Aphorisms Toward A Cultural Philosophy For The Present Time, #8–From the Fear Machine to the Malign Metaverse.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Autonomism at the Gates

2. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship

3. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power

4. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation

5. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control

6. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order

7. Aphorisms 62-83: Mechanisms of the State Apparatus

8. Aphorisms 84-109: From the Fear-Machine to the Malign Metaverse

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8. From the Fear-Machine to the Malign Metaverse

84. The Fear-Machine. Hyperstates deal in fear through States and the obligations, rewards, deterrents and services they regulate—fear of others, fear of one’s fellow citizens, fear of the police, fear of being ratted out, fear for terrorists, fear of viruses, and the most fundamental fear of all: that one becomes an outcast stripped of one’s rights and privileges. This is the prime fear that causes and aggravates all others. To be a citizen means to be an instantiation of the ideal subject. However, such citizenship comes with a package of rights and obligations. The State reserves the right to change the rules of the game, even without the citizen knowing it, and so the rights one possesses in theory can vanish overnight if the State decides so. Conversely, obligations can increase tenfold if the State decides so. And you better cooperate if you wish to keep your rights.

If there are Desiring-Machines—as Deleuze and Guattari once theorized—that is, mechanisms of desire that are so strong that they become almost a natural force, then there must also be Fear-Machines. Fear and desire always arrive together. A desire is a volition oriented towards either more of the same or towards obtaining something new. Yet, it always carries within it the hidden threat of dissatisfaction or unfulfillment. And if the desire is oriented towards obtaining or experiencing something new, it ventures into unknown territory, and as such invites fear.

Also consider the fact that fearing someone else may also be the cause of the Other’s desire. A State in search for more natural resources may hungrily eye the territory of its neighbor, much to the horror of the latter, which then causes that State to want to invade its neighbor.

As the Will-to-Dominate is a continuous thirst for domination and control, it is the Desiring-Machine par excellence, and therefore simultaneously the Fear-Machine par excellence.

85. Figurehead. The Hyperstate cannot appear as a person. The State must appear as a person, a recognizable figurehead that serves to convince you that the State is really human after all, and that it somehow relates to your interests and preferences. There is a conspiracy theory that lizard people are somehow implicated in a world government. This is a ridiculous conspiracy theory that nevertheless contains one psychoanalytic truth: the realization that our politicians are not the actual persons who wield executive power. No conspiracy theory is required to see this. Such theories are symptoms of the fact that people know that they are deceived, and so they project screen memories on the traumatic realization, just as someone who has been violently assaulted may concoct a story about extraterrestrials invading his home.

86. The Death drive. As long as people think in terms of State services, you will always get the Hyperstate for free. The State-impulse merges into the Will-to-Dominate once for a group of people Life itself becomes an abstraction and even a threat. As such, the Hyperstate is the Death drive institutionalized, the destruction of individuality, the petrifying of life and spontaneity, the stifling of development, and the onset of inertia. We tend to equate material conquest with the State, but that is just the first phase of development. In the second phase, material conquest is replaced with spiritual conquest and the consolidation of State power within the farthest reaches of the individual mind.

87. The ideal subject. Hyperstates shape their citizens into the abstract, idealized entities that appear as the ideal subject for the Will-to-Dominate. After all, this Will cannot tolerate opposition and even dissent. The very otherness of that which is not the amenable to the Will-to-Dominate is always subjugated and stamped out. The idea of “citizenship” is initially used to define individual and collective duties, tacitly enlisting large portions of the population into the State’s workforce. Widespread agreement with State measures is required, as is the appearance of democratic participation. As long as the existing political structure appears as enjoying support, many will accept even unjust measures. The excuse is usually that “tough decisions have to be made.” So, even if thousands of people lose their jobs due to political decisions, or are treated unjustly by governmental agencies, many citizens still defend the State when they learn of these events.

Meanwhile, the State is careful to present the political figurehead as a “human being” who deeply feels for those affected. It is surprising how many horrifying acts a State can get away with, as long as a charismatic person defends them on television. After all, can we not sympathize with the poor politician? The answer should always be no – empathy cannot be an excuse for poor decision-making. However, States weaponize empathy in a continuous barrage of misinformation, emotional blackmail and deflection directed against their own citizens. The ideal subject of the Hyperstate is therefore a person who identifies fully with the authority that the State exerts, and for whom a world without this Master-Slave relationship is unthinkable. So, an elaborate system of rewards, nudges and contemporary myths is conjured up to shape the minds of individuals into the minds of ideal subjects.

