Matrix Of Control: A Short Tale About Society We Live In
by Joe Contrarian
( August 29, 2015, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) What is the society we are living in like? We think, we know our neighborhood, friends, if we really have any, and definitely we know or at least we think we know something about our close relatives as well as extended family mostly through the personal experiences of our lives but also through the narratives that are proliferated among our family members about the society at large and ourselves within this society.
What about the society at large? Do we really directly know anything about our society beyond our professional or commercial relationships with strangers, mitigated by money or advantage? Do we realize or understand our own role in the society beyond narrow family ties and responsibilities?
Are there true human experiences and not fat books of lies, aphorisms, innuendos, misconceptions and omissions supposedly about politics and society, the only source on which we base our entire social worldview?
Is it not the society we live in really our society, meaning that we, ordinary people, create it and control it or at least conscientiously support it in any meaningful ways?
There are no easy answers to the above questions. But we do not worry much, since we know we don’t have to know all those answers to live our everyday lives, which we believe to have special meaning or we wish to have special meaning, purpose for us alone and we vaguely sense, if not conscientiously choose, what such goals are or should be, hoping that they would be attainable.
Sadly, all of it, a nice tale about humanity and the life struggle, is just an illusion we ourselves help to feed into our minds. The necessary illusion of our own control over our own lives within our own community or even in our own society at large, we are truly oblivious to.
So what is the real society we live in? Is our place and role in the society solely mitigated by our inherited social position, skills, talents, our hard work, dedication and determination and lots of good luck or random chance? Or are we imprisoned behind invisible bars of our knowledge, beliefs, choices, traditions or intellectual horizons, all arbitrary factors instilled in us from within our society making us insensible to the great indiscernible walls of desirable comfort and stability of our mind?
Unfortunately, nobody can be told what the society really is and unlike the famous Matrix, nobody can see it with his or her own eyes either, since we cannot simply unplug. What we really have are bits and pieces of societal structure in itself, a substrate separated from myths and obfuscation, examined in “extention” for what it actually is and not for what it does.
There is ample documentation for the latter while scarcely anything about the former.
All we know for sure is that society we live in is man-made.
Fortunately, there were men and women in the past such as Michael Foucault and others who understood the fundamentals of society with its holographic structures of deceit and suggestive hedonistic innuendos disguised as the principles and values as well as its perfect dynamism of control. And they woke up and freed few people from beautiful delusion of the radical individualism, as well as from profound believe in the possibility of self-effacement deep within the society.
And from them we know what we know.
It is mostly accepted fact that “advanced”, so-called agrarian and/or civil society is organized into political system imposed by minority of ruling elite.
Below there is presented a brief review of a model of structure of the society under dynamic control of the political system that is thought to resemble the society we live in. While plausible, this model was developed under the restraints of deficient or often insufficient data obtained from complex dynamic system.
The issue of emergence of the elite itself is more an issue related to the evolution of our human species and individual advancement processes as well as its conditionality regarding social development, generally similar across all higher order species and hence will not be discussed here where the focus is being placed on already developed society.
Structure of Society vs. Moral Attitudes.
Every society consist of a continuously emerging elite, a group of often interbred families or clans that persuaded themselves that it is their prerogative to control the rest of society, seen as animalistic masses, immoral abominations of humanity. They see themselves, whether they admit it or not, as reluctant saviors of the humanity, against all odds. Their self-proclaimed objective and perceived necessity is to become the absolute moral arbiters, life and death decision makers. They believe that they are Hegelian type “ubermensch”, supermen, meant as the only true humans, the building blocks and foundations of perfect social order and power structure able to support it. Hence, to hold power is their solemn duty, a burden they must carry for higher good of the society at large.
They consider themselves not as much better humans as they just consider the rest of the humanity as a certain earthly creatures, items of natural world, a resource to be harvested or exploited in any way they deem necessary.
Such attitude permeates all decision-making processes within the ruling elite, all understood not as means of survival and dominance but as a self-sacrifice for the higher end, for higher purposes than their individual well-being, one of the paranoid delusions deviously nurtured among themselves.
