False Alternatives...

[tyrannosaurus vex]

FALSE ALTERNATIVES

For most people, it is no surprise to hear that their rights are slowly dissolving. They are aware of the creeping totalitarian flavor of Western society, the intensifying scrutiny of outcasts and outsiders, and the methodical approach of various "first-world" governments to dismantling a centuries-old framework of civil liberties. Even in cases where the person in question may have practically no concept of what has historically gone into the construction of the freedoms they take for granted, they are at least subconsciously aware that their lives are becoming more planned and arranged by forces beyond the individual's control.

Most of these people will take sides in what they think is a debate between liberty and security. On those terms, however, the fight is not winnable for the libertarian: it takes no soaring feat of logic to equate absolute social lock-down with apparent "security" for the masses, and that logic has been beaten into the public consciousness now for two entire generations. The government is our Protector, responsible for the overall security of the State; the government knows what's best for us, having access to privileged information we mere citizens would be unable to handle; and in some nations the government is even our Provider, taking care to make sure at least our basic needs are always met.

All of these things are convenient — moreso than the responsibilities that come with liberty — but have required us at each phase to give up a little autonomy and a little capacity for critical thinking. Where, a century ago, it would have been thought imprudent at best to rely on the Government for daily necessities, today we are so indebted to Government assistance that we forego the formality of looking into what is going to be expected of us in return. Culturally, we have cultivated an environment of subsistence on Government whim, from the arbitrary assignment of the value of our work to corruption-prone systems of regulation which affect nearly all of us on a very personal level.

In past ages, a society full of people collectively working toward a goal of zero responsibility would have been fatal to any nation. But today, thanks to great advances in science, technology and medicine, personal responsibility can be shirked without the larger threats to national cohesion or security. With large government and corporate bureaucracies devoted to micromanaging personal finances, medical care and liability, the effect on the large scale is similar to what might happen if we were managing these things ourselves. When one looks at the resulting society as a whole, it has a bustling economy, a healthy work force, a common culture, projects large and small under way, and it appears to be a functional society.

But if one looks at the average person caught up in all this, we can tell that something about our big successful State has changed fundamentally. His personal affairs are now a matter of government record and decree; his job, if not already assigned by a government office, is only the logical end of whatever education he is able to obtain. He arouses suspicion in supervisory bodies if his bank statements go out of line with what is mathematically expected; he is the target of psycho-demographic advertising campaigns which have narrowed his entire life experience down to a point on a chart. He is hardly responsible for anything except to keep doing what is expected of him: show up for work, go out once in a while and have too much to drink (but only drink), you know, the normal "This is what you do because you're here, because that's what we do because we're here" routine.

The average citizen can be easily made aware of all this, if he is not already, and most times you won't encounter an argument when you bring it up, but you will have the subject changed rather quickly. People know about this but they do not want to discuss it. If you do get a discussion going, it will most often reveal that people have been fed a very useful lie about their situation in life, and usually adhere to a false dichotomy when it comes to this subject.
On one hand, they say, "Complaining won't do any good." That is true, but when they say that, what they really mean is, "There's nothing to be done about it — it's just the way things are," which is not true. There is something to be done about it, which is why they immediately (sometimes without saying so out loud) will follow that statement with, "and neither will voting." Which, of course, is also true. People know the system is failing (or has failed), but rather than take what they assume to be a radical position against the system, they balk at the idea of change and feign a woeful resignation to the "way things are." These people know they are trapped — but they are wrong about why they are trapped, and by whom, or what. This first lie they believe is that they have no options and no power to change their situation.

Because most people will never receive higher education or directly encounter philosophical discussions beyond armchair politics, they are ill-equipped to process the information and events streaming at them continuously. It really is an information overload for anyone to try and assimilate everything that's happening in the world, even in a single day, much less global events over a span of centuries; nevertheless, the public is bombarded on a daily basis with video and headlines from all over the planet. Without the slightest inkling of established methods of dealing with these larger picture, often with the undertone that they ought to know what all of this means — and almost no interest in history — their natural defense is to grasp onto something familiar and ride it through the onslaught of events.

