Found something interesting here, continuing the topic of generations and philosophy

 While searching for a couple of dialogues for game development to rewrite and include in an article, I gradually started noticing intriguing, recurring patterns. I’ve often said that the corporate city, with its internal reliance on the absolute efficiency of everything that generates profit here and now, completely transforms people into a function of consumption, families into a function of efficiency and consumption, and even children into advertisements and consumers. What’s similar here is that nearly all of culture, especially in the 2010s, is thoroughly permeated with super-individualism and nihilism.

First, let’s talk about postmodernism. Globalism has triumphed. The world is unshakable, it’s not going anywhere, and things will always be as they are. This world must be protected and preserved. The problem is that disrupting it implies a pull from the past: the formation of a totalitarian state, traditions, or a return to the terrifying Middle Ages. Have you ever wondered why corporations fear feudalism? Because it means returning to a society where resources, including labor, had to be negotiated with a proverbial bandit wielding a gun, guarding a specific territory. Why does the state scare them? Because it represents control from above, and national unity is only useful for forming initial capital, not for further growth.

The result? Something in the middle must be maintained. Corporate culture has begun to reinterpret all meaning to turn it into a marketing strategy. Lacking new ideas, the first thing that came to mind as a form of critique was rational nihilism—a complete rejection of what’s happening around us. Why do I emphasize rational? Let’s recall the concept of new sincerity.

We have bloggers, writers, and intellectuals who disagree with the ongoing changes. This is fueled by a still-relatively-free internet, which is already undergoing economic expansion. The reasons vary, but their essence is the same: a desire to either lead the process in the end or simply withdraw and hide, without resolving contradictions or producing anything that could at least push the spiral of development forward. A boom in science begins, aimed at enlightening the population and universalizing knowledge to create a humanistic society capable of coexisting with what has been globally established. They simultaneously criticize tradition, especially in the post-Soviet context, while talking about progress, and at the same time denounce what’s being created here and now, seeing consumers all around but not understanding what to do about it. Ultimately, rational criticism, meant to explain the situation, turns into the very idealism it sought to avoid.

What’s even worse is that as soon as it became clear that new sincerity itself was turning into yet another marketing strategy, the contradiction wasn’t resolved but regressed back to thesis and antithesis. The result? Rationality in the corporate environment became the norm for explaining the very structure of the world, while nihilism became a weapon against the state. The individual in this system continued to represent a function, but now one with a legal basis. The main anthem begins—about freedom.

Freedom of expression, freedom of consumption, freedom of choice, freedom of life, death, self-control, and so on. The problem lies in the word freedom itself. What does it mean? A corporation will answer evasively, but it boils down to liberation from traditions—the most aggressive form of protecting human community, culture, and collectivism for capital—and from the state, as an ideological direction for forming a collective nation.

But individualism and collectivism aren’t just opposing thesis and antithesis; they are interdependent foundations of human life. A person doesn’t exist outside the experience of others: their identity, their sense of self, is built through dialogue and interaction. Renouncing social memory and collective practices isn’t a restoration of true freedom but a transition to a form of loneliness structured by the market. The corporate response to this is the myth of the “superhuman” in a market modification: be more efficient, be more mobile, become the Übermensch of a competitive world. Urban culture, in turn, weaves this demand into the schedule of life: neighbors, colleagues, even family become factors reducing productivity; people learn to view them as external elements subject to optimization.

Leftist thought, which once aimed to break with market logic, disrupt institutional orders, and seek universal human solidarity, has gradually found itself in the position of a dilettante forced to play by the rules of the very game it opposed. This is paradoxical but inevitable: when the infrastructure of capital encompasses languages, rituals, and desires, it doesn’t just appropriate the products of thought—it transforms the very form of protest, aligning it with its algorithms of efficiency. I think we’ve all noticed this.

