Technological Slavery - Reading #6
Technology is a more powerful force than the aspiration for freedom.
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https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/58495097
Speaker 0 (0s): <inaudible> Technological, Slavery the writings of the Unabomber. Number six, here we go. You know, the drill Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. What do you guys think? Yes, no, maybe. So. Let's see what Ted Kaczynski thinks it is not possible to make a lasting compromise between technology and freedom because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through repeated compromises.
Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one demands, a piece of the other's land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, okay, let's compromise. Give me half of what I asked the weak one has little choice, but to give in sometime later the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land.
Again, there was a compromise and so forth by forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man. The powerful one eventually gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between Technology and freedom. Let us explain why technology is more powerful, social force than the aspiration for freedom. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom.
Often turns out to threaten it very seriously. Later on, for example, consider a motorized transport. A walking man, formerly could go where he pleased go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations and was independent of Technological support systems. When motor vehicles were introduced, they appeared to increase mans freedom.
They took know freedom away from the walking men. No one has to have an automobile. If you didn't want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon change to society and such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it was found necessary to regulate their use of extensively in a car, especially in densely populated areas.
One cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace. One's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws, one is tied down by various obligations, licensed requirements, driver, test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of a motorized transport is no longer optional.
Since the introduction of motorized transport. The arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities so that they have to depend on the automobile for transportation or else. They must use public transportation. In which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car or even the walkers freedom is now greatly restricted in the city.
He continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic in the country. Motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway note, this important point that we have just build a straight in with the case of motorized transport. When a new item have technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not, as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional.
In many cases, the new technology changes society and such a way that people eventually find themselves for us to use it while Technological progress as a whole continually narrows our sphere of freedom. Each new technical advance considered a by itself appears to be desirable, electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long distance communications. How could one argue against any of these things or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society?
It would have been absurd. It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone. For example, that offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained earlier, all of these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends. But in those of politicians, corporation, executives and remote anonymous technicians and bureaucrats
Speaker 1 (5m 59s): Whom he And whom he as an individual has no power to influence the same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering. For example, few people will resist the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent harm and prevents much suffering yet a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance or of God or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs.
Okay. Let's pause there for a minute. I think at that point is incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly thought provoking. And let me tell you why. I think that I think it is, I think he is he's he's Right in that there will be few people that will be able to deny genetic engineering can be a good thing.
Yes, it will prevent suffering. Yes, it will prevent harm. But here is where the dangerous part is. Once you begin to be genetically engineer, there is already, at least in the United States, there's a precipice, a precedent for patenting genes, right? For those of you, for those, for my European friends, for stuff, I love you guys and good for you guys for taking this Monsanto garbage. The U S has trying to put out because this is the exact company that has tried to patent genes.
In fact, they have them on a lot of their seeds that give to farmers. And if those seeds are found in another farmer's yard, then Monsanto can actually go in there, ensue that farmer for stealing their patent for using their product, without paying for it. So if there is already a precedent on genes and the new genetic engineering technology comes forward, that would be able to look at that case and possibly use it.
So let's say that I got genetically engineered and then I had a child. My child could now be because those genes got passed on to him, the genetically engineered genes, it is possible that the company that I used to be genetically engineered could own not only some of my genes, but some of my offspring's jeans. It sounds crazy. It sounds like a science fiction movie, but we are heading in that way.
Not to mention another dangerous issue with that.
Speaker 2 (8m 59s): You are a commodity once that happens
Speaker 1 (9m 2s): And you have been given your, you have to become a product of a corporation at that time. And you can say that as an employee of a large corporations, you are already that, however, once people put their Technology inside your body, now you become a commodified product to be tracked traced in database, back to the book. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction, it can never be reversed.
Once a technical innovation has been introduced. People usually become dependent on it so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some steel, more advanced innovation. How many of you out there that can drive a, a standard vehicle? You know what I mean by that, like a stick shift, I would say less and less people. When I was little, I, I had a Volkswagen have to learn how to drive it.
Not only do people become dependent on as individuals on a new item of Technology, but even more of the system as a whole becomes dependent upon it. Imagine what, what happened to the system today have computers. For example, we eliminated does the system can move in only one direction toward greater Technology visitation Technology station. That's a big word. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but Technology can never take a step back short of the overthrow of the whole Technological system technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points.
At the same time, crowding rules and regulations, increasing dependents of individuals on a larger organizations, propaganda, and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etcetera, to hold back. Any one of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop since they become apathetic and no longer resist to fight.
Each of the threat separately would be few times. Success can be hoped for only by finding the Technological system as a whole, but that is revolution, not reform technicians. We use this term in its broad sense to describe all of those who perform a specialized task, that requires training
Speaker 0 (12m 4s): Tend
Speaker 1 (12m 5s): To be so in the technicians tend to be so involved in their work, their surrogate activity, that when a conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost always decided in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it is also appears elsewhere. Educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations, they do not hesitate to use propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends corporations and government agencies.
When they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information.
Speaker 0 (12m 47s): How about individuals without regard to their privacy law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent persons. They do whatever they can legally or sometimes illegally to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights.
But when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that they're work is more important. How many people do you know or have you yourself decided that you are the arbiter of the greater good? I know there's been times in my life where I've made decisions based upon what I thought was the greater good, a scary to think about because who are you to decide what the greater good is?
That's that, in my opinion is one of the dividing lines between the integrity and psycho psychopathy. I don't think, I do think sometimes. However, I try to always remind myself that I am not the arbiter of the greater good, and I don't think anybody else has the right to tell me or you, what is the greater good?
It is. Well-known that people generally work better and more persistently when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a punishment or a negative outcome scientists and other technicians are motivated mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But those who oppose Technological invasion of freedom are working to avoid a negative outcome. Consequently, there are a few who work persistently and well at this discouraging task.
