For some reason, I have spent a lot of time on HPANWO
replying to Stefan Molyneux, for example:
https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-afterlife-second-reply-to-stefan.html.
Most of my responses are to his audio and video work, but he is also an author,
like me, and has written some non-fiction and fiction books. His latest novel
is called
The Present and he himself
makes a note of his unimaginative titles; his previous one is
The Future. This is only the second
fictional work of Stefan's I've read; the other was his historical novel,
Almost.
The Present is, as its title suggests, set in the present day and leads
into the near future. It starts off with a series of profiles of the two main
character groups. Molyneux's style is very different to my own and I find it
difficult to absorb. It consists of long narrative monologues as well as character
thought monologues. There is no shortage of dialogue, but this tends to be
interspersed with explanatory narration in a way that doesn't quite work for me.
This is not to say Molyneux is a bad writer, just that his particular style is
not one I, as a personal reader, enjoy. In the last couple of years, Stefan has
become increasingly black-pilled. He ended a recent Freedomain show with a
statement of failure. He believes we have lost our chance for freedom in this
particular cycle of history and our only option now is to wait for the great
collapse and hope people afterwards rediscover his work and it inspires them to
do a better job than we did; with peaceful parenting, the non-aggression
principle and universally preferable behaviour etc. As far as he can see, there
are simply too many broken, dishonest humans in the world for the world ever to
be free in the current era. Source:
https://fdrpodcasts.com/5130/are-we-doomed.
The Present is a
story about his predictions for the world. It begins in a society on the brink;
although things seem very normal to begin with and the crash happens almost
overnight, coming apparently out of nowhere. I'm not sure we wouldn't have a
bit more warning than that. The only foreshocks the characters get is they
notice fewer lorries on the roads and items missing from shop shelves,
indicating that the supply infrastructure has broken down. Virtually the next
page we see descriptions of shops being looted, electricity and water being cut
off and dogs reverting to wild lupine packs. In one dramatic scene, the Rachel
character is hunted by a pack of starving dogs desperate to make her their next
meal. Rachel is the only character in whom I felt any depth. All the others are
merely embodiments of Molyneusian concepts. Regular listeners of the author
will recognize them immediately. Rachel is described in the opening scene as a
shallow and spoilt young woman who is a fellow traveller of feminism without
consciously being one or even understanding the movement. However by the end of
the story she is transformed, even making wry jokes about her former attitudes.
Her sister Cassie is a nurse and has a son called Ben who is about three years
old and spends most of his days in a creche while his mother works. As a result
Ben is suffering numerous behavioural problems. The curse of child daycare is a
recurring issue in
The Present and
its supposed psychological harm to children is explored in detail. Cassie's
husband Ian belongs to a men's rights organization. Antifeminism, or the men's
rights movement, is another major plot thread in this novel. Rachel, as an
investigative journalist, decides to study the MRM and through that meets
Oliver, the pivotal character between the two families. I don't know about you,
but when I'm reading a book I can imagine everything being described as a
picture in my mind, almost as if I am constantly adapting it into a mental
movie. However, occasionally and completely unintentionally, my own mind steps
in and overrules the author. Oliver is depicted in the novel as some kind of
Galtian supermensch with thick hair, a chin like a warship's prow and sculpted muscles
from head to toe. However, the moment he entered, I imaged him as a short and
chubby young man a bit like Blake Lemoine, the famous Google engineer in the
illustration. Oliver's family are devout Christians who say grace over their
meals and are making plans to escape the doomsday by fleeing the city to a
remote agrarian community. Christianity is a major theme in
The Present, but not as a religion in
itself; there is nothing CS Lewis about the story. Molyneux merely analyzes
Christianity as a socio-political phenomenon. In the last few years Molyneux
has broken ties with organized atheism, both old and new, and has embraced
cultural Christianity. (So far there is nothing in his output to indicate that
Stef's conversion has caused him to develop a genuine faith, like Dave Cullen
has, see:
https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2019/06/computing-forever-born-again-reply-to.html;
but I am on the lookout for any hints.) Rachel's boyfriend Arlo has some
interesting features. He is an incredibly handsome young man who works part-time
as a model, but his other occupation is as a zookeeper. At first one sees him
as a superficial and mindless "himbo", but as the tale progresses you
are shown his private self which is deeply dissatisfied with being of no value
to others except as an outward appearance. He loves the animals at the zoo
because they see beyond that and get to know his inner self. Unlike his girlfriend,
Arlo exits the narrative early on and we are led to assume he has perished in
the collapse with so many other people. I
enjoyed reading
The Present, even
though it is very dystopian and Stefan told his audience that it had taken a
lot out of him emotionally. It does not end without hope. Oliver's survivalist
community is very successful and as the novel draws to a close, the reader is
left in no doubt that it has a good chance of persisting through this new Dark
Age to a brighter distant future. I think that if such a collapse of
civilization happens then it will be a terrifying and miserable experience for
us all, but
The Present has made me
realize that in some ways it will also be a liberation. We will have a hell of
a lot of be frightened about, but nothing at all be
worried about. The poison of post-modernity, which is described in
all the gruesome detail I expect from Stefan, will be no more. When we're out
hunting and gathering, fighting off hungry dogs and gangs of nomadic thugs,
nobody is going to bother posting the latest sex scandal about Simon Parkes. It
will be a huge relief, I must admit; and, if the cause is what I hope it will
be, despite everything we should rejoice. Stefan doesn't believe in the Illuminati
and New World Order. His vision of the collapse is caused simply by the
sickness of society eventually overloading it. I personally believe there are
three possible causes for the collapse. Firstly, the ultimate fall of the
Illuminati leading to what I call "the transitional period", which,
as I've said, could be a very turbulent time indeed. I describe such a society
in my own novel
Roswell Revealed- a World After Disclosure,
see:
http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2017/10/roswell-revealed-is-here.html.
The second cause is a deliberate demolition of civilization out of whose ashes
the Loomies plan to build their New World Order; or they just want to
obliterate the world in a spiteful scorched earth policy in response to their
own defeat. Obviously I hope that one never happens. The third is my own model
closest to Stefan's, the socio-politico-economic engineering of the Illuminati
leading to an unintentional collapse. Should that happen we will have some hope
left because it is really very similar to the first scenario. We can still
build a viable post-Illuminati civilization from that catastrophe. I do recommend
The Present. It can be read for free
here:
https://freedomain.com/the-present/.
Stefan is also working on an audio book which you can hear if you subscribe to
him on Locals, see:
https://freedomain.locals.com/member/freedomain.
See here for more
information: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2019/01/denying-2016.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-2016-matters.html.
