Possibly my favourite book ever.

>>8177401
Played the first Deus Ex; don't have to read it.

I don't read, so no

I'm only 100 pages in (The rise and fall of the first men, 500,000 years of history, although most of it is two huge ass dark ages) and the parts about the syncretism of materialism and puritanism into a blind worship of progress and "movement" were particularly chilling. It's very easy to see that happening right now in our society with "Disruption" obsessed Silicon Valley billionaires and pseudo-atheist singularian technology worshipers.

The part about autistic German Philosophers was funny too.


>>8177446
Deus Ex references it, but the book is a whole different level. If you really wanted to adapt this to a video game you'd need something like Civilization crossed with Dwarf fortress on acid. If anything the kind of games we make today, Even great ones like Deus Ex, are too progress oriented (Constantly leveling up facing harder and harder challenges until the end where you win.) to accurately tackle this book's perspective.

>>8177507
>our society with "Disruption" obsessed Silicon Valley billionaires
can you expand on this, I have not read the book.

>>8177626
It basically states that reductionist materialism and american fundamentalist Christianity have many similarities, and that in the future, they merge into a worship of energy and movement. Pop science becomes increasingly pseudo spiritual and world religions are merged into a syncretic worship of vague universal energy in which religion and science are re-united.

Under this dogma, human thought is stifled for some four thousand years. People live in a technological utopia but live very shallow lives in which capitalism and thrill seeking has replaced spirituality and intellectualism. The society becomes increasingly ritualistic and collapses when they run out of fossil fuels. When the energy crisis hits they conclude that rather than stop wasting energy on meaningless ritual, they should actually devote MORE energy to the rituals in hopes god will reward them with the long lost secret of nuclear power (in this story, it had been invented earlier but suppressed by scientists who feared earth was not yet ready) When society starts to collapse because they stopped running the farms and factories that maintain their post scarcity utopia, they resort to using biological weapons on the rioters and start a dark age that lasts 15,000 years.

The civilization that follows is much more subdued and lasts longer but somehow manages to fuck things up worse when they unleash the secret of the atom.


The people of the first world state seem to be a criticism of modernism, but I can see elements of what Stapleton was talking about even today in our postmodern world.

Just finished it.

Amor fati is one hell of a drug.

Now time to read star maker.