[MD] The new autocracy

[Ham Priday]

Hi Mel --


> That's just a little scary.
> It sounds like modern society.

You bet, and it's because modern society has become leftist/liberal and is 
headed precipitously toward state socialism.

--Ham


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Khaled Alkotob" <khaledsa at juno.com>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2008 6:36 PM
> Subject: [MD] The new autocracy
>
>
> Greetings
>
> Flipping thorough a book I read a few years back, I came upon a passage
> that rang so true, especially in the wake of the last election.
>
> Jerry Mander wrote in 1977 a book titled "four arguments for the
> elimination of television"
>
> the book hold more true today than ever, especially with the advent of
> the Internet.
>
> I thought I would share it, for it 1984 and a brave new world rolled into
> one.
>
> Under a chapter titled 'Adrift in Mental Space" is the following passage:
>
> Eight Ideal Conditions for The Flowering of Autocracy
> The three fictional works I have described, when combined with those rare
> political writers who approach autocratic form from the point of view of
> technology (Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, Guy Debord, Herbert Marcuse),
> begin to yield a system of preconditions from which we can expect
> monolithic systems of control to emerge. These may be institutional
> autocracies or dictatorships. For the moment, it will be simpler to use
> the dictatorship model.
>
> Imagine that like some kind of science fiction dictator you intended to
> rule the world. You would probably have pinned over your desk a list
> something like this:
>
> [1] Eliminate personal knowledge.
> Make it hard for people to know about themselves, how they function, what
> a human being is, or how a human fits into wider, natural systems. This
> will make it, impossible for the human to separate natural from
> artificial, real from unreal. You provide the answers to all questions.
>
> [2] Eliminate points of comparison.
> Comparisons can be found in earlier societies, older language forms and
> cultural artefacts, including print media. Eliminate or museumize
> indigenous cultures, wilderness and nonhuman life forms. Re-create
> internal human experience-instincts, thoughts, and spontaneous, varied
> feelings-so that it will not evoke the past.
>
> [3] Separate people from each other.
> Reduce interpersonal communication through life-styles that emphasise
> separateness. When people gather together, be sure it is for a
> prearranged experience that occupies all their attention at once.
> Spectator sports are excellent, so are circuses, elections, and any
> spectacles in which focus is outward and interpersonal exchange is
> subordinated to mass experience.
>
> [4] Unify experience, especially encouraging mental experience at the
> expense of sensory experience.
> Separate people's minds from their bodies, as in sense-deprivation
> experiments, thus clearing the mental channel for implantation. Idealize
> the mind. Sensory experience cannot be eliminated totally, so it should
> be driven into narrow areas. An emphasis on sex as opposed to sense may
> be useful because it is powerful enough to pass for the whole thing and
> it has a placebo effect.
>
> [5] Occupy the -mind.
> Once people are isolated in their minds, fill the brain with prearranged
> experience and thought. Content is less important than the fact of the
> mind being filled. Free-roaming thought is to be discouraged at all
> costs, because it is difficult to control.
>
> [6] Encourage drug use.
> Recognize that total repression is impossible and so expressions of
> revolt must be contained on the personal level. Drugs will fill in the
> cracks of dissatisfaction, making people unresponsive to organized
> expressions of resistance.
>
> [7] Centralize knowledge and information.
> Having isolated people from each other and minds from bodies; eliminated
> points of comparison; discouraged sensory experience; and invented
> technologies to unify and control experience, speak. At this point
> whatever comes from outside will enter directly into all brains at the
> same time with great power and believability.
>
> [8] Redefine happiness and the meaning of life in terms of new and
> increasingly uprooted philosophy.
> Once you've established the prior seven conditions, this one is easy.
> Anything makes sense in a void. All channels are open, receptive and
> unquestioning. Formal mind structuring is simple. Most important, avoid
> naturalistic philosophies, they lead to uncontrollable awareness. The
> least resistible philosophies are the most arbitrary ones, those that
> make sense only in terms of themselves.
>
>
>
>
> Khaled