The political scene is filled with those who question the liberal foundations of society today. One such current is the Dark Enlightenment, which calls upon its followers to question modernity and the liberal establishment that sustains it. Among its luminaries is Curtis Yarvin.
Curtis Yarvin is a curious postmodern figure who deliberately defies classification. The fifty-one-year-old author is a software developer who engages in political commentary. His Substack musings were relatively unknown until recently.
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Much of his work is contained in his now-discontinued blog, Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote under the name Mencius Moldbug. He has since written a 2024 book titled Gray Mirror—Fascicle I: Disturbance, in which he tries to explain his illiberal position and vision of the future.
Entrance into Notoriety
With the right’s victory in the November elections, Mr. Yarvin gained a sizable following. He counts among his readers and admirers Vice President J.D. Vance as well as venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Interviews with establishment media such as The New York Times have given him some notoriety outside the fringe from which he emerged.
The shaggy commentator has everything to make him popular among the illiberal right. He is brash, sarcastic, skeptical and cynical. His style is irreverent and vulgar. He cares little for rules and formality. His anti-establishment invectives leave nothing standing. Every certainty must be doubted; every institution distrusted.
In Gray Mirror, Mr. Yarvin openly advocates for a regime change in which a single figure guides society like a CEO. Such a regime change would put in check the decay of the liberal woke establishment (which he calls the Cathedral) and pave the way for a new world more responsive to society’s needs. Many see traces of his ideas in the rising populist wave.
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Thus, to understand this curious figure, Gray Mirror would be a logical place to start. Thinkers usually lay out their thoughts in books. However, Mr. Yarvin’s work fails to deliver. Any reader who expects clarity comes away disappointed. Anyone who wants to review the book is likewise frustrated. It is indeed a dark enlightenment.
Unreviewable and Nearly Unreadable
Gray Mirror is unreviewable and nearly unreadable. It is a collection of rambling commentary—part blog, part social media, part Facebook banter—and the worst thing is that it seems intentionally so.
Thus, a standard review of the book is an exercise of futility since it violently resists such attempts. The author would reject putting the book into any classical framework.
The subtitle, Disturbance, is the stated aim of the book, and so perhaps the best way to discuss it is to declare it disturbing.
However, the book is disturbing not because its content is important. It isn’t. It is disturbing because it represents a chaotic way of dealing with problems that bodes ill for the nation.
A Lack of Certainty
Three disturbances might be noted.
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The first disturbance is its lack of certainty. There is no way to ascertain certainty inside the dark web of the book’s quasi-narrative. The author questions everything. He claims traditional explanations and narratives are partial and deceitful. No one is to be trusted—perhaps not even himself.
This distrust is built into the text. The author promises the reader that, after reading the book, “you may not have many answers, but you should have many more questions.” The book’s goal is “to disrupt the sense of where we are. Our historical, political, philosophical narratives are not infallible.”
One cannot rely on past narratives, canons and religious beliefs, not because they are wrong, but because they are just “not infallible.” They cannot be interpreted in the dark light of the present regime of “unwisdom.”
“We cannot use tradition to guide us into the future,” Mr. Yarvin affirms. “It is because we have a fake past. Any real, useful past must be constructed from first principles.” He invites readers to “write it out ourselves.”
Readers are deliberately left drifting and unanchored at the end of their journey. The only way out is the path of disturbance, where people’s past certainties are shaken. Regime change then becomes both possible and desirable.
A Framework of Semi-Certainties
The second disturbance contradicts the first. Upon a platform of doubt, Mr. Yarvin constructs a framework of semi-certainties. The same person who calls everything into question asks the reader to consider his conclusions, which he admits may or may not work.
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Thus, the author pontificates about his musings, affirming them strongly, without development or deep reflection. However, this strong affirmation takes on the air of an authority that claims to know what is going on.
In his jocular style, he insinuates he knows the game of the ruling oligarchy now in power. He exposes its Matrix-like dominion over society. He will write the manual for regime change from scratch to make the world a better place.
Disturbance becomes the formula for regime change. Without it, nothing will move forward.
The Perspective of Power
The final disturbance involves the book’s prism of cold, hard power.
His is the politics of the strong man, a kind of Caesar, who resolves everything efficiently by exercising his power and technique. The author reduces everything to power without considering the vast world of moral, cultural and other considerations that makes governing human and messy.
There are no references to charity, morals or virtue. There exists no high ideals or social community. As an atheist, Mr. Yarvin omits any reference to a loving God Who governs the world through His Providence.
In a pseudo-monarchical regime that functions like a corporation, everything becomes an exercise of power dynamics. The undefined aim is to make the world a better place to live. However, it is not clear what that means.
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His system does not address the grave moral issues that divide the nation; it suppresses them. The Culture War is a fake war that will be simply declared over with no side allowed victory. This “illiberal” system leaves in place all the excesses of liberalism that have created the present crisis.
Meanwhile, the deep questions of purpose, meaning, and morals remain untouched at a time when these issues are crying out for solutions. The Catholic reader will immediately notice that the vital role of religion, grace and God is not considered important.
What makes Gray Mirror so disturbing is that such ideas are gaining some traction among some conservatives.
Pablo Picasso of the Philosophical World
In times of political unrest and moral uncertainty, authors who attract shallow souls often emerge. They create a certain sensation because they affirm their ideas strongly. It becomes trendy to cite them as profound thinkers, if not prophets, who read the signs of the times.
About Gray Mirror, one is reminded of what Encyclopedia Britannica wrote about Martin Heidegger’s 1927 book, Being and Time: “Although almost unreadable, it was immediately felt to be of prime importance.”
Such works are unintelligible to the general public. Few can understand what is meant by Mr. Yarvin’s chapter, “The Etiology of Political Toxicity.” However, no one wants to admit that the emperor’s “new clothes” don’t fit. These thinkers are like the Pablo Picassos of the philosophical world, where everyone pretends to find meaning in confused canvases where none is intended.
Times of Radical Mediocrity
Catholic thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira once commented that convoluted philosophies are the products of mediocre minds. They lack the crystalline logic and élan that should characterize good philosophy. Such thinkers fail to take their ideas to their final consequences.
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Instead, they clog their thought with created jargon and complicated reasoning. They become attached and obsessed with their creations and easily become narcissistic. Like Gray Mirror, their works become difficult to read. They are disturbances, not solutions.
* * *
Such an evaluation may seem harsh and even uncharitable. However, this is not a personal attack. Works like Gray Mirror reflect much more the present culture than any individual.
Society suffers from radical mediocrity, in which no one wants to address causes or accept the consequences of their actions. Everything must be without effect.
The radical mediocrity of Curtis Yarvin and those like him consists of an unwillingness to enter into the existential questions that clamor for resolution. This results in the dangerous and paradoxical times of dark enlightenment.
First published on Law & Liberty.