Posthistoric Man

A meditation on leftist eschatology…

Last week, I mentioned how it seems—to me, at least—that the mouthpieces and “opinion makers” of the Left and the Regime in general have lost any real interest in even attempting to portray their vision of the future in an appealing light.

It’s lost its edge, if it ever had one, and that’s why we see so much justified jeering on the Right of left-wing futurism—a futurism that largely amounts to eating bugs, living in pods, owning nothing, virtual reality escapism, stifling climate and social credit systems, total reliance on government, complete spiritual inanition, and…well, you get the picture.

But what’s the point of it all?

What longer-range vision of the future do these people hold? Do they even have one? And did anyone really believe all that “end of history” tripe, and think that the future would be an eternal confederation of globally integrated liberal-democratic regimes living in handholding harmony forever and ever?

Or is the leftist future one of endless gay sex, questionable life choices, sex changes and pederasty if one wishes it, on-demand abortion, consequence-free substance abuse, and all of it without ever having to be bothered about conscience, or religion, or tradition, or family, or really anything that makes life truly worth living?

At least the old-school Marxists of the nineteenth century had a somewhat more inspiring and nobler vision of where they wanted things to go—a sort of Edenic utopia, I guess, where everyone was a mix between an Athenian philosopher and an English yeoman farmer, or some such nonsense.¹ Just read the final chapter in H. G. Wells’ Outline of History for an idea of what some of the more inspired leftists of the past dreamed up for the future.

It was all millenarian bullshit, of course, and it didn’t exactly work out the way Marx and company had imagined in the Soviet worker’s paradise…but hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

The truth is, I just don’t think the modern crop of leftists are capable of thinking very far ahead. Maybe they’re just not that smart. Stephen Hawking—whose dubious prophecies were treated in the press with the same sort of awe and reverence formerly reserved for the solemn pronouncements of the Oracle at Delphi—once predicted that the Earth will become a “sizzling fireball” in about six hundred years, because of all the people and the electricity consumption and global warming and whatnot.

That’s the sort of profoundly lazy thinking that represents top-tier “futurism” these days. Even so, the press breathlessly reported on it as though it were a true and accurate preview of future time, a divine prophecy handed down from on high.

Global warming apocalypses, overpopulation, and excessive energy use—that’s about the extent of left-wing futurism these days, and it rarely glimpses anything beyond a few centuries. But I think we can do better, and we can start by examining the social trends that have shaped the dystopia we’re currently living in, and think about where that will lead us.

So if the regnant Regime and modern leftism are all about globalism, the eradication of borders, the leveling of differences, and total economic, social, and cultural integration around the world (whether anyone wants it or not), together with the marshaling of scientism and technocracy to achieve this end, then what is the future endpoint of it all?

Fortunately, there are some who have thought very seriously about this problem.

I think one of the most provocative thinkers to tackle this question is the obscure German-American architect and philosopher Roderick Seidenberg (1889-1973). Today almost completely forgotten, Seidenberg wrote the books Posthistoric Man: An Inquiry (1950) and Anatomy of the Future (1961), which paint a rather grim picture of the shape of things to come.

Seidenberg’s understanding of history does away with the complex divisions of “modernity,” the “pre-modern period,” the “Middle Ages,” the “Classical period,” and all of that, and replaces it with a very simple, tripartite scheme: there is, in his view of things, a “Prehistoric Age,” an “Historic Age” (in which we’re currently living), and a “Posthistoric Age.”

The Prehistoric Age is a long, essentially unconscious or pre-conscious period during which instinct predominates, and intelligence is dormant; in other words, the Palaeolithic, together with the immense, multibillion-year sweep of prehuman history, if you really want to be comprehensive. The Historic Age is a brief period in which intelligence and instinct jockey for supremacy, with one or the other gaining the upper hand for a time. This disequilibrium manifests itself in the colorful pageantry and bewildering unpredictability of history.

Finally, in the Posthistoric Age—which we are on the cusp of entering—intelligence wins out and instinct recedes. But, paradoxically, at the moment of its triumph intelligence or reason fossilizes into something rote and unconscious—in other words, it becomes almost instinctual. Seidenberg’s understanding of the future is that mankind is destined to become a kind of mammalian analogue to the eusocial insects…the ants, termites, and bees.

The Posthistoric Age will be the mirror image of the Prehistoric Age, an endless prospect of a highly organized, changeless and unchangeable society that might persist in that condition for millions of years…until some cosmic collision or geological convulsion destroys it, or evolution tosses up some new organism to outcompete it:

“The extent to which the formulations of intelligence may come to supplant the directive guidance of the instincts is virtually unlimited, from our point of view; and however different life may come to be in the far future from what it is today, the integration of society will be effected, we may be sure, on the basis of conscious procedures and organized efforts… The organization of society will unquestionably proceed until its final crystallization shall have been achieved ecumenically, because of the relationship of this trend with the inherent dominance of the principle of intelligence. But the process, once dominant, implies in turn a steady decrease and retardation of social change—the gradual slowing down of the momentum of history until, indeed, we shall be confronted by the inverse of our historic ascent in ever more delayed sequences of stability and permanence in the conditions of life. And thus, in a period devoid of change, we may truly say that man will enter upon a posthistoric age in which, perhaps, he will remain encased in an endless routine and sequence of events, not unlike that of the ants, the bees, and the termites. Their essentially unchanged survival during some sixty million years testifies to the perfection of their adjustment, internally and externally, to the conditions of life: man may likewise find himself entombed in a perpetual round of perfectly adjusted responses.

