Notes from the Underground Founder

An exploration of superfluousness in Silicon Valley

Notes from the Underground Founder are the superfluousness ravings of the Underground Man, a startup founder in future San Francisco. Read at your own risk. Side effects may include self-loathing, ressentiment, and nihilism.

3:33am

I am a sick man…I am an angry man. I am told that the climate of San Francisco is bad for me, and that, with my insignificant means and consciousness, it costs too much to live here…But I shall stay here; I will not leave San Francisco! I won’t go away because it is a special misfortune to live amongst the most abstract and pre-meditated people in the whole world.

I want to, indeed, I am morally bound, to achieve great quests. Extraordinary men have the inner right to do so. Unfortunately, to do great things one cannot have character. A man of character is fundamentally limited. Such is my forty-year-old conviction. I am forty now…at times I urge to throw myself into a coffin. To go on living after forty is improper, disgusting, immoral! Who goes on living after forty? Give me a sincere and honest answer!

Just consider the great ones. They start young, and now their elders throw themselves at their feet. Indeed, there was a time I would have rejoiced to be slapped in the face by them. I am speaking seriously, for I desired nothing more than the privilege of changing the world at their side.

Those who build fast and stand up for themselves—how do they do it? They seem to charge at their goals like raging bulls. To them, obstacles are preordained to be overcome. I am green with envy of such men. They are stupid, I won’t deny that, but wise men in 2035 can’t seriously make themselves anything. Only fools and scoundrels can.

After all, to act one must be absolutely sure no doubts remain. How am I to know whether my actions won’t hurt an innocent fly in 400 years? How am I to be sure I am a man of blood and not a man of clay, trapped within some invisible structure, unknowingly committing violence on my fellow man? 

All the moral questions must be answered. But how am I to know my moral foundation? After all, that is the essence of all thinking and doing.

So you give up the quest to create your own existential cause. You try letting yourself be carried by your intuition, blindly, repelling consciousness. You choose war and adventure over sitting with your hands folded. You join great quests to improve humanity (and for no other reason). You slaughter lambs to accelerate the thermodynamic will of the universe, to maximize utility for all.

But the day after tomorrow at the latest, you will begin to despise yourself for having knowingly deceived your consciousness. You know deep down you wanted nothing but to play God. So you return to inertia. Ladies and gentlemen, do you know why I consider myself an intelligent man? Only because I have never been able to begin or finish anything. I have been telling the world of my New Ideas for twenty years now (I swear I will ship soon).

I have concluded that in life, conscious inertia is preferable to unconscious action. Better to be a man on the sidelines than a bull-pig in the arena. But oh, how existential anguish tortures me! Even now you know I am lying…you can tell I thirst for more than just the underground, but I cannot find it!

6:33am

A man of consciousness, particularly a founder, must always meditate in the morning. That is the only way he can center himself (or herself, or themselves) against the wolves of life. Retreat into your interior to protect yourself!

I hate walking outside. Ten years ago a Chinese dragon visited San Francisco and cleaned our streets. It was as if Moses himself had summoned the red sea to part again (I mention Moses to show I know of the Old Ideas, as I was recently made aware that Jesus is becoming important again). But soon after, the tents returned just as fast as they had disappeared.

Just now, I went outside and a homeless child approached me. He could not have been older than 14. How I wish I could have walked away, but so many bystanders were watching me. Their eyes were pleading with me to be a great man, to extend my mercy, to show my grace. Would Napoleon have given bread to the child? What would one of those stupid, Rickover-type people do? Oh, how I despise them, yet think they are sometimes superior to myself.

Owing to my unbounded vanity and desire to prove my value, I scoured my pockets. I giddily imagined how I would slowly pull a five-dollar bill from my trousers and this child would fall to his knees, kiss my feet, and beg for his salvation! There is an aristocratic playfulness about it, I thought with jubilation!

Yet when he reached for the bill, I felt complete disgust. A vermin child, how dare he demand of me what I labored so hard to accumulate! Everyone knows a man’s wealth is a function of his great contributions to humanity. Yet here was this stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, sickly son of Judas, not worth zero but worth negative, who himself has no idea what he is living for. It would be far better to give the money to a worthy cause, like saving lobsters or aligning AGIs.

In the end, I gave the boy my five-dollar bill. Then a ten-dollar bill. His lips quivered in a smile. He suppressed it at first, but then gave up all effort, now it was a huge grin; his face was one of depravity, of infinite pride and laughter.

