rigorousintuition.ca

I am going to repost myself because this chance reply in another thread (JackRiddler » Sat Jul 05, 2014 2:17 pm) expanded into a summary of pretty much everything I think about the world at the present historical moment. Meaning, at least, "the world" as seen from a traditional, U.S.-centered, global-politics, "rise and fall of the great powers" perspective. It may be just right as my (at least attempted) Last Thread on RI before that break I keep promising to me, and to you.

Sounder » 02 Jul 2014, 03:43 wrote:If people want to know who is running things, just find out who is not being tapped. That would be a more useful and much smaller list.

My guess is, absolutely no one. There are doubtless those against whom the information yielded by the universal tapping is not being used, and they are, effectively, the protected core of the power elite. But if they make the wrong move, Robert Maxwells and Mikhail Kodhorkovskys and maybe even Rockefeller scions (depending on what that small plane crash last month was all about) can be sacrificed.

Theses:

(1) Even as it provides self-service to capitalist interests ("the corporations," the banks, some of the largest funds and fortunes) and cross-institutional networks of pillage and plunder and divine mission (the various parapolitical octopii, in RI parlance),

(2) the enormous apparatus of surveillance, force, propaganda, "foreign policy" and war-making centered on the prime U.S. power agencies (Pentagon, CIA-State, NSA, FBI, "Homeland") requires ideological unification and motivation based in obedience to hierarchy and a reigning idea (meaning a god!) of "national security" against enemies as these may be designated.

(3) Buried within that is the mission of preserving a system of social class against ideas of democracy. Within this ideology, this threat was traditionally understood as "communist." Nowadays, it is partly projected onto the decidely undemocratic movements of Islamism, or on to almost non-existent phantoms of "terrorism," whether false-flag or genuine.

(4) So national security ideology and, at the top levels, mutual blackmail are necessary glues for holding together a quite heterogeneous system of alliances among inherently corrupt and self-interested groups, organizations, and individuals (or perhaps self-directed rather than "self-interested," since many of them have a sense of higher mission).

So I tend to agree with WR's assessment that the national security state is where the power has its systemic center of gravity (if not its "bosses" per se).

And with this:

spiro c. thierry wrote:The apparatus is like an organism that functions without its parts being aware of the part they play in much of what it works. Naturally there are powerful people who game the system for their own purposes. But I think even the most influential don't always know precisely where they are headed.

There are those who endeavor to theorize how it works, and to influence it through their ideas (for want of a better word, since these ideas are usually little more than a simplistic and violent-minded realpolitik), by placing themselves at the strategic leverage points. Intellectuals, nowadays think-tankers, partly serving the power (and wealth), partly programming it, sometimes getting to write the policy directly. The Dulleses, McCloys, Huntingtons, Wohlstetters, Brzezinskis, Kissingers, Marshalls, Bakers, Gateses, Team B neocons, RAND, AEI-Heritage, Powell Memoists, architects of "Third Way" neoliberalism, etc. From another angle, the billionaire activists, the would-be shapers of the future, the "philanthropist" foundation-makers, Rockefellers, Morgans, Carnegies, Mellon-Scaifes (die again, mother-fucker!), Murdochs, Kochs, Gateses, Petersens (how is that fucker a Greek?!), Bloombergs, etc.

Also:

spiro c. thierry wrote:Herewith, I don't mean to say that individual actors should not be held accountable. On the contrary.

It's an absolute necessity.

(5) While the drivers behind the system's development function as always to head it in the same developmental direction as always, we have in the last 15 or so years crossed a threshold into a new plateau of lawlessness and global danger thanks to

(a) the escape from any consequences, first, of the political mob in U.S. and U.K. who openly engineered the unprovoked war of aggression of 2003; and second, of the entire Wall Street criminal class who conducted the mass fraud with MBS and derivatives prior to the 2007-2009 global crash that they caused and which exposed them.*

(b) The new U.S. administration that followed in their wake set up their getaway and consolidated their dark achievements under a new, liberally-tinged and legalistic system of state authoritarianism backing a financial feudalism.