In their obviously psychopathic or even psychotic state of mind it is all about binary moral order, the good and the evil, absolute truths and absolute values, incomprehensible concepts to those who don’t belong, those unable to achieve higher state of consciousness beyond any notion of forethought or petty human concerns. Seen as a matter of the objective reality, their law is their will and their morality is their immediate need or benefit, all other considerations rescinded. They regard themselves beyond any earthly moral insecurities or doubts as an expression of ultimate justice and absolute truth.
What is astounding that all those assertions are not developed and accepted by the ruling elite as much as dogmas of their rule but rather as a rational conclusion based on the results of numerous experiments and detailed observations of the society at large and its behavior. The ruling elite rationally concludes that their rule is the only thing that works for all society.
The idea of the ruling elite as a conspiracy in common meaning of the word it is not, since they have no specific plan of action or even specific ultimate objective to be achieved, short of holding onto the power and expand the limits of control by whatever means available. What they use are the methods and techniques of manipulating of the population stratified into the casts or classes via propaganda of the abstract concepts of economic development, political process, social policies, law, religion, science, vertical mobility, sports, nationalism, racism etc., and in cases when it fails they use raw brutality as the ultimate expression of “innate” morality of their power.
So who are they? What are their names? Here is the problem. Even in the historical perspective most the names of kings or emperors who supposedly ruled the world for thousands of years, as many results of scientific research indicated, have been likely made up names for certain groups or elites that actually ruled the ancient states. Such a arrangement sometimes was chosen for security of the individual who was in charge but mostly it was to cover up the existence of committee of rulers, a ruling class. Such assertion is not at all controversial since it is very well accepted fact that for example, mysterious priestly class even when technically not in power, was always influential power player in the economy and politics for millennia and still is today.
However, even in the XIX century new emerging power elites in the US and elsewhere where so convinced about their benign character that allowed some kind of interaction with the society at large through promoting those so-called towering figures of industrial revolution such as Fords, Rothschilds, Carnegies, Rockefellers etc., multiple names for the same symbol of ruling class.
But this changed drastically at the end of the XIX century when political movements of masses, of what they believed to be benevolent human refuse, a fertilizer of their power, suddenly threatened the very foundation of their rule. Ironically it was a side effect of their own nation-state ploy devised after French revolution shaken ruling elites to the core.
Following advice of Sigmund Freud who in early 20th century came to the US not really to lecture about his dream theory at US Universities, though he was invited numerous times to do so during his over one year stay and finally in 1909 gave so-called “Clark” series of lectures on Psychoanalysis, but to warn the US and the world elites to change their ways, step back from the spotlight and return to their ancient obfuscated ways of ruling the world or else prepare to be overthrown by massive political movements of ordinary working people all over the word.
It was not easy but after a year of often secret (handsomely paid for) meetings with the representatives of ruling elites in the US they heed the call. It was not as much because they were scared or felt particularly threaten with Armageddon but more because Freud presented the specific program to mitigate such a risk cheaply and effectively using substantially improved methods of the social control and manipulation he developed during his psychoanalytic practice in Vienna.
In just few years so-called corporate reforms promoting fantasy of dissolution of strict and unified corporate control structure run by an individual, fantasy of dissolution of singular responsibilities and corporate accountability of an individual, have been introduced to obfuscate the calcified corporate structure which stayed the same, unaltered.
The so-called anti-monopoly laws (Clayton Antitrust Act) passed late 1914 to break up huge corporations, trusts and cartels were instigated and used as a part of Freud’s plan to obfuscate ruling elite role or even their very existence and shield them from coming political tsunami. The creation of the CIR in 1912 to diffuse labor tensions, establishments FTC and FED in 1913 against all the protest and privatization of central banks all over the world were steps into dissolution of the responsible identity.
The core of Freud’s program that drew attention of the ruling elite was a discovery, in comparison to society at large, of much higher overall morality of the poor and working class people, than previously assumed, stemming mostly from development of the work ethos and camaraderie in suffering.
In the simplified form it was about the very high threshold of proof of causal relation between action of an individual and the effect on the poor or working people before their political and moral attitude changed. In other words new individual in the society if placed in the position of authority immediately gains substantial trust of the people, gains instant credit of his/her honesty and the good will given to anyone as a recognition of his/her human dignity. Freud called it a virgin moral naiveté of working people, the fundamental believe of goodness of another individual human being, a concept alien to the ruling elite who subscribe solely to the stringent class morality.
