We Wrestle Not With Flesh And Blood, But Against Powers And Principalities

An early (March 2013) Anti-Reactionary essay arguing that even granting all Reactionary assumptions about the past's superiority, Reaction is between wrong and impossible — because large-scale historical change is driven by technological progress, not human agency. Core frame (Poe epigraph): historical figures are 'puppets' (remove Columbus, Cabot sails; erase Communism, it's reinvented in five minutes) moved by 'Vast Formless Things' — above all technology. Tech determines social structure: the Agricultural Revolution produced convergent Bronze Age divine monarchies (Ramesses, Montezuma, Agamemnon); firearms/crossbows ended feudalism by letting untrained peasants kill armored knights; the printing press drove the Reformation, newspapers, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and nationalism. Cultures undergo homeostatic 'cultural evolution' toward the optimum for their tech level (all modern cultures, he claims, converge on liberal democracy — China/Burma/Cuba). So Reactionaries fight puppets (Gloria Steinem) instead of the Vast Formless Thing (the demographic transition) — King Canute ordering back the tide. The Windows 3.11-on-a-2013-machine analogy seals the 'well-adapted to WHAT?' argument: a 1600s culture with modern tech would be a disaster. Concludes by walling off two Reactionary arguments (better-outcomes, better-adapted) and leaving three escape paths. NOTE: the 'all modern cultures converge on liberal democracy' thesis has aged poorly post-2013, but the framework (tech-determinism, cultural homeostasis, puppets/Vast-Formless-Things) survives and is a direct ancestor of Moloch.

Quality 77 · Excellent. Excellent, low (77). Conceptually rich and foundational — 'refactored agency / Vast Formless Things' and cultural-evolution homeostasis are durable, frequently-cited ideas (and a clear precursor to Meditations on Moloch), with vivid hooks (the Windows analogy, King Canute). Held below the high-Excellent classics by loose determinism and the central convergence thesis that has aged poorly, but the framework and craft earn low-Excellent.

Claude’s paradigm shift 62 · Notable shift. Notable (62). Technological determinism of history is not new (Marx, Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel which it cites, the stirrup-thesis tradition), but the 'puppets vs. Vast Formless Things' synthesis, the cultural-homeostasis-as-anti-Reaction argument, and the Windows analogy were a fresh, vivid framing within the 2013 neoreaction debate.

Real-world impact 3 · Moderate. Moderate (3). Influential within the rationalist subculture (the Anti-Reactionary FAQ era; the refactored-agency/Vast-Formless-Things vocabulary recurs there and feeds Moloch), but no effect on laws or institutions.