3:36pm

I must confess that I did not think of the boy in the way I described in my previous entry. I merely wished to show you what a true San Francisco hero would think, not necessarily me. Our gods taught us that if a man learns of society’s interests, it is noble to replace all one’s own desires with a mission for humanity. How could I afford to help a child when the whole of humanity depends on me?

One must toil sleeplessly for the world, never for oneself. To act for oneself is improper, immoral, and disgusting! And if you do secretly desire things for your own interests, you must NEVER, EVER, TELL ANYONE.

Of course, this is a wonderful trick! When in these thousands of years has there been a single time when man has acted for others’ interests? How much blood has been shed in the name of peace for humanity? How many brothers have had their hearts pierced by their own kin in the name of preserving stability for the empire? Take Caesar, who was made and unmade in the name of protecting Rome. Take the whole 20th century—everywhere guts rained down like a divine inferno, and what’s more, as merrily as if it was champagne.

Someone once said, “To invoke humanity is to cheat.” I am always honest at cards, which is why honorable men like myself stay chained to the underground. I am broken in San Francisco, for I cannot bring myself to save humanity…

3:39pm

Through the introduction of an important person, my sole investor entered my life (though I harbor no illusions that all others who pitched to him were given a fair and equitable chance to receive investment, I am sure). Two weeks ago he invited me to a hero’s assembly, a gathering of hors d'oeuvres and fellow founders, to occur this very night.

Shyness often crippled me around other founders, making me verge on retirement, for they instilled shame in me. I longed to build something good for humanity…but every time at the very precipice of ideation, I turn from a man into a mewling boy. Artificial meats and rockets seem good, but AI marketing tools were what danced in my thoughts…bah, none of it matters anyway! I have been exploring ideas for twenty years and cannot choose!

Devil knows what dark fantasies I entertained of strangling my investor. Was he so ignorant of the wearisome charade I had to endure? Did he not know the exhausting dance required to weave a tale of exploration, reflection, and innovation, while retaining one’s believableness? No, he thought his invitation a favor. Under the guise of networking with those accelerator graduates, he lured me in hoping I would be inspired to commit to an idea.

If only I could be decisive so easily. Though I have always been a coward in action, I have never been a coward at heart. The truly decent men of our age must be a coward, slave, or both. Knowing this is how I can sleep at night.

But tell me, whoever thought interests could guide man’s righteousness? Forget humanity’s interests or one’s selfish interests, the very foundations of ‘interests’ are dog liver!

Those descendants of Bentham proclaim that it is man’s natural law to be guided by enlightened self-interest—that is—utility and interests alone can steer humanity as long as man is liberated from intangible nonsense like religious faith. They define what is advantageous as what has utility, and what has utility as what is good.

But will they then take it upon themselves to define with perfect accuracy what man’s advantage consists of? Even if you could, how can a human possibly measure whether every action fits within this abstract advantage? And even if you could do that, are you positive men will be happily lured to follow their advantage upon hearing the Siren song?

You think science, common sense, and reason can re-educate human nature. You think receiving universal basic income will make everyone satisfied sheep! You think a new political economy will come into existence, calculated with mathematical accuracy like a table of aerodynamic coefficients, such that all problems will vanish with a twinkle of an eye, simply because all possible answers have been supplied?

No, you, gentlemen, you have arrived at your entire registry of human advantages from the averages of utility calculations and Huberman psychology. I tell you, there is only one, single, advantage, man will sacrifice anything for. For its sake, man is ready to oppose reason, honor, peace, prosperity…even salvation from our darkest sins and all other useful things if he can attain that one most advantageous advantage, which I will reveal to you later.

6:36pm

Ladies and gentlemen, now that I am writing to you tipsy from beyond the underground, I will reveal to you man’s most advantageous advantage. Yes, there seems to exist something that is dearest to almost every person, that they will sometimes throw themselves in jail or Hell in pursuit of this advantage…

…which is one’s own freedom to choose. It seems one’s own unfettered choice, however crazy it is, is what proves our flesh and blood. Our lust for freedom makes us us! Wisecracks think we seek a rational choice or a noble choice, but what we truly seek is simply an INDEPENDENT choice, wherever that independence might lead or how much it might cost. I choose, therefore I am.

Of course I gave the vermin boy my money. I felt pride shake my being because that choice was my own. Not because of a felicific calculus, moral good, or my own passion, but simply to prove I am a man. In fact, it seems at times to me that the whole business of humanity consists solely of everyone constantly proving to themselves that they are people and not bike-pedals!

