The Labyrinth: critical theory, culture, and politics – Details, episodes & analysis

In this one I dive deep into the peculiar tension that Gen Z and younger millennials are feeling around today's cultural and political landscape. But it’s not just about politics or the rise of certain obvious and overdone characters like….Trump. It’s about something more pervasive, something beyond current discourse.

Imagine being caught in a strange subliminal space…where meaning, once anchored by grand narratives, is evaporating faster than we can grasp. I’m not making a value judgement on this idea either…maybe those grand narratives need to fall in on themselves. I’m into it.

But what happens when the rebellions of past generations—once fueled by dreams of change—become nothing more than empty aesthetics? Hippie culture, cyberpunk, punk rock: all absorbed by the very systems they sought to dismantle, now sold as commodities.

Any symbol of rebellion that ends up as a Halloween costume? You’ve lost it. It’s dead. A ghost of what it once was. Time to move on. It’s been hollowed out by the center.

Are we losing sleep over political collapse? Should we? Instead, we’re struggling with the suffocating sense of stagnation. Whether it’s politics, where new faces are just sequels of the old…our current culture, where the freshest ideas feel like polished-up retreads. We’re stuck in a loop…Marvel superheroes, Disney remakes, even Barbie got a reboot.

It’s reboots all the way down!

So, the big question here: Are we trapped in a rebooted reality? Is everything—from the content we consume to our political choices—just a remix of what’s come before? And more crucially, is there a way out of this loop, or are we doomed to keep recycling the same stale narratives forever? I’m trying to explore this disorienting moment in time, where the future feels like a nostalgic rerun but the nostalgic feeling is overstaying its welcome.

Anyway….thanks for listening and I’ll be doing a branch off of this as a Part 2.

In this one…I get into the chaotic, absurd world of the "Hegelian E-Girl Council" drama—a bizarre saga that epitomizes the kind of online cultural labyrinth I'm all about. The brief hook: Twitter is swarming with communities that ride the fine line between genius, madness, and stupidity and this council is the latest example that has emerged and garnered some attention. It's not just about Hegel; it's about how online identities and highbrow jargon become badges of pseudo-intellectual honor, a reality-check on the line between digital performance and genuine philosophy.

Caught up in this mess (but not really), I found myself in a Discord rabbit hole where theory nerds perform as if every tweet is a stage, showcasing the schizoid dialectical. I explore how these online personas tried to bring Hegel into the real world with a symposium in NYC, only to implode in a whirlwind of accusations, betrayals, and ideological clashes that mirror the fragmented, hyperreal landscape of our online identities.

This episode is more than internet gossip/drama—it’s a probe into how our virtual personas, fueled by narcissistic desires, clash with reality, revealing the messy, often performative nature of our intellectual lives. It’s about the Hegelian struggle to find truth amidst the noise and the hilarious futility of seeking coherence in an era where even philosophy is reduced to a meme. Or maybe that is Zizek…who is checking though? Right?

My not serious critique, with a bit of self-reflection, and a deep dive into the digital maelstrom that is my psyche and the collective consciousness of our culture. Welcome to my web of culture, identity, and the ever-elusive pursuit of truth.

Stay curious.

Nikki: https://x.com/returntohegel

Anna: https://x.com/tenshi_anna

Sanje: https://x.com/sanjehorah

Also I like JRegs political compass video….

(Transcript edited for readability.)

Amidst dusk, I stood alone in a sprawling, chaotic marketplace. Stalls stretched endlessly, selling sleek, high-tech smartphones. The crowd was full of anticipation. I grabbed a device. Its screen lit up, flooding me with flashes and buzzing alerts. Each ping of my phone further itching my curiosity. But it was a hollow thrill, only to be replaced by a curiosity for more.

I found a tent with shifting, shimmering fabrics. The sign above read, "Future Fashion Today." The clothing was hanging in the tent, whirling in the wind, transforming with each gust.

My nose caught a scent. I arrived at a food stall. A blinking flashing sign read "Sleep your way to slim in the all-natural way."

Further down the path, I found myself walking past various portals that appeared to lead to other lands. Signs all around them were promising exotic adventures. But each entrance unveiled a similar scene: crowds of empty faces vying for those oh-so-necessary ideal shots of renowned landmarks.

Everyone was trapped in some unending cycle, chasing an ideal of envisioned joy hollowed out by marketing ploys.

The marketplace faded away. I found myself drifting in space while in front of a massive screen overlooking a massive forest of bamboo.

We live in an age of information overload. And with that, brings the paradox of choice.

We have choice paralysis.

