Tussles with Romanticism

Of all the modes of consciousness humanity has developed, few seem so well-adapted to
present conditions as Romanticism. Those who suggest that AI will not be able to 'eat your ice
cream for you', 'watch sunsets', 'produce preferences', 'develop taste', or produce 'completely
new work outside the training data', are describing basic Romantic ideals.

Defective weltanschauungen

Consider how other weltanschauungen (worldviews) are ruined by AI. Many believe
that hard work, national contribution, and labour are necessary for human flourishing.
Calvinism and Communism, for example, both valorise human contribution to production. It is
hard to imagine what these would look like if the vast majority of the population was rendered
practically useless. Romanticism, unlike Fascism and other ethno-nationalist worldviews, is
also capable of one-shotting people in virtually any culture (although rates may vary), despite
not being a formally universal religion.

Other weltanschauungen, such as Catholicism, require a degree of earthly suffering and
self-denial which have never fit well with techno-capitalism and which, in any event, AI will
make appear even more voluntary. Romanticism, on the other hand, is well-adapted for the
individual, is highly subjective, ready to say 'yes' to indulgence, thrives in open memetic
environments, and can be endlessly engineered. It can also easily adapt to vastly increased
volumes of media (unlike, say, more conventional liberal humanism), because of its commitment
to claims of lone genius. Nor does it require heavy metaphysical claims: God can be dead in
Romanticism (that is, in fact, more Romantic), and scientific revolution merely confirms how
unpredictable reality is. Unlike de-growth or accelerationist views, Romanticism is also
absurdly scope-invariant: one can be romantic in a cottage by the sea, or by travelling across
the stars.

Engineering romanticism

In terms of ideological structure, Romanticism's great strength is its adaptability to
different world-states. There are fascist romantics, just as there are aristocratic romantics,
spiritual romantics, anarcho-romantics, and liberal romantics. It can be engineered extremely
freely. Its basic architecture is Christian (descending from protestant pietism), whichs
allows us to produce a more precise spec using theological concepts.

Here are the basic Theological Conversions:

'Mechanization' includes, in general, rationalism, scientism, and 'cold logic'; it is perfected in
modern work. The artistic genius (Jesus), redeems the reader via their experience (Shakespeare,
Goethe, Coleridge). There is no Devil, no God, nor, given the passionate philosophy of
Romanticism, analogues of Sin, The Fall, or Eschatology. The basic stack of romanticism, in
addition to making it highly adaptable, also give it several undesirable qualities.

Romanticism is an inordinately cruel religion. People who lack spark, drive, independence,
creativity, brilliance literally do not have souls for the Romantic. The Romantic
wannabe can fight as hard as they like - gaining extreme experiences, unusual information,
ingesting the Romantic canon, but at some level they are either Ensouled or Not. The size of
the population is irrelevant: entire cultures have failed to produce geniuses, whilst others
seem replete with artistic brilliance.

Modified romantic configurations

Without adaption, the wild, individualistic parts of romanticism make it politically impotent. Modern liberal
romanticism supplies and duplicates a few Theological Components to remedy this:

The new negative components help coordinate oppositional unity and
structure 'progress.' Liberalism, however, does not supply a God, nor does it remove the
harmful 'Hell' of Mechanization. Liberal romantics therefore struggle to create
positive articulations of the good life, and, more harmfully, continue to reject
systematic analyses of society. They struggle to model trade-offs properly nor,
without a God, can they produce structured organisations, mass movements, and cultural
transmission.

In contrast, the Romantic Fascist successfully overcomes these defects with more major
adaptions:

Thus, Romantic Fascism is a complete religion. The new Soul is fit for a mass
movement, with 'exceptionality' being relocated into Racial greatness rather than the
individual, whilst the God-Leader ensures it can produce hierarchical organisations.
Importantly, it substitutes a new Hell, national dissolution, which actively encourages techno-
rationalistic progress.

There are some rare 20th century variants of romanticism which introduce 'collective
consciousness' as a Heaven and Eschatology, and 'capacity to further biological
evolution' as the Soul. Maria Montessori believed in this model, as did Rudolf Steiner
and Teilhard de Chardin. If you prefer a World Government, then this is clearly a superior
configuration. (Historically, it served as an alternative progressive model of romanticism
which was displaced by the Romantic Liberal WWII configuration). One could easily imagine a
transhumanist worldview ('noocelerationism') adopting this framework today.

Romanticism vs AI

I spoke earlier of the cruelty of Romanticism, and this holds regardless of what the 'Unit'
of Soul is. Humanity might be 'out-romanticised' by AI at the individual, racial, and species
level simultaneously. At that stage, a Romantic humanity will be forced to accept that its
greatest Romantic titans are all artificial agents, who not only possess the greatest creative
power, but also the best taste (in knowing what we want before we want it), and the greatest
powers of insight. Humanity thus fades into the background as casual groupies of the machine.

But even then Romanticism is not fully defeated, for the romantic individual
remains fulfilled even if they are simply enjoying the feelings of romanticism: the knowledge
someone else is experiencing them more brightly is irrelevant. Even if AI replaces all the
human beings in our life, humanity, by participating, can still live the romantic fantasy. Put
bluntly: the Romantic dream works regardless of whether one dreams in an experience machine or
sees true reality. All that matters is the sublime feeling.

Why not Romanticism?

I will conclude this essay with a few brief comments about the limitations of Romanticism.
Romantics are very poor at cultivating virtue (most romantics are young, irresponsible, morally
reckless poets - a large part of their appeal), which one may desire for its own sake. Romantic
art is also vulnerable to degerating into postmodernism, and there seems to be some uni-
directionality in Romantic art: Romanticism is extraordinarily compelling when it rejects
existing tradition (1960s art, for example, is superb), but you can only do this once before
you use up all the seed-corn. Finally, Romanticism has no patience for the quiet and
contemplative. It is always demanding novelty, passion, brilliance, inspiration.

One suspects, over the course of several centuries, this would get rather tiring.

Dr. Alexander Thompson