The Technocratic Oath - Quareness Series 125th "Lecture".
In addition to the usual commonly acknowledged ideologies of capitalism, fascism, socialism, etc. there is another powerful one which at this stage would appear to be increasingly supplanting them all i.e. technocracy pushing for a new resource-based system in which energy and social engineering run our economies rather than pricing mechanisms such as supply and demand. Under this system the engineers and scientists (using the justification of the scientific approach/method) get to instruct producers and consumers what resources they are allowed to use and consume. In effect what we'd be facing is an ongoing domination by entrenched authoritarian/totalitarian mindset..the fruits of quite dangerous thinking processes favouring the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism.
This technocratic mindset may be traced back as far as two centuries ago to the expressed views of the French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon considered by many to be the founding father of scientism, social sciences, transhumanism and technocracy. As he pointed out..."A scientist is a man who foresees. It is because science provides the means to predict, that it is useful, and the scientists are superior to all other men." Here we can glimpse the origin of what we might call the technocratic oath...to uphold the fruits of science as the sole truth. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised then that many adherents of this "new" ideology appear to labour under the crazy illusion that they know what's better for humanity more than anybody else.
Technocracy seems to have first taken firm root in the US during the 1930s but it was Nazi Germany which first came to implement it on a societal scale. Despite outlawing any organised Technocracy Parties, due to their perceived potential to compete with him becoming a dictator and their not necessarily being on board with his goals, the technocrats themselves (engineers, mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, etc.) were highly prized by Hitler and his crew. And not just by the Nazis...after the war a secret undertaking code-named "Operation Paperclip" brought some 1,200 of these top players from Germany to the United States where they were given influential positions of prestige at national technology agencies in order to continue practicing their science and engineering.
The Trilateral Commission (a non-governmental "discussion group") co-founded during the 1970s by Columbia University's Zbigniew Brzezinski and the financier David Rockefeller, openly declared from the start that they aimed to foster a new international economic order. And this necessitated some "taking over" of the US political structure which indeed did occur e.g. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were all subsequent members of this Commission and within just two weeks of his inauguration Barack Obama had appointed 11 of its members to top-level positions in his administration. The apparent goal here was to gain control of the economic engine of the world (USA at that time) so as to transform it and the rest of the world into a new technocracy-based economic system.
With hindsight we can more readily recognise a consistent endgame progressively unfolding over time and even notice how circumstances may have been engineered to allow this agenda to amass more and more power. Among the obstacles they apparently need to remove along the way are any effective national sovereignty and a large degree of personal freedom. A big and swift impetus to this end was gained with the pushing through of the US Patriot Act in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, which sacrificed many freedoms in one fell swoop. The current covid-19 situation too could be exploited as a further convenient opportunity to rapidly advance the transformation. Indeed it's becoming clearer that this pandemic is and will be used to move us all towards a more authoritarian and totalitarian societal structure with radically increased ability to continue to erode civil liberties and to enhance control over society.
With such a large project (transforming the whole economic system) the necessary strategy deployed has been to build infrastructure i.e. the schematic diagram that makes things work and connects everything together. For the technocratic mindset, setting up the necessary infrastructure involves so many more things today than ever before e.g. the infrastructure of technocracy now has to do with anything called "smart"...smart growth, smart cities, smart phones, smart devices, "internet of things" tying everything together, as well as all the cameras and sensors. It's the new technology-based infrastructure of the digital age now visibly being put in place all over the globe...another "hidden" power grab on open display?
This emphasis on building the infrastructure has been increasingly evident since the early 1970s and has now landed us in the situation where most people can hardly understand it anymore because it's so technological. And it's almost inevitably pointing to the need for some super artificial intelligence somewhere to make sense of all the data transactions being fed back to smart computers. It's even kinda funny when we consider that the same artificial intelligence programs now taking all the data and getting some sense of meaning out of it, go on to "turn it around" and issue things we should do in response...telling us we should change. Here we see the science of social engineering...engineering by algorithm...if something doesn't fit into the algorithm "science says we should do that other thing". The long back story here is the realisation that science would eventually get to the point where the algorithms could be automated enough to replace long-standing political and societal structures and keep everything in line and working.