And hence, we saw proliferation of completely fake and useless boards of directors, invention of CEOs, COOs, etc., and other meaningless acronyms that obfuscate the obvious. Also, seems unlimited and often superfluous, the multi-level corporate management structures proliferated among the corporations, followed by an avalanche of company splits or mergers and the introduction of ridiculously obfuscated capital structures of multi-leveled holding companies into corporate capital investment world, that all but dissolved into the fog a concept of the ownership even for shareholders of the publicly traded companies, with no real influence over the company they formally own, no matter how much shares they bought.
A new era dawned on the World. From Ford, proud sole proprietor of entire billion dollar Ford company who himself was making all the decisions down to the production line to the featureless corporate bureaucrat, a temporary puppet face of the big boss, a grunt that can be blamed for all the bad decisions, and can be swiftly punished for them so those workers and their families who suffered greatly can be confused about who was actually responsible for their misery, and they will not blame anyone without a direct proof. It was the proof that the so-called corporate and governmental reforms aimed to obfuscate and what they consequently accomplished as an element of wider political strategy to defeat and destroy the working people movements all over the word.
Since then the ruling elites retreated back to their historical cloud of the obfuscation and speculation, not to be seen or spoke about, directing the masses through the social mechanism of control supported by their propaganda puppets, courtiers of the system tasked with maintaining of the ruling elite’s strict control over the population, and running the matrix-like illusion of civil society, not too horrible and not too comfortable.
A society run by ruling elites consist of courtiers’ class, a privileged servants forming a core of the puppet politics, political administration and the civic institutions, system security agencies, military, money banking, trade and economic management and the secular and religious propaganda of celebrity. These courtiers are often descendants of the former courtiers with some small contribution from those from lower classes who are genetically related, most “talented”, “needed”, or are admitted on the basis of a caprice or curiosity or those who in rare cases, temporarily cannot be eliminated or killed.
To be included in the class of courtiers one has to genuinely exhibit certain peculiar sense of morality. The courtier morality is based on absolute loyalty and submission to the ruling elite, submission to their goals and methods and utmost loyalty to implement them without prejudice, without doubt, hesitation or judgment, to act without any kind of individual morality, individual moral judgment or doubt since such concepts do not exist in the courtier class. Any degree of deviation from this brings to those who dare swift retaliation i.e. immediate death or rejection, repudiation and total alienation from the class, loss of relative privilege and most of all condemnation from their kin. However, this is relatively rare since the self-censoring, self-limiting mechanisms, the invisible prisons of ideas, within the class work extremely well.
Courtiers are themselves victims of the ruling elite, considered as subhuman in need for the guidance, and in the same time perpetrators of the atrocities among themselves as well as among the lower classes. They are expected to be mindless executioners of the moral/social order established by the “chosen people” of ruling elite otherwise they failed in their duty and are discarded as a refuse. That’s why, to mitigate somewhat, the enormous pressure; courtiers are frantic, gluttonous consumers of the very propaganda they produce by orders of ruling elite.
They are metaphorically liquefying their own brains to feed their young as well as to feed the poisonous potion of, backed by ostentatious brutality, propaganda worldview into the brains of lower classes who ruling class consider a spawn of the Earth or just all-encompassing natural resources which are to be exploited to the exhaustion or collapse. Since, in contrast to the courtier class, this type of indoctrination is mostly unsuccessful as a tool of controlling the bottom of society, it does not constitute a major focus of the ruling elite in dealing with the lower classes.
The massive propaganda that is being deployed toward the courtier class however, has the main objective, not as much to suppress “undesirable” ideas about reality they are living in, but rather providing the avenue of “help” and escape of tremendous stress imposed by the brutal regime they are tasked to uphold. The other avenues are provided as well through addictions and the sin industry always allowed and nurtured by the ruling elites for this very reason. Courtier class is required to be moral and to believe that they are moral, whatever “moral” means at given moment. All for their own psychological relief of tension, preventing any disruption of their duty to suppress the others.
In general, in contrast to the courtiers’ class that fulfills the central function in the social system, attitude of the ruling elite to lower classes is somewhat ambivalent. The lower classes are treated as a social refuse so hopeless that there is nothing really that can be done about them though they are trying hard to enlighten them using their absolute morality of power.
