I know of two forms of accelerationism. In one, you do not retard or you do accelerate the demise of society because that will lead naturally and necessarily to a better society. This is foolish. In the other, you do not retard or you do accelerate the demise of society because you hate society and you want it to die, with or without being followed by a better society. This can be successful, but may fail if a better society does accidentally follow.

I know of two forms of prison abolition. In one, prisons are abolished and men and women in prison are convinced by reason and compassion to not engage in criminal behavior. This is foolish. In the other, prisons are abolished and men and women in prison no longer have the monopoly on criminal behavior. In the former, criminals learn to limit themselves. In the latter, non-criminals learn of criminal freedom in the war of all against all.

I’m decidedly not convinced of the arguments that there are laws to history. I’m not convinced that when X and Y happen, the natural and necessary result is Z. I’m not convinced that talking about how the past might have been different is fruitful – it’s interesting! but not fruitful. “What if WW1 never happened” and “What if Atlantis arose up from the ocean” are both questions of imagination, not fact.

I’m decidedly not convinced of the arguments for progress. There’s no divine guidance, nor Marxist class conflict mechanism, nor invisible hand of commerce, nor human-nature preference for freedom, etc. Those are all just the history version of creationism. Things change, and sometimes they change in ways I prefer, and sometimes they don’t. And they’ll keep changing, long after I’m gone, and aren’t going backwards or forwards, they’re just changing.

The ancient Greeks had ground glass lenses. There is no evidence they ever put one ground glass lens in front of another ground glass lens. That’s all it would take to make a microscope, or telescope. But they never did it. This gives me tremendous hope. It suggests that there are fantastic solutions to real human problems just kind of lying around right now, and we haven’t put them together. I’d like to think in a few hundred years someone on the moon will say “you know, it’s hard to believe, but back then they didn’t know that anti-gravity is produced when you swirl salt water in a copper cylinder” (or whatever invisible solution is currently lying around).

The ancient Greeks also had the aeolipile. Why didn’t they put it on a cart? The ancient Americans had wheels, on children’s toys. Why didn’t they make wheelbarrows, or carts? The materials for a crystal radio (wire, crystal, membrane) existed in the bronze age. Why didn’t they make a radio network? They just didn’t think about it. Neither good nor bad, just how it worked out. And it gives me tremendous hope. “Those poor savages, if only they’d planted seeds aligned with magnetic north they’d have learned crops do ten times as well” (or whatever invisible solution is currently lying around).

I think Charles Fort nailed it in his book “Lo!” (1931)…

If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.

Lesser men have robbed value
From what value is for
By connecting it with “less”
Instead of value meaning MORE

What makes a revolution start
Has been discussed by those who’re smart
But the question I think is the top
Is what makes a revolution stop

Nothing is “like” anything else aside from an arbitrary agreement on what counts and what doesn’t count. Two coins minted on the same press at the same time in the same denomination from the same metals – nope, not even them. They occupy different points in space, and if that doesn’t matter then put one of them under your eyelid and tell me it doesn’t matter. It’s a choice to say the metal and denomination matter but the point in space doesn’t, the unseen molecules don’t matter, the fractional direction of light reflecting of this one versus that one don’t matter, etc.

Atheist and theist say their rules are for all
And therefore their deeds are the only ones moral

A monopoly is what each of their needs is
But all deeds are moral, it defines what a deed is

The air that you breathe, you breath alone
It is unshared with the drowning who sink like a stone

A corpse on the ground will occupy space
That others have “rights” to and can’t take that place

You can pick your own morals, and I think that’s just fine
And I’ll pick my morals, and my morals are mine

Impotent rage?
You’re over your quotient
Try to supply
A rage that is potent