If reformers ever achieved a single victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion of freedom through technical progress, most would tend to relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits, but the scientists' would remain busy in their laboratories. And Technology, as it progressed, would find ways in spite of any barriers to exert more and more control over individuals.
And Think them always more dependent on the system. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs, or ethical codes can provide permanent protection against Technology history shows that all social arrangements are transitory. They all change or break down eventually, but technological advances are permanent within the context of a given civilisation suppose for example, That, it were possible to arrive at some social arrangement that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human beings or prevent it from being applied in such a way as to threaten freedom and dignity.
Still the technology would remain waiting sooner or later, the social arrangement would break down probably sooner. Given the pace of change in our society than genetic engineering would begin to invade our sphere of freedom. And this invasion would be irreversible short of a breakdown of technological civilization itself. Any illusions about achieving anything permanent through social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently as of 95 happening with environmental legislation a few years ago, it seemed that there were secure legal barriers, preventing at least some of the worst forms of environmental degradation, a change in the political wind.
And those barriers begin to crumble for all of the foregoing reasons. Technology is a much more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom, but the statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades, the industrial Technological system will be undergoing severe stress due to human behavior.
Alienation rebellion hostility have a variety of social and psychological difficulties. Let me know this was written in 95. So these are the decades he was talking about. We hope that the stress is to which the system is likely to pass will Cause it to break down or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible if such a revolution occurs and as successful. And at the particular moment, the aspiration for freedom will have proven and more powerful than technology.
In a boat paragraphs. We use an analogy for a weak neighbor who is left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing on him a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor get sick so that he is unable to defend himself, the weak neighbor Can force the strong one to give him his land back, or if you can kill them, if you let the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land back, he's a fool because when the strong man gets Well, he will again take all of the land for himself.
The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance in the same way. While the industrial system is sick, we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all our freedom. The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance in the same way.
While the industrial system is sick, we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all our freedom. Similar social problems have proved intractable. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way is to protect freedom from Technology, let him consider how clumsily and for the most part, unsuccessfully, our society has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and straight forward among other things.
The system has failed to stop environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking, or domestic abuse. Take our environmental problems. For example, here, the conflict of values is straightforward. Economic expedience now versus saving some of our natural resources for our grandchildren. But on this subject, we get only a lot of blathering obfuscation from the people who have power and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action.
They keep on piling up in environmental problems that our grandchildren we'll have to deal with attempts to resolve the environmental issue consists of struggles and compromises between different factions.
Speaker 1 (20m 48s): Some of which are ascendant at one moment, others. At another moment, the line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion. This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to a timely and successful solution to the problem, major social problems. If they get solved at all, rarely or never are solved through any rational, comprehensive plan, they just work themselves out through a process in which various competing groups pursuing their own.
Usually short-term, self-interest arrive mainly by luck at some more or less stable modus. Vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated an earlier paragraphs, make it seem doubtful that rational long-term social planning can ever be successful. Thus, it is clear that the human race has at best, a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straight forward social problems.
How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of rec consent of a con sorry of re re constantly. I cannot say that word, subtle problems of reconciling freedom with the technology Technology presents clear cut material that advances advances Technology presents clear cut material advantages.
Whereas freedom is an abstraction. That means different things to different people. And it's lost is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk and note this important difference. It is conceivable that our environmental problems, for example, may some day be settled through a rational, comprehensive plan. But if this happens, it will be only because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these problems.
But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational prudent approach to environmental problems. Equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely, preferably by indirect means that we'll disguise the encroachment of freedom.
This isn't just our opinion, eminent, social scientists,
Speaker 2 (23m 47s): EEG
Speaker 1 (23m 47s): James Q. Wilson have stress. The importance of socializing
Speaker 2 (23m 52s): The people more effectively.
Speaker 1 (23m 56s): I think if you're honest with yourself, you can see that
Speaker 2 (23m 59s): In the last few days,
Speaker 1 (24m 2s): Decades for the last few generations have taken mankind down a route of domestication.
Speaker 2 (24m 9s): You think about it. If we were half as tough as our dads were, think about, think about how your father lived and then think about how your grandfather lived
Speaker 1 (24m 22s): Or think about how your grandmother lived and then how her grandmother, right?
Speaker 2 (24m 25s): So we have become a softer weaker, clearly more pussified. In fact, there is,
Speaker 1 (24m 37s): I know there's people now that don't even get
Speaker 2 (24m 39s): In fights. I know people that have never been punched in the face revolution is easier than reform. We hope,
Speaker 1 (24m 55s): Or you have convinced the reader that the system can not be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with Technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial Technological system all together. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change. And the nature of society. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater change
Speaker 2 (25m 20s): And then reformed does it is more difficult to bring about than reform. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (25m 26s): Actually under certain circumstances, revolution,
Speaker 2 (25m 29s): It was much easier than reform. The reason
Speaker 1 (25m 32s): Is that a revolutionary movement can inspire
Speaker 2 (25m 36s): An intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire
Speaker 1 (25m 41s): A reform movement, merely offers to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world. It provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reason, it would be much easier to overthrow the whole Technological system than to put effective permanent restraints on the development or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic engineering.
For example, not many people will devote themselves with single minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on a genetic engineering, but under a suitable conditions, large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial Technological system. As we noted in above paragraphs reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of Technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome, but revolutionaries work to gain It powerful reward fulfillment of their revolutionary vision and therefore work harder and more persistently than reformers do
Speaker 2 (26m 58s): Reform is all
Speaker 1 (26m 60s): Always restrained by the fear of painful consequences. If changes go too far, but once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian revolutions. It may be that in some cases, only a minority of the population is truly committed to the revolution, but this minority is sufficiently large and act in so that it becomes the dominant force in a system
Speaker 2 (27m 33s): In control of human behavior.
Speaker 1 (27m 43s): It's the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings for the sake of the functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society
Speaker 2 (28m 0s): To another.