This creates a false antithesis of the lie that that people cannot change their situation to a very large degree. If they are trapped and losing ground, if they are feeling the crunch of the new way the world works, then it is because (they believe) the old way is under attack, and the only hope for survival now is to cling steadfastly to outdated ideas. We see resurgent religious movements in America; we see a drive toward the former "glory" of the Soviet era in Russia. These people are open to the idea that their freedom is under attack, and they will stop at nothing to turn back the forces of whichever evil they have been persuaded to blame, usually by political opportunists.

So, now they know they are trapped, and they think that there is either nothing to be done about it (and thus hate the topic and refuse to discuss it), or the only thing to do about it is to turn around and attack the perceived source of their persecution, the identity of which is always open to debate thanks to a naturally short human attention span (exacerbated by the media) and a generally uneducated population. The false assumption here that is always maintained (out of fear of what the reverse would mean) is that the threat to our freedom is some great external force or group or nation. (This, incidentally, is where the chief ideological difference between modern "conservatives" and "liberals" is rooted, as well — conservatives always blaming the crisis of the moment on some tangible human foe and liberals always doing their best to make a crisis of the moment out of any one of a thousand non-human issues like climate change or poverty or health care — although after the case against some enemy has been made, what proceeds directly afterward is usually pretty much the same thing either way).

But what if the threat is not an external one? What if the real threat — not the threat to our national pride, which is contrived anyway, or the threat to our "collective unity," which doesn't exist except in name, but the threat to our own individual right to exist as more than a self-aware blip on a Government or corporate diagram — is entirely internal? What if, by decades of building a Government to take care of us so we don't have to do it ourselves, we have created a system as interested in its own survival as we are?

[LMNO]

Well written; good conclusion.


The birth of the self-aware Beurocracy.

[Cramulus]

Very strong.

I like your movement towards what LMNO called the "self aware bureaucracy".

This meshes a bit with an essay I posted a while back which compared the internet to an intelligent, self-aware self-preserving self-modifying entity. We're starting to see large, complex structures which display some sort of awareness and autonomy. From our point of view, evolution happens in small increments propagated by groups and individuals. But if you zoom out far enough it appears to be happening on a much bigger scale than the individual. And these large moving entities seem either unaware or uncaring of the cells which they are composed of. Just as you pick at a scab or cut your hair, the Machine is willing to sever you to make itself more efficient.

But that's natural, right? You don't care about your individual cells, just the tissue and organs they form.

Towards the end of the piece, you come back to the topic of frustration. The individual, simultaneously trapped by and estranged from his government, feels hopeless. There is no way to change the system, so why even bother talking about it?

To address this I'm going to re-quote Can You Feel It Coming...

You see, to be effective as a catalyst, one has to confront the problem of scale. You CAN NOT bring the MACHINE™ down. You can't even slow it down. What you can do is very slowly and unobtrusively begin to rearrange the basic components. We will refer to these as "widgets" and "sprockets". If widget A and sprocket B combine to exert societal influence C on the stinking morass known collectively as "humanity", then it stands to reason that the MACHINE™ can be reprogrammed at a very basic level and in very small increments. You waste your time dreaming of how to effect such a change on a global, national, or regional scale (the impossibility of which, I might add, keeps you in your perpetual state of blissful apathy), dreaming of assembling a group of like-minded fellows who will march with you to the very gates of the ivory tower whereupon those who have misled and exploited you will be cast down upon the parapets.

Well guess what?

YOU ARE the one who has misled and exploited you. You have overlooked the most obvious solution, the most effective solution, the only possible solution.

Kill yourself, fuck the body.

Just kidding.





Maybe.

But seriously, this is what I have come to believe is the true spirit of the oft-misused phrase "we must stick apart": we cannot effect a large scale change, and if we make a serious attempt we WILL be neutralized. Instead, each and every one of us should make a conscious effort to effect a small reprogramming of the MACHINE™ in a manner that affects us and our immediate surroundings. Keep the mutation small, and give it a chance to become effectively contagious.

If we all effect a change on our own paradigm (this DOES require some effort, being a bliss-ninny doesn't count), there WILL be an eventual overlap, at which point the large scale change which we have hoped to effect all along will be impossible to stop.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It's the same territory I think.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this though, although I did have the thought while I was writing this that it's weird how these observations are made by amateurs like us, and sometimes show up as themes of rock songs from Fear Factory et. al., but are apparently ignored or missed by professional thinkers and knowers.

