Subject grouping in the Essays & Articles archive.
Reporting from Hereticon, an invitation-only gathering of technology figures and the dark-enlightenment thinkers who circulate among them, where an optimistic account of the future is premised on leaving democracy behind.
Written for Purple’s Revolutions issue. Pinchbeck describes losing and regaining his conviction that collapse is avoidable, and argues that classical revolution is no longer the available form. Instead he proposes redirecting displaced labour toward regenerative work — wetland restoration, ocean aquaculture, retrofitting — funded by a basic income, alongside a shift from materialism to idealism. Draws on Buckminster Fuller and Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
Starting from the British political scandal over decades of child sexual abuse and its cover-up, this piece argues that profit-driven systems select for sociopaths and that elite universities train what Herbert Marcuse called irrational rationality. Pinchbeck describes an occult control system, links Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati to Rudolf Steiner’s Ahriman, and notes that Egypt and Central America gave Set and Tezcatlipoca a ritual place.
Written in support of the Worldwide Wave of Action. Citing IPCC projections, a 30 percent rise in ocean acidity, and James Lovelock’s forecast of a human population reduced to a few hundred thousand, Pinchbeck argues that no adequate response is possible under neoliberal capitalism, and that ownership must give way to stewardship using new social technologies.
Built around quotations from Bataille’s On Nietzsche, Antonio Negri’s Time for Revolution, and Georg Kuhlewind’s Becoming Aware of the Logos, the piece argues that capitalism rests on domination and cannot be reformed, only superseded. Pinchbeck holds that a cooperative society must integrate humanity’s destructive tendencies as ancient Egypt and the Maya did through paired deities like Set and Tezcatlipoca.
For Dazed & Confused, an interview with former CIA and Marine Corps intelligence officer Robert Steele about The Open Source Everything Manifesto, published by Evolver Editions in 2012. Steele argues that intelligence drawn from eight open information families outperforms secret agencies, citing General Tony Zinni’s claim that the $80 billion US secret community supplied four percent of his needs, and invokes Buckminster Fuller’s ephemeralism.
Pinchbeck interviews David Sauvage, co-founder of Occupy.com, for Dazed & Confused. Sauvage argues that Occupy is only a temporary name for a global awakening that began with a Tunisian self-immolation, and that alternative media have a moral obligation to abandon superficiality. He says leading Exxon Mobil or Bank of America should carry public shame.