Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

In modern life, there are many asymmetries; one is that 'the personal is political' is applied to monitor and control the smallest and most casual of human interactions, in the public and increasingly the private sphere - but only in a Leftward direction.

The breaking of even the smallest of politically correct taboos is never regarded as trivial - and indeed a single sentence in private, a single word has been enough to end many a career (only a few of which you will have been aware-of).

Yet there is near-zero resistance to the imposition of totalitarianism.

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We are all aware of the personal experiences of being-controlled - yet any slight effort to link this personal to a long-term, pervasive, powerful, unrelenting Grand Plan for Man is dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorising...

Nonetheless, the Plan proceeds apace - the world is ever more comprehensively monitored, brought under control and subjected to sanctions - rewards (including the highest - e.g. in the UK royal medals, knighthoods, peerages) go to those who are most diligent and effective in justifying and building the totalitarian control system.

Why does the Plan seek this control? For the sake of our damnation. The control is used to fill our minds with lies and false motivations, and distract our attention from realities with trivilality and wickedness; to corrupt us with sinful excitements (pride, greed, envy esepcially) and oppress us with crushing dullness, futility, despair.

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What is totalitarianism? It is the coercive monitoring and control of all aspects of life, down to the smallest - with the objective of controlling thought. In our society it is being achieved by modifying the 'iron cage' of bureaucracy (Weber's phrase) into a smaller-and-smaller steel mesh.

The steel mesh of bureaucracy is a matter of daily, hourly, experience for nearly everybody in The West - and not only does everybody experience it, but an ever-larger proportion of people are actively engaged in its construction and imposition.

Probably, more people are 'managers' and 'officials' than any other paid job, such personnel now dominate numerically and in power all large organisations in all systems and sectors of society - and these jobs are ultimately all about devising and implementing the steel mesh of totalitarianism.

Almost everybody wants more bureaucracy for their own purposes - the equation of managerial control with responsibility, safety, how things 'ought' to be done is almost complete. The unmanaged is regarded as bad in and of itself.

Bureaucracy is the systematic embodiment of Schadenfreude. 

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And this is why bureaucracy just grows and grows - and the lack of resistance is evidence of the very great, and unrepented, evil of our society - almost everybody is actively complicit in making, repairing, tightening their own corner of the steel mesh - and apparently this prevents them noticing or objecting to the totality of the mesh.

Everybody wants everybody-else except themselves to be 'regulated' - and everybody gets their own way with the exception of their own exemption. And indeed there are plenty who want themselves regulated - yet who live lives of quiet desperation as a consequence.

For the sake of our souls, this is something that everybody ought to notice; notice, acknowledge and repent - even if they cannot (or simply do not) resist it.

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A world of endless and proliferating mutually-exploitative managing; of ever tighter thought regulation; unnoticed, collaborated, profited-from, and unresisted... this is Hell on Earth - universal evil incarnate.

Why? Because bureaucracy is the very instantiation of falsehood - the physical implementaion of multiple false assumptions, priorities and practices regarding the fundamental nature of Man, Society, and Reality.

Bureaucracy is materialism and denial of the realm beyond the senses and therefore it is active atheism and ultimate dis-order; it is denial of the validity of human judgment; it is denial of the reality of the transcendental goods of truth, beauty and virtue; it is the breaking of unity and coherence and thus bureaucracy is the inevitable destruction of meaning and purpose in Life. 

And as soon as we cease to be aware of the fact, we are in Hell; because to regard the false as true and the contingent as inevitable is of itself a choice to align with the domain of evil. 

The very least we must do (to save our souls from self-damnation) is to notice, acknowledge and repent the fact we dwell in and sustain a steel mesh of bureaucracy; a mesh that closes-in upon us, year by year!