tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post427953062683976702..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: Technocracy vs tradition?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-21775128295475843862022-10-28T07:51:30.479+11:002022-10-28T07:51:30.479+11:00Chesterton’s blistering essay on “expert” worship ...Chesterton’s blistering essay on “expert” worship is key here.<br /><br />“we trust travelers on places they have never been.”Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-37707120192487655182022-10-28T07:23:04.392+11:002022-10-28T07:23:04.392+11:00Good find. It is certainly one aspect of the techn...Good find. It is certainly one aspect of the technological mindset on display - the idea that social life should be under the formal control of "experts" with credentials, rather than a loving father and mother.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-43279574760868308352022-10-20T02:07:56.071+11:002022-10-20T02:07:56.071+11:00Sorry to be a bother, but I was recently reminded ...Sorry to be a bother, but I was recently reminded of this. It’s but an anecdote, but I think it’s nevertheless an interesting insight into a more common form of managerial thinking (if I may say so): https://web.archive.org/web/20220728235056/https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/wap891/the_fact_that_any_two_idiots_well_a_male_and_a/<br /><br />Apologies for the archive link. If you can’t or don’t want to view it, the title should more or less suffice: "The fact that any two idiots (well, a male and a female idiot) can force a life into existence is mind-bendingly terrifying.” Admittedly it is more dominated by an antinatalist fear that sees life as pain, but the fear of “amateurs” being in control of something like reproduction is nonetheless an example of managerial fear.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-84854029104400657422022-09-26T15:39:25.223+10:002022-09-26T15:39:25.223+10:00Mark, my general view is that evil is holistic, an...Mark, my general view is that evil is holistic, and detrimental forces will work out to harmony in the end. While managerial types, technocratic types, and leftists seem to conflict on many points, they also seem to work together more than they work against each other. Their efforts consistently average out to chronically bad policy. Which is all just a roundabout way of saying that I’m sure both forces, that of the managerial and that of the leftist, are at play. Even more likely, really, when it’s many thousands or millions of people at work.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-45355940615534553742022-09-26T10:14:12.019+10:002022-09-26T10:14:12.019+10:00Guest Ghast, also wanted to comment on your third ...Guest Ghast, also wanted to comment on your third point. You write about a scaling up of peoples for greater efficiency: "through a managerial lens of scaling up a system (in this case from small peoples to larger ones) for greater economic efficiency". It reminded me of the case of Alfred Deakin, Australia's second PM. He was torn between wanting to retain the particularity of the Australian identity of the time (early 1900s), but thinking also that the longer term trend was toward "higher unities". He wrote about liberalism that "All such provisions point to larger and more effective Unions within the realm and then beyond it." Part of this could be, as you suggest, the managerial focus on scale & efficiency. Lawrence Auster suggested an alternative explanation, namely that it has to do with leftists accepting the existence of "wholes" (unlike right liberals), but rejecting the hierarchies that exist within them due to the emphasis on equality: <br /><br />"On the left, socialists and Communists, like traditional conservatives, believe in larger wholes, but the wholes they believe in are seen in terms of equality: the whole of society—equal; the whole of the human race—equal. They believe that man has the ability to engineer this larger, equal whole into existence, wiping out the unequal, inherited orders of class, sex, nation, race, religion, morality, and thus creating a New Humanity. Only the largest whole—humankind—is good, because only at the level of all humanity can there be true equality and fraternity uniting all people."<br /><br />I suppose the technocratic side fits in here too as it requires an "enlightened" class of experts/state bureaucrats to socially engineer these new "wholes" into existence.<br /><br />http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2018/04/deakin-higher-unities.html?m=1Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-25109098298375380692022-09-26T10:01:25.938+10:002022-09-26T10:01:25.938+10:00Yes, interesting, isn't it? I've noticed t...Yes, interesting, isn't it? I've noticed the same thing. In fact, I'd divide those with a modernist mindset into two types. Those who take the ideology at face value and who lose big time vs those who pick and choose strategically and who often end up well off. More specifically, there are those who push technocracy hard when it comes to public life, including the workplace, but who resolutely cling to other values when it comes to their private, personal lives. Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-76054287859412340952022-09-24T14:57:44.737+10:002022-09-24T14:57:44.737+10:00Mr. Richardson