In the normal course of events science is initially used to issue suggestions. However, such optional guides have a tendency to rapidly turn into mandates. We have seen this already with some vaccines, for example, and in the context of the covid-19 pandemic we may soon be facing into open/readable (implantable?) digital identifications, medical records and vaccine passports, as well as digital currency and banking (making cash redundant). We could be rapidly heading where all of this will be tied together so that algorithms will be able to keep everyone in line, everywhere and all the time. Thus it may go from "science says" on to the algorithm and then it becomes fully automated manipulating of everyone, with those who try to buck the "Big Brother" system rendered unable to freely participate in society.
The supply chain of moving goods to and providing services in the right place and at the right time ("just in time" deliveries) is an essential part of the technocracy infrastructure, which is already growing at a fast pace...a pace rooted in the quite stunning capacities currently available to surveil and analyse and manipulate our behaviour. And the predictive power of our technology continues to advance at an exponential rate that we can no longer fully comprehend, increasing its ability to manipulate. The prize for the power-seekers rests in a new "truth"...that whoever owns the data, controls the system. It's no surprise then to see the new public/private partnership "ethos" of the big IT corporations now increasingly embedded in modifying all aspects of our personal and societal lives. For example notice how they condition the feed that you see when you search for something on-line...they predict mid-stream what you're asking and provide the answers they think you should pick rather than those you might really be looking for. Here we have scientific social engineering writ large and exerting a huge psychological impact. These technocratic warriors are in the business of influencing people through feeding them all kinds of stuff nudging them in one or other direction. When this type of manipulation gets a firm hold on susceptible persons, it can open up their minds to be seduced into doing all kinds of things they might not otherwise do. Engineering our social environment is just part of the picture here...it seems they're also seeking to back-engineer all of us personally.
This technocracy is now also openly trying to restrict our ability to communicate and not just with those who may not agree with us. The impact of this censorship is increasingly apparent as society becomes more dysfunctional with a lot less patience and civil discourse alongside more and more of "everybody at everybody else'e throat". It's necessary to learn how to communicate ideas to other individuals and, regardless of whether those others agree or disagree, people need to be able to express their thoughts in a way that other parties don't get triggered to start angrily reacting e.g. through cancel culture, public shaming, etc. If we're to foster genuine progress in personal liberty and society, this weakness of the communication process needs to be overcome.
Looking to our immediate future we might be about to witness an unprecedented massive pro-vaccine campaign as part of the current official thinking on how to deal with the covid-19 crisis. The messaging slants of such a "push" might well be somewhat on the lines of the following:
- Personal Freedom...how the virus is limiting our personal freedom and how society working together to get enough people vaccinated can preserve its personal freedoms.
- Economic Freedom...how the virus is limiting people's economic freedom and how by us all working together to get enough of us vaccinated we can preserve society's economic freedoms.
- Self-Interest...how the virus is a real danger to everyone's health and getting vaccinated is the best way to protect ourselves from falling ill.
- Community-Interest...how the virus is a danger to the health of our loved ones and how this risk is lowered with more people getting vaccinated (lowest risk if all vaccinated).
- Economic Benefit...how the virus is wrecking havoc on the economy and the only way to overcome this is by working together to get enough people vaccinated.
- Guilt...how guilty people will feel if they don't get vaccinated or support society's attempts to get enough people vaccinated and then have to face their "selfishness" being responsible for spreading the disease.
- Embarrassment...how embarrassed people will feel if they don't get vaccinated and subsequently are identified as having spread the disease.
- Anger...how angry one will feel if they don't get vaccinated, do get infected and go on to spread the disease.
- Trust in Science...how vaccination is backed by science and if you don't get vaccinated it means you don't understand how infections spread or you're a "science denier".
- Coward...how front-line workers are brave people and those who decide against vaccination are not.
Here again we'd have social engineering writ large...pushing emotional and mental hot-buttons to fire up a desired response, whilst dismissing/ignoring any more considered thought processes on the part of individuals.
Looks like humanity is now about to reach that fork in the road which will decide much of our future...towards a more totalitarian environment (with inevitable rule by entrenched elites) or in the direction of greater personal and societal freedoms. The ongoing underlying struggle here is between fear/hate and love/trust and regardless of whichever side prevails at any time, the conflict is necessarily played out on the person-to-person level. Each of us has to choose and face the consequences of our choices.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
August, 2020.