From the Publisher
The Dark Enlightenment: A Modern-day Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham was arguably the most eccentric thinker of the 19th century. A celebrated philosopher and jurisprudent, Bentham professed to support individual liberty and to oppose slavery. At the same time, however, he rejected any belief in natural law or natural rights. Although British, Bentham was sympathetic with the humanist version of the Enlightenment, putting him more in alignment with the French revolutionaries than the likes of John Locke or the American Founders. Among Bentham’s better-known ideas was the so-called panopticon, a proposed new technology for regimenting productivity. Meaning “all-seeing” in Greek, the panopticon was to be a special kind of prison outfitted with mirrors and telescopes to enable a group of supervisors to watch every inmate’s every move. The panopticon would be provisioned with looms and other manufacturing accoutrements, and Bentham promised that the new technology would rehabilitate prisoners while transforming the penal system into an efficient new means of production. While no panopticon was ever built, the term became synonymous with the misuse of technology to surveil and to control.
While some of Bentham’s philosophy made an impact, his numerous radical prescriptions for social reform, such as the panopticon, were ignored by political leaders (including both President James Madison, who politely rejected Bentham’s proposal to reform the American legal code, and Benjamin Franklin). In our day, however, our political leadership is showing a peculiar susceptibility to the once-fringe ideas of modern-day Bentham wannabes and their sacralization of science and technology. Today, a movement called the Dark Enlightenment, championed by the likes of tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel and philosophers-at-large Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, has become the creed, not only of Silicon Valley techno-utopians, but of a growing number of influential politicians and globalists, including key figures in MAGA such as J.D. Vance and Elon Musk.
But what is the Dark Enlightenment, and why are its cadences so seductive among elites? In effect, it’s a repudiation of the actual Enlightenment, in that it rejects “democracy” (i.e., any form of popular government) and favors the establishment of something akin to a technocratic oligarchy. The movement embraces both technocracy (the view that technology should be the basis for government) and transhumanism (the movement to rejigger humanity via genetics and other technology designed to alter our biological essence). Although the vast majority of Americans are completely unaware of these movements, they are immensely consequential, because they represent the way that large numbers of elites, both nationally and globally, think and plan. For example, while many of us are aware of the malign activities of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum at Davos, comparatively few appreciate the degree to which the WEF’s agenda is driven by technocratic and transhumanist considerations.
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