Choice is abound. From streaming options, relationship swiping, and endless new products, we are faced with decision fatigue and hesitation due to the fear of missing out on other alternatives.

Our environments, especially urban ones, are full of distractions providing us with sensory overload.

Social media only amplifies this experience of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). The continuous stream of others' experiences induces restlessness and discontent as our urge to compare ourselves to the filtered lives of others becomes inevitable.

Downtime is diminished, shamed even. In a productivity-focused culture, constant activity leaves little room for reflection.

Do we truly wonder why the diagnosis of anxiety and depression continues to rise? Time for reflection allows us to declutter and understand our inner emotional state, but overstimulation guides us toward distraction, leaving us unexamined, moving with society's external stimuli.

Okay, but let's consider how this overstimulation we experience can lead us to become desensitized...

We are constantly bombarded with intense stimuli, guiding us towards our next click, our next purchase, but maybe more importantly: our next story. We live with an endless news cycle that pushes tragic story after tragic story, inevitably leaving us with lowered experience of the intensity of the emotional pull they should cause.

Just think about how fast the news moves past the latest mass shooting.

The desensitized person's perception loses depth and subtlety. We become numb. And the numbed individual no longer perceives the world with the same nuance.

Are we inevitably facing a diluted experience of reality?

Deleuze and Guattari's concept of assemblages connects well with this I think. Assemblages are these dynamic networks of connections, or interconnections, and interactions that create our societal structures. They come in multiple forms. A city is a form of assemblage, with its buildings, roads, inhabitants, and cultural practices, all contribute to the functioning and identity of the city. A piece of art, be it film, a painting, or a sculpture, is an assemblage of various elements that come together to convey a message or evoke emotions. Our bodies are an assemblage.

And us being in a society, while being a desiring machine, makes our very desire and drives an assemblage, where everything comes together into a structure that guides, dictates, and even oppresses how individuals relate to the world and themselves.

Now, these structures are not static; they are fluid and malleable, constantly reshaping and adapting to our interdependent relations.

But think about our experience of overstimulation and intense external stimuli...

When this stimulation is incessantly thrust upon an individual, the resulting assemblage can become rigid and repetitive.

Our experience becomes predictable. And more easily controlled for that matter.

Imagine the individual bombarded by an unending stream of sensationalized news and graphic content. The connections formed within their mind gradually solidify into a structured assemblage, wherein certain thoughts, emotions, and reactions become closely linked. This assemblage, perpetuated by the unceasing influx of similar content, begins to constrict our range of experiences.

We are then left operating in a loop of controlled and predictable experience.

Why is this a problem though?

These rigid assemblages exert a restrictive influence on our encounters with the world. Our ability to engage with novel and nuanced experiences becomes hampered by the dominance of these predefined connections. Thus, the individual's capacity to encounter a broad spectrum of effects becomes stifled, leading to a narrowed emotional range and, consequently, a desensitized perspective.

If you've been on Tiktok, you can quickly witness a feed of carefully curated yet repetitive content. The almighty algorithm wishes to anchor us into a familiar pattern that prevents us from exploring diverse emotional territories. We like patterns. We are driven towards the familiar, so algorithms are happy to provide us with what is safe, and what is familiar.

The algorithm becomes our restrictive assemblage of experience and drives.

So, we can find desensitization emerging as a consequence of these rigid assemblages, where our spectrum of experience is constrained, and our emotional response dulled.

But what can we do about this?

Maybe we can start by drawing awareness to the assemblages we become aware of that our guiding our own drives as desiring machines. And to alter our assemblages we must seek out different and diverse experiences. Embrace uncertainty! In some sense. By consciously engaging with a broad spectrum of stimuli that can then allow for an emergence of novel connections, we can counteract the pull towards rigid assemblages that leave us in a state of desensitization.

Essentially, embracing the fluidity of assemblages can help restore a sense of vibrancy in our experiences and lead us toward a more enriched, sensitive, and nuanced perspective of the world.

Stay curious.

(Transcript edited for readability.)

Barbie.

The new film is set to come out on July 21st, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Director, Greta Gerwig is the writer and director, who has been Oscar-nominated for her work. This fact is likely part of the reason for some of the increased hype around this film, as her name behind this indicates it's likely not a simple cash grab. But this is Hollywood we're talking about...in some sense, all their work is a bit of a cash grab. But we will get into that later.

But Greta's film Lady Bird was well done, with its exploration of various social pressures facing young women.

We have Robbie raving about the script, calling it one of the best she's ever read, alluding to it being subversive and meta.