“Curiously, we seem to have returned, via the route of intelligence, to the very status from which man departed, aeons ago, under the undivided dominance of the instincts. For here, too, in the conditions of the future, the organism appears suspended within set responses, following interminably the selfsame patterns until altered by the slow processes of biologic mutations. These extremes of instinct and intelligence throw light upon the nature of consciousness; for, obviously, it is only in the strained field of their mutual interactions that consciousness itself can arise. Consciousness depends upon a state of imbalance, a condition of tension… Consciousness will gradually evaporate and disappear in this posthistoric period, very much as it condensed step by step into ever sharper focus during man’s prehistoric era. In the ultimate state of crystallization to which the principle of organization leads, consciousness will have accomplished its task, leaving mankind sealed, as it were, within patterns of frigid and unalterable perfection. In this consummation we perceive the essential meaning of the posthistoric period of man’s development.”²

What is this if not the ultimate aim of the Left—even if its own votaries are incapable of recognizing this? The enforced conformity, the cancelation of unorthodox thought, the relentless surveillance, the promiscuous leveling of the genders into a sexless mass (not unlike what we see with the ants, bees, and termites), the ruthless destruction of cultures, languages, ethnicities…it’s all there, baked into the cake, so to speak.

The result? The real “end of history,” in which the entire human species will be locked “within patterns of frigid and unalterable perfection,” and thought itself will disappear as completely as the parietal eye or any of a number of other organs and senses lost to time.

I think the dissident Right glimpses something of this dreadful future, and rightly abhors it. Meanwhile, the coming Posthistoric Age seems to sense this threat as well, and works to eliminate it through ever more stringent censorship and social control:

“…the future condition of man…gives evidence of ever greater stability and fixity, approaching in an asymptotic sense an ultimate state of final crystallization. Nor can we doubt, under this equation of change, that man will in time direct his psychology in extrovert harmony with the established drift of life, eliminating ever more ruthlessly the friction of divergent personalities and tangential philosophies under the plea of social efficiency and social health. Thus, the meshes of the social sieve are being constantly tightened, so to speak; and the acceleration toward an ever more highly organized condition of man’s affairs must in itself become the dominant directive force of society. Under these circumstances the meaning of the individual, and the moral, ethical, and religious relationships arising out of the conception of the person as the fountainhead of spiritual values, will gradually lose definition and become dissipated under the impact of a purely collective dispensation. But even more basic, perhaps, in the final long-range perspective of this aspect of man’s future estate, is the fact that human consciousness itself will slowly relax its tension and become dissipated.”³

Seidenberg also points out that the use of certain technologies, especially genetic technology, virtually assures that we’ll end up someday with a human ant-heap, since it’s impossible to imagine that the totalitarian impulses of our civilization won’t manifest themselves in genetic manipulation of some kind.

After all, why try to suppress “toxic masculinity” when you can just snip it out of the genome altogether?

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So what would things look like if the Left had its way? In other words, what would a “posthistoric” civilization resemble?

Well, it would be a world of total, inflexible, and inescapable control and regimentation of human life…and perhaps even all life on Earth. Sexual reproduction, hormonal balances, freedom of movement, acceptable forms of thought, even the weather, would all be subject to top-down control. I used to laugh about the whole global warming thing, and wonder what it was the Left really wanted—the entire planet kept at a pleasant 75 °F, in a perpetual spring?

It’s not so funny anymore…I think that’s exactly what they want.

Incidentally, there’s an obscure dystopian novel that I think does a pretty fine job of depicting this posthistoric type of world. It’s called This Perfect Day (1970), by Ira Levin, whose better-known works were made into a slew of popular movies in the sixties and seventies—including Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from Brazil. For some reason, This Perfect Day didn’t receive the Hollywood treatment…though, given its unflattering depiction of a future world in which leftism is triumphant, I think I can guess why.

In any case, the book takes place a century or two in the future (it isn’t clear how many), after a war and a subsequent revolution have led to the creation of a global state in which all life is totally organized. The book begins with an epigram:

“Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei
    Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei, and Christ;
    All but Wei were sacrificed.
Wood, Wei, Christ, and Marx
    Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx, and Wood
    Made us humble, made us good.”

It’s supposed to be a simple children’s rhyme, depicting a garbled version of history in which Christ is enrolled as a left-wing revolutionary, followed by Marx, and then two subsequent figures (invented by Levin) named Bob Wood and Li Wei Chun who were instrumental in creating the world state. All dates are given in years after the Unification of mankind, at which history has essentially stopped and posthistory has begun.

