Toadpipe Teaches A Semester, Day 2
Technocracy - A Screwtape inspired post
Previously….
Mr Toadpipe:
Welcome back class, please take your seats.
Subitomorso Tumorpile, get down from that chandelier at once! You are a devil, not a baboon! As much as you and your fellow fiends think you can monkey around in this class, I’ll have none of it. Off you go to the torture room for a good beating – I’ll expect you to catch up with this class in your own time.
Now, you parasitic vermin, sit up and get out your notebooks. Today we are going to learn about one of the arms of The Great Convergence. That extraordinary accomplishment of Lower Command, bringing together what might seem to be a vast range of disparate movements into a coherent force of inhumanity. Over the course of the semester, we will consider the primary rivers of this Great Convergence, starting, in no particular order, with technocracy.
Now technocracy is based on the idea that the key to solving human society's woes lay in the hands of the “technical experts” - the engineers, the scientists, the management consultants, and in more recent times the Silicon Valley innovators. Not too long ago, in the 1930s, we had certain humans take up the belief that their technical expertise, and their “scientific” approach to problem-solving, make them uniquely qualified to lead society forward. The idea of “forward” could well be expressed as “efficient”, in a material and mechanical sense. Although any sense of “forward” was acceptable, as long as they though that society was somehow stuck.
We encouraged them to propose the establishment of a “technocracy”, a government of sorts, ruled by a council of technical “experts” who would be free from the influence of special interests and political pressures. It was also encouraged that such expertise could be, and indeed should be, completely divorced from any spirituality. It was another spin on the materialist’s delusion that there exists nothing but matter, and a material world that could eventually be totally controlled by the “experts”. A big machine, if you like, that could be reinvented to work so much better than the current arrangement.
Jot this down, will you? This is from The Technocrat magazine in 1937:
Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population… For the first time in human history, it will be done as a scientific, technical, engineering problem.
Of course, we had to nurture the right sort of fellows to embrace this idea. We found those with a proclivity for thinking in their left hemisphere particularly instrumental in this regard, accompanied with a careful suppression of the right hemisphere. Such individuals do not see the world as it actually is, but through a re-presentation of it. A sort of simulation if you will. These are the best sort of patients to convince that traditional politics, with its messy business of democracy and representation, is inadequate to deal with the complex and rapidly changing modern world, and that a more “rational” and “efficient” form of management is required. They need no real-world experience of people and society, but rather algorithms, to convince themselves of their aptitude as masters of efficiency for the good of humanity.
Lower Command saw great potential in this movement but undermining the humans' confidence in their elected officials and convincing them to put their trust in these technical experts did not gain traction as they had anticipated. We suspect the War got in the way a bit and that surge of new hope after the War did nothing for this project. Nevertheless, the 20th Century was an unusual explosion of technological advancement for humanity and soon there were a new breed of technocrats who believed that they could lead humanity towards a brighter future with these new tools.
Now, in recent years, we have seen technocracy blossom into a marvellously malevolent force that is secretly working to subvert traditional forms of government and control. Of course, since the Great Pandemic of Fear over these last three years, the technocracy revolution is no longer operating behind the scenes but is out there in all its explicit glory. Our wonderful technocrats, obsessed with efficiency and objectivity, are successfully imposing their will on the rest of society, without regard to any human value system outside their own myopic, mechanistic, decontextualized, virtual imaginations of their own minds.
One of the marvels of this movement today is the near frictionless participation by the masses due to their hypnotic fixation with smart devices. And hypnotised in a very real sense, I might add. These little hand-held windows into virtual worlds have so captivated these creatures that they have all but forgotten the real world. I can’t emphasise strongly enough just how advantageous this has been for technocracy, and indeed for us. And it’s not just the incessant consumption of the pornography, the violence, the division, the obscenities, the hatred, the distractions, the time wasting, and all those wonderful attributes of this beautiful addiction they lust after. No. It is the fundamental departure from their earthly reality that is so much more… demoralizing. Amusingly they believe they are getting MORE reality, being more “in touch” and informed by the myriad of distractions that overwhelm their little brains – all the while completely divorced from any conscious awareness of the one next to them, or their neighbour, or the Enemy, thankfully. There’s more to be said about this, but it must wait for another class as we should push on.