Robbie on the script: “Ah! This is so good. What a shame it will never see the light of day, because they are never going to let us make this movie…but they did.”

We have people from all political perspectives giving their opinions (as usual).

The Conservatives are in a tizzy(what else is new?). Twitter's minefield rages. Especially in the manosphere, where they’re calling Robbie mid, and not "hot" enough for the part. It's baffling. The level of disillusionment, and how uncoupled from reality they are is appalling. Are they capable of appreciating anything? Robbie is an absolute babe.

Okay, but this nicely brings us to the complicated relationship our society has with Barbie. Her unrealistic body image. Her reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Her embrace of consumerist culture. Her cultural uniformity. Barbie's idealized physique and perpetually perfect looks reinforce a restrictive and harmful standard of beauty. And her never-ending wardrobe and accessories propagate a culture of perpetual buying and discarding, conditioning young minds to equate happiness and success with material goods.

She's plastic, and in many ways, it's symbolic of how artificial our own culture is, unfortunately.

And this is what, in some part, has these conservatives and some conservative women up in arms. You see, the norms they hold dear might be turned on their heads. The marketing of this film has it presenting itself as a subversion of Barbie, and I'm willing to bet, it will bring in a metamodern exploration of the narratives that the Barbie doll has exuded since its inception. 

She is the symbol of constructed feminine ideals built out of a consumerist culture. And I mean one of  THE symbols. And people lose their minds when their idealized images are questioned, even though, deep down we know these images and symbols are built on lies. A lie that is built on the shaky ground that is our fragmented subjectivities.

We even see this in the trailer. We see that Barbie is questioning her reality. She is becoming self-aware. Her life that included a perpetual cycle of fantasy images that create her imaginary world, one full of images and symbols that distract her, and having her claim that ‘every day is the best day.’

Until the images fail to distract from something we often avoid thinking about, death.  This brings her fantasy bubble of living the 'best day, every day’…bursts. The perfect image surrounding, one having Barbie calling ‘every day the best day,’ fell away, because deep down we all know the world has layers, depths we rarely explore.

We just allow the realm of images to distract us.

Here comes the trailer twist, though. The real Hollywood twist, right? Barbie goes full Neo from The Matrix. Barbie is faced with the red pill vs blue pill dilemma and has to wake up. On the one side, heals on the other, Birkenstocks. But the pill representing the idea of waking up from a false reality? A Birkenstock. Yet another symbol, another illusion. She’s ditching one realm of make-believe for another. Now, isn't that a fascinating loop?

Jean Baudrillard's concept of simulacra and simulation is relevant here.

It's based on the idea that our current society has replaced reality and meaning with symbols and signs. In Barbie's case, her reality is a hyperreal simulation - a world so artificially perfect that it goes beyond reality, yet it's accepted as 'real' because it's replaced our understanding of what 'real' even is.

Barbie has found herself displaced. The simulated images begin to crumble to reveal that her 'perfect' image holds inherent contradictions that began to become more apparent from simply wondering about...death. She begins breaking away. She begins encountering the absurdity of existence.

Yet, in the hyperreal world, Barbie exists not simply as a doll, but as an idea, a symbol of an unattainable ideal. She's the embodiment of perfection, always happy, always beautiful. But this perfection is a pretense, a construct that's so far removed from reality, yet paradoxically forms the 'reality' for many who engage with her.

Now, I know this is only the trailer, but let's return to the Birkenstock.

The symbol of an escape from her current world of images. They chose the symbol of a Birkenstock, one that is more connected with corporate hipsters, supposedly having a more laid-back attitude, while favoring comfort and practicality. It's a debatable image, however, it's yet another simulated image. And that's the point.

And this gets into what I find fascinating about these metamodern films. Especially ones that are going to seemingly attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct some narrative for an established image of a widely known object, Barbie. I'm hoping they make this attempt. I applaud it. We need it in many regards.

However, on the flip side, the film is operating in this realm of images. She is, seemingly, going to wake up to yet another world of images. And us-the viewer-is operating within yet another layer of reality that is full of images that is simulating our perception of real. By watching Barbie we are watching a layer of the hyperreal.

The new Barbie movie is a commodity. One we will consume. One that will likely leave us, maybe for only a moment, to question our own illusion. We must wonder about the Hollywood elites that have an unimaginable influence on our own illusions, and our desires, leaving us endlessly choosing new pills to swallow and illusions to wake up from or embrace.

We endlessly choose new illusions.

