Every move you make, Every vow you break, Every smile you fake, Every claim you stake, I’ll be watching you.
– Sting, The Police, Synchronicity, 1983apocalypse (n.)
late 14c., “revelation, disclosure,” from Church Latin apocalypsis, “revelation,” from Greek apokalyptein “uncover, disclose, reveal,” from apo :”off, away from” (see apo-) +kalyptein “to cover, conceal” (see Calypso)
www.etymyonline.com
The polymorphous illusion of Capitalist Democracy in the 21st Century is becoming too expensive to maintain. It is nigh on ‘lockdown time!’ sense of ‘click wall’ at the back of the digital theater becoming increasingly visible; this paraphrase with acknowledgement to Frank Zappa and as per etymology above concerning ‘apocalypse’. The utility of surplus labor, courtesy of technological progress and capital intensity, is all but complete, the Panopticon now demands a trimming of the population on grounds of efficiency, as is in progress in ways enumerated below, such the hidden agenda of war as would be concealed, such the horror.
Apropos, your click on this, as with other websites has been recorded by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) Corporation, and is available to relevant authorities – for the technological panopticon is a digital phenomenon with a utility highly conducive to pathological deployment.
The original technology of Panopticon as conceived by the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th Century was brick based – in the 21st Century the implementation of Panopticon as the power of mind over mind has become click based, whether on TV remote control as ambiguous if the TV be smart and has camera and microphone, smart phone, tablet or laptop, or just plain old personal computer.
The Technological Panopticon is an extension of the debauch of currency by way of mode of obtaining power of mind over mind which thru ontology relates to control and issue of currency as the abuse of faith and degeneration of love – whence become a destruction of Life form of expropriation and arrogation as intimates division and terrorism – as ‘quantitative ease’ explicates by way of sufferance inflicted covertly with willful deliberation?
As these small quarters write another ‘pump and dump’ operation in the pipeline; stocks and shares such the Casino Capitalism become as aspect of Panopticonic illusion are being primed for another fire sale takedown explicative of insight by Keynes concerning secret and unobserved confiscation – for the tragic vision of a Panopticon is one where the majority have little if ought, such the Paine, and mere parasites have approaching all; and Life is denigrated to the point where the majority as Goyim/Untermensch have as according only to parallel of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) – while the ‘elite’ feast at a banquet based on illusion comprised in part of disinformation as false news and the value thereof, such the control and manipulation?
‘Share the wealth!’ arises as a long scream rendered silent in the Panopticon as Munch intimated by way of brush upon canvas?
Getting down and dirty, such the wrestle with the pig as both get dirty and the pig likes it as Bernard Shaw enunciated is necessary sometimes?
Thus it is concerning the utility of information in a Panopticon as prison this small article progresses, as much as entropy would be resisted evidenced, and despite political correctness the right to ‘J’accuse!’ affirmed – and ‘negative valence of thought’ be damned as but control and manipulation as quintessence of said Panopticon. For I am not a number, I am not a prisoner, I am a man, a free man as God given – and First Amendment to the United States Constitution much admired.
So much for pre-amble.
The utility of information by way of facilitating a Panopticon as Currency debauched in context of ontology is perhaps best illustrated in 1815AD and the exploitation by way of intermediation by Nathan Rothschild. There is awareness here that going back to 1815 may be seen as irrelevant in context of politics contemporary but this is a large part of how the bastard parasites who profit from the Panopticon as conceived of by Bentham in 1791 continue to operate – get the majority focusing on the short game of survival and the long game of fleecing further goes on, such the rationale of obfuscation as when in the minds of the majority arse incapable of being clearly differentiated from elbow then you got them by the balls. While extended idioms may be humorous there is nothing funny for the majority subsisting in a debt peonage plantation aka electronic concentration camp, or in a techno-tyranny as Bamford put it. Such a further squeeze on resource distribution as by quantitative ease for example illustrates the overarching rationale of the Panopticon as transfer of resources – morality is not so much a matter of what is thought or said, but what is done.
