Tag: authoritarianism

Meaning: Uncertainty Disco

Post author By G
Post date Jan 2, 2026
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Meaning does not exist in words, ideas, or intentions taken in isolation. It arises from a relational system in which elements acquire significance only through their differences from one another over time. Words are defined by other words; references defer to further references; interpretation always lags expression. That lag is not an accident or a […]

Tags adaptation, ambiguity, Artificial Intelligence, authoritarianism, automation, climate systems, coercive power, communication systems, complex governance, complex systems, control systems, cybernetic governance, cybernetics, disinformation, ecological collapse, entropy analogy, environmental crisis, Epistemology, fascism, feedback loops, field theory, geopolitics, global instability, Global Systems, governance-failure, information ecosystems, information entropy, knowledge systems, language philosophy, manifold semantics, meaning, meaninglessness, misinformation, planetary boundaries, planetary governance, platform governance, policy failure, political systems, post-truth politics, power dynamics, relational meaning, resilience, semiotics, shock absorption, socio-technical systems, systemic resilience, systemic risk, systemic-fragility, systems collapse, systems theory, technological systems, uncertainty

Philosophy

2026 Technocracy: More Control, Less Comprehension

Post author By G
Post date Dec 31, 2025
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We are likely worrying about the wrong thing. The danger is not that AI amplifies stupidity, volatility, selfishness, or ideological corruption. The danger is the speed of that amplification, the smoothness with which it integrates into ordinary life, and the ease with which this acceleration is framed as inevitable. It is not inevitable. But velocity […]

Tags 2026, AI and power, AI governance, AI risks, algorithmic governance, algorithmic power, Artificial Intelligence, attention economy, authoritarian acceleration, authoritarianism, choice architecture, civilisational collapse, cognitive capture, collapse dynamics, complexity and governance, consequence deferral, control society, encoded choice, entropy, entropy and power, field logic, future collapse, future of humanity, global instability, late capitalism, loss of agency, mass psychosis, oscillatory instability, phase transition, platform capitalism, probability collapse, socio-technical systems, surveillance capitalism, systemic risk, systems collapse, systems theory, technocracy, technological determinism, technology and society

cybernetics

Metabolic Power

Post author By G
Post date Dec 28, 2025
1 Comment on Metabolic Power

Modern power does not stabilise disorder. It metabolises it. At planetary scale, technological and financial systems do not merely respond to uncertainty. They generate specific instabilities that make their own interventions appear necessary, then present themselves as the most probable remedy. This is not a claim about intent. It is a structural tendency of adaptive […]

cybernetics

Merry Griftmas

Post author By G
Post date Dec 24, 2025
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Across the United States, and increasingly across comparable political systems, authoritarian grift has consolidated with remarkable speed. It is disproportionately financed, protected, and normalised by extreme concentrations of wealth. The alignment is not driven by ideological sophistication, intelligence, or long-term strategy. It is driven by extraction. Ultra-rich actors pursue deregulation, tax minimisation, labour suppression, and […]

history

Fascism as Fear: Nazi Persecution of the Disabled

Post author By G
Post date Nov 21, 2021
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Context: The First into the dark (link to pdf) Fascism as acute and pathological fear of otherness is perhaps nowhere so clearly illustrated as an interrogation of these facts reveal. I do wonder if the identification of historical horrors at times causes us to distance ourselves from them, even as we warily unveil and as […]

Tags authoritarian, authoritarianism, disabled, fascism, fear, history, horror, nazi, Psychology, war

Philosophy

Fascism

Post author By G
Post date Sep 20, 2021
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Context: The World of Tadeusz Borowski’s Auschwitz – The New York Review There is “a certain orientation of life toward death” that forms the basis and existential kernel of a pathology that transcribes the arc and trajectory of (an) industrialised or mechanised rationality that in being (or becoming) aspirationally unbounded from the consequences of its […]

Tags authoritarian, authoritarianism, control, death, dictator, fascism, holocaust, ideology, nazi, pathology, politics

Philosophy technology

The Dream Police

Post author By G
Post date Jan 5, 2021
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Context: ‘This is not science fiction,’ say scientists pushing for ‘neuro-rights’ Dystopian authoritarian visions notwithstanding, there is a strong philosophical argument to be made that consciousness, sentience or intelligence only possesses the value (and, indeed, the substantive reality) it does because there are aspects of self and indeed of complex systems self-organisation that are not […]

Tags authoritarian, authoritarianism, Complexity, control, dystopia, enigma, ethics, information, logic, mind reading, police state, privacy, security, surveillance, technology, thoughts, truth

communication

Censorship is a Broken Gambit

Post author By G
Post date Sep 26, 2020
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As an observer of media and communications systems in regards to oversight, constraint and psychological, cultural or ideological aspirations to control and manipulate, there is a curious enigma and blind-spot in all attempts to surveillance as a method of control. That is, specifically, that asserting prohibition and censorship is only ever superficially able to provide […]

Tags authoritarian, authoritarianism, censorship, control, entropy, information, surveillance

Alien Anthropology

Populism, Authoritarianism and Cults of Personality

Post author By G
Post date Aug 27, 2020
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Context: The CCP’s Official Journal Falls in Line with Xi Jinping’s Cult of Personality As a more general philosophical observation agnostic of specific contexts (including -isms or persons), human beings are subject to reflexive psychological imprinting of a sort that leads us to cultivate these fantasies and fictions of triumphant great leaders as an inadvertent […]

Tags America, authoritarian, authoritarianism, bolsinaro, capitalism, ccp, China, cognition, communism, control, culture, dictator, history, information, personality, politics, populism, populist, power, propaganda, Psychology, Republican, Trump

Philosophy

Authoritarian Oscillations

Post author By G
Post date Aug 24, 2020
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I am endlessly fascinated by the many ways that these systems of knowledge and information or culture and political momentum tend towards similar, recurring self-organisational and behavioural patterns. Much is (rightly) made of a contemporary, pronounced turn towards populism and authoritarianism. A suggestion for interpretation which does not seek to directly engage any specific instance […]

Tags authoritarian, authoritarianism, Complexity, ideology, information, political, politics, populism, populist, system

Alien Anthropology

Coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang and the Implicit Fragility of Authoritarian Political Regimes

Post author By G
Post date Feb 8, 2020
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While it is true that there is no such thing as a perfect political system, some forms of social organisation clearly possess greater resilience than others. This current epidemiological catastrophe is clear evidence of the implicit failures of authoritarian information control. https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1225480460979056642?s=09 The mechanical, austere logical function of authoritarian states generates deep fragility in their […]

Tags authoritarianism, China, Corona, Coronavirus, democracy, Dr. Li Wenliang, epidemic, freedom, Hubei, information, logic, My Wenliang, Novel Coronavirus, pandemic, politics, resilience, virus, whistleblower, Wuhan

Alien Anthropology

Democracy and Authoritarianism are Strange Bedfellows

Post author By G
Post date Jul 1, 2019
No Comments on Democracy and Authoritarianism are Strange Bedfellows

There is only one underlying logical information system – all ideologies are contingent interpretations that are biased towards selfish needs.