The Sorcerer's Apprentice

We are witnessing in real time the impossibility of totalitarian control.

Governments want us to believe they follow “the science”. They imply this makes their rulings valid and wise and thus beyond dispute. But there is not now, nor has there ever been, only one ‘science’. Such is an immature fantasy. Science is never in total consensus about anything; even the most rigorously produced and unambiguous data can be interpreted in multiple ways. 

But even allowing that One Science is real, there follows the problem of developing wise or clear policy from its decrees. For example, what if science were to definitively prove that TV is bad for humans? What is the scientifically correct policy response to that truth? And how easy would it be to address the finding that the profit motive is primarily destructive to the environment? More generally, what if science were to prove the opposite of what governments need to be true? This simple thought exercise tells us all we need to know: governments cannot follow objective science; they wield The Science in a way that suits their purposes, that delivers only those interpretations of the data that support their ambitions and requirements.

In “following” (whatever that means) “the science” (whatever that means), governments forcefully imply there can be no disagreement with their rulings and guidelines. Even accepting the idea that government should issue laws that cannot ever be disputed, how could such total power be practically implemented? How can all argument be halted? Can totalitarianism accomplish this eery ambition? Can government, or science, or the greatest genius communicator alive, issue constant instructions about how all 7.x billion of us are to behave from moment to moment such that there is no room for confusion or interpretation? And how healthy or desirable would machine humans in a machine system be? No matter how much we might want it to be so, humans are not programmable machines. (And even programmable machines behave like wilful children much of the time!) Life is not a programmable machine.

The more we reach for control, the more we create its opposite. The genie the Powers That Be have released – in their ivory-tower wisdom – is inadvertently exposing the impossibility of top-down rule. Lockdown and relentless fear mongering have set people against each other so profoundly that there is now no possible way of agreeing on the best way forward. Each side has scientists. Each side has authorities and data to support their position. How can the ever-growing mountain of that data be correctly interpreted? We’re assessing effects and ramifications of an invisible particle – SARS-CoV-2 – that cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt. And on top of that, even if we could agree on how deadly it is (if it is deadly), how can we agree on what best to do about it? If Sweden or Texas or Florida or South Dakota or wherever achieves herd immunity in the next few days or weeks – if we can even ‘prove’ to everyone’s satisfaction this has occurred – comparing one country to another is deemed unscientific by many. In the absence of comparisons, there can be no healthy scientific debate. We’re thus left with The Science that produces what each government needs it to ‘prove’. 

Which brings us back to totalitarian control. Which is impossible.

Can top-down rule work at all now that debate and discussion can happen between billions of people 24/7? How is that policeable? How can all that chatter be effectively censored? How can humanity’s endless talking be orchestrated such that its outcomes are invariably favourable to The Powers That Be? With AI? But how would the AI instructions be implemented, interpreted? By a separate AI system? By robot armies? How would they be controlled? And so on.

All this seems to beg these final questions: Are we being directed towards direct democracy even though we’re not ready for it? Are our amazing communication technologies inexorably herding us towards a challenge most don’t want to face?

And doesn’t history always do this to us?

Economics is Economic Madness! Markets Buck Reality!

I’m borrowing somewhat from The Slog’s recent post, though I had wanted to comment on the miraculous markets myself before I read his missive. Time and business elsewhere prevented me from doing so earlier, but I think Saturday is the better day for this my first ‘The Week That Was’ post.

Anyway, rating agencies have been slashing away merrily; Mervyn King has proclaimed the current crisis the worst in history; an IMF adviser is warning of imminent global financial meltdown; revolution is beginning in America, is underway in Greece, in Spain and elsewhere; relocating Tokyo has been mentioned as well as the possibility that all of Japan is becoming uninhabitable; JP Morgan lovingly donated multiple millions to the NYPD, who promptly arrested hundreds of oiks (of Occupy Wall Street fame) for being on a bridge, and yet the markets surged upwards:

Dow Jones



FTSE



DAX



The Slog wonders if traders are stupid. Toby wonders if traders (human ones anyway) have anything to do with this at all. It is clear to me—as far as clarity is possible amidst this mud-miasma of disinformation—that the markets are rigged, and have been for quite some time. This ‘All’s Well on the Western Front’ media massage [sic] is so obviously a panic measure by those who want and need this system to survive as is, come what may, is as deft and elegant as JP Morgan’s metropolitan largesse, we can only take market robustness as a sign of desperation and evidence of embedded and rampant criminality. The Powers That Be are losing their confidence, their touch is deserting them. But what can they actually do? The game is up. And ‘we’ are taking ‘their’ power from ‘them.’ (In the end there is only us. As we stop playing along with the elite/non-elite dichotomy and start growing up into direct democracy and political maturity, the 99% will become the 100%.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t even making any demands of Government, which is exactly as it should be. Why one earth should we demand anything of the criminals looting global wealth so psychopathically, other than to tell them to stop and move aside, join us, or be steamrollered by the turning tide of history? When demands are made, we will be making them of ourselves. We want a system that has human and environmental concern built in. It’s up to us all to build it. And it always has been.

Meanwhile, the respectable organisation the NEF (New Economics Foundation) has just published a book on money creation and the mechanics of the money system. Here is the first paragraph from the executive summary:

“There is widespread misunderstanding of how new money is created. This book examines the workings of the UK monetary system and concludes that the most useful description is that new money is created by commercial banks when they extend or create credit, either through making loans or buying existing assets. In creating credit, banks simultaneously create deposits in our bank accounts, which, to all intents and purposes, is money.”
New Economics Foundation

No one who regularly visits either this blog or others concerned with similar objectives will be surprised by the above quote, but I think we should remember it is still controversial that money is the plaything of commercial banks worldwide (with the exception perhaps of China), that the money system is purposefully shrouded in mystery, and that we are again being asked to pawn our children’s futures to protect the system, the commercial banks’ ‘right’ to continue the charade they have employed for centuries to enrich themselves at the expense of others. The only human response to this redoubled attack is rebellion. Anything less is an abdication of our humanity. If we relinquish our dignity, we have nothing of any real value to live for. Isn’t that exactly what we are waking up to?

In short, the fact that the deeper system is the problem is the idea which needs to be promoted most energetically. It is not until this is recognized and understood by a sizable and coherent minority of people across the planet that effective change can be begun in earnest. When the numbers of us able to disseminate this reality compassionately, wisely and artistically to any ready, willing and able to hear it, reaches 10% and above, the tipping point will be reached. Perhaps we are already there. What lies before us is keeping vital infrastructure healthy and operational—the Internet, food supply chains, energy delivery systems, hygiene, sanitation, water, etc.—and learning, day by day and decision by decision, how we want direct democracy to work. Some of us will have to stay in the current system for this to be possible, as contacts, moles, what have you, others will be at the forefront of the new.

There are no guarantees of success, nor can there be a clear idea of what success will mean. And yet, the very fact that this is even beginning, whatever the outcome, is a success already. Live or die, the richer life we all want begins with uncertain courage flickering to action in our hearts, then flows outwards from there. We all have a role to play.