Creature Comforts: Neoliberalism and Preparing for Disaster

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ideological trends in Silicon Valley and how that influences the way Americans prepare for climatic, political, and economic disaster. The suite of ideas called the Dark Enlightenment influence the makers and designers of doomsday preparation products for the middle classes, which in turn folds addressing global instabilities into a neoliberal and anti-democratic project that emphasizes individual consumption over collective action. This article argues that even as human life confronts unprecedented challenges for survival, society organized through neoliberal principles precludes collective democratic processes for addressing an uncertain future.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and my Environmental Political Theory colleagues for excellent feedback along the way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015).

² Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture, January 1996.

³ Robert Kirsch, “You Can’t Handicraft the Apocalypse: The Invidious Consequences of “Opting Out“,” New Political Science 41, no. 4 (October 2, 2019): 1, https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2019.1686740.

⁴ Jenna Schnuer, “This Startup Is Making Stylish Earthquake Survival Kits,” Entrepreneur, March 13, 2015, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242518.

⁵ “About Preppi – Makers of the Best Emergency Preparedness Kits for Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Blizzards, and Fires.,” Preppi, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.preppi.co/pages/about-us.

⁶ “About Preppi – Makers of the Best Emergency Preparedness Kits for Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Blizzards, and Fires.”

⁷ “The Prepster | Two-Person | 3-Day Emergency Kit Bag,” Preppi, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.preppi.co/products/the-prepster.

⁸ Joe Veix, “Survive in Style With a $995 Emergency Kit,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2018, sec. Life, https://www.wsj.com/articles/survive-in-style-with-a-995-emergency-kit-1525443716.

⁹ Eleanor Ainge Roy, “New Zealand Gave Peter Thiel Citizenship after He Spent Just 12 Days There,” The Guardian, June 29, 2017, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/new-zealand-gave-peter-thiel-citizenship-after-spending-just-12-days-there.

¹⁰ Elizabeth Stamp, “Billionaire Bunkers: How the 1% Are Preparing for the Apocalypse,” CNN, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/style/article/doomsday-luxury-bunkers/index.html.

¹¹ Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2008).

¹² Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 17.

¹³ Brown, 65.

¹⁴ Mitchell Dean “Foucault Must Not Be Defended,” History and Theory 54, no. 3 (October 2015): 389–403, 399.

¹⁵ Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 65.

¹⁶ Brown, 65–66.

¹⁷ Stanford University, “Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address (2005),” Stanford News, June 14, 2005, https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/.

¹⁸ Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 84.

¹⁹ Brown, 84.

²⁰ Brown, 108.

²¹ Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” 1.

²² Barbrook and Cameron, 1.

²³ Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

²⁴ Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” 4.

²⁵ Barbrook and Cameron, 7.

²⁶ Phillip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pélerin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), xi.

²⁷ Milton Friedman, “Neoliberalism and Its Prospects – Items – Collected Works of Milton Friedman,” accessed June 22, 2020, https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/objects/57816/neoliberalism-and-its-prospects?ctx=b8c0f32e-f5a4-4e53-ba3d-cf017b993579&idx=0.

²⁸ Friedman, 3.

²⁹ Friedman, 3.

³⁰ Friedman, 3.

³¹ Ibid, 15.

³² Phillip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pélerin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

³³ Ibid, 143.

³⁴ Ibid, 163.

³⁵ Nick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment,” 3.

³⁶ Scott F. Aikin, “Deep Disagreement, the Dark Enlightenment, and the Rhetoric of the Red Pill,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 36, no. 3 (July 2019). doi: 10.1111/japp.12331, 425.

³⁷ Timothy Luke, “The Dark Enlightenment and the Anthropocene: Readings from the Book of Third Nature as Political Theory,” Anthropocene Alerts (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2020).

³⁸ Ibid., 267.

³⁹ Ibid., 268.

⁴⁰ Nick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment,” 1.

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Peter Thiel, “The Education of a Libertarian,” Cato Unbound, April 13, 2009, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian.

⁴⁴ Thiel.

⁴⁵ Patri Friedman, “Beyond Folk Activism,” Cato Unbound, April 6, 2009, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism.

⁴⁶ Phillip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, 162.

⁴⁷ Scott F. Aikin, “Deep Disagreement, the Dark Enlightenment, and the Rhetoric of the Red Pill,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 36, no. 3 (July 2019). doi: 10.1111/japp.12331.

⁴⁸ “About Seasteading,” The Seasteading Institute (blog), April 6, 2020, https://www.seasteading.org/about/.

⁴⁹ BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug: How to Reboot the US Government, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZluMysK2B1E.

⁵⁰ BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug.

⁵¹ BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug.

⁵² BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug.

⁵³ BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug.

⁵⁴ BIL2012 – Mencius Moldbug.

⁵⁵ Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 139.

⁵⁶ Brown, 141.

⁵⁷ Andrew Szasz, Shopping our Way to Safety (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).