[Cramulus]

I like to think of it as this

We're trying to paint a picture of something very large and complex.

We lay-people are impressionists. Or maybe we're just bad painters. We're painting it with big daubs of color. It's fuzzy, but if you stand back and squint, you get the picture.

the sociologists and political scientists and "professionals" only use fine brushes. It takes them much longer to depict the nature of the thing. And they often do it with a level of detail which is lost on anyone but the art connoisseur.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

so, what you're saying is that too many people are too comfortable with their target audience.

[Cramulus]

I guess what I'm saying is that one shouldn't discount the ramblings of lay-people,
and that one shouldn't take the ramblings of "professionals" as the only credible info out there.


--Because we get some good stuff done over here!

[tyrannosaurus vex]

no, that isn't what you're saying at all.

[Cramulus]

are you discounting me because I'm a Professor?     

[LMNO]

so, what you're saying is that too many people are too comfortable with their target audience.

[Cain]

I like to think of it as this

We're trying to paint a picture of something very large and complex.

We lay-people are impressionists. Or maybe we're just bad painters. We're painting it with big daubs of color. It's fuzzy, but if you stand back and squint, you get the picture.

the sociologists and political scientists and "professionals" only use fine brushes. It takes them much longer to depict the nature of the thing. And they often do it with a level of detail which is lost on anyone but the art connoisseur.

I agree with this assessment entirely.

Academia, for example, is all about the details.  You have to concentrate on the individual trees, and often the forest only ever appears by implication.

Also, very few academics can afford to go against the grain.  You have to find a willing sponsor first, or at least a source of funding which will put up with your extra-cirricular shit.  And then there is the role of luck - who gets noticed by the wider media and who gets ignored (Sageman's excellent book on Al-Qaeda is ignored for the Carlyle Group tool Brian Jenkin's work, for example).

Finally, you're not meant to pass judgement unless you absolutely have to.  Don't ask me why, but many academics are more content with describing a situation than deciding if it is good or not (much of the regional trade blocs thinking is indicative of this).  Moral judgement means hiring a philosopher, or adding another 5,000 words to your paper, neither of which are especially fun prospects.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Finally, you're not meant to pass judgement unless you absolutely have to.  Don't ask me why, but many academics are more content with describing a situation than deciding if it is good or not (much of the regional trade blocs thinking is indicative of this).  Moral judgement means hiring a philosopher, or adding another 5,000 words to your paper, neither of which are especially fun prospects.

I think this is an interesting point. Academia first requires a mind open enough to learn, observe, and analyze, but once the academic reaches a certain point it becomes necessary to 'weed out' excessive detail. Nobody likes a paper that makes obscene generalizations, so the only options seem to be either expanding your paper to accommodate what you want to add, or to narrow the focus of the paper so much that moral judgment becomes irrelevant.

This is where the aphorism "The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't" comes into play; the deeper one studies a particular subject or phenomenon, the more one realizes how subtle its implications are. An academic, quite often, simply cannot convince themselves that they know enough to pass judgment, much less one that has to hold up to criticism.

Cainad,
Is not sure where he was going with this.

[Z³]

As for Academics, I cant speak personally, but ?

In truth, I admire academics. Knowledge is one of the most precious things that the human species has, and there are two distinct points in history that have put our advancement back a great deal. (the global fascist movement around WW2, and the burning of Alexandria.)

Of course, I'm pretty negative. I think that individually the best thing that any of us can do is give up... but I'm all for enjoying myself, and if the bureaucracy is self aware, perhaps we (its individual cells) can give it cancer and doom it to an early demise.

Which is better, the new world order, or total human extinction?
I'm ready to flip a coin.

[BumWurst]

Which is better, the new world order, or total human extinction?
I'm ready to flip a coin.

No such dichotomy. Occasionally we change the wallpaper, but it's still the same shitty house...

[Cainad (dec.)]

Which is better, the new world order, or total human extinction?
I'm ready to flip a coin.

No such dichotomy. Occasionally we change the wallpaper, but it's still the same shitty house...

I was going to post an 'oh noes, dichotomy!' statement, but this is much bettar. Couldn't we just move?