The General Will vs. the Great Shrug: Why Dark Enlightenment Isn’t Good Enough
Strange Times
We live in strange times. On one hand, we’re witnessing the steady collapse of democratic trust, the rise of authoritarian flirtations, and the mainstreaming of political nihilism dressed up as new thought. On the other hand, the means to solve our greatest problems—psychologically, socially, philosophically—have never been more within reach.
The danger isn’t that we are failing to ask questions. It’s that we’re asking the wrong ones—or worse, settling for answers that masquerade as inevitabilities. The so-called “iron law of oligarchy” is one of these: the lazy claim that power inevitably concentrates, and resistance is futile. It’s used as a sigh of resignation, a great shrug dressed in systems theory.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
A Shrug in the Place of a Solution
Dark Enlightenment—particularly the version popularized by Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug)—has gained surprising traction, especially among tech elites and those disillusioned by the inertia of modern democracy. In essence, it offers a seductive claim: liberal democracy has failed, egalitarianism is a delusion, and progress means returning to a kind of techno-monarchy where a small ruling class of geniuses call the shots.
Let’s grant some of the premise. The liberal democratic order is flawed. It’s corrupted by wealth, manipulated by media, and driven by short-term self-interest. But to conclude from that failure that oligarchy is preferable—that we should simply choose new masters and abandon the pursuit of shared governance—is not just anti-democratic. It’s anti-intellectual.
The worst part? It’s lazy. It assumes that humanity can’t do better because it hasn’t yet. It makes no serious attempt to understand what human beings actually are, how minds work, or what kind of society might emerge if we designed our systems around psychological truth rather than economic convenience.
And it’s here that I’d like to revisit a forgotten idea: the General Will. Not as it’s been misunderstood in textbooks, but as a profound metaphysical principle of harmonized intelligence—and as the cornerstone of a better future.