Speaker 1 (28m 3s): Some of the pressures are physical, poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution, some are psychological noise crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires in the past. Human nature has been approximately
Speaker 2 (28m 23s): Constant or
Speaker 1 (28m 24s): At any rate has a very only with certain bounds
Speaker 2 (28m 28s): And consequently Sunstein
Speaker 1 (28m 30s): Fridays. These have been able to push people only up to certain limits when the limit of human endurance has been passed. Things start going on
Speaker 2 (28m 41s): Wrong rebellion, crime corruption, or invasion of work or depression, as well as other mental problems, right?
Speaker 1 (28m 52s): And elevated death rate, a declining birth rate or something else so that either the society breaks down or its functioning becomes too inefficient. And it is as quickly or gradually through conquest attrition or evolution replaced by some more efficient form of society. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies.
People could be pushed only so far and know further But today. This may be changing because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.
Speaker 2 (29m 33s): So imagine a society that subjects people, right?
Speaker 1 (29m 37s): So the conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then it, them drugs to take away their unhappy, right?
Speaker 0 (29m 43s): Yes. Science fiction. I don't think so. It is already Yeah
Speaker 1 (29m 49s): Happening to some extent in our own society is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent
Speaker 0 (29m 58s): Decades. We believe
Speaker 1 (29m 60s): That this is due to disruption of the power process is explained in earlier paragraphs, but even Yeah.
Speaker 0 (30m 5s): And if we are wrong, the intent
Speaker 1 (30m 8s): Increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of some conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them an anti-depressant in effect. Antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
Speaker 0 (30m 39s): Yes, we know that
Speaker 1 (30m 40s): Is that depression is often a purely genetic origin. And we are referring here to those cases in which the environment
Speaker 0 (30m 47s): Plays the predominant role drugs that affect the mind are only two.
Speaker 1 (30m 54s): So one example of the methods of controlling human behavior, that modern society is developing. Let us look at some other methods
Speaker 0 (31m 1s): And it's to start with, there are other techniques of surveillance, hidden camera
Speaker 1 (31m 8s): Cameras are now used in most stores. And in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information.
Speaker 0 (31m 17s): How about individuals? You know,
Speaker 1 (31m 20s): And so a pain greatly increases the effectiveness of physical Yeah
Speaker 0 (31m 23s): Coercion. Then there are the methods of propaganda for which one,
Speaker 1 (31m 30s): The mass communications media provide effective vehicles, efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections
Speaker 0 (31m 41s): And efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion, the entertainment industry. So far
Speaker 1 (31m 55s): As an important psychological tool of the system. Possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and
Speaker 0 (32m 2s): Violence. Entertainment
Speaker 1 (32m 5s): Provides modern man with an essential meaning
Speaker 0 (32m 7s): Escape while absorbed in television videos or games. He can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, and dissatisfaction, many primitive peoples when they don't have any work to do are quite content to sit for hours at a time, doing nothing at all. 'cause they are at peace with themselves and their world, but most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained. Otherwise they get a quote on quote, bored.
They get fidgety, uneasy, irritable, other techniques striking deeper. Then the foregoing education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kids behind when he doesn't know his lessons and patting them on the head. When he does know them, just becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child's development. Jesus Christ. You guys have kids, the fuck are these masks doing to our kids.
You get to put a mask on your kid, put a fucking shield on their face before they go outside. We're teaching our kids to be scared before they even go outside. I don't know what you guys do, but if you, if you're worried or you've been affected by the virus, I think you should at least tell your children that this mask, this shield is an attempt to change your behavior.
Don't be afraid if you need to take that thing off. I think the longterm consequences of our children's behavior in schools or online schools now is fundamentally going to change their behavior. Forever. Education is no longer a simple affair Sylvan learning centers.
For example, I've had great success and motivating children to study and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success. In many conventional schools, parenting techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children except the fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable mental health programs, intervention, techniques, psychotherapy, and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals.
But in practice, they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals' to think and behave as the system requires, there is no contradiction here and individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with a system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from and see is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat his path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires.
In that sense, the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity child abuse. And it's gross in obvious forms is disapproved in most, if not all cultures tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone, but many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse. Much more broadly is a spanking. When you used as part of the rational and consistent system of disciplines, a form of abuse, the question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society in practice, the word abuse tends to be interpreted to include any method of child rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system.
Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious sense of this cruelty programs for present preventing child abuse are directed towards the control of human behavior. On behalf of the system, presumably research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating biological methods probably we'll have to be used.
We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur and the form of gene therapy. And there is no reason to assume that such methods will not. Eventually we use to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning. As we mentioned in para earlier, paragraphs industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress do in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and, and environmental problems and a considerable proportion of the systems economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave, alienation
Speaker 1 (37m 57s): Low self-esteem depression, hostility, rebellion, children who won't study youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict. Pro-choice pro-life political extremism, terrorism, sabotage anti-government groups, hate groups. All of these threatened the very survival of the system.
The system will therefore be forced to use every practical means of controlling human behavior. COVID-19
Speaker 2 (38m 37s): The vaccine there are coming.
Speaker 1 (38m 41s): So the social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of chance. The social disruption that we see today, it is certainly not. The result of mere chance can only be a result of the conditions of life that the system imposes on people. We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.
If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over a human behavior to ensure its own survival, a new watershed and human history will have been passed. Whereas formally the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies. Industrial technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both in the future social systems.
So we will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead of human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
Speaker 2 (39m 58s): Generally speaking, Technological
Speaker 1 (40m 1s): A troll over a human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict him and freedom. Each new step in the assertion have control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering.
In many cases, there will be a humanitarian justification.
Speaker 2 (40m 37s): For example,
Speaker 1 (40m 39s): When a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children until Sylvan learning centers to have them manipulate it. And it becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do. So for concern for the child's welfare, it may be that some of these parents were just that one didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didn't have to be brainwashed to becoming a computer nerd, but what can they do?
