To avoid misunderstandings and the inevitable “moral confusion” regarding matters of Intelligence, a brief tutorial might be in order to illustrate as clearly as possible what, as a famous politician once said, “the definition of is is.”
I am, to the extent I can afford to be, a compassionate man. While I can do nothing to help you, for your lot is merely a necessary component of the way things work — such is Life and Fate — perhaps I can make your miserable future a bit more…acceptable to you if I can help you understand, to the best of your ability, how things work.
“Understanding is the first step toward acceptance” — or whatever such doggerel they feed booze-hounds huddled in those church-basement covens — might be the road to take. Not that many of you will attain understanding, much less acceptance — they always go kicking and screaming to death, prison, The Job, after their rebellions implode, thanks in no small part to the efforts of yours truly; why should you be different, you who do not even know enough to rebel? — but perhaps you can be persuaded to carry on with your alloted tasks without wasting anyone’s time or money, or causing yourselves grievous, unnecessary harm, if this scrap of knowledge I’m giving you (nothing secret, really; nothing some of you don’t already know, if not intellectually, certainly intuitively), this toe-nail shaving of omnipotence, allows at least some of you, the smart ones, to find peace in resignation, and show others the way to a degree of freedom, even luxury.
Let me explain.
All societies, so called, are systems created by individuals, usually the ones who know, for the organization and management of those who do not know. These systems, imaginary creations that they are, are held together by certain laws or principles of order. The invisible authorities behind these principles are, or were, your myths, gods, goddesses and what not. What we in the business of systems management call “necessary fictions.”
Consider the game of chess, for instance, a relatively complex hierarchy of individual pieces, from King – less “powerful” than the Queen but infinitely more valuable, for once the King is lost, so is the game – down to the mere pawn. Now, one can carry on all one wants about the alleged “individual rights” of every piece, even the lowly pawn. So let us give the pawn his rights. Poof: the necessary fiction of “the game” is gone. Now what? Your pawn has his “right” to be a useless figurine in a meaningless universe. But create the necessary fiction of the game, and even the pawn, expendable piece though it may be, attains value and meaning.
Understood? Excellent. Let us proceed:
Simpler societies had multiple gods and goddesses to reflect the nature of each component of their surroundings; more complex societies, or civilizations, needed more unified, abstract authorities to reflect and enforce the chain of command which grew more hierarchical in accordance with complexity.
Simpler systems (tribal) can make do with a few or even a panoply of gods and goddesses reflecting both the power and uncertainty of nature as well as the desires, jealousies, passions of human beings.
Complex systems (civilized) were in need of more unified, all-powerful, necessary fictions to reflect their more complex, abstracted hierarchies leading, inevitably, to smaller and smaller of groups of priests, law-givers, commanders and other ones who know. This only makes sense. A goddess of the river watches over her domain as jealously as a god of fire watches over his. But an all-powerful, omnipresent, omnipotent god sees everything and everyone, at all times, always. As reflected in the system’s hierarchy from the limited purview of local magistrates to the all-powerful king or emperor. The logic behind this is self-explanatory.
All well and good, yes?
But as systems become more complex, so too the odd and various minds which comprise the “stuff” of their whole. In other words, the human system, like an individual human body, is prone to attack by “free radicals,” as the Medical Industry so drolly named them, and other dangers to the order of things created by the heterogeneous nature of the complex environment that is Empire.
For managers of complex systems, such as myself, free radicals are problems not to be taken lightly. A small tumor today can metastasize into a full-blown cancer tomorrow, threatening the life of the system itself.
Ever since Nietzsche, that nasty man, killed god as a necessary fiction, nay, even before that (Shelley, that most messianic of poets, was an atheist, that is, denier of necessary fictions, as was Voltaire before him, despite his rather cowardly conversion to “belief” in his final panicked moments) there have been numerous threats to the order of things as they had been.
Note: the “Marxist” Soviet Empire was never a threat, rather an ally, based as it was on similar principles of order and containment, and the necessary fictions needed to enforce their own alternative version of “freedom.” Indeed, Spruchtude, the country of my birth and upbringing, was part of the so-called “Eastern Bloc,” and – well, I’ll save all that “David Copperfield kinda crap” for a later date. Suffice it to say that the Soviet Empire did become a very grave problem indeed – when it collapsed, and could no longer be depended upon to keep free radicals under the aegis of its own managers. Hence, the “New World Order,” in other words, the necessity for new, more drastic, even “radical” forms of management and containment, aided by the creation of digital surveillance, data collection and advanced methods of flow control.