Now about some specifics that you can use on your patients that are at the heart of technocracy. You will not have much trouble nudging your patients toward these views as most of the heavy lifting has already been done for you.
The first thing to remember is that just as the world is considered a great machine to be manipulated and controlled, so too is the human animal. The technocrat believes that the human is a reflexive animal, and by extension his society can be conditioned to reflexively act in whatever way they see fit. In early writings of the technocrats, they state that the human animal can be thus manipulated:
If they are taken young enough, human beings can be conditioned not to do almost anything under the sun. They can be conditioned not to use certain language, not to eat certain foods on certain days, not to work on certain days, not to mate in the absence of certain ceremonial words spoken over them, not to break into a grocery store for food even though they may not have eaten for days.
You would do well to nudge your patients into believing their “animal” condition is nothing more than an organisation of atoms. These atoms are in a certain arrangement that they form an engine that takes in food and has potential for work. This animal machine responds to its external environment via reflexes. And therefore, human social habits and institutions are no more than the sum of reflexes. Such a social order tends to be stable but is not always in the best interest of the animal or its environment – like global warming, or racism. Changing such order requires a rapid change in the external environment – a revolution, if you like, or an emergency, some catastrophe maybe. When there is a dramatic challenge to basic biological necessities (food, energy, health, finances) this creates social instability. Social instability can then be used to train a new set of social habits, new reflexes for the new environment, and thus a new world order.
So, you see it all seems good for your patients, in the long run. The pain of the moment is leading them to a much-needed change for the better. They feel they can “build back better” and “reset” the status of the world that wasn’t working very well for them in the past. Of course, we have an entire department working on the re-writing of the past, but again, that’s a topic for another day.
Now a word of warning: You can’t for a moment have your patient go anywhere near the idea that technocracy is a feudal pseudoscientific dictatorship. Which of course it is. Rather encourage them to believe that it’s “progress”, whatever that means to the pathetic soul, as long as it’s something positive. At parties, social gatherings, in the office, and online, you should encourage conversations about the wonders of modern technology that is keeping them safe, healthy, informed, and comfortable. If your patient refuses to believe, for example that a digital ID is a good for him, then push him in the opposite direction as much as possible. Better to have a bitter and disgruntled “conspiracy theorist” who has cut themselves off from family, friends, and most of society, than someone who is aware, yet grounded and measured. Such people, I’ve found, are difficult at best and dangerous at worst.
One last endearing attribute of technocracy and then I’ll let you go. We have found this view, entrenched in Darwinian Evolution, extremely mocking of the Enemy and his doctrine. Taking advantage of the anti-Christian movement during the early 1900s, the technocrats described the Christian faith as an error handed down from a primitive and ignorant people. That there is nothing revealing or even corresponding to a spiritual reality, not even to ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ or indeed a ‘will’. All is but reflexes to what we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, and thus science is based purely on correlations of the objectively observable. It is fundamentally sensual and in direct opposition to anything spiritual. The technocrat even says that “When we observe a human being we merely perceive an object which makes a certain variety of motions and noises. The same is true, however, when we observe a dog or a Ford car.” Let us perpetuate this understanding as much as possible.
Please, my young devils, remember that for the human, “seeing is believing”, and you can’t go wrong reinforcing that notion every chance you get.
In summary, the technocratic movement is one of many important rivers converging at this time into the sea of distress and upheaval the world is now experiencing. You will do well to encourage your patient to become absorbed in as much new technology as possible, to lust after all the newest gadgets, and embrace the digitizing of their lives to save the planet. Nurturing a hatred toward traditional governments, democracies, and sovereignty is also advantageous. We have passed a threshold that now makes this task relatively easy. They hardly need prompting as by their own volition they allow themselves to move with the momentum of the times. For the most part they have departed from reality, they have no thought for the Enemy, they are seekers of safety and comfort, they have become the pure reflexes the technocrats claim them to be.
Good day then class. Praise to Our Lord Below! Don’t forget your homework – I want you to memorise the first chapter of the Epistle of Screwtape by Friday morning.
I'm really liking this C. S. Lewis style of writing.
Great job.
I like it. More please.