“One cannot maintain an ethic on a transient certificate of service entitling the possessor to a certain quantity of energy. Ethics requires at least the illusion of eternality. Ethics deprived of the immortal dollar might again interest itself primarily in spiritual values.” “During the period in which the nature of man was adjusting itself to economic security and a superabundance of leisure, emotional needs would doubtless be rampant.” “If technocracy should be successful, and when its success had become accepted even by the individual’s subconscious mind, religion might undergo a metamorphosis.”
Category Archives: Automation Revolution
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /6 (2021)
“Some individuals consider periodical health examination an invasion of their private rights; but such invasions are not resented long.” “It is only the suspiciousness of the poor, whom experience teaches to expect no good of the unknown, which makes them recalcitrant to medical advice.” “With doctors assuming the intimate role of family adviser, mental defectives would inevitably be recognized. When suspected of dangerous tendencies, their habits would be watched; when necessary their actions restrained.”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /5 (2021)
“In a technocracy, the separation of private and public function is clearly defined.” “The alterations in structure are radical but simple. First the present tendency to merge the competing units in each industry must be carried to completion.”
“Corporate monopolies would be the government.” “A most undemocratic system!”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /4 (2021)
“Man automatically attaches to his ego extraneous elements and calls them his”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /3 (2021)
“Six thousand years have been required to harness the forces of nature. Will another six thousand years be necessary to check the forces which have impelled society to found its faith in greed? Economic competition, the free-for-all, called capitalism, is now breeding a condition which is imperiling the complicated structure and the very civilization of the Western society. Is the alternative to capitalism so dreadful that it may not even be envisaged?”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /2 (2021)
“The sole function of conventional politics would be “showmanship” to keep the public amused: “receiving distinguished guests, laying corner stones, making speeches about the rights of man, American initiative, justice. Its offices would be elective, thereby titillating the egos of those who like to think they are running things. Prominent clowns will, doubtless, be frequently elected.”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? (2021)
“Americans, their faith in Capitalism unimpaired, deny the illness.”
The ‘Code of Nature’, 1755: collective feelings vs. individual reason (2020)
Loin que la raison nous éclaire
Et conduise nos actions,
Nous avons trouvé l’art d’en faire
L’orateur de nos passions.
C’est un Sophiste qui nous joue,
Un vil complaisant qui se loue
A tous les fous de l’univers,
Qui s’habillant du nom de sages,
La tiennent sans cesse à leurs gages
Pour autoriser leurs travers.
– Rousseau
NASDAQ, Oregon, and Washington D.C.: three steps towards 21st century cyber-psychedelic global capitalism (2020)
The cyber turn of 21st century capitalism is becoming more explicitly cyber-psychedelic, digital as well as hallucinogenic, working to modify common sense and our shared sense of reality.
The economics of ‘ego death’ (2020)
According to Keynes “the essential characteristic of capitalism” is “the dependence upon an intense appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals as the main motive force of the economic machine.” Keynes emphasized the role of the irrational in economic life and talked about “the Freudian theory of the love of money.”
‘CyPsy’ mind? Cyber super-ego and psychedelic id. Or digital surveillance, mass hallucinogens, and the new ‘black gold’ of the unconscious (2020)
In the CyPsy hypothesis on the mind, as the mind is currently transformed by cyber-psychedelic capitalism, the super-ego becomes largely externalized onto the surveillance digital system, the ego is dissolved, and the id becomes free of internal constraints only to be regulated by the external substitution of the super-ego, which is the digital panopticon of surveillance capitalism making profits.
Libertà cyber-psichedelica? (2020)
“La libertà è schiavitù” – George Orwell
Joker: welcome to the era of global political psychiatry (2019)
Joker sanctions in global popular culture the citizen who becomes patient.
Are we witnessing the emergence of a new global psychiatric power? (2019)
The current public psychiatrization of “the most powerful man in the world,” as the media often describe the President of the United States of America, could be seen as a new paradigm shift in contemporary power.
In addition to the increasing use of a psychologized lexicon in everyday speech, a role might be played by such spectacle communicating symbolically, and contributing to, a global cultural shift towards a subjectivist worldview and a progressive de-politicization of citizenship.