They can't change society and your child may be unemployable if he doesn't have certain skills. So they send them to Silvan.
Speaker 2 (41m 25s): Thus control
Speaker 1 (41m 26s): Over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities, but through a process of social, rapid evolution.
Speaker 2 (41m 36s): However, the process
Speaker 1 (41m 39s): Will be impossible to resist because each advance considered by itself will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that, which would result from not making it propaganda. For example, is used for many good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred sex education is obviously useful. You get the effect of sex education. To the extent that it is successful is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands at the state as represented by the public school system.
Speaker 2 (42m 19s): Suppose
Speaker 1 (42m 20s): A biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove this trade. Of course, most parents whose children possess the trait, we'll have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise since the child would probably have a miserable life. If you grew up to be a criminal, but many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with That of our society, even though they never, they neither high tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh
Speaker 2 (42m 56s): Systems of punishment since the eighties,
Speaker 1 (43m 0s): No reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have a neat predatory tendencies. The high crime rate of our
Speaker 2 (43m 9s): Society must be due
Speaker 1 (43m 11s): To the pressures that modern conditions
Speaker 2 (43m 13s): You put on people too, which many cannot or will not adjust them.
Speaker 1 (43m 20s): So the treatment design to remove potential criminal tendencies, his at least in part, a way of re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of them,
Speaker 2 (43m 29s): The system, all this stuff,
Speaker 1 (43m 34s): He tends to regard as a sickness, any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system.
Speaker 2 (43m 43s): And this is plausible.
Speaker 1 (43m 45s): 'cause when an individual doesn't fit into the system, it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system as seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore a good
Speaker 2 (44m 4s): In the earlier paragraphs. We pointed out that if the
Speaker 1 (44m 7s): Use of a new item of Technology
Speaker 2 (44m 10s): Is initially optional, it
Speaker 1 (44m 13s): Does not necessarily remain
Speaker 2 (44m 16s): Optional because the new technology
Speaker 1 (44m 18s): Tends to change society and such
Speaker 2 (44m 20s): A way that it becomes difficult or impossible.
Speaker 1 (44m 23s): So for an individual to function without using that, Technology this applies also to the Technology of human behavior. Any a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying apparent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable
Speaker 0 (44m 51s): Or suppose
Speaker 1 (44m 52s): A biological treatment is discovered that without undesirable side effects will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in
Speaker 0 (45m 2s): Our society. If large
Speaker 1 (45m 4s): Numbers of people choose to undergo the treatments and the general levels of stress and society will be reduced so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress producing pressures. This will lead more people to undergo the treatment and so forth so that eventually the pressures may become so heavy. That few people will be able to survive without undergoing the stress, reducing in fact something right, or like this seems to have happened already with one of our society's most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce, or at least temporarily shape from stress, namely mass entertainment or use of mass entertainment is optional.
No law requires us to watch television, listen to radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complained what about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone and watches it a few have KYC the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using any form of mass entertainment yet until quite recently in human history, most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than that, which each local community created for itself
Speaker 0 (46m 25s): Without
Speaker 1 (46m 25s): The entertainment industry. The system probably would not have been able to get away with putting as much stress producing pressure
Speaker 0 (46m 32s): On us, as it does, assuming that industrial society survives
Speaker 1 (46m 39s): It is likely that Technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over a human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis as experimenters have demonstrated feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain, or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation.
Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one at clearly is less powerful than the biological mechanisms of human behavior for if that we're not the, then the researchers would not be able to easily manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs in the car.
Speaker 0 (47m 36s): So currently it presumably would be impractical for all right,
Speaker 1 (47m 42s): All people to have electrodes inserted in their heads and so that they could be controlled by the authorities.
Speaker 0 (47m 49s): But the fact
Speaker 1 (47m 50s): That human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical person,
Speaker 0 (47m 60s): A problem of neurons, hormones, and complex molecules, but the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack, giving the answer
Speaker 1 (48m 8s): Standing record of our society and solving technical problems is overwhelmingly probable. That great advances will be made in the control of day.
Speaker 0 (48m 16s): I mean, behavior. I want you to think of neural link right now, and I'm going to read this paragraph again, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48m 25s): How have you guys all seen that Elon Musk neuro link, where they go in and they are using this technology to help blind people see,
Speaker 0 (48m 32s): To help people walk allegedly, what are they doing to controlling the neurons or controlling the circuitry of the brain? So think of neural link and I'm going to read this paragraph again.
Speaker 1 (48m 46s): It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the Yeah
Speaker 0 (48m 55s): Authority is a neuro link, right?
Speaker 1 (48m 60s): It was neural link and Starling Kevin common, you think, but the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problems of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem. Problem of neurons, hormones, and complex molecules. The kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society and solving technical problems is overwhelmingly probable. That great advances will be made in the control of human
Speaker 0 (49m 28s): Behavior. Will public
Speaker 1 (49m 30s): Resistance prevent the introduction of Technological control of human behavior? It's certainly would, if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once,
Speaker 0 (49m 41s): But since Technological
Speaker 1 (49m 42s): Control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public
Speaker 0 (49m 50s): Resistance to those
Speaker 1 (49m 52s): Who think that all this sounds like science fiction. We point out that yesterday as science fiction
Speaker 0 (49m 57s): Is today's fact the industrial
Speaker 1 (49m 60s): Revolution has radically altered men's environment
Speaker 3 (50m 3s): In a way of life. And it is only to be expected that it is
Speaker 1 (50m 6s): Technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as it is,
Speaker 3 (50m 13s): Environment in a way of life have been. Wow, ladies and gentlemen, what are you going to do? What are you thinking about? Think and hard. Love your family. Love your friends.
