Tag: complexity and power

Categories
politics technology

The Engine of Tyranny

Blame draws breath. Inhale the fear of other people. Exhale the accusation that keeps the fear alive. Each cycle promises control—naming enemies, drawing boundaries, standing strong—but strength here is a mask. What passes for rebellion only generates new codes, new rituals, new obligations. Rules always return, harsher and more brittle, precisely because they are denied. […]

Categories
cybernetics

Modulating Power

A political system doesn’t shed its skin and emerge as something new when it flips from “democracy” to “autocracy,” from “left” to “right,” or from “inside” to “outside.” It shifts phase into another register of the same underlying forces—self-interests, fears, incentives, and ambitions. At the core of this self-interest is an essentially empty and insubstantial, […]