Unqualified Reservations

The landmark essays of Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug, that redefined political philosophy for the digital age. Between 2007 and 2013, a mysterious software engineer writing under the name Mencius Moldbug published a sprawling blog called Unqualified Reservations , a strange fusion of political philosophy, cultural critique, historiography, and right-wing polemics never-before seen in the contemporary American landscape. In what became the most intellectually explosive body of writing of the early internet age, these essays helped define what would later be called the "Neoreactionary" critique of modernity: a systematic dismantling of progressive orthodoxy and an audacious attempt to imagine the architecture of post-democratic order. Volume 1 gathers the foundational texts of this project. "Formalist Manifesto" is the blog's first ever post and lays out Moldbug's central propositions: that government should be understood as a formal, accountable corporation; that progressivism functions as a religion; and that the modern state's dysfunction is the result of its refusal to recognize these truths. "An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives"--the series that introduced the world to the concepts of "the Cathedral" and the "Red Pill"--offers a sweeping genealogy of liberal thought, exposing the moral logic and incentive architecture that binds our sense-making institutions. "How Dawkins Got Pwned" expands that analysis, tracing the secular humanitarian creed of the modern West to its Puritan and Anglican roots, and identifying in its universalism the seed of today's political religions. With a new introduction by Curtis Yarvin reflecting on the origins and legacy of his work, Unqualified Reservations, Volume 1 presents the first of three books comprising the essential archive of a thinker who reprogrammed the way politics was understood in the digital age.

The landmark essays of Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug, that redefined political philosophy for the digital age. Between 2007 and 2013, a mysterious software engineer writing under the name Mencius Moldbug published a sprawling blog called Unqualified Reservations , a strange fusion of political philosophy, cultural critique, historiography, and right-wing polemics never-before seen in the contemporary American landscape. In what became the most intellectually explosive body of writing of the early internet age, these essays helped define what would later be called the "Neoreactionary" critique of modernity: a systematic dismantling of progressive orthodoxy and an audacious attempt to imagine the architecture of post-democratic order. Volume 1 gathers the foundational texts of this project. "Formalist Manifesto" is the blog's first ever post and lays out Moldbug's central propositions: that government should be understood as a formal, accountable corporation; that progressivism functions as a religion; and that the modern state's dysfunction is the result of its refusal to recognize these truths. "An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives"--the series that introduced the world to the concepts of "the Cathedral" and the "Red Pill"--offers a sweeping genealogy of liberal thought, exposing the moral logic and incentive architecture that binds our sense-making institutions. "How Dawkins Got Pwned" expands that analysis, tracing the secular humanitarian creed of the modern West to its Puritan and Anglican roots, and identifying in its universalism the seed of today's political religions. With a new introduction by Curtis Yarvin reflecting on the origins and legacy of his work, Unqualified Reservations, Volume 1 presents the first of three books comprising the essential archive of a thinker who reprogrammed the way politics was understood in the digital age.

The essential writings of Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencisu Moldbug, one the internet's most influential and controversial political thinkers. Between 2007 and 2013, a mysterious software engineer writing under the name Mencius Moldbug published a sprawling blog called Unqualified Reservations, a strange fusion of political philosophy, cultural critique, historiography, and right wing polemics never-before-seen in the contemporary American landscape. In what became the most intellectually explosive body of writing of the early internet age, these essays helped define what would later be called the "Neoreactionary" critique of modernity: a systematic dismantling of progressive orthodoxy and an audacious attempt to imagine the architecture of post-democratic order. Volume II brings together three of Moldbug's most influential texts. A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations serves as the perfect initiation to Moldbug's core themes, an elegant, wide-ranging labyrinth of reference and analysis that turns the language of liberal democracy inside out to reveal the Matrix-like operating system beneath. Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century builds on that critique by proposing a radical rethinking of sovereignty through the lens of technology, imagining a world divided into thousands of competing, privately governed jurisdictions, optimized for order and exit. Finally, Moldbug on Carlyle presents the Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle as the the first great opponent of egalitarian illusion and the sentimental moralism that sustains it. Collected here for the first time in print, these writings preserve one of the great intellectual detonations of the early blogosphere, whose incisive critiques and playful style still radiate outward from that first shockwave.

The essential writings of Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencisu Moldbug, one the internet's most influential and controversial political thinkers. Between 2007 and 2013, a mysterious software engineer writing under the name Mencius Moldbug published a sprawling blog called Unqualified Reservations, a strange fusion of political philosophy, cultural critique, historiography, and right wing polemics never-before-seen in the contemporary American landscape. In what became the most intellectually explosive body of writing of the early internet age, these essays helped define what would later be called the "Neoreactionary" critique of modernity: a systematic dismantling of progressive orthodoxy and an audacious attempt to imagine the architecture of post-democratic order. Volume II brings together three of Moldbug's most influential texts. A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations serves as the perfect initiation to Moldbug's core themes, an elegant, wide-ranging labyrinth of reference and analysis that turns the language of liberal democracy inside out to reveal the Matrix-like operating system beneath. Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century builds on that critique by proposing a radical rethinking of sovereignty through the lens of technology, imagining a world divided into thousands of competing, privately governed jurisdictions, optimized for order and exit. Finally, Moldbug on Carlyle presents the Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle as the the first great opponent of egalitarian illusion and the sentimental moralism that sustains it. Collected here for the first time in print, these writings preserve one of the great intellectual detonations of the early blogosphere, whose incisive critiques and playful style still radiate outward from that first shockwave.