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Unqualified Reservations, Vol. 01
Volume 1 of 3 of the print version of Unqualified Reservations.
Volume 1 includes:
Formalist Manifesto – UR’s first-ever post and a brief summary of the the main themes found throughout the remainder of the work.
An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives – Over 250 pages detailing the history, meaning, and internal contradictions of the ideology of progressivism. The text that gave us “the Cathedral.”
How Dawkins Got Pwned – A critique of the politics of Universalism, its foundations in both English and American strains of Protestantism, and its present manifestations in modern liberal secularism. The first analysis of Wokeism as a religion, a decade before Wokeism was ever conceived.
Volume 1 includes:
Formalist Manifesto – UR’s first-ever post and a brief summary of the the main themes found throughout the remainder of the work.
An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives – Over 250 pages detailing the history, meaning, and internal contradictions of the ideology of progressivism. The text that gave us “the Cathedral.”
How Dawkins Got Pwned – A critique of the politics of Universalism, its foundations in both English and American strains of Protestantism, and its present manifestations in modern liberal secularism. The first analysis of Wokeism as a religion, a decade before Wokeism was ever conceived.
502 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2023
23 people are currently reading
474 people want to read
About the author
Curtis Yarvin
10 books96 followersCurtis Guy Yarvin is an American political theorist and software developer. He is known for advocating the replacement of democracy with a monarchy headed by a CEO or dictator, often using the pen name Mencius Moldbug.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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December 20, 2024Decline to give it a rating, because while i find the general idea that bourgeois democracy being rotten to the core agreeable, the pernicious gang of Liberal journalists and academics inside Yarvin's Cathedral stirring away at a noxious brew of worm-laden soup to feed the ineffectual politicians that propel their bureaucratic hellscape fairly accurate, I seriously detest the solution (Jacobite-style reaction)
I think Yarvin is a sly propagandist for a particular view of western political evolution and history. One that is about two hundred years late to the party. I mean this in a nice way.
There are lots of 3/4-truths embedded in his prose. For example; the American Revolution is not some triumph of freedom over despotism, the Civil War was not necessarily fought for antislavery reasons, Obama Kinda Sucks, Actually, and that Protestantism is a general stain on human advancement (just not in the way dear Mencius thinks).
He uses a term "sincere mendacity" about 2/3 of the way through the text to describe a New-Deal era journalist's comparison of Nazi Germany and the USSR. I think our good Mr. Moldbug is also sincerely mendacious about a lot in his screed (FDR is a diet bolshevik, Pinochet was based, Lenin is evil as hitler, apartheid is good, broad economic and social progress is bad). I could continue. Lastly, there is a reason Moldbug does not elaborate, or dare to even mention the spectre of capitalism in his historiography, or the ways in which elites (like those who support Yarvin) corrupt this system even further, and stifle any attempts to buffer the cycle of Bullshit that emits from our political environment. No matter how hard these silicon valley reactionaries try to will it into existence, I fail to see how a Russia-in-the-90s style crack-up of our public institutions, & the government changing into a joint-stock company with them at the head of a new artisocracy (and new cathedral) is..good?
I think Yarvin is a sly propagandist for a particular view of western political evolution and history. One that is about two hundred years late to the party. I mean this in a nice way.
There are lots of 3/4-truths embedded in his prose. For example; the American Revolution is not some triumph of freedom over despotism, the Civil War was not necessarily fought for antislavery reasons, Obama Kinda Sucks, Actually, and that Protestantism is a general stain on human advancement (just not in the way dear Mencius thinks).
He uses a term "sincere mendacity" about 2/3 of the way through the text to describe a New-Deal era journalist's comparison of Nazi Germany and the USSR. I think our good Mr. Moldbug is also sincerely mendacious about a lot in his screed (FDR is a diet bolshevik, Pinochet was based, Lenin is evil as hitler, apartheid is good, broad economic and social progress is bad). I could continue. Lastly, there is a reason Moldbug does not elaborate, or dare to even mention the spectre of capitalism in his historiography, or the ways in which elites (like those who support Yarvin) corrupt this system even further, and stifle any attempts to buffer the cycle of Bullshit that emits from our political environment. No matter how hard these silicon valley reactionaries try to will it into existence, I fail to see how a Russia-in-the-90s style crack-up of our public institutions, & the government changing into a joint-stock company with them at the head of a new artisocracy (and new cathedral) is..good?
March 12, 2025
Already reviewed the individual segments of this book but now it's hear I may aswell give it a rating.
A good book containing writings from a simpler age (the mid 2000s) ahead of it's time as far as political philosophy on the internet goes, Elitist thought and in-depth revisionism that writes very similarly to modern blogs on the subject just with ancient cultural references. In particular the connection made in this book to protestantism in America and the progressivism of modernity is incredibly intriguing to me and noone writes about it quite like Yarvin. Give it a read.
A good book containing writings from a simpler age (the mid 2000s) ahead of it's time as far as political philosophy on the internet goes, Elitist thought and in-depth revisionism that writes very similarly to modern blogs on the subject just with ancient cultural references. In particular the connection made in this book to protestantism in America and the progressivism of modernity is incredibly intriguing to me and noone writes about it quite like Yarvin. Give it a read.
February 28, 2025
Mind-blowing for people who've never considered things like the American Revolutionary War having dissenters, having another side who believed they were as correct as the separatists and so on.
Maybe it was more interesting in 2007. It cites some interesting contemporary writers I was unaware of which is good.
That this guy was a libertarian before reading Thomas Carlyle (his words) explains a lot.
Maybe it was more interesting in 2007. It cites some interesting contemporary writers I was unaware of which is good.
That this guy was a libertarian before reading Thomas Carlyle (his words) explains a lot.
July 10, 2025
Yarvin is interesting. That isn’t true of most political thinkers today.
August 28, 2023
Essential reading for anyone that seeks to understand the world we live in today
July 22, 2025
Will be remembered as one of the greatest pieces of Political Science ever written.
January 8, 2025
This book belongs to a genre called "political horror."
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews