Journal of Cogency

If you are reading "What Is A General Strike?" (journalofcogency.com/2025/03/02/w...), at the beginning I talk about issues I have with the UAW's planned general strike of 2028 (just corrected). I didn't get to them in the article but I'll talk about it here.

New post on Journal of Cogency: What Is a General Strike? Briefly exploring five* modern historical examples and trying to find the common traits: journalofcogency.com/2025/03/02/w...

Right now, I am starting to put together a work of philosophy, a thesis. My goal with this work is to explore this question: How does a smaller group of people manage to rule over a larger one? Why is “there are more of us” not enough to create change? My answer to that question is “the subjugation effect” and this work is my attempt to explain what that is. To properly explain this phenomenon, I need to proceed in six stages. The first stage, political systems, will set the basic context of the argument. The second stage, money as a medium, will explore the binding force of money as an example of such forces. Third, the way we think, will develop the second stage and show how this “binding” can be generalized to other agents. Fourth, the mystery of cogency, will discuss the construction of social power and indirect action. Fifth, the subjugation effect itself, where specific manifestations of political-cultural subjugation will be examined in light of the first four stages. In the last stage I’ll explore the reason which motivates the continuing of the subjugation effect: the desire for luxury.

Just posted "A Non-Grand Thesis of Luxury Politics", which is the introduction to my in-progress explanation of the fascism of the current moment through a philosophical-psychological exploration, ~14 minute read: journalofcogency.com/2025/02/19/a...

Right now, I am starting to put together a work of philosophy, a thesis. My goal with this work is to explore this question: How does a smaller group of people manage to rule over a larger one? Why is “there are more of us” not enough to create change? My answer to that question is “the subjugation effect” and this work is my attempt to explain what that is. To properly explain this phenomenon, I need to proceed in six stages. The first stage, political systems, will set the basic context of the argument. The second stage, money as a medium, will explore the binding force of money as an example of such forces. Third, the way we think, will develop the second stage and show how this “binding” can be generalized to other agents. Fourth, the mystery of cogency, will discuss the construction of social power and indirect action. Fifth, the subjugation effect itself, where specific manifestations of political-cultural subjugation will be examined in light of the first four stages. In the last stage I’ll explore the reason which motivates the continuing of the subjugation effect: the desire for luxury.

Just posted "A Non-Grand Thesis of Luxury Politics", which is the introduction to my in-progress explanation of the fascism of the current moment through a philosophical-psychological exploration, ~14 minute read: journalofcogency.com/2025/02/19/a...

Why do I want to do this? I have said this before, too. It’s because these ideas are conservative ideas. They are the conservative justifications for their political agenda. As such, they have no value for those who want real justice. They have less than no value because they make you second-guess the things you would do to achieve justice. They make you wonder whether even if you got a lot of support if it’s “the right thing”, if you are organizing “without ressentiment“, if you are not determining right and wrong through “slave morality”. It serves only to convince people that they should not seek to redress wrongs and it does this through leaps in logic and disguised interest. Holding onto Nietzscheanism is one of the biggest flaws that leftists have currently and its one they absolutely must let go of. I am the man of ressentiment. I am the man of bad conscience. I am the slave who triumphs. Nietzsche put the poison pill down and I am swallowing it, and I will shit it out, too. I refuse to be afraid of being accused of the ideas he made up. I am also the philosopher with the hammer. Nietzsche is the anvil. And I will never stop beating him to produce something better.

But engineers don’t always know what the best design is and don’t always know why a building fails. Sometimes they’re too close to the nuts and bolts, admiring a new technique, and not seeing that it’s caused flaws elsewhere. Philosophers are not always going to simply intuit a problem with philosophy. To Nietzsche’s benefit, philosophy has a quality that engineering doesn’t: philosophy is not actual. It doesn’t exist in the actual world, and effects outside of the mind do not affect it. Where the fascinated engineer will eventually have to face the flaws in their design when it collapses, nothing can force the ideas Nietzsche puts forward to collapse, so we’re free to keep believing in them even if they prove to be inadequate. With things that are actual, we don’t need to worry about the chain of reception. Things happen and that makes the new reality. It doesn’t matter that the most educated engineers say that floating apartments can work; if they don’t float, it didn’t work. Philosophy is not actual so it’s not like that. It does worry about the chain of reception. So the fact that the experts of philosophy still give credence to Nietzsche means that his ideas will keep being studied.

