The Age of The Dark Enlightenment is upon us
Who needs votes when u have dictators? Who needs psychiatry when u have vitamins? Who needs science when u have your truth? Who needs a future when u have mini-wines?
It’s been over two weeks since I slid into your inbox and sprayed disgruntlement and chaos your way like Regan’s demon-fuelled projectile vomit pea-soupper in The Exorcist. Sorry about that. I’ve been swept up by a whirlwind that has finally dumped me at a very kind friend’s converted pigsty on Wilts/Somerset (Zummerzet) borders, which is muddy.
Tonight apparently it’s Imbolc. The beginning of spring in the old Irish times before telly and Jesus, and a festival of the home and hearth. It’s a time to write poetry, make resolutions and light fires. If I light a fire where I sit right now there will be a hullaballoo, and a 999 call. I’ll just write this Substack instead. Happy Imbolc to those who celebrate.
No demons here, not as far as I know. In the Wiltshire pub I am writing this particular paragraph in (other paragraphs will have been written in different pubs in different counties) there’s a local bellowing at the barman, “Why should I pay tax for schools when I don’t ave no kids,” and “oid move to America tomorrow if I could as long as I could get my cider.” Jesus wept. No concept of why we need well-educated children for the collective good of our society, so that they can invent the procedure to fix him up again when he has the first of one of his cider fuelled falls. But America is gonna love him. He’s got the sort of mentality the new regime will embrace. What’s in it for me!
After seven days here I am starting to unravel the meaning and consequences of living in the domestic siege. Here, it’s quiet, save the dog carnage, which is testing. We’ve already had non-consensual playdates with geese, hens and a swan, and we are a regular feature on the village WhatsApp. A well-spoken battleaxe popped by to give me canine handling advice and gleeful notice of the widespread disgruntlement of the villagers.
Last night I got back late and the automatic gates to the farm where I am living did not open and I immediately assumed I’d been cast out of this idyllic Mediaeval village. Such is my weary, be-victimed and put upon mental state, I thought, Righty ho, I’d better trudge up the drive and pack. Instead of, Oh, there must be a code after midnight my nice landlady hadn’t told me about.
All this and I’m trying to do my tax. No matter how many times I cry, "The Power of Christ compels you!" and throw holy water over the laptop I cannot get the thing finished.
When the day ends I require urgent mood correction and I am afraid it is a dose of jammy Shiraz poured from a screw top mini-bottle in a Sky Sports pub where they don’t have any demand for wine apparently.
I’m sipping it, diluted with ice, as I type. Man City are playing. Apparently women love football these days but the only other woman here is a toothless crone in velour leggings sat by the Ladies. A vision of a future me, perhaps, if I don’t stay off the mini-wines. But let’s save reflections on the shit pubs of Frome (and you thought it was all Hauser + Wirth and Phoebe Philo’s house] and its surrounding villages’ for another day.
It’s been a busy time for three of the subjects that lately preoccupy me much. Wellness zealotry (now sort of US health policy), recovering from my toxic break up, and money. Money money money. MONEY. In fact, if I had money, recovering from my toxic break up would be significantly easier.
All the news that’s fit to spew.
The world has turned many times since we last met
Pinch punch first of the month, though I started writing this two weeks ago before I went to the annual meeting of global school prefects and their hangers on that is Davos. Forgive any badly sewn seams in this Frankenstein post, and the use of erratic tenses (if I’d done new year’s resolutions I’d have had “learn proper grammar” on it).
In Davos, I barely slept, something that is not, of itself, a disaster. Sometimes jobs are time consuming. Partly though, it was because I was living in the same apartment as the two female executives I was there to write about because accommodation was as tight and expensive as a [insert doubtful sex simile here]. These two women, Kaye and Eva of Unlocking Eve are trying to convince the world that the best leaders, be they a staff nurse or a POTUS, are those able to integrate both female and male qualities into their being. They didn’t let on how fruitless this must have felt in the week that Trump was crowned because they are incredibly positive and successful people. [Note to Eeyore self: the two things may be linked.]
Trump is an example of not integrated. His greatest support base comes from white, working class, evangelical (or born again) men and from those who prefer a conservative article of faith over any woman having autonomy over her body. Overt toxic masculinity is a political weapon that he has proved works. Bob Woodward’s book, Fear, Trump in the White House, describes Mr Trump advising a male friend swept up in #metoo style accusations, “You've got to be strong. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to push back hard. You've got to deny anything that's said about you. Never admit.”
This is not a Trumpstack, though. In fact, I’m trying to see a potential positive to it all. People at Davos I spoke to, the Glastonbury of moneymen and women, often seemed quite keen on Trump, even if some were holding their noses with one hand while doing a thumbs up with another. Money, see. I know plenty of people who would have voted for them if they could. Bankers mostly.