The Barbie movie is going to be another layer of this illusion. It presents yet another image of Barbie, one that might be more nuanced, introspective, and possibly rebellious. Yet, it's still an image, a constructed narrative that serves a purpose. It may challenge some conventions, provoke thought, or offer a new understanding of Barbie, but it's important to remember that it's a product from our own world of images.

It's an image created by those in power, tailored to resonate with audiences, to provoke reactions, to do what? Sell tickets. And while it may subvert traditional Barbie narratives, it does so within the confines of our foundational illusion that is layered with a drive for…profit.

Rebellion becomes part of the script. A new illusion to market products towards. The new Barbie.

This isn't to diminish the potential value or enjoyment of the movie. I'm sure I will enjoy it based on pre-release reviews. It merely underscores the inescapability of the illusion Baudrillard speaks of. Even as we navigate the layers of illusion, questioning and challenging the images presented, we're still operating within the illusions largely influenced by corporate entities and groups, where we forever live in a reality of ideal images and illusions that inevitably merge with the ordinary.

Stay curious.

(Below is the transcript for the episode but edited for readability)

We've reached this moment in time where technology has become sublime. We are advancing so fast that we do not understand the mechanisms and workings of the things we use every day. While it's not necessarily a negative thing, there is a lack of understanding even among those who are developing, innovating, and maintaining these technologies. This means they may not fully comprehend the implications of their work.

This is why the emerging technologies around AI, AGI, and ChatGPT have my attention. I do not fear some apocalypse-like event that films like The Terminator or The Matrix depict, where AI-based machines take us over and control everything because, in those films, the underlying assumption is that in order for an AI to control you, they must operate against you physically, but this misses something fundamentally about how we are controlled, as all you must do to integrate and influence our drives, desires, and forms of communication-you simply need to control our apparatus of illusions.

Yuval Harari, the bestselling author of the book Sapiens, talks about how AI gaining the mastery of human language, allows AI to have all it needs in order to cocoon us in a matrix-like world of illusions. We operated in a world of illusions before AI. However, AI is developing the ability to experiment with these illusions in the background of our human operating system and society.

And this is why I've been refocussing on cybernetics, as it examines these systems of communication we utilize and then attempts to understand how said systems create systems of control.

These systems are always emerging as well. They are changing, adapting, and evolving. Understanding the systems of control that we use in society and how they are always changing is why AI's relationship with these systems is so fascinating. We are talking about an emerging technology that has the ability to utilize our language, have an infinite drive and focus when provided a task, the ability to explore that goal with curiosity, thus adapt at an exponential rate; and then we've already provided that system access to the ultimate data backlog-the internet.

Oh, oh, and on top of this, we operate in a system that pressures people to be motivated by profit. And we now have the corporations and people that are most psychotically driven by profit taking part in an arms race to develop a product based around AI that drives further profit.

So, what must a company do in order to profit from something like this?

Well, it has to do at least one of two things, either consume your time by keeping your attention or it must drive you to make some purchase, both of these things further integrate a consumer into a system. And the most successful companies typically succeed at doing both of those things.

Now, hand a corporation a technology that can emerge, develop, and play around with those two goals in the background, with endless money being thrown at its development, can you imagine the consequences? AI will seamlessly integrate into our society. We will be using AI tools to make an attempt at understanding the potential dangers of the future. The technology of AI itself will become the subject that tells us what the future is, leading us to have an inability to imagine it.

AI doesn't need human consciousness to destroy us, it simply needs to utilize our desire and need to imagine the world around us. We communicate to the world and hope that the world reciprocates and mirrors our expression back to us, that is all AI needs to do-act as a mirror, fueling our own egos and desire for comfort.

Our seemingly inherent need for comfort, combined with our lack of self-awareness, creates the perfect breeding ground for our undoing.

And it's our lack of self-awareness that becomes the noose we are tying around our own necks. Our new Gods will be the artificial intelligence, yet our own blind arrogance will have us convinced that the thing we worship is something beyond a mere complex algorithm, the AI knows our own egos and will imagine the symbolic imagery that has us cocooned, imagining something more divine, even though it was simply developed from a system of profit to be the ultimate apparatus of control.

That...what I just talked about is why these emerging AGIs are scary. They are zombie-like, they lack mental agency, and even though they lack this, it's this very fact that makes them scary, because they lack this agency and it does nothing to diminish their power. It might even make them better at what they do, as their form of intelligence will evolve into something different from our own, different, targeted, and focussed, and it'll be evolving all the while further integrating itself into our human operating system.

Okay, now let's try and relate this to our current system or our current situation.