The people who like Nietzsche primarily, in my opinion, like that he made attacks upon philosophy which exposed anxieties that people had about the supposed certainty of philosophical “truth”. There are elements of procedural thought which are compelling, especially as brought out by Deleuze. As one follows those compelling elements, one then sees how they are built up into Nietzsche’s edifices and one assumes that those edifices are well-built. But they are not. I’ve been saying “Just look at the fucking thing” and, to be honest, this suffices for most people. I’ve said it before but Nietzsche isn’t like a popular guy. There’s a reason he has always been “controversial”, why people always have to rescue his work. “Just look at the fucking thing!”

But why should we see the noble’s statement as one that isn’t coming out of reason or contingency? Why should we accept that a noble person would say “I am good” in a vacuum? Why would they say anything about their quality if they have nothing to compare to? Obviously, going by the logic of the argument, the person who says “I am good” is also making a comparison, so if the slave says “so”, the noble must also say “so”. It is this value judgment which is the difference between noble and slave for Deleuze/Nietzsche, not the specific appellations of good or evil, and it immediately falls apart upon inspection. Yes, Deleuze/Nietzsche do assert that “good” does not need comparison, but again: they are just saying things. This is what I mean. Nobody else would say that you can understand “good” without “bad”. They only say this for the purpose of making this specious argument. And it’s upon this argument that the rest of Nietzsche’s philosophy is built, because this is the same distinction as that between active/reactive, critique/ressentiment, re-action/reaction, and so on. The distinctions are false and are introduced purely to support the value judgment.

Possibly the most unconvincing part of Nietzsche’s philosophy is how he constructs the noble and the slave. The noble says “I am good, you are evil”, while the slave says “You are evil, I am good”. I have not stated this exactly, of course. The way that Deleuze/Nietzsche put it, the slave says “You are evil, so I am good”. Why is this? It’s because only if you add that element in can you act as though the second part is contingent on the first part, and by only adding it for the slave, the noble is not making a contingent statement. The noble doesn’t reason, they say, but the slave does.

Because Nietzsche is allergic to checking his work, he never considers how absurd what he says is. He never thinks again about it. If we take his distinction between active and reactive forces, reading through this book, there is never a concrete stated difference between the two. Again, this is said fairly explicitly, but I have to say: lampshading does not eliminate the problem. It is clear that the only difference between active and reactive is perspective. Many times it is stated that the difference is something innate in forces, that this fact about forces is determining, but there are enough hedges that you can see that there is no difference. The point of differentiating them is to make a value judgment about them: namely, calling the active forces “good” and the reactive forces “bad”.

But this leads us towards the fatal flaw of Nietzsche, one which Deleuze gleefully copies and continues. This flaw is what I will call anti-experimentalism. At first, I want to say his issue is anti-empiricism, as empiricism is a trait that Deleuze/Nietzsche specifically decry. The problem with Nietzsche is that he resists being told no. This is an element of his theology of affirmation, obviously, but his affirmations burst past consideration into childishness. There’s a part which I remember, though I won’t bother quoting (I’ll talk about this later), where Deleuze/Nietzsche is saying that the problem with science is that it’s based on testing hypotheses rather than making affirmative claims. I’m likely mangling the message, but the point is, they are taking issue with the scientific method. And the thing is… that’s just how it works. That’s how you do science and confirm that your answers are useful for other people. To be affronted that science doesn’t work the way you think it should, even though the way you think it should work simply wouldn’t work, is puerile.

I think that the core appeal of Nietzsche is in asking the question again; I’ve said this before. I didn’t, perhaps, give enough credit to what a monumental moment that may have been. This might be a historical fallacy; that is, because it’s such a common thing now, I assumed it was always the case. Surely there must have always been iconoclasts who went against the philosophical grain. Also, Nietzsche’s dramatics and poeticizing are aesthetically appealing. It appears to be a much different way of doing philosophy than anyone else, and for that reason it appears to be saying something which is different than anyone else. It seems to demand appraisal on its own terms because it does not easily fit within the run of philosophy as such.

Read my first-blush review of "Nietzsche and Philosophy" by Gilles Deleuze, in which I refine my position against Nietzsche: journalofcogency.com/2025/02/15/d...