Since its eradication would have been costly and not overall beneficial to the system control scheme, modern society also consist of a lower class, the class of serfs or slaves, those abandoned courtiers or those who quit the system and just slowly dying on its margins. All those are considered by the elite as low life devoid of any human dignity, those who need to be organized and exposed to the external rule of law and revealed morality for their own good since they do not posses capacity of the moral life.
Opposite to the propaganda revelations spewed over the lower classes, entire political system that permeates society is busy not with healing the social ills or bring prosperity to the population as we know well but rather is busy running a late Roman style political money theater, a cheap burlesque with no consequence beyond the curtain call although real blood is flowing on the stage.
Members of the serf/slave class are unaware of anyone individual from the ruling class short of courtier spokespeople, borrowed faces of the ruling elite and mistakenly take on their grievances to the representatives of courtiers’ class, themselves just up notch on the all-encompassing autocratic structure of society, with absolutely no real power of their own.
In contrast to what courtiers of the system telling lower classes, the elites are tasked with no plans or vision for the humanity and often employ brutal deception of non-existing political choices or programs stealing the future from countless gullible generations of the non-people. All such practices are implemented as means of the control and not as means to any particular end.
Any so-called political system that lower classes are referencing as such; totalitarian, oligarchic, democratic, meritocratic, aristocratic, plutocratic or whatever other meaningless names are used, all of them are fulfilling role of fashionable headlines of endless sequels of one single play, a power play aimed to assert control, that’s all.
Mechanism of Control.
While the nature of stratification of the ruling class itself is a subject of speculations and not much of knowledge, there is strict stratification imposed on other classes, namely the courtiers and lower classes intertwined within all permeating grid structure of the social power.
So how is society controlled? How elites are executing their command and impose their control over minute aspects of individual lives within the population while leaving an impression of uncertainty of the future outcomes and illusion of chance for a social change.
We all already know the answer: It is the rampant propaganda of individualism, myth of self-determination, illusion of self-definition and individual will, a tale of uniqueness of the special attributes which are supposed to be of utmost importance in the human interactions while they are truly not. The ruling elites know that atomization of the society is an initial, necessary step toward assertion of the efficient system of control.
The propaganda erases all we have in common, all what our humanity really means, namely that we are one, human beings who share all in unity and no differences are of any important consequence to our humanity. The propaganda reigns supreme, bringing us the social alienation and addiction to particular psychological comfort, making a glimpse into true reality a painful experience we would rather avoid or forget.
So while we’re convinced, and would even swear, that we are making our own choices of a career or lifestyle, personality, character or life philosophy, that we are in control of our life at least to some degree, we are surreptitiously preprogrammed and ordered to take our preplanned, respective position within our stratified and calcified society with no room for true, meaningful advancement in the existing hierarchy of power that has been eradicated from our consciousness and replaced with the fantasy of people’s rule or hallucinations of freedom.
How such a thing is even possible? Would millions of people need to be involved in such a deceit on massive scale? Would such conspiracy not be leaked, disclosed or otherwise revealed to public at large?
It seems ironic but millions of people in the courtier and lower classes know something about it but they do not know of it. This so-called conspiracy if there was one, is not hidden at all, it is everywhere in the plain view for everyone who cares to open his or her wide shut eyes to see. The true conspiracy is to make us not want to open our eyes, not want to know, to dismiss undesirable truths as unimportant or irrelevant to our “real” lives, to stay blind to the world around us as an expression of our freedom of choice and self-control.
But why? Perhaps, it is because we all are part of it, every day of our lives whether we are aware of it or not.
It is extremely hard to perform an act self-reflection and self-examination finding out and admitting that we, you and me, could be small cogs in this charade called the “real” world, agents that contribute to the current state of affairs in one capacity or another or in one degree or another by adopting imposed on us by the political system, truly alien goals and morals as our own family and human values. It would be shocking to discover that we are imprisoned by our own mind.
It would have been excruciating to realize that most every choice we ever made was no truly ours, that every opinion we ever held was not truly ours, that every moral judgment we made was not truly our own moral judgment but an illusion of it, all for the sake of forced upon us, social and political system permeating our lives. But unfortunately that may as well be the truth.
