The Man Who is Afraid of Death, Women, and Nature

Hello Darkness…

I’ve been warning people about Peter Thiel, the owner of Palantir, for the past ten years or so. So when I kept seeing clips from a recent New York Times interview with the conservative religious writer Ross Douthat, I decided to listen to the whole thing so you don’t have to. (It was over an hour long, so you are welcome.)

Thiel is obsessed with both the stagnation of the world (which he literally blames on the hippies and Woodstock) and Transhumanism, which is the belief that technology can cure disease and extend lives (for those wealthy enough to afford it). He wants to see a future where your human natural body gets transformed into an immortal body — “but not just your body, but your heart, mind, and whole soul.” Not only does he believe in God, apparently, but he believes in the Bible. He was able to throw out chapter and verse numbers like they were obvious facts, and say things like “The word Nature doesn’t appear once in the Old Testament.” And “We are supposed to transcend nature. Nature means we have fallen.” He’s also obsessed with Armageddon and the Antichrist, claiming Greta Thunberg is the closest thing to the Anti-Christ because she wants “The one world Totalitarian State” or “Stagnant Totalitarianism.” Greta, by the way, was the only woman he mentioned.

Here is a man who is living in his own private superhero science fiction dystopian movie, who thinks he’s the hero, when he’s actually the villain. I’ve seen this with billionaire tech bros before. They are so isolated from the real world, surrounded by luxury, sycophants, and carefully curated “friend” groups, that they don’t realize they are living in a fantasy world that is directing a horror movie for the rest of us. We are just germs to them that must be sterilized so they don’t catch the disease of being human. All these guys who want to live forever have never had to care for an aging, ailing relative. Or tasted the freedom of facing the future without ties to parents who are no longer living. They take their comfort in a tunnel vision intellectualism that ignores any messy complexity of the human experience or nature. Or women. Unless they are the cartoon Ozempic women, like those who attended the Bezos wedding, climbing the cliffs of the Patriarchy in high heels as if tons of goody bags are at the top. It’s like a female Squid Game.

The good news is that he seems to have soured on politics. He said, “Funding politicians is a zero-sum game. It’s toxic for everyone involved.” And, “In retrospect, this was a prosperous fantasy” to believe Trump's conversations about the future. So yes, he is capable of learning. Although he is afraid of the “Zombie left-wing” people and “the Green thing” in Europe. He also claimed that he believes Elon has given up on getting to Mars, and now is focused on creating a billion robots in 10 years.

Sigh.

Peter, Peter, Peter…Where do we start?

Let’s start with stagnation. Do you know who isn’t stagnating? China. Why? Because American capitalists, in search of higher profits for less cost and effort, outsourced all our manufacturing and innovation skills (and recycling) to China. Meanwhile, the Chinese have high-speed rail, excellent healthcare, amazing education, and literacy levels, along with nutritious school lunches. Plus, their electric cars are way more advanced than ours. And imagine this: They don’t give a fuck about the Bible! They are the oldest continuous civilization in the world (over 5,000 years old). The Chinese aren’t perfect by any means. But they know how to last and thrive through adversity. As Xi Jinping just said, “The world can move on without America.”

Capitalism is cancer. Cancer is uncontrolled growth that spreads to all parts of the body (the Earth is our body. Nature is our body!). Capitalism is a cancer spread by management and efficiency consultants, venture capitalists, private equity, and Wall Street. I am not a Communist! But there has to be something in between that enables healthy growth, caring for everyone in the community, and encourages innovation and progress. Because what’s the opposite of stagnation? Movement. Progress. Progressives! I consider myself a progressive because I like progress. I like to look ahead rather than back. Plus, progressive music is awesome.

Maybe Progressive Democracy is what we are looking for. I think the reason some people believe that politics is a zero-sum game is that it is the quintessential patriarchal mindset. For every winner, there must be a loser. Resources are finite, so men must be free to grab as much as they can so that others can’t get them first. And women and people of color must be enslaved so that, God forbid, white men don’t have to do their own dishes, change diapers, or pick their own food.

Fortunately, there is another term: Positive-sum game. That’s the game I like to play, where everyone wins. Sharing is caring. And there is enough for everyone if we cooperate. Does that make me a zombie? If so, I don’t care. But honestly, I don’t think zombies* are real. They are just made-up things to scare us into believing we are doomed. We are not doomed. After all, there are people like Zohran Mamdani in the world. And AOC and Jasmine Crockett. And Bernie and Buttigieg. And you!

Towards the end of the interview, I could tell Ross Douthat was starting to believe that Peter Thiel himself was the anti-Christ and wanted to ask him that, but he held back out of fear. But ironically, after listening to Thiel for an hour, I am less afraid of him now. We fear what we don’t know, or don’t understand. Now I understand him better. He is a wounded, terrified, shell of a man who thinks he believes in God, but has no faith in the universe. That’s okay. He’ll figure it out eventually.

But he’s going to be blindsided by the real revolution.

And by the way, Nature always wins.

*According to Google AI: “The myth of the zombie originated in Haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries when African slaves were brought in to work on sugar plantations under the rule of France. The slaves believed that if they ended their own lives by suicide they would be condemned to spend eternity trapped in their own bodies as the undead.” So basically, hell.