THE ONCE AND FUTURE POLITICAL ANIMAL

by Ryan Andrews

The seemingly anachronistic ubiquity of smoking in Blade Runner 2049 may be intended as nothing more than a tribute to the neo-noir original, just like the Pan-Am and Atari billboards. But perhaps it also symbolizes something psychological about the society it depicts: the feeling that it has no reason to live. The replicants, of course, do not have souls or free will. They have no past, and, because they can not breed, no collective future. Meanwhile, the humans are staring down-the-barrel at their obsolescence as a species. Ensouled or not, the replicants are so much smarter and stronger, and so even if they lack the agency to conquer or destroy humanity, what is the point of going on?

SPACE – THE FINAL CAPITULATION

Space: consolation for the loser.

by Eugene Westerly

I frequently see articles from race realists and others expressing faith in some kind of futuristic, pro-technology solution to the problems of the present. Such solutions are usually dependent on assumptions of uninterrupted technical innovation, driven by large and successful industries and markets, over a lengthy period of time. These are the unquestioned assumptions of these futuristic solutions, but extract fossil fuels from the equation and even the beginning of such a scenario is infeasible.

Roman Bernard's recent film review, Interstellar: Finding A New Telos is a fine piece of writing, but provides an excellent example of the sort of blind assumptions that undergird all techno-futurist thinking. Even scientists make these assumptions. They may in fact be among the worst offenders. So Bernard is in good company.

This article will focus on the likelihood that ours is not a technological future, that our destiny – at least in a time scale meaningful to humans – is not in the stars, but that we are essentially stranded on Earth, and it is this, our home and only "destination," for which we must fight without hope of redemption by a form of interstellar White flight.