One of the things that I notice is...Mr. Richardson<br /><br />One of the things that I notice is that they want people to live and to turn into things that they themselves do not live by. They don't live in communes, which is what they want for us. They still get married, something that they don't want for us. They still raise their own children, something that they don't want us to be doing.<br /><br />Curious that they cannot get it together for themselves. Mark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-85574420990135196692022-09-23T22:42:27.216+10:002022-09-23T22:42:27.216+10:00Mark, that’s disturbing. I’ve experienced it in my...Mark, that’s disturbing. I’ve experienced it in my own workplace, but not quite that bad. The last quote in particular unsettles me, but that’s because I find it unnerving to see people (allegedly) repeat verbatim what I’m sure is the desired Party line about the subject. I rather hope Mr. Peters didn’t really say that.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-31252959761928531212022-09-23T22:29:19.361+10:002022-09-23T22:29:19.361+10:00Guest Ghast, I'll start with your point number...Guest Ghast, I'll start with your point number 4, as I've thought about this recently myself. Apparently there are corporations now who are hiring "happiness officers". They do small things like sending staff books by their favourite authors or big things like taking responsibility for an employee's "personal development". You get a sense of how this is supposed to draw people into a corporate environment from the following:<br /><br />"Katina Byford-Winter is the office and employee wellbeing manager at Magenta Associates where she organises chats between employees and line managers every three months to discuss career progression, quarterly team outings and annual mini-breaks. She also has a monthly, hour-long mental health “walk-and-talk” with every member of the company, including the founder and CEO.<br /><br />Last week, Craig Peters, a consultant at Magenta, had his monthly meeting with Byford-Winter. “The work Katina does makes me way more efficient and effective as an employee,” said Peters. “My head is clear and calm when I come into work because of her, and I pay back the support she gives me with 100% loyalty to the company.”"<br />Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-91058013893980294422022-09-23T22:04:41.540+10:002022-09-23T22:04:41.540+10:00Thank you. Can't say I've seen what you ha...Thank you. Can't say I've seen what you have regarding population decline - it's possible I've missed it.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-59623972130129609932022-09-23T14:09:02.018+10:002022-09-23T14:09:02.018+10:00what is being hinted at by you and the author here...what is being hinted at by you and the author here, but missed, is that these “elites” are trying to create the antichurch. they were never going to, but that’s what they want.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-68639464067205746492022-09-23T14:03:43.396+10:002022-09-23T14:03:43.396+10:00Because they want to “be like gods,” but they wait...Because they want to “be like gods,” but they waited too long:<br />1) the “elite” are very old and dying.<br />2) their brainwashed are so aged they can’t fight anymore.<br /><br />Same reason france wanted world war 1 in 1914, because germany had a 60% birthrate and france only a 5%. Had france waited 5-10 years longer to take back Alsace and Lorraine, they would have lost all their military aged males (they did that anyway by the war, ironically).<br /><br />england jumped in because germany was busy trying to expose the english war crimes in South Africa during the boer war, and it would expose england to some very real crimes that would collapse their country if found out. plus if england did not continually steal all those diamonds then they would have collapsed because their world “empire” was such a massive failure on its own.<br /><br />this last fact is why thatcher did all she could to free nelson mandela (a famed mafia don and nail bomber of children) and made him an object of pagan worship: to hide english war crimes for 100 years so they would be forgotten.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-66993363961368912282022-09-23T10:58:07.037+10:002022-09-23T10:58:07.037+10:00I believe they switch between worries as needed. T...I believe they switch between worries as needed. Their regimes rest on a very unstable balance point and they have to keep pushing one way and then another to maintain them. You might be talking about something different, but when I’ve seen them worrying about population decline it’s usually as a way to offer the “solution” of mass immigration, and the problem most of the time is that existing Western citizenries can’t economically support the likes of social security, socialized healthcare, and things of that kind (especially as they start to shrink).Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-62210189966704309382022-09-23T10:55:09.268+10:002022-09-23T10:55:09.268+10:00The quote Mark had from MacIntyre about corporatio...The quote Mark had from MacIntyre about corporations desiring fungible consumers. I think this is largely correct and I would argue that a consumer stripped of all particular loyalties and identities is a dehumanized one.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-57641464043567260092022-09-22T11:30:25.877+10:002022-09-22T11:30:25.877+10:00Excellent post, Mark. Have you noticed how the de...Excellent post, Mark. Have you noticed how the deep state has switched on a dime to worrying about population decline? I wonder why this is. Any thoughts?RobertBrandywinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11661602554300651862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-30785786067235333862022-09-22T11:28:48.645+10:002022-09-22T11:28:48.645+10:00What do you mean by dehumanized consumers?What do you mean by dehumanized consumers?RobertBrandywinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11661602554300651862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-24582271347437036322022-09-22T08:55:46.354+10:002022-09-22T08:55:46.354+10:00Interesting comment, thank you. I have some things...Interesting comment, thank you. I have some things to add, but busy today - will get to it soon.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-81353899508157754802022-09-21T16:04:27.950+10:002022-09-21T16:04:27.950+10:00I meant that automation wouldn’t reduce demand for...I meant that automation wouldn’t reduce demand for dehumanized consumers. Perils of writing just before bed.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-70226623168161414252022-09-20T22:17:26.773+10:002022-09-20T22:17:26.773+10:00Some thoughts of my own:
1. Going off your thought...Some thoughts of my own:<br />1. Going off your thought #2, it’s interesting that so many of these deleterious ideologies or vogue philosophies dovetail so neatly into each other. Besides the equalitarians you noted, it harmonizes only too well with people who want to destroy (particularly) Western cultures and peoples.<br />2. An observation I and others have made (hardly new) is that there exists an inclination amongst many people that, bereft of (the right) human control, things will spiral into chaos. This I would say is most often manifested in a “The government has to do something!” attitude. Having read this article, I would be inclined to call this a managerial attitude: not merely a disdain for “amateurs” but an actual fear of leaving people to their own devices. I imagine the only too obvious analogy in their mind is letting a speeding car drive without a driver (a better one would probably be a horse, since horses will look after themselves without a rider).<br />3. Managerial attitudes at first blush would seem to extend far further than even the reorganization of the family. It’s certainly not hard to interpret the efforts of 19th century Germany and the US to take in “particularized” raw materials (Swabians, Bavarians, Prussians, Hessians, Hanoverians, etc. on the German side, Irish, German, Italian, and various other immigrant groups on the US side) and process them into a more useful (and more deracinated) form (Germans or what we now call “white Americans”) through a managerial lens of scaling up a system (in this case from small peoples to larger ones) for greater economic efficiency.<br />4. Per your comment about the school system, I wonder what might be said about similar attitudes spreading through the current Anglo-American corporate world, where there is now a big push for more social functions and greater social intergration. Being exposed to it sure does give you the feeling they’re trying to replace your friends and family. It’s certainly in line with a Trotsky-esque vision of common economic living.<br />5. I think it’s worth pointing out that there are massive benefits to scale economies, at least when it comes to purely material metrics. While I don’t think the topic has been explored sufficiently to draw conclusions, the immediate logical inference does seem to be that this guarantees conflict as more materially productive societies outcompete (through war (see WW2) or more peaceful means) others but then collapse in the long-term due to what’s required of these systems.<br />6. I’m sure the more one thought about it, the more clearly anti-human the managerial attitude would be. It’s obvious to everyone who isn’t a manager that humans can’t healthily function in the systems the likes of Messrs Trotsky and Flynn (to say nothing of Asimov et al) dream of and that it would be insanity to expect them to, and that the perfect labor input to these systems is someone stripped of all human qualities.<br />7. I’m sure someone more interested in the topic would have a great deal to say about the impact of automation on the managerial view of life. The most apparent thing to me is that while automation might reduce the pressure of managerial systems to dehumanize (as it reduces their required labor inputs, though how much these systems also demand dehumanization of the managers is an unexamined question) it certainly would reduce the demand of these systems for dehumanized consumers.Guest Ghastnoreply@blogger.com