Technological Slavery PDFTranscript:
https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/58048050Speaker 0 (0s): Well, well, welcome back, everybody. Hope everyone's doing,
Speaker 1 (7s): Well breaking it out here on this Wednesday, back to our friend, the mad man in the cabin, the Harvard LSD experiment tour coming to you from the industrial society and its future. Technological Slavery. Here we go. If you remember yesterday, we kind of left off about the power process.
We left off about feelings of inferiority, how our society can over socialize us and what kind of potential psychological problems that, that leads to today. We're going to get into how some people adjust to those particular issues. Here we go. Not everyone in industrial technological society suffers from psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is.
We now discuss some of the reasons why people defer so greatly in their response to modern society. One beginning, interjection I often heard and where I once heard that in a society that is sick, the sickest people seem to be the most healthy. Think about that. First, there are doubtless are innate differences in the strength of the driver for power individuals, with a weak drive for power may have relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least relatively little need for autonomy in the power process.
These are docile
Speaker 0 (1m 59s): <inaudible>
Speaker 1 (2m 3s): At old South. We don't mean to sneer the plantation of the old South to their credit. Most of the slaves were not content with their servitude. We do sneer at people who are content with their servitude. Some people may have some exceptional drive and pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an unusually strong dry for social status may spend their whole lives, claiming the status ladder without ever getting bored with that gain people vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques.
Some people are so susceptible, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy. There are constant craving for the shiny new toys and the marketing industry that
Speaker 2 (3m 0s): The marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard pressed financially, even if their income is large and their cravings are frustrated. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process. People who have mediums susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort, putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, et cetera, thus material acquisition serves their need for the power process, but it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied.
They may have insufficient autonomy in the power of process. Their work may consist in following orders and some of their drives may be frustrated, EEG security, aggression. We are guilty of oversimplifying oversimplification because we have assumed that the desire for a material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. Of course, it's not that simple. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or a man and individual lacking goals or power joined some movement or an organization adopts its goals as his own then works towards those goals.
When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only a insignificant part. And the attainment of those goals feels through his identification with the movement or organization as if he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by the fascists Nazis and communists. Our society uses it to the less crudely example.
Manuel Noriega was in irritant of the U S the goal punished Noriega, the U S invaded Panama Panama effort and punish Noriega attainment of goal. The U S went through the power process and many Americans because of their identification with the us experience, the power process, vicariously hints, the widespread public approval of the Panama invasion. It gave people a sense of power.
We see the same phenomenon in armies corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements in particular leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is through surrogate activities.
As we explained in previous paragraphs, a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the fulfillment that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there was no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little white ball and do a whole, or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps.
Yet many people in our society. Do you vote themselves with passion to bodybuilding golf, or stamp collecting? Some people are more other directed than others, and therefore we'll more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important, or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essential trivial activities, such as sports or bridge or chess or arcane scholarly pursuits.
Whereas others who are more clear sighted, never see these things as anything, but the surrogate activities that they are in consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process. In that way, it only remains to point out that in many cases, a person's way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity, not a pure surrogate activity. Since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities.
And for some people social status in the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put in to their work, far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require. And this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity, this extra effort together with the emotional investment that accompanies it is one of the most potent forces acting towards the continual development and perfecting of the system with a negative consequences for individual freedom, especially for the most creative scientists and engineers work tends to be largely a surrogate activity at this point is so important that it deserves a separate discussion, which we will give in a moment in this session, we have explained how many people in modern society do satisfy
Speaker 1 (8m 56s): Their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people, the need for the power process is not fully satisfied in the first place. Those who have an insatiable drive for status or who get firmly hooked on a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with a movement or an organization to satisfy their need for power in that way are exceptional personalities.
Others are not fully satisfied with a surrogate activities or by identification with an organization in the second place. Too much control is imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which result in a deficiency of autonomy and in frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining to many impulses. But even if most people in industrial technological society were well satisfied, we would still be opposed to that form of society because among other reasons, we consider it demeaning to fulfill one's need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather than through the pursuit of real goals, the motives of scientists, this is going to be particularly important.