Back to 1815 and the utility of ‘false news’. Information about the result of the Battle of Waterloo was utilised by Nathan Rothschild to perform a very large scale ‘mind over mind’ or confidence trick upon investors in the London Stock Exchange or LSE (est. 1801). Parallel to such confidence trick was explicated in the 1983 film ‘Trading Places’. While we may have progressed from horse riding courier and carrier pigeon concerning rapidity of information flow the utility of said information and ‘intermediation’ remains the same, it can be used to further control and manipulation by way of exploitation and arrogation. Nowadays intermediation can be a matter of nanoseconds, and the beak wetted or cut taken. Nowadays dedicated implementation of Artificial Intelligence or AI can be an adjunct to the illusion which is the power of mind over mind. Dark pools are but an aspect of the Panopticon as a capital intensive operation, and fiat currency is control of capital which leads towards the control of Corporations.
The click built Panopticon is a transfer of resources which leverages the utility of information towards the point of profit maximization, for at the dark ‘heart’ of the Panopticon is the concept of a man god whom in such simulacrum of nature is omniscient and omnipotent, and faith and worship is debased by shock and awe, with fear being the key which closes so many locks. Artificial intelligence means no need for Stasi like labor intensive operations sense of someone with a headset on listening to a wiretap or bug, nowadays algorithms can be implemented which are capable of simultaneous sifting extremely high volumes of data where such is not only auditory but visual. Think key words, gait analysis, number plate recognition, biometric facial recognition, cookies and flagging and you get a picture of AI implementation, for the Panopticon has come a long way since ‘ECHELON’.
One of the largest components of the illusion is that all this is done in the interests of protecting the ordinary Citizen. That is, the Panopticon is operated by the good guys as opposed to terrorists, and the gradual erosion of Human Rights and invasion of privacy is necessary to counteract a growing terrorist threat. The contention here is that the click built Panopticon is rather part of a military industrial complex which is degenerate in that it devalues life in context not only of military warfare but economic warfare, and is the antithesis of Democracy. For evidence of this devaluation of Life as must be protected and furthered as to the demands of the Panopticon one need not only contemplate the perpetual wars being waged abroad and such abominations as drone strikes and depleted uranium munitions, but examination of wealth distribution and the treatment of the poor as economic warfare practised within the Panopticon itself. Here it is not only human life as reflects the denigration which the Panopticon has as sine qua non, it is all life, as the pollution is not only moral it is physical.
It is here that this small article turns to an even more unpleasant proposition concerning the denigration of Life which the Panopticon is driven to further, and it is that of the concept of the utility of surplus labor given robotics and artificial intelligence, growing capital intensity and technological displacement. Given that surplus labor has a fear utility and is capable of minimising labor costs to cause of increased profitability, the Panopticon is yet becoming too populous. This overpopulation is purely economic; it is not related to the capacity of the monitoring and surveillance technology to ‘handle’ it, rather it is a question of the ‘break even’ in context of how much surplus labor is required to maintain fear and the drive down of labor costs and the fact that the surplus population has grown beyond this point. It is clear that Military Warfare is from such sense failing to trim surplus population in number of indigenous recruits, the days of such wholesale slaughter as of the First and Second World Wars are gone, and it is also clear that militarization of the police can have limited efficacy. The removal of any benefits to the unemployed or punitive, while leading to increased numbers of suicides or mortality such as detailed concerning the UK in the award winning film ‘I, Daniel Blake’ is not rapid enough and engenders a high risk of backlash.
Please understand these small quarters are playing the devil’s advocate here, the concepts and abominable degeneration proposed above are anathema to my values, but the tragedy is that examining the Panopticon leads one to such a proposition. There has also been restraint evidenced concerning examining the religious or spiritual aspects of the Panopticon, rather a focus on the immoral economics which drives it, and as are embraced in neo liberal or free market orthodoxy.
It is undoubtedly a tragedy that the Western World has elected to go down such a pathway as an evolutionary trajectory, and that rather than technology being developed and applied leading to a variant of Utopia as envisaged by Gorz, for example, it has led towards a Panopticonic dystopia in which the full sinister nature of such an abomination awaits ‘apocalypse’ as defined above. The term ‘umbrage’ was used in the title based on Vault 7 revelations, horror would be more apposite.
In closing, and trying to look on the bright side of what Utopia could mean, extract from a poem quoted in novelization of ‘The Prisoner’ where the protest ‘I am not a number! I am a man! A free man! also occurs. The poem on a clearly Utopian theme is by James Newton Matthews and the extract is as follows:
If all who hate would love us,
And all our loves were true,
The stars that swing above us,
Would brighten in the blue;
If cruel words were kisses,
And every scowl a smile,
A better world than this is
Would hardly be worthwhile