(c) The EU powers abandoned any pretense to counterweight in a signal use of crisis capitalism to strengthen the same poisonous system and neoliberal policies that the crash had ostensibly discredited.

(d) The rest of the world's more traditionally authoritarian regimes (the ostensible antagonists in Russia and China, for example) are encouraged by the factual abandonment within the West of the pretense to rule of law and Western ideals as carte blanche to respond as they will in the midst of the global crisis.

The potential results are explosive.

* NOTE:

It's not that these two acts of class criminality were entirely without moral precedent, or (arguably) worse than earlier acts. It's that they were conducted so openly, so brazenly, backed by such awesomely stupid lies that were exposed even as they were spoken; that their perpetrators got entirely away and were allowed to double down, even after the predictable and dire mass disasters became manifest to the world; and that, in the fast-moving media and mentality landscapes of today, these recent disasters are essentially forgotten to the public, although their consequences are still determining current events. And by determining, I mean not as historical causes in a chain of causality, but still as direct, immanent causes. We are still in the economic crisis that manifested in 2008! Look at the situation in Iraq (and Syria), right now!

Furthermore, these acts were essentially cannibalistic. A functioning system of empire that can sell itself to the world and sees long-term future prospects would not have engaged in the high-risk self-sabotage of conducting the Iraq invasion against the oppostion of its key overseas allies; a stable system of exploitation still capable of growth would not have required predatory scams on the mass level of the Wall Street plays we've seen since the mid-1990s, let alone mid-2000s.

It's like an experimental confirmation with the lesson to sociopathic individuals and classes alike that they can commit such crimes again; that they should do it in big and brazen fashion; that they should recognize no limits, indeed cannot afford to recognize limits; that there will be no crisis and no protest, let alone an uprising, that cannot be easily weathered, or (like the legions of "Tea Party" idiots, some of whom are reading this) turned into a systemic support; that no law will be brought to bear on them, but that law will continue to function reliably as an authoritarian support against the lower classes and outsiders; that they will, in fact, be rewarded in direct proportion to the level of their criminality and ambition. This is a step beyond crime pays: Crime wins, and only crime wins.

Or so it appears, until, inevitably, a much larger breakdown or outbreak comes about, but that's not anything that should give us hope, in the fashion of leftist apocalyptism that sees opportunity in crisis. The 2008 crisis has yet to produce a credible populist threat. Do you think a Mad Max scenario would do it? At the scale and level of development we have reached, such breakdowns are incredibly unpredictable and chaotic for a period and then almost certain to result in the re-consolidation of a more authoritarian state with popular support, doubling down in backing an even more predatory economy. A breakdown that really destroys the system is unlikely to leave a world that can sustain civilization. Successful reform movements have to somehow be grown just as much within the pockets of relative prosperity (based on long-term and complex thinking) as well as among the most damned, with these lower and middle classes coming together even absent a breakdown.

In other words, good luck.

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Good theses, Jack. But what I was wondering the other day, is who takes care of the security of these people? The politicians rely upon security but are there bigger badasses that look out for security and so on? Like, say you're some kind of badass that your sole job is to protect the motherfucking prez. What's downtime like? Are there other badasses who watch out for you when you're singing in the shower? And so on. . .

JackRiddler » Sun Jul 06, 2014 6:19 am wrote:

Sounder » 02 Jul 2014, 03:43 wrote:If people want to know who is running things, just find out who is not being tapped. That would be a more useful and much smaller list.

My guess is, absolutely no one. There are doubtless those against whom the information yielded by the universal tapping is not being used, and they are, effectively, the protected core of the power elite. But if they make the wrong move, Robert Maxwells and Mikhail Kodhorkovskys and maybe even Rockefeller scions (depending on what that small plane crash last month was all about) can be sacrificed.

So there is this egregore of global proportions....presuming its manifested structure is hierarchical, how does one find out who and what form the cap stone of the pyramid?

The OP acknowledges the evidence that hierarchy exists within and at every level of human kind, yet draws the conclusion there is nothing at the top. Odd.

Really valuable and important topic. It seems hard to flesh out all the nuances of these big questions in any sort of absolute way but it seems clear that Capital and the State are both central to the process of organizing human society. By Capital, I mean the social relationship that drives and demands profits for those with the bread. The State, a governmental hierarchy ruling a particular territory and maintaining a monopoly on the legitimate use of force/violence within that territory, is clearly central- but how can we really separate its functions out from the imperatives of Capital? Both are central!

I think of the connect-the-dots puzzles I used to do as a kid. Each point matters, but the pattern that emerges when you look at the inter-relationships is really, really important, too. Conspiracy is an integral part of the way things work but this does not necessarily mean that there is a capstone, the one ultimate smoky room. In fact the roots of that assumption correlate highly with forces fairly high up on the ladder of power and privilege, working agenda which themselves are not in the popular interest.




On Edit: Corrected spelling on one word

coffin_dodger » Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:46 am wrote:The OP acknowledges the evidence that hierarchy exists within and at every level of human kind, yet draws the conclusion there is nothing at the top. Odd.

A very astute observation that deserves to be highlighted. There are many who think because the "top" cannot be identified, it therefore does not exist. I maintain that successful hierarch power must remain hidden.

We all agree there exists a hierarchy, then in what form is the hierarchy capstoned? A machine that runs on its own is dependent upon outside resource and outside creation. We see the maintenance of the machine everyday.

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Hm, coffin_dodger's short comment makes it appear he stopped reading and started complaining after the first sentence ("absolutely no one!") even though it refers to who may be "untapped," and not yet to who is "in charge."

Brandon_D seems confused by a limited understanding of the many forms in which hierarchy or authority systems might come (and observably do come!). He assumes a simplistic, all-purpose, static metaphor -- a "pyramid" with a singular "capstone" -- although this cannot possibly work as an observational model of stratification in the complex political economies and institutional settings of modern societies, and also wouldn't apply in most historic settings.

Why not a mountain range, with many peaks overlooking different territories, some of the peaks flatter and some pointier than others? How about a set of overlapping spider's webs, some in the light, some in the dark? How about a readiness to modify models and understand that metaphors are supposed to aid understanding and communication, not substitute for it? The existence of multiple peaks, for example, wouldn't imply that power wasn't concentrated in a tiny number of owners and managers, since it so clearly is.

OMH, you also don't seem to have read it, since an idea of where power lies is given. It's just not in your seemingly desired single group of people, an empirically unsupportable idea unless we broaden this group to cover the owning and managing classes generally. It's also not in a static structure or situation -- a historical absurdity, especially in the modern period.

There is much hierarchy but no one central committee, no one coven of hierophant-alien-lizard-whatevers with a single institutional memory carrying out a single long-term plan for the world that's actually stuck. I'd guess the most successful such small, compact grouping with a long-term plan would be the Federalists of 1786, whose attempts to limit democracy and establish a government suitable for acquiring and running a continental empire devoted to preserving the property rights (essentially, the power over others) of their class have proven quite durable.

But their work is hardly a secret. Neither for that matter is the work of the present-day global ruling class and its various institutions and clubs: the power agencies of the U.S. empire and their contractors and parapolitical tentacles; the financial centers in US-UK-EU; World Bank/IMF/WTO and the various FTAs; the "147 corporations" especially the banks, energy companies, media conglomerates and high-tech such as in Silicon Valley; the offshore money pools and laundering havens that allow financial exploitation of the war/terror/drug operations; the main billionaires' foundations; and the clubs and annual conventions like CFR/Trilateral/Bilderberg/Davos. On the periphery looking in and not easily moved are the BRICS, or at least the RC and B part of that. On the periphery being raped are most of the rest.