88. Theory of the Other. The current notion of the “Other” as despised outsider is only a small part of the entire theory of political strategy. Yes, States routinely engage in demonizing the “Other,” be it foreigners, dissidents, people with a different culture or language, or ethnic minorities. However, the State internalizes this theory in its citizens, forcing them to confront any element that is “Other” in themselves. They must suppress any impulse to question the State forcefully; and likewise, they must not entertain thoughts about a world without the State. Such Others are freethinkers, individuals, intellectuals, dissidents, the unemployed, those who refuse to cooperate, the irresponsible citizen, those who question surveillance, those who express doubt about democracy … the list of derogatory labels is endless.

So, on one hand, the Other is an external force threatening the purported “harmony” of the State from the outside; and on the other hand, it is the “enemy within,” in the form of critical reasoning and independent thinking lurking inside the State itself.

89. Perpetual crisis. No Hyperstate or State can survive without crises. It must cultivate them in order to shape and subjugate its citizens. Crises are either internal (i.e. they are presented as “threats to our way of life” or “our economy”). Otherwise, they are external (i.e. faraway dictatorships, or the nebulous “war on drugs” or “war on terror”). In all these crises, the goal is to solidify the coercive authoritarian power of the State and secure a firmer hold over its subjects. Crises must end at some point, but then, new ones have to be invented or unleashed to find new excuses for control.

90. Commodity. The values that the State claims to defend are treated as commodities or luxuries by those claiming to uphold them. Freedom, equality, and the option to “opt out” of certain measures are defended as long as they do not form cumbersome hindrances to the Will-to-Dominate. Under the guises of crisis, even these seemingly eternal values become negotiable. But first, these values must appear as eternal, and the State must appear as its most stalwart defender. Only when this belief is firmly in place, can the State take them away in the best interest of upholding them: “Look,” they say, “we remove a freedom here and a freedom there, so that we all can continue to enjoy living the way that we always lived!” But next year, they come back, and with the same argument, they chip away at the very values they pretend to uphold. As always, necessity is used as the prime argument for dismantling the agency of the population at large. At the same time, the crime is denied while presenting it in the political arena.

91. Invisibility. In this manner, the new dictatorship will turn out to be invisible. It will insist that it does not exist. It will deny all evidence, paint those amassing and presenting cases against them as conspiracy theorists, terrorists or disgruntled citizens. All the while, the new dictatorship will continue to claim that it is a mere benign organization for “managing the complexities of society” and above all to “guarantee safety, equality, sustainability, and prosperity.” The very anonymity of the security protocol and rows of black cars will extend into the very form of organization that the State will adopt. Its newest form? The digital passport, digital currency, central financial control, constant digital surveillance, and the interlinking of digital databases in the best interest of “peace and order.”

92. Disembodiment. As such, many of the Hyperstate’s and State’s instruments will be disembodied, since they will be purely digital technology or organoid-based digital technology. However, this also means that part of the identity and agency of the citizens will be disembodied, therefore disappearing from reach. Bitcoins can be hacked; digital assets be frozen. Digital identity cards can be revoked or used to track someone. So, while physical tokens disappear, a new form of control based on tracking-and-tracing becomes possible. Theoretically, this could spell the end for costly inventions like border fences and control posts. Practically, however, these old and archaic inventions of control will form the physical counterpart and infrastructure of the disembodied measures of control.

93. Extended sensing. The model of the remote-controlled drone provides a perfect illustration of the current paradigm of State control and surveillance. The operator is anonymous; the technology is advanced and secret; the organization commissioning the use of the drone owns it and gathers intel; the instrument itself is largely invisible; the drone serves as an extended sensory apparatus (“eyes and ears everywhere”); and no one knows where the data is gathered and how it is used. This mode of surveillance is increasingly common, and its core tenets apply to all kinds of control systems. The QR code, tracking apps, CCTV, and monitoring of financial transactions all rely on the combination of an extended infrastructure of surveillance. This infrastructure is to the State what the web is to the spider: its vibrations signal when prey has landed on it. Literally, the attempts to police and control the world wide web and to track the movements of individuals in nothing less than the Will-to-Dominate unleashed on the only realm where ideas and thoughts can travel unhindered.

94. Extended digital phenotype. The current infrastructure of our world (in particular the digital networks) serve as the extended, global, digital phenotype of the State. The very possibility of control and domination is constitutive of its architecture. Tech giants use this infrastructure for marketing purposes, but the State uses this infrastructure as a form of surveillance and will increasingly use it for the distribution of services and establishing checkpoints. A suspected criminal might not be able to access his bank account, or someone accused of anti-social behavior may have his public transport pass revoked. It is a mistake to think of digital infrastructure as a free, neutral digital instrument that can be freely used by us. The old slogan “If it’s free, you are the product!” applies completely here.