If it protects your dough it’s very hard to vote for the other guy. Indeed, why vote at all? A much repeated quote of this years leadership gangbang is Alain Berset, the former Swiss president’s, “We are witnessing a backsliding in democracy everywhere in the world, even in the most advanced democracy. It is a movement into the bad — in the wrong direction.”
Berset is head of the Council of Europe, who oversee the EU’s court of human rights. But, honestly, what tf does he know? Old liberty-loving pinko gammon. Better to ask a 13 year old. A survey by Channel 4 published this week found over half Gen Z’s think the UK would be a better place for a strong unelected leader. There was a furore about this. But the age range 13-27 is not a time, William Hague-a-likeys aside, of sophisticated political minds. Would you ask Beavis and Butthead for their thoughts on universal suffrage?
What’s a far bigger deal than a 13 year old thinking dictatorships are cool is that 40% of grown ups aged 45-65 years old believed the same (see below) and some of these grown ups are very powerful (see even far belower). Maybe we are witnessing the dying of the enlightenment right before our eyes? Is the Age of Unenlightenment upon us? No, it is not the Un-enlightenment. It is the Dark Enlightenment, the neo-reactionary movement (NRx) that, “proposes a mix of the ancien régime with the ideology of Silicon Valley. The goal is to reach a pragmatic — yet elitist — solution that restores order and stability in turbulent times.”
You are going to hear a lot more about NRx. I will back with more words on this, but I have a lot of reading to do…
Lately times I’ve been feeling quite a full blown fully integrated big mess as I try to pivot back to single existence without blowing up my entire life. External events haven’t been helping. I work most days, and clearly not effectively as I have yet to find the 300K my ex wants for me to buy him out of the flat we both own.
I work on, getting more and more tired and less and less effective. I’ve been wondering how can we build resilience and recover from periods of high stress if we can’t afford a holiday? If that week or two in a spa, or at rehab, or just cleaning out the airing cupboard at home, is out of financial reach.
How do we rebuild a sense of calm, safety and security while trapped in Capitalism’s hamster wheel of costs, bills, improvements and endless needs to upgrade, and now, passwords, so many fucking passwords? How many weeks of my life will be spent clicking “forgotten password”? What is the secret to weathering the endless assaults on peace of mind: microplastic panic, bills, climate change, direct debits, wrinkles, death, transaction declined, taxes, divorce, and, of course, if you can’t give me £300,000 now then it’s hasta la vista baby.
Good to find an answer to that one, but let’s save it for another day - soon, tomorrow even, I owe you a few Substacks. I’ve been writing a Iist since I got to Somerset, a post it note so far, about how to sort my life. I’ll get back to you when it extends to a side of A4.
Reimagining my circumstances has helped me remove myself from the picture and look objectively at it, instead of cowering and going all sweary Eeyore, I’M FUCKING DOOMED. I’m like a small country called She being bullied by a big rich one called He that keeps encroaching on what little resources I have (my mind, my physical wellbeing, my energy, any mad notion that I might be an alright or capable person or entitled to respect and common courtesy) because He controls She with debt or has She dependent on them for some precious resource like water or gas. Economic dominance. It’s exhausting. Disempowering. I am spoken to like a Filipino maid, which has greatly enhanced my empathy for my richer friends’ household staff.
He is sitting threateningly at my borders waving any number of casus belli drawn from shared history. He knows survival for She requires being nice to He. He is big, important and noisy. And rude. He can stomp all over She, easily. And she says, thank you very much. But why bother when the psy-ops is so successful. She is a basket case economy and He has had enough of it! She supports narcoterrorism. She disobeys international law. She is unstable and weak. She never cut it on the world stage. What a “Loser” as Trump might describe this little nation.
She’s only resource is a fairly humble crop of ideas and creativity. What happens if the harvest fails. What happens if He’s chemical fertilisers poison the soil? What happens if She can’t extend the geopolitical metaphor satisfactorily and runs out of steam (Felt cute might delet daft mini-wine fuelled metaphors later.) What happens if She finds another nation’s frilly knickers in her underwear drawer.
This babyish geopolitical imagining of how economic inferiors in many types of relationship get shat on is actually how things kinda work. I think, looking at the way I wrote this, the power is in the perception of threat, rather than the actuality of it. I don’t have to be poor old Nepal, or Tibet, or Moldova. I could be Switzerland.
Can you see where I am dragging the conversation back to here. Geopolitics. Money. Switzerland. Yes, it’s a laborious segue back to the fact that I went to Davos, I was Molly Sugden’s bridesmaid too.