At first, resistance seemed sincere: cultural practices, alternative communities, and rejection of consumption as an ethical stance. Then sincerity became a style, style became a commodity, and the commodity became a marketing strategy. To an observer, it looked like a play with a tragic ending: what was meant to break the system ended up incorporated into its repertoire. Worse still, some forms of refusal took extreme, personal consequences; opting out of life—a direct and irrational gesture—became, for some, the final aesthetic of dissent. This isn’t a glorification of suicide but a sign of cultural catastrophe: when protest has no public square, it seeks an outlet at the edge of the personal. This brings me back to old correspondences, as it’s among left-leaning individuals that I’ve noticed the highest number of… suicides.

I hadn’t paid much attention to this before, but I was surprised to discover that at least three people from the Socialist Alternative took their own lives. One of DOXA’s editors voluntarily chose euthanasia, justifying it with control and improving the state of nature—a kind of rebellion and, simultaneously, capitulation before a machine that cannot be broken. This shifted the field of resistance: the struggle was no longer about restructuring material relations but primarily about the form of expressing protest. If the corporation’s counterargument is the rationality of efficiency, technological progress, and law—the politics of identities—then this is not just a global conspiracy of governments and corporations but the first attempt to do something within the framework of rehashing old meanings, throwing themselves at the barricades with humanistic philosophy and, failing to achieve success, simply clearing the way for others.

For example, the proponents of the Dark Enlightenment. They seek to further harden the current order, synthesizing the market with traditions.

The Dark Enlightenment (in a broad, ideological sense) is a reaction to the paradoxes of postmodernism: disillusionment with universal values, skepticism toward democracy as a means of rational governance, glorification of hierarchies and expert authority, often accompanied by an aesthetic of elitism and technocratic rationalism. It reflects skepticism toward equality as a political myth and a belief in natural or functional differences between people and groups. This is the ultimate development of that same nihilism and super-individualism. Corporate urban culture is shaped into such a tradition, such an unshakeable part of ideas, that it must become the norm for generations of workers who are literally squeezed dry for the development of a limited group of people.

They draw a curious conclusion from the rebellion of leftist ideologies. If the masses, as Grandpa Sorel once wrote, cannot carry out direct action and dismantle the order, then why grant them democracy? Corporate rhetoric transforms into a philosophy of governance: “efficiency,” “optimization,” and “metrics of meaning” acquire a metaphysical status. Meanwhile, the arguments of the “dark” wing—about the natural hierarchy of abilities, the passivity of the masses, and the need for detached rule—become an ideological buttress for corporate strategy: hierarchy is proposed as a natural and rational method of organizing labor and politics.

Together, they reshape human subjectivity: the individual becomes a supplier of qualities and risks, managed through mechanisms of motivation and legal agreements. Freedom is declared an option for consumption and contract choice, but in reality, it becomes a choice within the boundaries of pre-established market algorithms. Law, in this synthesis, adapts: it formalizes and optimizes relationships, legitimizing private power and turning inequality into a legal structure.

The left, initially resisting all this, unwittingly paved the road to hell when they tried to operate within the framework of a global world. It’s not about their retreat or a conspiracy—it’s much simpler: communists, anarchists, and social democrats themselves did everything to enable the proponents of a more radical market, a more aggressive outcome, to take the steps we see today.

Corporate rationality demands stability and trust; “dark” rational-elitist thinking devalues universality and solidarity, gradually undermining the social foundation on which corporations rely: the market is public trust, and consumption is a social practice. When trust disappears, efficiency loses its resource. This is what we observe in the politics of figures like Javier or Trump.

The philosophical choice here is simple in theory but complex in practice: will we allow rationality to become an absolute in service of creating an ideal dark enlightenment world, legitimizing inequality as a “natural” order? Or will we demand that rationality operate in tandem with moral responsibility and collective memory, allowing freedom to be not just the right to sign a contract but the opportunity to collectively construct a shared life? Is capitulation necessary at this specific moment, or is there a chance to influence the situation, leveraging the current chaos in the global world provoked by corporations themselves? Should we bring tradition back into the fold of continuing collective memory, enriching science and culture, or abandon it entirely?

Telegram: @ShapkaSchpree