So just think about the word truth. When I read this particular passage about scientists, science, and technology, to provide the most important examples of surrogate activities, some scientists claim that they are motivated by curiosity or by a desire to benefit humanity, but it is easy, easy to see that neither of these can be the principal motive for most scientists.
I just asked for curiosity, that notion is simply absurd, absurd. Most of them scientists work on highly specialized problems that are not the subject of any normal curiosity, for example, is an astronomer or a mathematician or an home entomologists curious about the properties of ISO portable tryptamine of course not only a chemist is curious about such a thing.
And he is curious about it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? Nope. That question is of interest only to the entomologist and he is in it only
Speaker 2 (11m 55s): Because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologists had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the physical necessities. And if that effort exercise their abilities in an interesting way, but in some non-scientific pursuit, then they wouldn't give a damn about ISO proper a trip to me or the classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for a postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist.
In that case, he would have been very interested in insurance matters, but would have cared nothing about ISO pro bowl trip. To me, in any case, it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity, the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work. The quote on quote, curiosity, explanation of the scientist motive just doesn't stand up. The benefit of humanity. Explanation doesn't work any better. Some scientists, some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race, most of archeology or a comparative linguistics.
For example, I don't know. I think comparative linguistics may in fact benefit humanity. I mean, if you could communicate better, if you could find a way to add intention in the language that would do away with user agreements or contract law, I think that would vastly benefit humanity.
I think we suffer from a lack of being able to communicate most of archeology or comparative linguistics. For example, some other areas of science present, obviously dangerous possibilities yet scientists' in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants.
Did this involvement STEM from a desire to benefit humanity. If so, then why didn't Dr. Teller get emotional about the humanitarian causes? If he was such a humanitarian, then why did he help to develop the hydrogen bomb as with many other scientific achievements? It is very much open to question whether a nuclear power plants actually do benefit. Humanity does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents.
Dr. Teller saw the only one side of the question clearly is emotional involvement with nuclear power arose, not from a desire to benefit humanity, but from the personal fulfillment he got from his work. And from seeing it put into practical use, the same is true of scientists generally with possible rare exceptions. Their motive is neither curiosity nor desire to benefit humanity, but the need to go through the power process, to have a goal, a scientific problem, to solve, to make an effort research and to attain the goal solution of the problem.
Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself. Of course, it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists, money status. For example, some scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status. And this may provide much of the motivation for their work.
No doubt. The majority of scientists like the majority of the general population are more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. The science is not a pure surrogate activity, but it is in large part, a surrogate activity. Also science and technology constitute a powerful mass movement and many scientists gratify there, a need for power do identification with this mass movement, thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard obedient only two, the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.
It's interesting. Right. It's interesting to think about the different underlying motives that help. I don't know if help, but it's interesting to think about the underlying motives that move us through our day. Would you guys, do you agree with that? Would you guys say that the things we do at least for the most of us, you know, for me, like I'm in a ups driver, I deliver a lot of packages and I guess some of the extra things that I would do on my route would be surrogate activities.
You know, I, there's a lot of kids on my route and I always try to bring like a little logic puzzles or, you know, I try to ask them questions
Speaker 1 (17m 50s): That will get them thinking about life. And I like to think that, you know, maybe later in their life, they would look back and remember this, this ups driver that tried to teach him cool things or that made their life a little bit better. However, my main function in my job is just to deliver boxes. You know, it's I guess that that would be a surrogate activity.
It's interesting to think about the power process and how we define ourselves. And I guess I would also add that so many people actually define who they are by what they do, which is accurate on a whole, however, I guess to break that down further, people say, I am this, I am a doctor. I am a truck driver. I am a business professional. I am a, you know, Phil in the blank, but it, that is just a shadow of who they really are.
Right a person has as many roles as a person is a father. A person is a husband. A person is a brother, a sister, a mother, a father of friend, a neighbor. There are so many different roles that one plays on a daily basis to claim that your only one of those rules, I think does yourself a great injustice. It's also the, one of the ways advertising works to try to suck you into the garbage that they make you feel as if you need or attempt to make you feel as if you need.
