consciousness.

All of this is why I think this film is better understood as a Shakespearean tragedy rather than purely a horror film. At the heart of “Christmas Evil” is a tortured soul who could’ve been a force for good. But instead, he is brought down by the tragedy surrounding him. And we are left to wonder what it would take to rearrange our society so that those facing similar plights to Harry might not fall into such tragedy but rather find communities of redemption.

#postmodernism #aesthetics #capitalism #atmosphere #NickLand #Kant #Lovecraft #liminal #space

The Backrooms is a popular short story that went viral on the Internet with endless adaptations, memes, games, and short films. I think it's an ingenious bit of short horror fiction that sounds like something from the Twilight Zone. The story postulates that, at certain points in our world, one can make a wrong step and accidentally “no clip” out of reality. This language of no clip or clipping out is borrowed from video games in which there are certain points within a map where the game developers forgot to add barriers. If the player reaches those points, he or she “no clips” out of the map and into undeveloped digital landscapes (or perhaps falls into an infinite void).

The original post that created the basic lore is as follows: “If you're not careful and noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it (...) has heard you.”

Creepy, right? Most people think so, which is one reason why it went viral online. The basic structure allows for a lot of creative reimagining, and the liminal aesthetics allows for plenty of interesting artwork. But I also think the story's popularity rests in its ability to capture something about our postmodern condition. I'm not the first to point this out. In fact, there's a great video essay by Clark Eleison that talks about how the Backrooms captures our fear of loneliness and isolation (especially when considering how the story took off during the pandemic).

[Link] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fonsUaFURPI)

But I also think the story presents a fascinating illustration of the postmodern and capitalist material environments, landscapes, atmospheres, and architectures that we now inhabit. It shows the horrifying artificiality of these material environments, revealing how our spaces are constructed for the flourishing of capitalism itself rather than God's Creation.

The Backrooms represent a terrifying “outsideness.” What if, behind the borders of your house, workplace, and city, lies an infinite expanse of burning fluorescent lights, musky carpet, and ugly office hallways? It's like being trapped in the waiting room for a doctor's office from hell.

When I think about this outsideness, I'm reminded first of Immanuel Kant and his distinction between how we perceive the world and what lies beyond that perception. According to Kant, when we perceive the world, we do so according to internal categories and schematisms of the psyche, which arrange the raw sense data of experience into categories of understanding. When I look at a desk, I do not see the individual particles and atoms, but instead, I experience the desk according to how my brain is wired to recreate the input of visual stimuli. An entirely different creature, like a bat, might have an entirely different mental representation of the desk. Kant called this sort of stuff “phenomenal” experiences.

But what about the stuff that lies beyond, behind, or “outside” of the phenomenal? This stuff would be the thing-in-itself, and Kant called this the noumenal or noumenous. Our brains, rationality, and cognitive capacities are wired for decyphering phenomenal categories, but we cannot speak with any certainty about the noumenal realm other than to say it's out there. I can talk about, for example, my desk — its design, colors, and object parts — but I cannot talk about what the desk is like, in-itself, outside of my experience—according to Kant; of course, this is philosophy, so that has been subject to much debate. And even if we talk about the atomic structure of the desk, that is still talking about how the atoms appear to us, not necessarily the atoms in themselves.

In recent times, the professionally insane philosopher Nick Land has coined the term “fanged noumena.” Working under the influence of Kant, Deleuze, and Guatarri (and methamphetamines), Land used “fanged noumena” to refer to that “outsideness” which breaks into our world and rearranges things—sometimes in catastrophic ways.

Fanged, here, is to be taken in a Marxist-Lovecraftian sense. For Marx, capitalism is vampiric: “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” In the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, cosmic, extra-dimensional monsters exist in a manner that is beyond the comprehension of humans, leading to madness, destruction, or both. Land combines these notions and thus theorizes capitalism as a type of Lovecraftian monster rearranging our world in order to be devoured; it is fanged noumena.

In my previous post, I talked about something similar to this fanged noumena in the work of Deleuze and Guatarri in their conception of time. Here is what I said:

To give an over-generalized summary: in a more classic theological understanding, there is a distinction between Eternity (the realm of God) and time (the temporality of creation). Eternity is transcendent to time. However, for Deleuze and Guatarri, there is no transcendent Eternity. Instead, they speak of an “Aeon,” which is a concept inspired by Kantian philosophy. In Kant's philosophy, there is a distinction between how we experience the world (phenomenal) and how the world is in-itself (the noumenal). Deleuze and Guatarri place Aeonic time into a type of material, noumenal reality that is on the same ontological status as our experience of time, “but it does not manifest itself in time. Though it is itself composed of singular events – which can be precisely dated and named – these events compose a virtual plane of intensity that positively avoids climactic actualization. Deleuze and Guattari call these Aeonic occurrences plateaus and show how they constitute an exteriority that haunts the successive order of extensive temporality” (Anna Greenspan, “Capitalism's Transcendental Time Machine,” page 17).

Notice how this Aeonic time is like a ghost (or even a Lovecraftian monster) sitting just outside our periphery, occasionally breaking into our world and leaving haunting traces of itself. The Backrooms seem to have a similar function. It is a realm of pure liminal space that is outside of our periphery or perception, and yet something about this reality conditions our world — or at least what the Backrooms represent conditions us.

The Backrooms are the pure form of a capitalist atmosphere that is devoid of subjectivity, existing neither from humans nor for humans. Indeed, it doesn't really exist for anything so far as we can tell. It is a material environment devoid of telos. It is artificial and yet not generated solely by human effort. This aspect of an artificial material environment without a telos or sole human origin is similar to Nick Land's famous description of capitalism in his famous essay “Meltdown”:

“The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.”

The Backrooms spatially represent this noumenal or transcendental quality of capitalism as an alien force conditioning our world and vampirically sucking Creation's lifeforce to empower itself— a type of spiritual warfare if you will. And we see quite well in the Backrooms meme how this noumenal capitalism manifests itself in space: through the desubjectivizing atmospheres of postmodernity, such as office spaces, shopping malls, Time Square, and suburban sprawl. In a sense, all of reality is now suburban sprawl, and the Backrooms are the horrific psychogeography of that labyrinth that pushes us toward alienating individualism rather than communal flourishing.

Of course, much of what I've written in this post is imaginative speculation and intellectual experimentation. I'm not exactly convinced that this is the best way to understand the ontology of capitalism. But at the very least, I think the Lovecraftian lens of Land is an intriguing perspective because it would potentially allow for Christians to view capitalism as a “principality and power” (Ephesians 6:12) and thus under the category of spiritual warfare.