Yes, me, at actual Davos, the event. Not I went to Oxford (on a coach trip once). I tried to get a press pass once in the past but a soggy biscuit like me in the lifestyle section would never get accreditation. I was chatting to a producer on a radio station about it briefly, and they went, “Sorry, say that again, you went to Davos!?!”
I know. I know. I probably got in because of the high level of reporting on this Substack. A Pulitzer is surely in the offing? Anyway, Davos is meant to be where leaders get together and sing We are the World every year, but from what I can see, it’s the Glastonbury of Money where cold hard capitalism loosens its tie and tries to access a tender loving side. Where, with big ideas and good-intentions, the owners of the means of production try to solve all the world’s problems over chaste glasses of water and Robert Parker 100 point Bordeaux.
Those that profit most from capitalism insist that by letting the markets run riot in the pursuit of more, more, more everyone benefits. This might be true-ish. But as a system, capitalism has no heart. It’s not Mummy. It’s not got kindness to others built into it. Humans have tried to reimagine it in kinder, more conscious forms. Tony Blair being the pin up of this. This is what Davos is meant to be about. But aside from the really nice women at Unlocking Eve, and their type of people, everyone else just talked about crypto and AI all the time.
The new generation of hyper-capitalists are right-wing and heartless and Individualists straight out of Ayn Rand. Elon Musk (Starlink, Tesla, X etc) called Davos “boring”, and Peter Thiel (Paypal, Palentier etc) describes Davos as a “mob” of do gooders and sheep. Thiel like a 13 year old, doesn’t believe freedom and democracy are compatible, that’s a near direct quote. He thinks that the rise of the right and all this America First stuff is the antidote to “brain-dead, one-world state” which is a big poke at Davos style Band Aid problem solving. In the same speech Thiel describes the “dogma” of Science. And of the liberal values being fascist.
Could be worth talking to your 13 year old.
The world is really changing. It’s the stuff of nightmares, and I’m a white middle class woman. Those in charge now probably wouldn’t fuck me or give me a job, but they aren’t coming for me.
The new reality of techno-imperialism seems to have no values other than there are no values programmed in to it. So they are a great fit for Donald Trump whose mantra is that we let the winners win and the rich get rich, and perhaps everyone gets raised up with them (perhaps not).
I knew a lot of so-called normal people had voted for Trump, a lot of my friends with money would vote for him. They loathe the new UK government, all the tax stuff. It’s not going very well, is it?
Earlier this week there was a fundraiser for Reform at a private club called Oswald’s owned by Robin Birley in Mayfair, one million quid was raised. I’m surprised Elon Musk didn’t dial in, like he did for a rally of the neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany.
A few more good night’s sleep, a few more moments to breathe, and soon I can start drilling for oil and digging for diamonds on my National Parks and all over my green spaces, I can stop recycling my rubbish and focus entirely on reassembling the nation of She as a more high functioning cellular economy with big sexy tits and hair extensions. I’m going to be very welcoming of crypto I might even make my own and call it ADHDcoin. You can build data centres all over my landscape. Cryptocurrency thrives on chaos. Hmmn. *Chin stroky emoji* Perhaps this new world order could suit my unique skillset.
While the Tony Blair aligned goody goodies fly in to heal the world and raise up the poor, from what I could see elsewhere Davos was like a massive trade fair with everyone there looking to close a deal. Loads of them were into crypto and with Trump in the WH, crypto’s gonna be HOT instead of debanked and maligned.
At the WEF wine tasting about 20 Robert Parker 100 point Bordeauxs and the hottest ticket of the week, I spoke to one weird awkward man crypto trader who said everyone was in a party mood (coz of Trump), up the road at dinner with Al Gore and the founder of Ikea, among others, people refused to mention Trump by name and mocked those who had “taken the knee” meaning those who had kissed the ring of power (ooh er Mrs) down at Mar-a-Lago. Here, among the good people who like paying tax I was told by someone that the people who really run the world are quiet, they don’t go around bellowing and bloviating. I wanted to ask if they were lizards but I don’t think it was the right audience.
One of the Digital Money Loving Davos attendees told me that crypto would save the world, and that it’s precisely for people like me. What he actually said was, “poor people in places like Africa. The premise is to bring the millions of people in the world that can't be part of the traditional financial system for various reasons access to the new digital financial system.”
So there we are. Money as we know it, so over.
Is this hope? Or horror? *shruggy shruggy emoji* If you know let me know.
I’ve been half designing some kind of recovery system for me to adhere to, as I battle my way out of the huge mistake of… I’m sorry, I can’t write the following shameful sentence until I’ve erected a paywall. And the last Substack I wrote made my Mum cry so I really regret it being free to read.
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