I read somewhere that the radio was responsible for Nazism. I am sure this is an exaggeration, but I am also sure there is some grain of truth in it. The explosion of technological advances in the last three hundred years were enough to drive any society crazy.
I suspect this is intuitive to most. The problem is in following up on this intuition. We have to avoid too much of a logical, narrow, detailed analysis, and concentrate on the big picture. Immediately we run into problems, because we are not used to concentrating on our intuitions, or emotions – which are, by their nature, impossible to analyze.
We have carefully stayed away from them, because they were seem as the root of our problems by Enlightenment thinkers. Reason alone would save us – they reasoned.
Our perceptive thinkers have now realized this was a huge mistake. And plenty of other people, who are the worst kind of thinkers, are now busy destroying the Modern World: lock, stock, and barrel – certain that this process will create the best of all possible worlds – simply by destroying the one they have.
I refer you to an article on Page 7 of the April Harper’s Magazine entitled Check it for Yourself. Here are two quotes beloved of Tea Party advocates:
Benjamin Franklin said: “The Constitution only gives the people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
Thomas Jefferson said: “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout history: whether man should be allowed to govern himself, or to be ruled by a small elite.”
There is only one problem: neither man said either thing. Does this affect them in the least? No, it sounds like something they should have said, and that is good enough for them. Historical accuracy be damned!
But what about computer craziness – the subject I started to talk about? The foregoing was only intended to illustrate some of the craziness that has swept over us. Let me return to the subject – which is, in summary: that we have forgotten how to be human – and become machines instead. Various parts of the same machine.
I cannot resist another quotation, this one from page 21 of The Master and his Emmissary, an important new book:
The defining features of the human condition can be traced to our ability to stand back from the world, from ourselves and the immediacy of experience. This enables us to plan, to think flexibly and inventively, and, in brief, to take control of the world around us rather than simply respond passively.
Few would argue with this, but nearly everyone does their best not to do it. They do their best to not be human! Why? Because they don’t want to be destroyed!
“But what,” you may say, “Does this have to do with computers?”
For me, computer is a code-word for a complex consisting of computers, their software, and the Internet that ties them all together. I have spent some time recently looking into just what this is – and have been shocked at what I found. Especially its effect on its practitioners. They have been devastated!
I can remember when computers and their programming were just a hobby – a fun high-tech game. Bill Gates started off this way. But soon became a ruthless business man, intent on crushing his rivals. Some of his executives became multi-millionaires – and lots more jumped on his bandwagon, hoping to do the same. Most ended up being ground to pieces. You have to be very tough to go through that meat-grinder unscathed.
Which reminds me: Liz Taylor just died – a perfect example of that process. A tougher woman never existed – compared to Marilyn Monroe, who did not survive at all – except on film.
In my experience, it is the same in Silicon Valley: in the process of creating successful companies people are destroyed. True, they were severely damaged people to begin with, with terrible childhoods. The Machine just continued that process.
Complete Control Over Other People
This is what people have always dreamed of, but no one really had – even the most powerful people in the world had to live with the knowledge that their subjects really despised them.
Mankind’s first breakthrough here was the Nazi death camps – where complete control, with no restrictions, was possible for the first time. The inmates were not human, and didn’t have to be treated as such. There was nothing they could do to retaliate – not even in their own minds, which were destroyed too.
For the first time, complete control of human minds became possible – by the simplest of methods: systematic degradation of their bodies and minds, in conditions they could not resist. This was accompanied by something equally shocking: a total breakdown of moral behavior in those who did this.
Here again, the method was simple: a economic collapse, which affected the Germans to an extraordinary degree – WWI, followed by the Great Depression. The Germans thought they knew everything and could do anything – they could make war on the rest of the world as they pleased. When this grandiose dream collapsed, they collapsed, and Nazism took over.
Similar things happened in other countries: in Spain, Italy, and Japan – and also, in a slightly different form, in the USSR. Human brutality had become organized on a vast scale. This was made possible by the powers of mass communication (the radio and the cinema), completely under the power of a political party and the industrialists, who gave the people what they wanted most: jobs – and a sense of national unity, in the form of a war. Human dignity had been forgotten completely.
This was phase one of a two-pronged attack – as it turned out. Mankind and its technologies had something else to show the world. They formed a complex - to a degree never before possible. The first step was Television – the most powerful medium for mass control ever devised. Its objective was simple: to turn the people into consumers – and it succeeded in this admirably. But its most important affect was to destroy their minds, which it accomplished in coordination with the next step.
The next step was a complete takeover of the economy by a global coalition of large corporations – made possible by the next technical breakthrough: the computer/software/internet complex. This completely changed the character of the workplace: which became the center of a new power complex – which controlled everything - most importantly, their employee’s minds.
The effect of this on its people was – to use a word I use frequently here: extraordinary. Note the word: extra-ordinary. In other words: super-real. It had produced a super-reality populated by – what else, super-people!
In reality, however, something more complicated happened. People acquired split personalities: a super-powerful consciousness, and a powerless unconscious. As always, the unconscious one dominated the whole.
As a practical matter, power gravitated outward (not inwardly towards the Self, as usual) and came to reside in the Organization – which became all-powerful. People flocked (like chickens) to this new center of power.
Why? Because it was all-powerful, and had control over everyone. And they wanted to control – and to be controlled too.
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