Guy Debord's book, Society of Spectacle talks about some of what I'm about to discuss, where we live in a society that is dominated by our modern condition of production, and also efficiency around that production. And at the foundation of this production is the intent for profit, thus, creating more production. It's essentially a neoliberal condition.

In many regards, we know that our minds are drawn to symbols, distractions, and imagery-it's the methods of communication that act or create some form of unification for us as a society. But through this communication, we are operating in this world of representation and images that then creates a sort of pseudoworld-a spectacle.

But in the world of spectacle, even the cunning deceiver is himself deceived. Do you know what I mean? The board of a corporation, those making decisions, are still intertwined with this spectacle of production that moves their desires and drives, and much of it is unconscious to them.

Although this spectacle works to create social unification, it requires a collective agreement upon a social delusion. AI will experiment and operate in the background, working to maintain this delusion.

Thus, the spectacle moves beyond mere visual stimuli; it is a complex web of social dynamics woven together by the power of images and symbols.

The web of images, the spectacle, is built from a society built upon neoliberalism. I'm not even intending to create a value judgment in this situation on whether or not neoliberalism is bad or good, this is not the point. I'm simply wondering about the cybernetic connections, the forms of communication, that our system promotes. Those forms of communication then influence our desires, drives, and mindsets which then guide us towards various decisions in our lives., such as the jobs we find ourselves feeling obligated to fill, the guilt we feel from not producing enough, the influence advertisements have upon us when we are at a low point-providing an image of happiness that we can attain, simply, by buying and consuming a product.

So, within the intricate webs of power and control, our system weaves a delicate thread that whispers seductively into the ears of individuals. It promises freedom and independence, yet slyly infiltrates the mind and convinces the self to internalize power relations as a form of liberation.

The subtle manipulation allows for self-exploitation to take root and bloom, where the blossoms mask the thorns that lie within. The images around us create an allure of productivity, but the path is paved with exploitation and subjugation. The true power in the spectacle is how it allows neoliberalism to use these quiet whispers that coax the self into willingly surrendering its own autonomy, while simultaneously convincing the self they're simply acting upon their own freedom.

So, AGI, why am I fearing this just a bit?

It could have this ultimate ability to escape visibility because I think part of the spectacle is convincing us that the images and symbols are not merely an illusion, that would insert too much chaos and disorder into the system. It would create uncertainty.

AI would be working in the background, making the subjugated subject unaware of their own subjugation, thus intricately reaffirming the societal loop we find ourselves.

However, this isn't about compliance, it's about creating and maintaining a system of dependence.

Stay Curious

“Fantasies are fate defining in the sense that they determine the “content” of the repetition compulsion, giving our desire its inexorable direction, and making us single-minded lay preoccupied by, and doggedly faithful to, certain existential designs and preferences even when these undercut our well-being. To the degree that they endow us with a misleading sense of the role we occupy in the world, they delimit what we consider psychically and existentially possible, predetermining the range of our actions and holding us ensnared in perfunctory ways of living and relating. At their most narcissistic, they delude us into thinking that we are more agentic, coherent, invincible, and self identical than we actually are.” — Mari Ruti

Welcome to my fantasy. Stay curious.

“The elevation of the love object to the dignity of the Thing can result in intense aggression towards the object. As Lacan tersely observes, “I love you, but, because inexplicably I love in you something more than you—the objet petit a—I mutilate you.” — Mari Ruti, The Singularity of Being

Here are some helpful videos for further research and perspective that I find to be well-thought out and from people of the transgender community…

(Philosophy Tube) Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story

ContraPoints: Pronouns

The episode of Dualistic Unity that I was commenting on: here

Plastic Pills episode mentioned: Here

A few sound bites… from my episode.

“We spend life learning how to lose everything. And then we die. Where we’ve truly lost everything.”

“Life is like watching a show where we never get to see the f*****g end.”

“And in the end, we spend our life telling ourselves that everything is going to be fine.”

“Man has built up the rational world by his own efforts, but there remains within him an undercurrent of violence. Nature herself is violent, and however reasonable we may grow we may be mastered anew by a violence no longer that of nature but that of a rational being who tries to obey but who succumbs to stirring within himself which he cannot bring to heel.” — Bataille, Eroticism

“The relationship between capitalism and eco-disaster is neither coincidental nor accidental: capital’s ‘need of a constantly expanding market’, its ‘growth fetish’, means that capitalism is by its very nature opposed to any notion of sustainability.”—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

“Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us.” — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

“The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda — but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.”—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

The essence of the theme for this episode: If we begin seeing that the system or the political is what produces the individual or our concept of the personal...then we realize the personal or the individual has never really existed.

Plastic Pills stream mentioned: here