Great quotes, and Ame's ties in with a quote I have for technocracy.
"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle:who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."
So modern, really makes one wonder who said it. Maybe the Australian health director? No, he said we are locking out the unvaxxed from our economy so we can stop the lockdown. The above quote is from Leon Trotsky.
I want to believe in the semi-optimistic conclusion here ("nothing new under the sun") as a reminder that history has cyclical elements and the things that really matter (literature and arts, scientific progress, theological insight) are the things that survive through multiple cycles. That's a good reminder to invest in those things, rather than the ones that will pass away and be of no benefit to future generations (let alone to eternity!)
At the same time, I sense that there is "something new" about the toolkit that technocracy has available now. The quality of information is much higher due to consumer analytics in digital media, and the ability to parse that information with automation has basically tracked with Moore's Law. This has created the possibility of "nudge totalitarianism" or even "carrot totalitarianism" in a way that didn't exist before. Indeed, a number of recent political controversies have basically been screens for the implementation of the infrastructure required for social credit and constant consumer monitoring. In 1984, Big Brother still depends on normal informants that need to deceive you into revealing your noncooperation with the state. Today, our browser history lets us do that to ourselves. (I mean, I'm sure *you* have good opsec, but that's not standard for more trusting people with less education/paranoia. And even then -- here we are, posting on Substack under our own names!)
I really want to believe this collapse cycle can still complete normally in the historical way so we can reboot on the other side of it. I feel a much stronger identification now with the imprecatory prophets who call out for humbling of mighty empires, the stuff in the final chapters of Jeremiah. I understand that this is promised in some sense (we see enough of the end of the story to know that), but the usual paradox of any category of prayer is that everyone still cries out earnestly for the purposes of God to be accomplished, even despite knowing this is inevitable in a cosmological sense.
No, I completely agree. The general cycle of "society must remake mistake to learn it's a mistake" is nothing new. But technology does make degrees of state control that the harshest tyrants of old would have never considered, because they simply would have been practically impossible, now possible. Even something like a mask mandate that is not especially technological would, I think, have been considered largely unenforceable before automobiles, say, meant that you could easily dispatch an investigator anywhere in the county within a hour. It sounds perhaps paranoid but I was listening to James White's podcast last night and he sort of said, you know, under communism Christians could meet for worship in the woods at night if they needed to. Good luck doing that now with drones and satellites. Inasmuch as good things must "hide" under tyrannies to continue, it is harder to hide than ever before.
And yeah, far as the "real names" go... you do wonder if there is some transition period that occurs when you go from "yes, I should still use my real name to build credibility and effectiveness because there is still a real chance of stopping the badness", to "all hope is now lost and you can find me posting under The Physics Cat if you need me". :).
It's bad that the Bolsheviks keep coming to mind, and let's not say things are that terrible now. But, the Bolsheviks did know what they were doing, in terms of liquidating the opposition (kulaks, rights, Mensheviks, etc.). Those weren't bureaucratic mishaps or a few rogue operators in the provinces. The killing of many of the opponents wasn't particularly disturbing, because it was necessary to achieve the end goal of complete control of society.
Great quotes, and Ame's ties in with a quote I have for technocracy.
"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle:who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."
So modern, really makes one wonder who said it. Maybe the Australian health director? No, he said we are locking out the unvaxxed from our economy so we can stop the lockdown. The above quote is from Leon Trotsky.
I want to believe in the semi-optimistic conclusion here ("nothing new under the sun") as a reminder that history has cyclical elements and the things that really matter (literature and arts, scientific progress, theological insight) are the things that survive through multiple cycles. That's a good reminder to invest in those things, rather than the ones that will pass away and be of no benefit to future generations (let alone to eternity!)
At the same time, I sense that there is "something new" about the toolkit that technocracy has available now. The quality of information is much higher due to consumer analytics in digital media, and the ability to parse that information with automation has basically tracked with Moore's Law. This has created the possibility of "nudge totalitarianism" or even "carrot totalitarianism" in a way that didn't exist before. Indeed, a number of recent political controversies have basically been screens for the implementation of the infrastructure required for social credit and constant consumer monitoring. In 1984, Big Brother still depends on normal informants that need to deceive you into revealing your noncooperation with the state. Today, our browser history lets us do that to ourselves. (I mean, I'm sure *you* have good opsec, but that's not standard for more trusting people with less education/paranoia. And even then -- here we are, posting on Substack under our own names!)
I really want to believe this collapse cycle can still complete normally in the historical way so we can reboot on the other side of it. I feel a much stronger identification now with the imprecatory prophets who call out for humbling of mighty empires, the stuff in the final chapters of Jeremiah. I understand that this is promised in some sense (we see enough of the end of the story to know that), but the usual paradox of any category of prayer is that everyone still cries out earnestly for the purposes of God to be accomplished, even despite knowing this is inevitable in a cosmological sense.
No, I completely agree. The general cycle of "society must remake mistake to learn it's a mistake" is nothing new. But technology does make degrees of state control that the harshest tyrants of old would have never considered, because they simply would have been practically impossible, now possible. Even something like a mask mandate that is not especially technological would, I think, have been considered largely unenforceable before automobiles, say, meant that you could easily dispatch an investigator anywhere in the county within a hour. It sounds perhaps paranoid but I was listening to James White's podcast last night and he sort of said, you know, under communism Christians could meet for worship in the woods at night if they needed to. Good luck doing that now with drones and satellites. Inasmuch as good things must "hide" under tyrannies to continue, it is harder to hide than ever before.
And yeah, far as the "real names" go... you do wonder if there is some transition period that occurs when you go from "yes, I should still use my real name to build credibility and effectiveness because there is still a real chance of stopping the badness", to "all hope is now lost and you can find me posting under The Physics Cat if you need me". :).
It's bad that the Bolsheviks keep coming to mind, and let's not say things are that terrible now. But, the Bolsheviks did know what they were doing, in terms of liquidating the opposition (kulaks, rights, Mensheviks, etc.). Those weren't bureaucratic mishaps or a few rogue operators in the provinces. The killing of many of the opponents wasn't particularly disturbing, because it was necessary to achieve the end goal of complete control of society.