All right, let's keep plugging away here. Nature of freedom. We are going to argue that industrial Technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. Well, that is pretty damn true. But because freedom is a word that can be interpreted in many ways. We must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with by freedom.
We mean the opportunity to go through the power process with real goals, not the artificial goals have surrogate activities and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization, freedom means being, being in control, either as an individual or as a member of a small group of the life and death issues of one's existence, food, clothing, shelter, and defense against whatever threats that are may in one's environment.
Freedom means having power, not the power to control other people, but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does not have freedom. If anyone else, especially a large organization has power over one, no matter how benevolently tolerantly or permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness.
Speaker 2 (21m 24s): Let me just read this other freedom means having power, not the power to control other people, but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. And that definition, how many people truly have power. And That in that definition, how many people truly have freedom? I would say a, an ever dwindling number of people you don't.
And it's amazing to think to me as an American, one of our creeds is believing in the freedom. We have the freedom of choice and you know, I've lived in Mexico for a while and I got to tell you, there's no regulations down there to the extent that we have I'm in the United States. And I would argue that in a lot of third world countries, you may be more free in some areas than you are in the United States.
That's kind of interesting to think about it. We were like one giant gated community that has all these homeowners rules funny to think about, or is it sad to think about it? A little bit of both. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights, but these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or as a form of government.
Most of the Indian nations of new England were monarchies in many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies, one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than our society does in part, this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the rulers will there were no modern well-organized police forces, no rapid long distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens.
Hence that was relatively easy to evade control as for our constitutional rights consider for example, that of freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that, right. It is a very important tool for limiting concentration of political power. And for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part, I don't know where you live.
However, I'm willing to bet that you have one paper. It used to be, there were a few, at least two papers with dissenting ideas in much like the media people watch on TV. That's been incredibly a consolidated. So he has the paper and by paper, I mean the newspaper or your local newspaper, or, you know, they've been consolidated. And a lot of times the same people that own the TV stations own the paper.
And when is the last time you saw someone in a position of authority to get in trouble? When was the last time you saw someone in a position of authority be held responsible for their misbehavior? Right. When we talk about the little guy talks about justice, the people with all the money talk about just us, you see, this is a difference there. Matt Taibbi has a pretty good book called the divide.
And in that book, he gets into the levels of justice based on your income. I suppose there's always been that way, you know, and I don't know if it's just because I'm getting older, that I am able to now see it more clearly. Or if perhaps the pandemic has brought about the pulling back of the curtain to see more clearly what is happening, you know, it's, when you look at a, remember that recent, there was a recent kerfuffle with Gavin Newsome, who is the governor of California.
And I think Nancy Pelosi had an issue as well. And maybe even Cuomo, you know, all of them are talking about how important is to wear masks and this whole COVID. And yet they're all out just having Thanksgiving dinners and no masks on drinking and up and having a good time. And there's zero consequences. I mean, look at Epstein, you could, you know, say he was murdered. However, I guess it's some form of justice.
The only reason he was
Speaker 1 (26m 44s): Murdered was due to the fact he was a liability for more important people. So it wasn't that he was being punished for his crimes. It was that he was being punished for getting caught,
Speaker 3 (27m 5s): Right?
Speaker 1 (27m 5s): The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money, you can have something printed or Can distributed on the internet or in some such way. But what he has to say, we'll be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence will have no practical effect to make an impression on society. With words, is there for almost a possible, for most individuals in small groups, take us.
For example, if we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably Would not have been accepted. If they hadn't been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers because it's more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if their writings had had many readers, most of those readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material, to which the media exposed them in order to get our message before the public, with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people.
Wow. That is a very sobering unapologetic.
Speaker 3 (28m 40s): Wow.
Speaker 1 (28m 43s): You see, this is, this is exactly why children at a young age are told to not be violent because of violent, violent behavior begets change, Right? It was a Malcolm X who says by any means necessary,
Speaker 3 (29m 0s): Right?
