Ccru – Syzygy Conversation between Mark Fisher & Steve Goodman 24/11/98

Syzygy Conversation / Initiation #1
Ccru – Mark Fisher and Steve Goodman – 24/11/98
Transcribed from minidisc – 30/04/17
This was the first of a series of recorded conversations whose aim was to explicate/clarify/transmit the embryonic mythos. Due to mnemonic fade and/or nonrecovery of other minidiscs, it is unclear whether subsequent recordings existed.
MF: Probably the best way in is through the eyes of the strata, which is, in a way, your own eyes, in so far as you are a subject. And that is also through the eyes of the AOE, who in a way, are the white magical brotherhood behind the times, literally. The sequencers of our history which culminates in the West as its teleological fulfillment, with all that that implies, particularly to do with a sense of the subject in that Kantian sense of being completely run by sequential time. The basic imperative of the AOE is to run the past from the future, so it is this model of perfected cybernetic control. What they have to assume is that they have already won. It’s a form of Calvinism
SG: Why? They have won, because they are already there in the future?
MF: Well, it’s partly this thing about the whole function of consciousness. Whenever there is consciousness there is this uninterrupted picture of the conscious mind, because the conscious mind can’t be conscious of the unconscious, and that is partly to do with temporality, this kind of retroactive temporality. It wants to say, “I did that because”, like this reverse Nietzsche thing that you were talking about. It owns any action by retroactively describing it as its will. That is the function of the conscious mind. It’s also about temporality. Julian Jaynes has this whole thing at the start of The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind to do with the fact that wherever the conscious mind appears, it will always patch up sequences such that it will appear that there was always consciousness, although in the average day, you’re often drifting off somewhere else all the time, but that is always screened out, whenever you are conscious, because part of being conscious, is this projection of unbroken continuity of conscious sequential time and its narrative about itself. It’s really always only retroactive. So the AOE are that as a social force, but they have to assume that they’ve won, even on Calvinist grounds, because as Calvin said, everything is in a sense mechanical because God has already decided who is saved and who isn’t. You can’t get yourself saved by any action. That’s not philosophically consistent to make that claim, but what you can do, well, your actions can show that you are already saved, like signs of grace. It’s like that with the AOE – they have to assume that they will have won come the moment of the eschatonic arrival, and therefore it’s like ratification of the process of the plan rather than determination. It’s already happened – God has already decided, that’s their model. The judgments of God are literal for them.Ccru – Syzygy Conversation between Mark Fisher & Steve Goodman 24/11/98 | Sonicwarfare (wordpress.com)