Speaker 2 (50m 31s): Have a good day. Hello.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yrb2e1njc4yae8d/kaczynski-tech-slavery.pdf?dl=0
Transcript:
https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/58495097
Speaker 0 (0s): <inaudible> Technological, Slavery the writings of the Unabomber. Number six, here we go. You know, the drill Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. What do you guys think? Yes, no, maybe. So. Let's see what Ted Kaczynski thinks it is not possible to make a lasting compromise between technology and freedom because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through repeated compromises.
Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one demands, a piece of the other's land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, okay, let's compromise. Give me half of what I asked the weak one has little choice, but to give in sometime later the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land.
Again, there was a compromise and so forth by forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man. The powerful one eventually gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between Technology and freedom. Let us explain why technology is more powerful, social force than the aspiration for freedom. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom.
Often turns out to threaten it very seriously. Later on, for example, consider a motorized transport. A walking man, formerly could go where he pleased go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations and was independent of Technological support systems. When motor vehicles were introduced, they appeared to increase mans freedom.
They took know freedom away from the walking men. No one has to have an automobile. If you didn't want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon change to society and such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it was found necessary to regulate their use of extensively in a car, especially in densely populated areas.
One cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace. One's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws, one is tied down by various obligations, licensed requirements, driver, test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of a motorized transport is no longer optional.
Since the introduction of motorized transport. The arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities so that they have to depend on the automobile for transportation or else. They must use public transportation. In which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car or even the walkers freedom is now greatly restricted in the city.
He continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic in the country. Motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway note, this important point that we have just build a straight in with the case of motorized transport. When a new item have technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not, as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional.
In many cases, the new technology changes society and such a way that people eventually find themselves for us to use it while Technological progress as a whole continually narrows our sphere of freedom. Each new technical advance considered a by itself appears to be desirable, electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long distance communications. How could one argue against any of these things or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society?
It would have been absurd. It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone. For example, that offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained earlier, all of these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends. But in those of politicians, corporation, executives and remote anonymous technicians and bureaucrats
Speaker 1 (5m 59s): Whom he And whom he as an individual has no power to influence the same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering. For example, few people will resist the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent harm and prevents much suffering yet a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance or of God or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs.
Okay. Let's pause there for a minute. I think at that point is incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly thought provoking. And let me tell you why. I think that I think it is, I think he is he's he's Right in that there will be few people that will be able to deny genetic engineering can be a good thing.
Yes, it will prevent suffering. Yes, it will prevent harm. But here is where the dangerous part is. Once you begin to be genetically engineer, there is already, at least in the United States, there's a precipice, a precedent for patenting genes, right? For those of you, for those, for my European friends, for stuff, I love you guys and good for you guys for taking this Monsanto garbage. The U S has trying to put out because this is the exact company that has tried to patent genes.
In fact, they have them on a lot of their seeds that give to farmers. And if those seeds are found in another farmer's yard, then Monsanto can actually go in there, ensue that farmer for stealing their patent for using their product, without paying for it. So if there is already a precedent on genes and the new genetic engineering technology comes forward, that would be able to look at that case and possibly use it.
So let's say that I got genetically engineered and then I had a child. My child could now be because those genes got passed on to him, the genetically engineered genes, it is possible that the company that I used to be genetically engineered could own not only some of my genes, but some of my offspring's jeans. It sounds crazy. It sounds like a science fiction movie, but we are heading in that way.
Not to mention another dangerous issue with that.
Speaker 2 (8m 59s): You are a commodity once that happens
Speaker 1 (9m 2s): And you have been given your, you have to become a product of a corporation at that time. And you can say that as an employee of a large corporations, you are already that, however, once people put their Technology inside your body, now you become a commodified product to be tracked traced in database, back to the book. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction, it can never be reversed.
Once a technical innovation has been introduced. People usually become dependent on it so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some steel, more advanced innovation. How many of you out there that can drive a, a standard vehicle? You know what I mean by that, like a stick shift, I would say less and less people. When I was little, I, I had a Volkswagen have to learn how to drive it.
Not only do people become dependent on as individuals on a new item of Technology, but even more of the system as a whole becomes dependent upon it. Imagine what, what happened to the system today have computers. For example, we eliminated does the system can move in only one direction toward greater Technology visitation Technology station. That's a big word. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but Technology can never take a step back short of the overthrow of the whole Technological system technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points.
At the same time, crowding rules and regulations, increasing dependents of individuals on a larger organizations, propaganda, and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etcetera, to hold back. Any one of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop since they become apathetic and no longer resist to fight.
Each of the threat separately would be few times. Success can be hoped for only by finding the Technological system as a whole, but that is revolution, not reform technicians. We use this term in its broad sense to describe all of those who perform a specialized task, that requires training
Speaker 0 (12m 4s): Tend
Speaker 1 (12m 5s): To be so in the technicians tend to be so involved in their work, their surrogate activity, that when a conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost always decided in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it is also appears elsewhere. Educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations, they do not hesitate to use propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends corporations and government agencies.
When they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information.
Speaker 0 (12m 47s): How about individuals without regard to their privacy law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent persons. They do whatever they can legally or sometimes illegally to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights.
But when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that they're work is more important. How many people do you know or have you yourself decided that you are the arbiter of the greater good? I know there's been times in my life where I've made decisions based upon what I thought was the greater good, a scary to think about because who are you to decide what the greater good is?
That's that, in my opinion is one of the dividing lines between the integrity and psycho psychopathy. I don't think, I do think sometimes. However, I try to always remind myself that I am not the arbiter of the greater good, and I don't think anybody else has the right to tell me or you, what is the greater good?
It is. Well-known that people generally work better and more persistently when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a punishment or a negative outcome scientists and other technicians are motivated mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But those who oppose Technological invasion of freedom are working to avoid a negative outcome. Consequently, there are a few who work persistently and well at this discouraging task.