Speaker 1 (29m 4s): You know where our, the system that Kaczynski talks about is constantly trying to domesticate constantly trying to suppress your feelings of anxiety and anger and violence. Don't be violent. He don't be violent. Why? Because violence has the ability to change the system. The violence has the ability to overthrow the government. Violence has the ability to force people in positions of authority
Speaker 3 (29m 38s): To change
Speaker 1 (29m 43s): No matter where you go, no matter who you listen to. People always, I don't call for violence. I'm not calling for violence, but yet wasn't it. The guillotines in France that caused that to change the threat of violence against the power structure is the only thing that holds it in check Jeffrey Epstein. All of these politicians Can can benefit from insider trading while regular people get nothing.
Like how about the wall street executives? I think it would only take a few, a handful of people to be violently fucking murdered, just violently fucking murdered with their head on a fucking pike, outside the fucking house. And things would change a few senators, a few fucking congressmen. I think that's what people were worried about.
Of course, I am not calling for violence because I am not a violent person. However, I could see his point. And when you think it's important, when you try to read what this person is saying, you just try to get into their mindset. That's what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to see what this person is saying by thinking from their point of view.
And I think that's exactly what I think what I just said is something that Kaczynski would have said, you can see the point. I know it sounds crazy. And look, you should never go kill people. I'm not saying you should, but when you read this material, if you really want to get the idea of the person who is seen it, you should try to think in their point of view in that goes for any book that goes for any autobiography.
You know, you should try to put yourself in that person's head, put yourself in that person's mindset. In fact, you should probably do that for anybody that you talk with. Like, if you, anybody, you have a relationship with, like, you should try to pretend to be that person and think, how are they feeling? Kind of try to become that person and then you'll understand them better. But it's important that you always pull yourself out too.
Like, don't fucking say that person and you might do some crazy shit. Don't stay that person got to put yourself back out. But jump in to their personality, jump into their head, jump into their thoughts and be them. It's an
Speaker 2 (32m 40s): Interesting exercise. All right, what are we at here? Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what might be called. The booze was conception of freedom. According to the BU's walk inception, a free man is essentially an element of a social machine that has only a certain set of prescribe and D limited freedoms freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine.
More than those of the individual. First, the booze was free. Man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress. He has freedom of the press because public criticism, restraints misbehavior by political leaders. He has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Boulevard to him. People deserve Liberty only if they use it to promote progress, progress as conceived by the bruise.
What other booyah thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means to collect of ENS Chester. See tan explains the philosophy of the Kumon Tang leader who Han men and individual is granted rights because he is a member of society. And his community life requires such rights by community who mint the whole society for the nation and tan States that according to Carson chain change in my head of the state socialists party in China, freedom have to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a whole.
But what kind of freedom does one have? If one can use it only as someone else prescribes. Our conception of freedom is not that of Boulevard who chain or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories. There are surrogate activity. Consequently, the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.
One more point to be made in this section. It should not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he says he has enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls, have which people are unconscious and
Speaker 1 (35m 38s): More over many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real needs. For example, it's likely that many leftists of the over socialized type would say that most people including themselves are socialized too little, rather than too much. Yet the over socialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization will that my friend's is fascinating.
You don't, you think it's, I find it rewarding and just very thought provoking to read about ideas that were deemed to be so dangerous. They couldn't be printed. And that's what this book was.
How can I don't endorse what anyone says? Really? I think you should do your own thinking about life and that you don't, we just get so busy, it gets so complicated and so busy that you read a headline or you don't have time to think about something or you're out working on your power process or you're out, you know, trying to find meaning in your own surrogate activities.
And we farm out our ideas to so-called quote unquote experts. However, it's important to remember that these experts, especially the ones you see on TV or reading a paper, these are the experts with agendas, and it's usually not in your best interest. So if you have to seek out an expert, if you need an expert, realize all you're getting as an expert opinion and that you should seek out an expert opinion, but then you should make up your own mind.
Because at the end of the day, all experts have is their opinion. And you, as a free individual, you have your opinion. You can read the same books, you can read the same literature you can read about the same experiences. And then you can make up your mind about what the right thing to do is critical thinking. So we got her today, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending time with me tomorrow. And we're going to do a little bit more of a, we're going to jump into some principles of history.
We're going to get into the industrial Technological society cannot be reformed to restriction of freedom. It's interesting. So they may take our lives, but they'll never take our fruit. <inaudible>.