95. The science of justified suspicion. Likewise, we end up with a science of “reading the signs.” If person X bought a box of nails, some fertilizer and a steel bucket, is he preparing an explosive device? The operators and algorithms that must interpret such information connect the most disconnected parts of our lives and weave them into new myths and narratives, based on the most restrictive thought-shapers that determine the cultural climate. The new science is one of justified suspicion, which is then used to target citizens or organizations that appear as threats to the State.

96. The Committee on Thought-Shaping. One could imagine a committee composed of experts and stakeholders (“The Committee on Thought-Shaping”) who meet once a month to integrate the trends and tendencies gathered by algorithms and surveillance technologies, using the science of justified suspicion to weave them into large, overarching narratives. Such narratives would have a force and conviction that would sway most politicians, because they have been formulated by panels of experts who have used only the latest technology. They could have such an impact that the products of this committee would become veritable thought-shapers in themselves. The way in which the CIA continued testing and recommending torture techniques after 9/11, even when it was clear that such techniques do not result in obtaining reliable information, is a clear example of a mindset that is locked in its own presuppositions. New technology makes “trends” appear out of nowhere: if the mass of data is large enough, correlations will always appear. But who decides on which correlations to follow up? Which thought-shapers determine what is regarded as a threat or an opportunity? And how correct is that information when it is aggregated from so many data points?

97. Two types of suspicion. The technocratic suspicion let loose on society by large corporations and governments alike collides with a cultural suspicion best epitomized by the woke movement. If the high-modern tenet of modernity aimed at technocratic control, the postmodern relativist variation aims at cultural control. As with any form of control, any technology requires compliance from the culture in which it is deployed.

98. Shape the minds. This dual suspicion (cultural and technocratic) is firmly embedded in our education. We teach facts and STEM-subjects to achieve competitive excellence. And we teach culture to reinforce the dominant cultural narratives. But both play into the hands of the State. A population subjected to continuous suspicion becomes insecure, its roots withered away, and its foundation unstable. Suspicion shapes the mind as much as affirmation. And so, the dual barrage of technocratic surveillance (testing, scoring, ranking, monitoring) and cultural relativism (equality, inclusivity, diversity) forms the formative background for the 21^st century mind.

99. Ideology. Here is a definition of ideology: a set of culturally entrenched, self-reinforcing beliefs, norms, and thought-shapers that appear so self-evident as a legitimate worldview that questioning it comes across as impossible, ridiculous, insane, or dangerous.

100. Necessary condition. Ideologies function only if those subjected to it are conscious of the fact that they are being watched. This fact must not be too present in the mind all the time. Instead, it must be present on a pre-reflective level, nevertheless shaping thoughts and actions without the subject fully realizing its impact. Any action that is conditioned by the consciousness of being watched appears as imprudent. “Let’s not do this, it might get us in trouble” sounds like a practical course of action, but it is the Fear-Machine working in the background. There are many kinds of surveillance. We might imagine CCTV cameras and digital checks as well as collective ostracizing of individuals and/or groups. The former examples represent technocratic suspicion in action; the latter examples represent cultural suspicion.

101. Memetics. All contemporary ideology is memetic in the sense that its core tenets need not be distributed in the form of a linear, coherent, and explicit argumentation. In a world shattered by the politics of fragmentation, that would be an utterly ineffective way of spreading propaganda. It can be distributed pellet-wise, in the form of small codes, images, thought-shapers, and perceptual schemata that can be ingested non-linearly. Memes R Us. However, this mode of ubiquitous presentation does not make it ineffective. On the contrary, it exploits the fact that by necessity, no ideology is internally coherent.

102. Internal inconsistency. Kafka is the grandmaster of showing this internal inconsistency of ideology. Every time the individual runs into the rules and regulations, inconsistencies emerge that cannot be resolved, but that are rationalized or accepted as fait accompli (“we have our orders”; “we are just doing our job”; “this is the procedure, it cannot be helped”). The individual in Kafka is not just trapped in the system, but in his own efforts to make sense of its all. However, this leads again to self-doubt and insecurity, since a thought-shaper which conveys the idea that the State is always rational and well-meaning disturbs, imbalances and ultimately paralyzes the critical faculties of the mind. The State is largely a system for strategically keeping the individual imbalanced. In Der Prozess, we can see this beautifully illustrated. The accused is always on the move, always in-between. He is always in a non-place and cannot find stable ground or regain his (existential) balance. This mental and physical imbalance is what the State enacts on entire populations through systematic suspicion, in both its technocratic and cultural variations.

