Forget theory.

I.

Everyone knows that attention has become the scarce object of note. It’s less often-remarked that up until a few minutes ago we lived in a world where capital was logically identified with the object of scarcity (that is, money), even if theoretically distinct (maybe following Kalecki’s dictum that workers spend what they earn, while capitalists earn what they spend). Something is off-kilter now — this isn’t a flight of theory, this is what most discourse has been about since the early augurs of Eternal September.

A further (even if rather minor) symptom of the attention-seeking character of our epoch is that to forget something now means to strip it of value. There is nothing natural about this; just a few hours ago, things were most valuable when forgotten: it used be the case that vor was broken and things were at their existential peak when they became unnoticeable. (Whenever something still has this character, we relegate it to the below-ground of infrastructure together with electricity and running water, both things that are only noticed when they stop working). In yet another time and place, the wisdom of ultimate value was meant to be forgotten, “like a raft one holds on to cross the river”.

Admittedly, English is not well-suited for the finest nuances of this discussion. Lacking imperative forms, the chasm between “oublie la théorie / olvida la teoria” and “oubliez la théorie! / ¡olvida la teoría!” goes unnoticed. It’s almost like English came with implicit exclamation marks around certain constructions. Even in the presence of explicit punctuation: doesn’t this text, under the weight of its title, seem to be working up to a polemical statement to the tune of “forget theory! it has no value!”? The chasm-paving has the effect of pulling everything to the gravity well of clickbait.

II.

This “tweet” is about ethics:

This is about morality:

To generalize: @SloaneSays is concerned (here, anyway) with issues of chromaticity. A feud is one thing through the chroma of escalation; another, entirely, through the chroma of elevation. Willet is concerned with the chrematistics of it all — and if there’s no great wealth to be found in forgiveness, at least how not to go broke with it. Yet how common is the Tupac-Biggie thing where there should instead have been an album colab/joint tour? Willet wants us to do bean-counting on our acts of forgiveness. He sees it as a means to a higher end. This is a very pragmatic attitude, but it doesn’t come with much practical depth — short, of course, of Jinping-colored social credit scoring.

“asemic horizon” wants to continue to explore theory towards an… asemic… horizon. There’s chroma and chrema coordinates to this. But general chrematistics doesn’t happen except as supported by generic chrematistics. Does this mean anything? Not yet, and it never will if we try at all times to keep track of local chrema scores. A shift in chroma always presupposes a shift in thinking, and the first internal revolution to be fought is to forget morality.

III.

Oublier la théorie is, of course, a prerequisite for going after theory in some grander sense. Theory kids have typically always been cerebral; but if one is going to continually self-induce “nosebleeds” (shifts in thinking that lead to shifts in chroma), one needs to get loose from the groove of holding the world in one’s brain-hands. Readers who have sifted through “asemic horizon” with generous priors must have sensed that its patent-pending vatic style is not superfluous — the louder sell would be to start citing facts and literature in Scott Alexander fashion, but that wouldn’t make your nose bleed.

Yes, in the asemic horizon we forget theory.