If reformers ever achieved a single victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion of freedom through technical progress, most would tend to relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits, but the scientists' would remain busy in their laboratories. And Technology, as it progressed, would find ways in spite of any barriers to exert more and more control over individuals.
And Think them always more dependent on the system. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs, or ethical codes can provide permanent protection against Technology history shows that all social arrangements are transitory. They all change or break down eventually, but technological advances are permanent within the context of a given civilisation suppose for example, That, it were possible to arrive at some social arrangement that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human beings or prevent it from being applied in such a way as to threaten freedom and dignity.
Still the technology would remain waiting sooner or later, the social arrangement would break down probably sooner. Given the pace of change in our society than genetic engineering would begin to invade our sphere of freedom. And this invasion would be irreversible short of a breakdown of technological civilization itself. Any illusions about achieving anything permanent through social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently as of 95 happening with environmental legislation a few years ago, it seemed that there were secure legal barriers, preventing at least some of the worst forms of environmental degradation, a change in the political wind.
And those barriers begin to crumble for all of the foregoing reasons. Technology is a much more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom, but the statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades, the industrial Technological system will be undergoing severe stress due to human behavior.
Alienation rebellion hostility have a variety of social and psychological difficulties. Let me know this was written in 95. So these are the decades he was talking about. We hope that the stress is to which the system is likely to pass will Cause it to break down or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible if such a revolution occurs and as successful. And at the particular moment, the aspiration for freedom will have proven and more powerful than technology.
In a boat paragraphs. We use an analogy for a weak neighbor who is left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing on him a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor get sick so that he is unable to defend himself, the weak neighbor Can force the strong one to give him his land back, or if you can kill them, if you let the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land back, he's a fool because when the strong man gets Well, he will again take all of the land for himself.
The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance in the same way. While the industrial system is sick, we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all our freedom. The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance in the same way.
While the industrial system is sick, we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all our freedom. Similar social problems have proved intractable. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way is to protect freedom from Technology, let him consider how clumsily and for the most part, unsuccessfully, our society has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and straight forward among other things.
The system has failed to stop environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking, or domestic abuse. Take our environmental problems. For example, here, the conflict of values is straightforward. Economic expedience now versus saving some of our natural resources for our grandchildren. But on this subject, we get only a lot of blathering obfuscation from the people who have power and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action.
They keep on piling up in environmental problems that our grandchildren we'll have to deal with attempts to resolve the environmental issue consists of struggles and compromises between different factions.
Speaker 1 (20m 48s): Some of which are ascendant at one moment, others. At another moment, the line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion. This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to a timely and successful solution to the problem, major social problems. If they get solved at all, rarely or never are solved through any rational, comprehensive plan, they just work themselves out through a process in which various competing groups pursuing their own.
Usually short-term, self-interest arrive mainly by luck at some more or less stable modus. Vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated an earlier paragraphs, make it seem doubtful that rational long-term social planning can ever be successful. Thus, it is clear that the human race has at best, a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straight forward social problems.
How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of rec consent of a con sorry of re re constantly. I cannot say that word, subtle problems of reconciling freedom with the technology Technology presents clear cut material that advances advances Technology presents clear cut material advantages.
Whereas freedom is an abstraction. That means different things to different people. And it's lost is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk and note this important difference. It is conceivable that our environmental problems, for example, may some day be settled through a rational, comprehensive plan. But if this happens, it will be only because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these problems.
But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational prudent approach to environmental problems. Equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely, preferably by indirect means that we'll disguise the encroachment of freedom.
This isn't just our opinion, eminent, social scientists,
Speaker 2 (23m 47s): EEG
Speaker 1 (23m 47s): James Q. Wilson have stress. The importance of socializing
Speaker 2 (23m 52s): The people more effectively.
Speaker 1 (23m 56s): I think if you're honest with yourself, you can see that
Speaker 2 (23m 59s): In the last few days,
Speaker 1 (24m 2s): Decades for the last few generations have taken mankind down a route of domestication.
Speaker 2 (24m 9s): You think about it. If we were half as tough as our dads were, think about, think about how your father lived and then think about how your grandfather lived
Speaker 1 (24m 22s): Or think about how your grandmother lived and then how her grandmother, right?
Speaker 2 (24m 25s): So we have become a softer weaker, clearly more pussified. In fact, there is,
Speaker 1 (24m 37s): I know there's people now that don't even get
Speaker 2 (24m 39s): In fights. I know people that have never been punched in the face revolution is easier than reform. We hope,
Speaker 1 (24m 55s): Or you have convinced the reader that the system can not be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with Technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial Technological system all together. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change. And the nature of society. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater change
Speaker 2 (25m 20s): And then reformed does it is more difficult to bring about than reform. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (25m 26s): Actually under certain circumstances, revolution,
Speaker 2 (25m 29s): It was much easier than reform. The reason
Speaker 1 (25m 32s): Is that a revolutionary movement can inspire
Speaker 2 (25m 36s): An intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire
Speaker 1 (25m 41s): A reform movement, merely offers to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world. It provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reason, it would be much easier to overthrow the whole Technological system than to put effective permanent restraints on the development or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic engineering.
For example, not many people will devote themselves with single minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on a genetic engineering, but under a suitable conditions, large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial Technological system. As we noted in above paragraphs reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of Technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome, but revolutionaries work to gain It powerful reward fulfillment of their revolutionary vision and therefore work harder and more persistently than reformers do
Speaker 2 (26m 58s): Reform is all
Speaker 1 (26m 60s): Always restrained by the fear of painful consequences. If changes go too far, but once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian revolutions. It may be that in some cases, only a minority of the population is truly committed to the revolution, but this minority is sufficiently large and act in so that it becomes the dominant force in a system
Speaker 2 (27m 33s): In control of human behavior.
Speaker 1 (27m 43s): It's the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings for the sake of the functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society
Speaker 2 (28m 0s): To another.