Most expressions of power are hidden only through terminology, which is to say, ideology. Even the most concentrated absolutism and abuse works best in plain sight, as long as it's dressed up in names that people fear, or are willing to respect: democracy, security, prosperity and growth, business and development, liberty and self-interest, family, divine will, higher law, technical expertise, nature or science, the People of New York State versus X, etc.

There are literally dozens of cabals who are or have been powerful and often destructive, who have had influence and impact, and who wank or wanked themselves and each other off daily to the notion that they are the true, great and powerful and above all permanent masters of the universe, which they are not. That doesn't mean all of these are equally deluded, or that power centers do not vary in their mass and therefore gravity, or that some power centers do not endure even for hundreds of years (which seems like a very long time given our very short individual lifespans).

I'm actually interested in answering these questions using the available evidence of observable reality, which is why no simple answer will do for very long. Shorthands are unavoidable. The concept of the 1% has been handy recently in educating Americans about the obvious concentration of power to which they've developed a historic blindspot since the high point of their consciousness (which came and passed in the 1930s).

Power and capital are so concentrated that "the 1% of the 1%" are really what we're looking for here. The power elite, as Mills put it. But also, and this is so often ignored among us here on RI: It's just as important to look not only at the hands (plural!) on the steering wheels (plural), but the nature of the vehicles, and the surrounding terrains. These may and often are more important. (And granted also: insofar as vehicles and terrains are the right metaphors for structures themselves subject to change.)

My assertion here has been that bringing diverse power centers and binding complex institutional workings together into coordinated action and development over time requires a) common interests and b) ideology (or mission). Pointless if you're not delineating these, how they develop, how they are applied and maintained, how they are pitched to various groups and classes.

What is the why?, as that Merovingian guy in the bad Matrix (II) said. Do not come here without a why.

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You guys are going to laugh, but I believe it to be "extra-terrestrial". Who leads it? I have no idea and that is the point. I looked up something yesterday and came upon this:

Naïve physics or folk physics is the untrained human perception of basic physical phenomena. In the field of artificial intelligence the study of naïve physics is a part of the effort to formalize the common knowledge of human beings.

Many ideas of folk physics are simplifications, misunderstandings, or misperceptions of well-understood phenomena, incapable of giving useful predictions of detailed experiments, or simply are contradicted by more thorough observations. They may sometimes be true, be true in certain limited cases, be true as a good first approximation to a more complex effect, or predict the same effect but misunderstand the underlying mechanism.

Naïve physics can also be defined as an intuitive understanding all humans have about objects in the physical world.[1] Cognitive psychologists are delving deeper into these phenomena with promising results. Psychological studies indicate that certain notions of the physical world are innate in all of us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_physics

Here's another thing. I am working a job now that I don't get. However, nobody gets it. They know the steps and shit like that, but we are creating a world of fiber optics that may or may not go on. Thus, I am left to wonder what the purpose is. I imagine earthquakes, hurricanes, windstorms, birds, you name it and it just seems like it's all for naught. Yet also for another reason.

JackRiddler » Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:47 pm wrote:Brandon_D seems confused by a limited understanding of the many forms in which hierarchy or authority systems might come (and observably do come!). He assumes a simplistic, all-purpose, static metaphor -- a "pyramid" with a singular "capstone" -- although this cannot possibly work as an observational model of stratification in the complex political economies and institutional settings of modern societies, and also wouldn't apply in most historic settings.
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Just stumbled upon this discussion and was surprised to discover that I am already somehow embroiled in it. Is this a mistaken appellation?

JackRiddler » Mon Jul 07, 2014 3:47 am wrote:Brandon_D seems confused by a limited understanding of the many forms in which hierarchy or authority systems might come (and observably do come!). He assumes a simplistic, all-purpose, static metaphor -- a "pyramid" with a singular "capstone" -- although this cannot possibly work as an observational model of stratification in the complex political economies and institutional settings of modern societies, and also wouldn't apply in most historic settings.