103. Re-embodiment. The extended phenotype of the Hyperstate reaches into the individual, and at some point, they may even invade the physical body. There is no difference in kind between a relentlessly media-broadcasted message glorifying the benign State power and a drug that induces a kind of mindset that makes it susceptible to targeted propaganda. In that sense, TV and digital media are some of the most potent electronic drugs available. In subjecting the population to propaganda of this kind, the body is seen as a substrate upon which imprints can be made. In turn, these imprints activate thought-shapers, and consequently life-shapers and action-shapers. The memetic format of ideology makes it only easier to distribute messages, ideas and suggestive themes throughout our embodied cognitive systems. In that sense, propaganda becomes re-embodied from the cultural sphere into the biological sphere. Ultimately, this re-embodiment shapes the ideal of the State.

104. Bodily integrity. During the COVID pandemic, we could witness how quickly States seize hold of bodily integrity once the (panicked) political consensus requires this. All that is holy is profaned, indeed. However, as necessity is the prime justification for tyranny, we can only imagine to what degree the State will not only impinge on mobility, financial transactions, behavioral patterns and ideas, but equally on bodily integrity as well.

105. Two thought experiments. Would it not be safer to forcibly inject suspected terrorists with a paralyzing cocktail instead of fitting them with a tracking device which can be hacked or removed? It would reduce the chance of escape to zero and keep the population safe. Alternatively, would it not be better to implant a tactical device in every arrested protester which can be caused to track them and deliver a taser-like shock at a distance? It would prevent large protester populations from acquiring force, as the “usual suspects” can be tasered right away, once again in the name of law and order.

106. Dystopia. If the above experiments sound dystopian, one must keep in mind that the reasoning behind both of them is not very different from the current legislation that has been put in place after 9/11 or that has been introduced in the UK against Extinction Rebellion protesters. Moreover, both experiments conclude with the Grand Justifying Aim of this age: to keep the population safe by arresting them, immobilizing them, controlling them, or otherwise segregating them.

107. Digital drugs. But how is this different in kind from supplying them with an array of highly addictive digital, mobile devices that pump pre-made thoughts in their minds, thereby literally affecting their bodies and cognitive as well as affective capacities? What is the difference between an addictive drug and an addictive digital device? Will digital drugs be downloadable one day, or are they already?

108. The Malign Metaverse. Here is another thought experiment. Imagine a prison system where the inmates are drugged with a disorienting and mind-altering drug or hallucinogenic that provides them with a feeling of disorientation, trapping them in a mental world that makes escape and or organizing a prison revolt or escape impossible. To what degree is a Metaverse-inspired virtual reality different? Every world comes with its own norms, but who decides the norms that apply to that particular (virtual) world? What is the degree in kind between the mind-altering drugs and having to function in a virtual world that has been carefully crafted for prolonged and purposeful inhabitation? If anything, our world is something in which we are thrown (our Heideggerian Geworfenheit), but the metaverse is a world in which we are installed. To some degree, our social world is something we ourselves designed as well, but it cannot be understood apart from our essentially embodied, evolutionary, organic history. With the Malign Metaverse, we create a simulated world that is torn loose (or at least largely torn loose) from our essentially embodied, evolutionary, organic foundations and origins. And it thereby fucks us up systematically, to the technocratic corporate capitalist State’s infinite advantage.

109. Anti-existentialism. The virtual world is in the most literal sense anti-existentialist. In it, computability precedes existence. It not only strips the subject of its essential embodiment, but also denies them the power of existing on their own terms. The digital avatar is the truth of this era—a digital token that is supposed to represent authentic existence and depth. Or: a very cool digital image instead of an actual authentic personality.

REFERENCES

(Hanna, 2023). Hanna, R. “Beyond The Spirituality-Industrial Complex.” Unpublished MS. Available online at URL = <https://www.academia.edu/44684385/Beyond_The_Spirituality_Industrial_Complex_August_2023_version_>.

(Hanna and Paans, 2021). Hanna, R. and Paans, O. “Thought-Shapers.” Cosmos & History 17, 1: 1-72. Available online at URL = <http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/923>.

(Paans, 2021). Paans, O. “Against the State: A Polemic During a Pandemic.” Against Professional Philosophy. 15 February. Available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2021/02/15/against-the-state-a-polemic-during-a-pandemic/>.

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