Blood & Ink: Tuesday

the emptiness machine / empire of nothing / problem of difference

“Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be,
Don't know why I'm hopin' for what I won't receive,
Fallin' for the promise of the emptiness machine.”

— Linkin Park, The Emptiness Machine

Linkin Park is making new music again.

Huge throwback to my teenage years. RIP Chester.

While it echoes with the dilution of the quintessential LP sound into yet another watered-down quasi-countercultural ‘still-within-the-lines’ performance act (it’s in the drum beat and chord progression), they nailed something: 

The Emptiness Machine.

In ‘The Way of Men’, Jack Donovan calls it The Empire of Nothing.

The headless, soulless hydra that we call ‘corporate interest’ never provides what you truly need. It can’t. 

What you need is antithetical to the Goals of the Empire.

Boundaries, belonging, heritage, values, purpose, meaning, traditions. An ‘us’ contrasting a ‘them’. An identity.

The Emptiness Machine absorbs the sacred and specific, churning out the mundane and undifferentiated. 

An empty ghost operating itself. 

Everything and everyone the same. Replaceable. It benefits from a culture of sameness: an Empire of Nothing.

No boundaries, no differences, no cultures, no places, no peoples, no friction, no disagreement. Global hegemonic culture. One unified consumer base.

The Empire lets you flaunt trivial nonsense like music preference, fast food, and vapid entertainment; but political differences, cultural heritage, and personal freedoms… these rock the boat too much.

“It impacts the bottom line, you see?”

Warriors are the last bastion against the march into Global Nothingness. 

Those of values, virtue, and courage holding the line and declaring, “That is far enough. This you cannot have. I will live, and die, for my honour and my people.”

Warriors defend an Empire of Something,
Eric Brown.