The world state has no name—it is simply called “the Family,” to which all of mankind belongs. There are no countries, and cities are known only by an alphanumeric designating a former country or the name of a continent: EUR00001 is evidently Geneva, Switzerland; RUS81655 is probably Moscow, and USA36104 seems to be Miami.

And there’s more…much more.

The people in this future state are known only as “members,” and their names or “namebers” are also alphanumerics—a string of identifying numbers following one of only four names allowed.⁴ They’ve been genetically engineered to be uniform and docile, totally androgynous and without any racial or ethnic differences at all, and with new research ongoing to make them even more conformist and indistinguishable in the future; meanwhile, the members are drugged to keep them obedient and happy, particularly the males, who can’t grow facial hair and have been almost completely neutered.

It’s pretty much just a suffocating, maternal HR regime grown to global proportions, with everyone in enforced peace and harmony, and the foulest slur one can use to traduce someone is “brother-fighter.”

Sex is scheduled at regular times each week, and, to maintain a steady population, everyone is euthanized around the age of sixty-two—though they believe this is the natural human lifespan, and don’t realize they’re being liquidated for reasons of efficiency. Each member wears a bracelet that allows their movements and activities to be monitored by UniComp—an immense supercomputer housed in Geneva, Switzerland, that regulates the entire world state. Food consists of bland “totalcakes,” which come in only one or two flavors, and personal effects are strictly rationed or nonexistent.

It’s “you’ll own nothing and be happy” on steroids.⁵

Meanwhile, even the weather is controlled, so that it only rains at night, and earthquakes are prevented through the use of immense “seismovalves” which dampen their effects. The Family is also busily employed in spreading its good news throughout the universe—mention is made of colonies on the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Saturn’s moon Titan, each with their own UniComp, as well as starships making their slow way to Sirius B and 61 Cygni.

The story is pretty typical dystopian fare. The protagonist is unusual in some way, and doesn’t fit in; he meets other “abnormals” like himself, and they engage in criminal activities—like smoking tobacco, giving each other nicknames, and reading about “pre-Unification” history in some old books they find.

“‘What have you found out?’ he asked. ‘Anything interesting?’

“Chip looked at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A lot of what we’re told is true. There was crime and violence and stupidity and anger. There was a lock on every door. Flags were important, and the borders of territories. Children waited for their parents to die so they could inherit their money. The waste of labour and material was fantastic…’

[…]

“‘But with it all,’ he said, ‘members seem to have felt stronger and happier than we do. Going where they wanted, doing what they wanted, “earning” things, “owning” things, choosing, always choosing—it made them somehow more alive than members today.’”⁶

The protagonist eventually learns of the existence of islands where misfits are allowed to live, so as not to pollute the Family with their unorthodoxy. He escapes to one of them, but it’s a miserable place, and so he plots to return to destroy UniComp and liberate the Family.

The ending isn’t exactly to my tastes, but that’s neither here nor there.

It’s an interesting book, but more so as a fascinating depiction of what life in Seidenberg’s posthistoric future would be like. The Family is so obviously a left-wing paradise. No global warming (not even any bad weather), no overpopulation, no abortion only because female fertility is strictly regulated or suppressed altogether, no possessions, no money, no privacy, no self-determination, no masculinity, no testosterone, barely any distinction between the sexes, no wrongthink, total equality, and total obedience and subservience to technocratic experts.

It’s the “icy fixity” of which Seidenberg speaks as the unyielding condition of posthistoric man; it’s a grim, nightmarish sort of future that one could easily imagine lasting for a million years or a hundred million or a billion, without any change at all. It is:

“…a degree of social organization, of collective order, unity, and conformity, beyond anything dreamed of by man, unless it is in the satiric novels of frightened anti-rationalists, or the visions of utopia which…are so often the projections of a wish for inflexible stability, rather than happiness or progress, in the affairs of man.”⁷

I guess that’s why I’m tolerant of even the craziest conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, fringe voices, and wacky dissidents; whoever’s fighting against the posthistoric future that our WEF and liberal-democratic overlords seem hellbent on achieving is a friend of mine…of all of us, really.

Seidenberg was convinced that a posthistoric future was virtually inevitable, and recent history has done very little to discredit that conviction. I don’t know…maybe I’m a starry-eyed optimist, but I’m not so sure.

The existence (for now) of Substack, with its many brilliant right-wing voices, and dissident publishing houses like Arktos, Imperium Press, and others, gives me hope that the posthistoric age and that “perfect day” of the Left’s total victory is still a long way off…

1. “…in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic” (Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part I).

2. Roderick Seidenberg, Posthistoric Man: An Inquiry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950) [New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1974, pp. 179-80].

3. Ibid., pp. 187-88.

4. Jesus, Karl, Bob, and Li for the males; Mary, Anna, Peace, and Yin for the females.

5. I sometimes wonder if Klaus Schwab and the WEF types didn’t read This Perfect Day and decide to take it as a blueprint; but then I realized that they probably don’t read all that much.

6. Ira Levin, This Perfect Day (London: Pan Books, Ltd., 1971), pg. 103.

7. Posthistoric Man, pg. 186.