Why do I want to do this? I have said this before, too. It’s because these ideas are conservative ideas. They are the conservative justifications for their political agenda. As such, they have no value for those who want real justice. They have less than no value because they make you second-guess the things you would do to achieve justice. They make you wonder whether even if you got a lot of support if it’s “the right thing”, if you are organizing “without ressentiment“, if you are not determining right and wrong through “slave morality”. It serves only to convince people that they should not seek to redress wrongs and it does this through leaps in logic and disguised interest. Holding onto Nietzscheanism is one of the biggest flaws that leftists have currently and its one they absolutely must let go of. I am the man of ressentiment. I am the man of bad conscience. I am the slave who triumphs. Nietzsche put the poison pill down and I am swallowing it, and I will shit it out, too. I refuse to be afraid of being accused of the ideas he made up. I am also the philosopher with the hammer. Nietzsche is the anvil. And I will never stop beating him to produce something better.

I wrote another anti-Nietzschean manifesto, this one is also a review of "Nietzsche and Philosophy" by Gilles Deleuze (12 min read) journalofcogency.com/2025/02/15/d...

But more than his existence, I hate the people still cite him approvingly. People listen to ideas about bad conscience and ressentiment, where Nietzsche is saying "you, the reader, are nothing but malice unless you are an elite" and say "yes actually, I feel so much ressentiment and that's why I want justice." They try to convince themselves that actually Nietzsche was being more nuanced than he appears to be. Am I trying to say that Nietzsche has no complexity? Of course not. But people who defend Nietzsche's work almost demand that you ignore the things he says, things he never contradicts and that no one even suggests he contradicts. His ideas are bad because he refused to understand the morals of his day, because he rejected their basis and therefore never considered that they might be as much a matter of practicality as they are of empathy. He never thought procedurally about why certain things might take place. The lack of connective tissue in his work is fairly alarming, and this is important because his ideas do not really make sense unless, like most philosophers, you have a little self-doubt inside that you like someone to beat on from time to time.

Because I'm feeling generous to all the losers: Why I Hate Nietzsche substack.com/home/post/p-...

I'm tired of you fucking idiots who yourselves have not read Nietzsche closely coming up to tell me I didn't get it when you have absolutely nothing. Nietzsche is shit. If you think his ideas are good, you are a fool.

I say "Nietzsche promoted master morality and hated slave morality", people go "but he said we have to get BEYOND our morality", I say "yes, he says our morality now is slave morality and he says it shackled master morality, he is talking about a resurgence of that" and they just splutter.

And when I say no one has challenged them, understand me, they don't even venture specific challenges. No one has ever said "this thing you suggested is wrong". They just refer to other shit he wrote which barely supports their point. Fuck you.

I do not have any time of patience for Nietzscheans. You are all dupes. The only thing you have to say is "you don't understand what he wrote". No one has ever successfully challenged my arguments. Shut the fuck up.

I changed the title to "Why Normal People OFTEN Don't Fight Fascism" cause my point is that it's hard for normal people to fight fascism, not that it's normal to not fight fascism. Most people are anti-fascist open.substack.com/pub/jonwuka/...

Dipshit

Dipshit

The idea that a morality of compassion came not out of mercy but out of resentment is the key beginning of Nietzsche's reasoning and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it went that way. And if it didn't, none of what he says about morality makes any sense.

My problem isn't that Nietzsche was mean to religious people or whatever. My problem is that his thinking is bad. His constructions have obvious assumptions and non-assumptions, the "slave revolt of morality" being the most obvious, and his absence of any idea of power-mercy.

Obviously I'm weasel wording a bit but I'm watching this guy's video "Why Everyone Hates Nietzsche" and none of the arguments he makes would hold up against any questions of material analysis, it's all just like "well but it wasn't QUITE as mean as you think it was" and that's not the issue I have.

While I know that there are communists/anarchists who are pro-Nietzsche, I really doubt that Nietzsche's work would endure a thorough communist or anarchist critique.

A lot of people did and do see through it, to the point that I think most people with half a brain just avoid reading Nietzsche altogether. I wish I could get a grant or something to express just how little there is there.

Nietzsche was both a genius and a dipshit. He's a dipshit because there's a very good reason that conservatives weren't really writing this shit down in reasoned language: it's because it sucks and people would see right through it. He was a genius for seeing that "Nah they probably won't though"

I have always said that the primary reason that Nietzsche gets any reading on the left is that people on the left feel like losers and Nietzsche gives them a way of justifying that feeling. Not explaining it and helping them get over it. Giving them a narrative for why they feel like shit.

People always want to make it about how Nietzsche must have triggered you by saying this or that, and it's like look his arguments are bad. Him irritating me is just what got me to actually read his arguments and when you do that, which I have, they just fall apart.

But he is just being a conservative, borderline fascist in the generic sense. Everything he thinks are thinks that you could expect a garden variety conservative to believe even if they had never read Nietzsche. That's because his big ideas are just conservativism.