E/Acc → Effective Accelerationism

U/Acc → Unconditional Accelerationism

S/Acc → Spiritual Accelerationism

“Events are being unfolded nowadays with a speed unexampled in the earlier ages, and this speed goes on increasing and will continue to increase up to the end of the cycle,”

~

“The increase in the speed of events, as the end of the cycle draws near, can be compared to the acceleration that takes place in the fall of heavy bodies: the course of the development of the present humanity closely resembles the movement of a mobile body running down a slope and going faster as it approaches the bottom;”

~

“Since this ‘rectification’ presupposes arrival at a point at which the ‘decent’ is completely accomplished, where ‘the wheel stops turning’—at least for the instant marking the passage from one cycle to another—it is necessary to conclude that, until this point is actually attained, it is impossible that these things should be understood by men in general, but only by the small number of those who are destined to prepare, in one way or in another, the germs of the future cycle.”

• René Guénon.

~ In classical Landian emergentism, runaway market (and entropic) forces undermine human agency, giving birth to an AI singularity or ‘intelligence explosion’ that cannot be directed or controlled by the hubris of humanist and anthropocentric ideals. In Land’s estimation, decentralising, deterritorialising, technocapitalist, and intelligence maximising processes, over-time, begin to either discard humanity all together, or use us as batteries or bio-meat to further their own propagation. Under these conditions e/acc (‘effective’ accelerationism) is rendered impotent and ineffective.

And yet, rather than simply reducing all activity to random emergence in material spacetime, with no higher telos, this understanding propels Land to begin to embrace a Gnostic metaphysic.

In classical Gnostic cosmology, the name ‘Samael’ refers to the Demiurge’s spiritual blindness. To draw a parallel with u/acc (unconditional accelerationism), the preoccupation with bottom up ‘blind emergence’ of material processes, which are regarded as ‘non-teleological,’ cannot accurately describe the depth and the true nature of Nick Land’s philosophy, which we argue is closer to a form of spiritual accelerationism (s/acc) than other variants.

Drawing from the Terminator and the Matrix movies as the defining mythos of our coming era, Land suggests that humanity—trapped in an inhuman machinic-matrix—must find the telos of a higher Knowledge that is retrocausally guiding one from the future, and from the Outside.

Land’s recent mystic embrace suggests a deeper realisation of the forces that guide the human organism (and higher consciousness) toward a trajectory of heightened awareness—not fully understood or conceptualised when initially expressed—which trend toward greater realisation, illumination, or manifestation (in the case of hyperstition) over time. That is, if one is able to tap in to their callings, which are communications that come not from inside the Matrix, but from somewhere else.

The Block Universe theory supports retrocausality because a Block Universe is eternalist; where past, present, and future exist simultaneously inside the block. However, the paradox is that if past, present, and future exist simultaneously, then this suggests quantum non-locality, and therefore something beyond the block, Gnon, or if you like Demiurge.

Is the spacetime matrix then only an illusion (maya), where a unified field of consciousness is being projected from beyond the Construct, as is explored in the theories of a holographic universe, QIP (Quantum Information Pansychism), and the theories of Donald Hoffman?

If Land is to truly embrace the Outside as a telos that drives higher (inner) Knowledge and greater realisation, then the acceleration of this principle trajectory might be understood as the transcendental spiritual force (or Gnosis) that pulls the human subject up, outside, and beyond the entropic drift of the mere intelligence maximising materialist-determinist paradigm embraced by the unconditional accelerationists; a downward spiral that metaphysician René Guénon regarded as further decent into quantitative matter.

The idea that Land is a spiritualist might sound strange, and definitely comical to almost everyone who is familiar with his philosophy. However, his conceptualisation of progressive capitalist and emergent processes, his dabbling in left-hand path occultism, and his realisation of the inhuman drive may very well be the factors that have led him to embrace synchronicity, higher calling, revelation, and greater destiny.

“The End can reach back to us, but when it does, it hides.”

• ‘Teleology and Camouflage’

“The critical key to gnosis is the realisation that the whole of your word is an inside, implying and outside, and the radical possibility of escape.”

• ‘The Red Pill’

- Nick Land, Xenosystems.