For a systems manager such as myself, no longer in my first youth, this was a welcome change. While neutralization, termination, denial-of-existence attacks and other methods of flow control are a necessity of management, I personally prefer the cleaner, more technical solutions.
While I was indeed the man most responsible for Operation Zombie and the unpleasantness of such a comparatively crude method of containment and flow control, I did it solely to get the hell out of the “blood and guts” business I was inevitably assigned to, as part of my eduction, as a young man (see Jungle Lazarus From Heaven or Higher). I will describe the unsavory methodologies of Operation Zombie in due course. But I say now as I would have then, had the options been available, the sanitation programs the new technologies have enabled us to establish are not only more pleasant, to us managers, but ultimately and in the long run, more effective.
Where was I? Ah, yes. The Way Things Work.
There are some seven billion “head-trips” in this world, but precious few real minds.
Real minds need work to occupy them, else, the self being “infinite,” as the good Herr Schelling implied (note: Transcendental Philosophy is not my cup of tea; yet some of my less sanguine colleagues have turned to such belief-systems to reconcile themselves with certain contradictory exigencies of their work; another reason I prefer cleaner, more technical solutions) they endlessly imagine all manner of desires, wants, needs, which by definition must remain unfulfilled, for the imagination will always desire what it cannot have. Such an accumulation of imagined desires, unfulfilled, will eventually sour into grotesque perversions and turn inward, consuming the very mind that created them.
Real minds need work, and this work is to create order out of chaos – and maintain it.
It is the unfortunate lot of the rest, the peasants, serfs, workers, etc. (that’s you, my friends) to labor at mindless, thankless tasks – The Job – so that we, the few, can think and organize and The Unseen (born of atheism, the denial of necessary fictions you hot-shots were so proud of) can command.
True, The Unseen are afforded luxuries of production, the likes of which most of you producers can scarcely imagine. But what were the Greek gods and goddesses, after all, but supreme beings with the luxury of Time to pursue their pleasures, whims, desires to fulfillment? Please keep in mind that even among the Greek gods the fulfillment of desires in Time was not infinite. Even Olympus, as Zeus well knew, was destined to fall to younger, stronger, more desirous and ambitious blood. Hungry blood. Which cannot abide denial imposed on it by Power. Not forever. Someday it will rise and conquer; though not on my watch…
Such is Life and Fate. If even the gods of Olympus, and The Unseen of the present Empire, must reconcile themselves to their own brief roles in the endless expanse of Time, so must you.
These are complex matters. The Empire, like Olympus, is not forever. One must get – or take – while the getting’s good. Thus we, the managers of this vast system, must do what we do, take what we must take, by any means necessary and/or at our disposal, to ensure that the Empire is fed as much new blood, if you’ll pardon the expression, for as long as it has the…uh…the guts to swallow and digest…
One cannot “blame” The Unseen for the order of things dictated by Life and Fate, nor can one blame managers, such as your humble Dr. Spaeoiuk. If you must blame The Unseen, and even Dr. Spaeiouk, you must also blame yourselves.
Consider the innumerable benefits you enjoy, hitherto undreamed of by serfs and peasants in any Empire before this, or I dare say, any Empire to come (since most of the world’s resources have already been consumed by this one), from the ability to take a hot shower on a frigid Winter morning – albeit at the crack of dawn, in preparation for your daily Time offering to The Job – to flushing your fetid excrement down toilettes whose connection to the labyrinthine plumbing of Empire you so take for granted. And let us not forget almighty air-conditioning, without which you would bake like your micro-waved lunches in your own damned cubicles.
I do not speak of the trinkets, baubles, toys and gadgets you so enjoy as “consumer goods,” mere amusements and diversions, but the necessities that make your wretched days somewhat more bearable than the days of billions – yes billions – of serfs who came before you.
These, as I said, are merely the facts of Life and Fate. The order of things, the way they work.
So, next time you get all grumpy about your so-called “condition,” or upset by some petty “horror” on The News (you don’t know the meaning of “horror,” my friends, believe me; what you see, what you are permitted to see, is but the tip of a gargantuan ice-berg), think about who you are, and where you are, and by whose sufferance.
Do not presumptuously accuse your manager and protector, Dr. Spaeiouk; rather, speak for yourselves…