I am far from blaming my own social class i.e. the lower class of serfs for the contribution to our common misery which I am guilty of as well, even if those are the facts, but most of all because the ruling elite wants us to blame one another, wants us to stir conflicts, wants us to divide ourselves and fight to our deaths in this senseless cockfight for sole benefit and entertainment of the ruling class gamblers and to detriment of our human dignity.
The political system run by the ruling elite puts us into predesignated nodes of the rigid social structure of power within our stratified class. In this node our position is determined by our social power relative to the above and below nodes of the hierarchy of control.
There is a simple basic mechanism that we all operate under and is based on de facto believe or assumption that those positioned in the nodes above us are infallible and those below us are controllable, in the need of supervision since they lack the capacity to make correct technical or moral judgments by themselves.
The utility of such an arrangement is extremely high since it surreptitiously applies our psychological transposition capability to be utilized by the system of control regardless of the level of our awareness of such conditionality. In other words whether or not we know that we are part of the social grid of rigid dependencies or believe that we are free is irrelevant in regard to the system efficiency.
The social grid structure sets up certain autocratic state of our mind where we deeply believe or accept the so-called “rational” empirical or “spiritual” proof of a superiority of one human being over another human being and as such the very precept of such discrimination needs no longer be questioned or validated, and hence it becomes interwoven onto our moral fabric.
Such a state of mind eliminates any doubt about those superior to us as well as removes any doubts about our own superiority, morality or righteousness in our judgments about those below us in the social structure. As we have been appropriately conditioned, we consciously or subconsciously believe or accept that we belong where we are in social strata even if we vehemently deny it.
Even if we seemingly are encouraged by our superiors to dream big via means of propaganda of unlimited opportunities and career advancement, often even when we are young, but definitely in our in later years, we value the perceived stability of where we are at, and we act accordingly and that’s the key.
These are the controversial issues and many readers may sharply disagree with the above assertions, claiming that, he/she base their relationships with subordinates on the sense of partnership and negotiating outcomes and definitely does not treat his/her superiors as infallible.
It is important to note that when we are talking about state of mind we are not talking about opinions, principles or attitudes but the ultimate actions that are being taken. Hence while we may not be impressed with the decisions or intellectual prowess of our boss we’re following his directions or at least are concerned with providing results as expected from us. In a sense, if we do not accept directly superiority of our boss we definitely accept the superiority of our job over our judgments about our boss, a typical psychological transposition in play.
It takes certain state of mind to submit to the control through specific, concrete actions.
Also as much as we may buildup more like two-way interactive relationship with our subordinates, the very act of control over them is the fact of, for example, scheduling of meeting itself as well as the fact that result of the interaction is likely a list of approved by the boss, instructions to be acted upon by subordinates, not the other way around.
The social control is all about inducing certain acts of subordination. The attitudes are irrelevant. The nature of control does not always require high-efficiency of perceived outcomes.
However, when our judgments or assertions about our bosses or company or church or family, or any other organization deviate from those of superiority or infallibility while we are forced to act upon them as they were, very stressful and painful cognitive dissonance is likely to develop, having capability to strongly disrupt our lives, likely leading to the addiction and/or readjustment of our attitudes and in a way surrender and submission to the questionable authority in order to return to the mental stability, or inspires us to commit the ultimate act of mental disenfranchisement or social alienation from the company or community or a group or family, namely quitting the job, quitting the Church, quitting the family, quitting the life.
Ability to harness and direct, the enormous power of alienation of the human being from the society constitutes the fundamental element of control, constantly utilized by the elites to maintain and extend their rule over us.
This same mechanism applies to the cases of subordination to our own authority when cognitive dissonance pushes us into the state of mind toward acceptance of our ultimate authority in the relation to our subordinates as a way of avoiding the internal psychological conflicts and uncertainties. Sooner or later we resign ourselves and submit to so-called social order and the structure of control that supports it or otherwise we drift to the margins of society.
As it is in any pyramid scheme most of us on the bottom of the social power structure do not have any subordinate layer where we could impose our superiority of judgments upon but unfortunately many try to impose their will on the fellow serfs, as they are strongly encouraged by the power elite, as a way to alleviate their own enormous stress of being autocratically subdued and suppressed every day of their lives and as a result they aid the control system itself.