Speaker 1 (28m 3s): Some of the pressures are physical, poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution, some are psychological noise crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires in the past. Human nature has been approximately
Speaker 2 (28m 23s): Constant or
Speaker 1 (28m 24s): At any rate has a very only with certain bounds
Speaker 2 (28m 28s): And consequently Sunstein
Speaker 1 (28m 30s): Fridays. These have been able to push people only up to certain limits when the limit of human endurance has been passed. Things start going on
Speaker 2 (28m 41s): Wrong rebellion, crime corruption, or invasion of work or depression, as well as other mental problems, right?
Speaker 1 (28m 52s): And elevated death rate, a declining birth rate or something else so that either the society breaks down or its functioning becomes too inefficient. And it is as quickly or gradually through conquest attrition or evolution replaced by some more efficient form of society. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies.
People could be pushed only so far and know further But today. This may be changing because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.
Speaker 2 (29m 33s): So imagine a society that subjects people, right?
Speaker 1 (29m 37s): So the conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then it, them drugs to take away their unhappy, right?
Speaker 0 (29m 43s): Yes. Science fiction. I don't think so. It is already Yeah
Speaker 1 (29m 49s): Happening to some extent in our own society is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent
Speaker 0 (29m 58s): Decades. We believe
Speaker 1 (29m 60s): That this is due to disruption of the power process is explained in earlier paragraphs, but even Yeah.
Speaker 0 (30m 5s): And if we are wrong, the intent
Speaker 1 (30m 8s): Increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of some conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them an anti-depressant in effect. Antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
Speaker 0 (30m 39s): Yes, we know that
Speaker 1 (30m 40s): Is that depression is often a purely genetic origin. And we are referring here to those cases in which the environment
Speaker 0 (30m 47s): Plays the predominant role drugs that affect the mind are only two.
Speaker 1 (30m 54s): So one example of the methods of controlling human behavior, that modern society is developing. Let us look at some other methods
Speaker 0 (31m 1s): And it's to start with, there are other techniques of surveillance, hidden camera
Speaker 1 (31m 8s): Cameras are now used in most stores. And in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information.
Speaker 0 (31m 17s): How about individuals? You know,
Speaker 1 (31m 20s): And so a pain greatly increases the effectiveness of physical Yeah
Speaker 0 (31m 23s): Coercion. Then there are the methods of propaganda for which one,
Speaker 1 (31m 30s): The mass communications media provide effective vehicles, efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections
Speaker 0 (31m 41s): And efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion, the entertainment industry. So far
Speaker 1 (31m 55s): As an important psychological tool of the system. Possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and
Speaker 0 (32m 2s): Violence. Entertainment
Speaker 1 (32m 5s): Provides modern man with an essential meaning
Speaker 0 (32m 7s): Escape while absorbed in television videos or games. He can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, and dissatisfaction, many primitive peoples when they don't have any work to do are quite content to sit for hours at a time, doing nothing at all. 'cause they are at peace with themselves and their world, but most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained. Otherwise they get a quote on quote, bored.
They get fidgety, uneasy, irritable, other techniques striking deeper. Then the foregoing education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kids behind when he doesn't know his lessons and patting them on the head. When he does know them, just becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child's development. Jesus Christ. You guys have kids, the fuck are these masks doing to our kids.
You get to put a mask on your kid, put a fucking shield on their face before they go outside. We're teaching our kids to be scared before they even go outside. I don't know what you guys do, but if you, if you're worried or you've been affected by the virus, I think you should at least tell your children that this mask, this shield is an attempt to change your behavior.
Don't be afraid if you need to take that thing off. I think the longterm consequences of our children's behavior in schools or online schools now is fundamentally going to change their behavior. Forever. Education is no longer a simple affair Sylvan learning centers.
For example, I've had great success and motivating children to study and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success. In many conventional schools, parenting techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children except the fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable mental health programs, intervention, techniques, psychotherapy, and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals.
But in practice, they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals' to think and behave as the system requires, there is no contradiction here and individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with a system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from and see is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat his path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires.
In that sense, the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity child abuse. And it's gross in obvious forms is disapproved in most, if not all cultures tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone, but many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse. Much more broadly is a spanking. When you used as part of the rational and consistent system of disciplines, a form of abuse, the question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society in practice, the word abuse tends to be interpreted to include any method of child rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system.
Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious sense of this cruelty programs for present preventing child abuse are directed towards the control of human behavior. On behalf of the system, presumably research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating biological methods probably we'll have to be used.
We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur and the form of gene therapy. And there is no reason to assume that such methods will not. Eventually we use to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning. As we mentioned in para earlier, paragraphs industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress do in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and, and environmental problems and a considerable proportion of the systems economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave, alienation
Speaker 1 (37m 57s): Low self-esteem depression, hostility, rebellion, children who won't study youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict. Pro-choice pro-life political extremism, terrorism, sabotage anti-government groups, hate groups. All of these threatened the very survival of the system.
The system will therefore be forced to use every practical means of controlling human behavior. COVID-19
Speaker 2 (38m 37s): The vaccine there are coming.
Speaker 1 (38m 41s): So the social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of chance. The social disruption that we see today, it is certainly not. The result of mere chance can only be a result of the conditions of life that the system imposes on people. We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.
If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over a human behavior to ensure its own survival, a new watershed and human history will have been passed. Whereas formally the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies. Industrial technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both in the future social systems.
So we will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead of human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
Speaker 2 (39m 58s): Generally speaking, Technological
Speaker 1 (40m 1s): A troll over a human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict him and freedom. Each new step in the assertion have control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering.
In many cases, there will be a humanitarian justification.
Speaker 2 (40m 37s): For example,
Speaker 1 (40m 39s): When a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children until Sylvan learning centers to have them manipulate it. And it becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do. So for concern for the child's welfare, it may be that some of these parents were just that one didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didn't have to be brainwashed to becoming a computer nerd, but what can they do?