This odd thing always happens throughout the ages: wise and rational persons, prophets and lovers of humanity who make it their function to live their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbors simply to show them that it is possible to live like them in the city of man.

And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some trick. One’s own desires, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness, is the ultimate and greatest good. Yet it is never taken seriously because it never fits into a neat taxonomy.

9:33pm

Ladies and gentlemen, I must unveil another truth to you: I am not truly faithful to my professed love for truth. The idea of real and honest truths that can go from idea to reality terrifies me. I prefer imaginary truths: those ideals that appeal to the heart and mind but can never be tested in the city or nature. 

It is imaginary truth that gives me the little strength I have. In only originating ideas that can never become reality I fashion an invincible iron armor that liberates me to criticize others who do and fail, while protecting myself from the same critics. In forging unfalsifiable ideas I deny others their right to existence.

Alongside my fellow founders, we just performed a classic San Francisco ritual whereby each person explains the one single thing everyone else gets wrong about the world. While others are limited by Euclid and Newton, we bask in the freedom of our imagination and ideals.

Tradition is stagnation and conformity is death. The masses are sheep at our feet. Yet our status depends on the crowd’s existence, for if everyone was a Girard, we would lose our special superiority. In our secret hearts, we desire to be the outcast, the scapegoat, for that is how we know we are not of the mob. Hallelujah to be a one-of-one!

Should the masses suddenly embrace our beliefs, tomorrow we would adopt the stance of yesterday’s crowd, just to stand opposite of the new consensus. Should they deem us innocent, we would throw ourselves onto the Cross, just to die as ruler of our own kingdom and for the chance to brush up against two thieves who worship our bravery.

9:36pm

These days, everyone believes that the most progressive progress is to create radical resource abundance. This will solve all of man’s problems, for what more could we want if we received all earthly blessings? It should plunge man so deep into economic prosperity that nothing would be visible but the bubbles rising to the surface of his happiness; he will have nothing left to do but sleep, collect UBI checks, eat artificial chicken fingers, and watch AGIs shape the end of history through his VR headset.

But once again, like the saints and sages of moral ethics, the thing everyone misunderstands is man’s true nature. They don’t know how phenomenally ungrateful he is. I even think this, that the best definition of man is: a featherless bipedal creature with no sense of gratitude. But that isn’t all; it isn’t even his greatest defect; his greatest defect is his constant need to rebel, constant from the time of the Flood to the Age of Revolutions.

It seems to me that rebellion is the principal method by which man establishes to himself that he is a person, and not a bike-pedal. Even when things are perfect, when nations cease to trade blood and glore, man out of mere ingratitude, out of sheer devilment, will commit some abomination. He will jeopardize his chicken fingers and deliberately commit some unstrategic nonsense, simply and solely to impose onto rationality an element of his own malignant fancy.

If for some reason this rebellion fails to produce a convincing scientific result that he was not a bike-pedal, the man would resort to mutilating himself, since man alone can harm himself out of spite (it is the chief thing that distinguishes him from other animals). He would contrive to create destruction and chaos, unleash diseases and terror upon the world, just so he could have his own way!

And if all else fails, if it were scientifically and mathematically established that Mercury in retrograde, our childhood environment, or the double helix strands in our DNA pre-determined everything we do, man would deliberately go mad, so as not to possess reason, and thus finally get his own way by expelling Nature and God from his mind and body.

2 × 2 = 4 is an intolerable thing. It is Archimedes and Gauss laughing beyond the grave. It is not the Author of life, but the beginning of death. It is Cerebreus at the gates of Hades. Twice two is four is, in my opinion, nothing but insolence. ‘Two and two make four’ is like a cocky young devil blocking your path with arms crossed and a haughty attitude. 

I cannot deny that two and two make four is useful, but to give man his due, twice two make five is sometimes delightful also.

0:00am

By the way, my good reader, I am not writing for you or Elon’s town square. I write only for my personal notes and my authentic self, so I wish to declare that if I write as though I were addressing an audience, that is only because it is easier to write in that form. You can’t really be so brazen to imagine that I was going to type all this and give it to you to read, were you?

In every man there are things he does not reveal to the world, but only to his friends. Then there are other things he will not tell his friends, but only to himself. Finally, there are things that a man is afraid to unmask even to himself. The more respectable a man is, the more he accumulates such things. Men of action are honor-bound to pretend as if he hides nothing, even from himself. Remember, only a coward can be as honest as I am with you.

---

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. — Proverbs 16:27