Why not a mountain range, with many peaks overlooking different territories, some of the peaks flatter and some pointier than others? How about a set of overlapping spider's webs, some in the light, some in the dark? How about a readiness to modify models and understand that metaphors are supposed to aid understanding and communication, not substitute for it? The existence of multiple peaks, for example, wouldn't imply that power wasn't concentrated in a tiny number of owners and managers, since it so clearly is.

Haha...seems Jack was confused, I think he was addressing my post Brandon. Oh well I shall respond....

Jack, I agree that there are multiple peaks at the present time in the actual structure, but it's still a work in progress....the egregore responsible for this evolving manifested structure, while accepting there would be many intermediate stages along the way, would want to end up with the most effective hierarchal structure for the job of ruling the planet ...and that would ultimately take a pyramid form imho. However even it were to involve a more complex arrangement...the egregore responsible must still rely on an inner circle at the highest level to do its bidding....the capstone.

I subscribe to the theory that is more of an unsupported hypothesis, that there is a non-human element that combines our understanding of God, Alien, Devil and soul. That this is the reason why we cannot see the capstone, because we literally cannot see it (or "them"). But it can see us.

I also suspect that it is interested in benign intervention in the same way a cattle rancher steers the cows from danger. It doesn't avoid the fact that a harvest is reaped. This is a theory many have subscribed to over the years and that our Jeff Wells seemed to hint at in his blog. It isn't as trendy as emergence or whatever other buzzword to denote a ghost in the machine - which I feel many here subscribe to. It's just my intuition.

In order to solve the problems of deep politics we have to solve the problems of deep esoterics because humans are more than a place on a power structure. This is the liberation and the marriage that is least likely. Our freedom depends on it.

Yeh OMH....that's sort of what I mean by the term 'Egregore'...though it needs mankind to manifest its ultimate goal as it feeds on their psychic energy...it is attempting to organize a planetary 'battery hen farm' of humans...a sustainable ecologically balanced planet whereby it becomes immortal as the human 'cells' that make up its manifested body are continually being born, living and dying.

Ben D wrote:Yeh OMH....that's sort of what I mean by the term 'Egregore'...though it needs mankind to manifest its ultimate goal as it feeds on their psychic energy...it is attempting to organize a planetary 'battery hen farm' of humans...a sustainable ecologically balanced planet whereby it becomes immortal as the human 'cells' that make up its manifested body are continuing being born, living and dying.

Which suggests an integrated symbiosis if we can benefit from the arrangement. Not a hierarchy at all? Then we are mistaking divine malfeasance as accidental self mutilation (or disease) and human power structures as divisions between higher organs and lesser tissues.

Occult Means Hidden » Mon Jul 07, 2014 2:27 am wrote:I subscribe to the theory that is more of an unsupported hypothesis, that there is a non-human element that combines our understanding of God, Alien, Devil and soul. That this is the reason why we cannot see the capstone, because we literally cannot see it (or "them"). But it can see us.

I also suspect that it is interested in benign intervention in the same way a cattle rancher steers the cows from danger. It doesn't avoid the fact that a harvest is reaped. This is a theory many have subscribed to over the years and that our Jeff Wells seemed to hint at in his blog. It isn't as trendy as emergence or whatever other buzzword to denote a ghost in the machine - which I feel many here subscribe to. It's just my intuition.

In order to solve the problems of deep politics we have to solve the problems of deep esoterics because humans are more than a place on a power structure. This is the liberation and the marriage that is least likely. Our freedom depends on it.

Agreed, and I would add that IMO human beings are themselves a diminished extension of this larger esoteric reality, and not entirely separate from it. I feel inclined to add this only because it adds an additional dimension to a somewhat flat image of man as helpless prey in a sort of grand cosmic exploitation factory. We arrive at that conclusion only because it is an exact reflection of contemporary human civilization.

Much in the same way that we interpret the animal kingdom and ancient civilizations through the lens of our own motivations (often quite erroneously).

There is a larger story taking place and not only have we been unable to grasp it, but I suspect it is ultimately ungraspable by human intellect.

But it is so enjoyable to try, regardless.