They can't change society and your child may be unemployable if he doesn't have certain skills. So they send them to Silvan.
Speaker 2 (41m 25s): Thus control
Speaker 1 (41m 26s): Over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities, but through a process of social, rapid evolution.
Speaker 2 (41m 36s): However, the process
Speaker 1 (41m 39s): Will be impossible to resist because each advance considered by itself will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that, which would result from not making it propaganda. For example, is used for many good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred sex education is obviously useful. You get the effect of sex education. To the extent that it is successful is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands at the state as represented by the public school system.
Speaker 2 (42m 19s): Suppose
Speaker 1 (42m 20s): A biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove this trade. Of course, most parents whose children possess the trait, we'll have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise since the child would probably have a miserable life. If you grew up to be a criminal, but many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with That of our society, even though they never, they neither high tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh
Speaker 2 (42m 56s): Systems of punishment since the eighties,
Speaker 1 (43m 0s): No reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have a neat predatory tendencies. The high crime rate of our
Speaker 2 (43m 9s): Society must be due
Speaker 1 (43m 11s): To the pressures that modern conditions
Speaker 2 (43m 13s): You put on people too, which many cannot or will not adjust them.
Speaker 1 (43m 20s): So the treatment design to remove potential criminal tendencies, his at least in part, a way of re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of them,
Speaker 2 (43m 29s): The system, all this stuff,
Speaker 1 (43m 34s): He tends to regard as a sickness, any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system.
Speaker 2 (43m 43s): And this is plausible.
Speaker 1 (43m 45s): 'cause when an individual doesn't fit into the system, it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system as seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore a good
Speaker 2 (44m 4s): In the earlier paragraphs. We pointed out that if the
Speaker 1 (44m 7s): Use of a new item of Technology
Speaker 2 (44m 10s): Is initially optional, it
Speaker 1 (44m 13s): Does not necessarily remain
Speaker 2 (44m 16s): Optional because the new technology
Speaker 1 (44m 18s): Tends to change society and such
Speaker 2 (44m 20s): A way that it becomes difficult or impossible.
Speaker 1 (44m 23s): So for an individual to function without using that, Technology this applies also to the Technology of human behavior. Any a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying apparent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable
Speaker 0 (44m 51s): Or suppose
Speaker 1 (44m 52s): A biological treatment is discovered that without undesirable side effects will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in
Speaker 0 (45m 2s): Our society. If large
Speaker 1 (45m 4s): Numbers of people choose to undergo the treatments and the general levels of stress and society will be reduced so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress producing pressures. This will lead more people to undergo the treatment and so forth so that eventually the pressures may become so heavy. That few people will be able to survive without undergoing the stress, reducing in fact something right, or like this seems to have happened already with one of our society's most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce, or at least temporarily shape from stress, namely mass entertainment or use of mass entertainment is optional.
No law requires us to watch television, listen to radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complained what about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone and watches it a few have KYC the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using any form of mass entertainment yet until quite recently in human history, most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than that, which each local community created for itself
Speaker 0 (46m 25s): Without
Speaker 1 (46m 25s): The entertainment industry. The system probably would not have been able to get away with putting as much stress producing pressure
Speaker 0 (46m 32s): On us, as it does, assuming that industrial society survives
Speaker 1 (46m 39s): It is likely that Technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over a human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis as experimenters have demonstrated feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain, or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation.
Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one at clearly is less powerful than the biological mechanisms of human behavior for if that we're not the, then the researchers would not be able to easily manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs in the car.
Speaker 0 (47m 36s): So currently it presumably would be impractical for all right,
Speaker 1 (47m 42s): All people to have electrodes inserted in their heads and so that they could be controlled by the authorities.
Speaker 0 (47m 49s): But the fact
Speaker 1 (47m 50s): That human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical person,
Speaker 0 (47m 60s): A problem of neurons, hormones, and complex molecules, but the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack, giving the answer
Speaker 1 (48m 8s): Standing record of our society and solving technical problems is overwhelmingly probable. That great advances will be made in the control of day.
Speaker 0 (48m 16s): I mean, behavior. I want you to think of neural link right now, and I'm going to read this paragraph again, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48m 25s): How have you guys all seen that Elon Musk neuro link, where they go in and they are using this technology to help blind people see,
Speaker 0 (48m 32s): To help people walk allegedly, what are they doing to controlling the neurons or controlling the circuitry of the brain? So think of neural link and I'm going to read this paragraph again.
Speaker 1 (48m 46s): It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the Yeah
Speaker 0 (48m 55s): Authority is a neuro link, right?
Speaker 1 (48m 60s): It was neural link and Starling Kevin common, you think, but the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problems of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem. Problem of neurons, hormones, and complex molecules. The kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society and solving technical problems is overwhelmingly probable. That great advances will be made in the control of human
Speaker 0 (49m 28s): Behavior. Will public
Speaker 1 (49m 30s): Resistance prevent the introduction of Technological control of human behavior? It's certainly would, if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once,
Speaker 0 (49m 41s): But since Technological
Speaker 1 (49m 42s): Control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public
Speaker 0 (49m 50s): Resistance to those
Speaker 1 (49m 52s): Who think that all this sounds like science fiction. We point out that yesterday as science fiction
Speaker 0 (49m 57s): Is today's fact the industrial
Speaker 1 (49m 60s): Revolution has radically altered men's environment
Speaker 3 (50m 3s): In a way of life. And it is only to be expected that it is
Speaker 1 (50m 6s): Technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as it is,
Speaker 3 (50m 13s): Environment in a way of life have been. Wow, ladies and gentlemen, what are you going to do? What are you thinking about? Think and hard. Love your family. Love your friends.
Speaker 2 (50m 31s): Have a good day. Hello.
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