Such simple social power structure and the mechanism of hierarchical morality enables, through its chain reaction, a flow of the top commands to control the bottom of society efficiently and in the individual form and scope tailored to the specific addressee of the commands.
It is really not so difficult to understand the reality of such a structure since it is a structure similar to that of the military organizations with one important difference.
Aside from the propaganda inspired narratives, the command and control in military institutions is accomplished via direct, intelligible order system, that while may not be seen as rational in itself, actions required to follow that order are clear with no room or need for individual interpretation.
However in the social power structures at large the command and control is accomplished differently, via indirect, vague, imprecise, unclear objectives or milestones, leaving the true meaning of the order to wild range of interpretations specific to the individual node identity, function, type, level and position. In other words in the social power structure the orders are executed always in the specific context often having different meaning to different people in different times and different circumstances which are never clarified.
Surprisingly, such a seemingly chaotic structure with the false impression of imprecise, variable rules was proven to be very efficient, not as much to accomplish something but rather to maintain the effective control over people. For the ruling elites it is not the results or what was actually done that matter most, since they have no real plans or goals for the society, but the inducement of certain actions or behaviors defining how and why its was accomplished or not, an interpretation of vague order that’s what is being judged. This is the essence of type of control that could not be defeated from within.
What is similar however between military organizations and the society at large are harsh consequences of a failure to act on the order as it is expected by those superiors, infallible human beings from the social power node above. It is rarely about inadequate results, but mostly about the character of individual’s action.
While the command and control could be achieved easier in the system security institutions such as military or police, it is not much more difficult to accomplish it within sociopolitical systems of power with its undefined rules and variable allegiances.
However, it always results in certain degree of corruption of an individual, a deep distrust to superiors and uneasiness or suspicion of subordinates below, sowing devastating seeds of alienation despite a veneer of comradery especially promoted among management/courtier class or even within family where a grid of social power is ever-present and ever powerful.
That’s what the so-called social mobility is all about, and what purpose it really serves in the sociopolitical systems namely the creation of personal uncertainty, insecurity, uneasiness on every level of the society and on every node of the structure except for ruling class which is founded on moral hazard and absolute infallibility as long as lower classes pay for rulers mistakes.
It could be difficult to accept the following fact, but all the societal calcified structure, we are talking about here, are reaching down to the level of individual family, itself nothing but an abstract construct imposed by the ruling elite, devised just to enable much stronger individual controls through means of intimate social alienation.
Such a mode of control is applicable to the lower class as well but it is even more applicable to the courtiers’ class where strict internal family power structure, with the superiors and subordinates, is being considered as sacrosanct, instilled in their minds as a manifestation of unbreakable family bond, critical for physical survival of the family.
This is the world where for millennia ever emerging and fluid ruling classes perfected methods of the massive social control via techniques of precise dosing of societal rejection or alienation.
The social alienation is a powerful tool of manipulation and control, insidiously exploiting our innate need to belong, to be recognized, respected and accepted, to find support and to give support, to feel understood, to feel safe and secure, to successfully participate in the development of society through a life cycle of learning, accepting responsibility and proliferating acquired wisdom for the benefit of all. To achieve the satisfaction or happiness through contribution to the well-being of others.
There are numerous examples of the social control supporting this particular model of society, from acting upon fantastic national narratives down to intimate relationships of mental bondage, while extremely instructive in the understanding of true purpose of the society and its mechanisms; they are unfortunately beyond the scope of this short form of expression. Although, it is definitely worth to revisit sometime in the future.
What is the question?
Is it possible that we live in the society as it was described above? Could the mechanism of control mentioned here be functioning in the society we live in? Is it possible that we are conditioned to perceive our lives and our family in the certain externally controlled ways? Is it possible, that the way we act is often in direct conflict with who we think we are?
Do you believe that you live in such stringently controlled society running by faceless ruling elites distracting you with all their economic games and political circuses? Do you feel it? Are you the one waking up from eternal torpor to see different light? You don’t know? You’re not sure? Know thyself.
Being awaken is like being in love, you know it, nobody can tell you, you are in love, you just feel it. If you are truly awaken, you should know it. You should just feel it.
But don’t worry. You know, you don’t believe in this control crap you just read. You know, you are in control of your own life. You know, how the world works, and nobody tells you otherwise. I promise you, by the time you finish reading this sentence, you will feel right like rain.
