Discourse 30.2: Engineering Evolution

The Iron Law of Cause and Effect II

I have often discussed in my work the concepts surrounding the scientific management of mankind. Mass production, mass entertainment, mass media- all help foment the rise of mass man. For those who have examined this subject at depth, they understand that the rise of mass society was directly tied to the industrial and technological revolutions. Coupling these advancements with Taylorism, the rise of central banking and the rapidly evolving managerial revolution, it quickly became a recipe for a new breed of empire. One that colonizes the mind more so than a geographic location. The ever increasingly integrated global community has become a technological society whose god has become technique.

For those unfamiliar with mass society, let me quickly add some clarity. While many have discussed this, the author C. Wright Mills recognized this shift in the social structure of the American Public and contrasted the differences between “mass society” and the idealized “American Public”. (Credit Duke Report for this condensed explanation)

American Public

Mills describes an idealized public as a society where:

1) Active Participation- Citizens are engaged in public debate and decision making

2) Decentralized Communication- There are multiple independent sources of information

3) Responsive Authority- Government and institutions are accountable to the people

4) Face to face interaction- People interact directly rather than being passive consumers of mass media

5) Small-Scale Communities- Political discourse and decision making happen in localized, democratic settings.

Mass Society

In contrast, mass society represents a modern condition where:

1) Passive Spectatorship- people are politically disengaged, reduced to consumers of media rather than active participants.

2) Centralized control- Information is controlled by a few large institutions (e.g., corporate media, government, military-industrial complex)

3) Manipulated Consent- Public opinion is shaped by elites rather than authentic grassroots discussion.

4) Social Atomization- Individuals are isolated, lacking strong communal ties or real political influence.

5) Mass Bureaucracy- Decisions are made by a technocratic elite rather than by democratic deliberation.

Mills made this argument in the 1950’s, stating that the elite control the political and economic landscape while ordinary citizens have become increasingly powerless. Since that time, it has become ever more apparent that he was correct. I agree with Mills’ argument that the public shifted to that of a mass society, where technique and protocol are managed most often above the awareness of the general public. This scientific technique manages it all, which essentially neutralizes the threat of the electorate system to power and makes the act of voting more of a performative ritual than a legitimate political tool. This system must maintain this illusion, or it risks facing a legitimation crisis, a term coined by Jurgen Habermas. It achieves this with concepts like Lippman’s “pseudo-environment" and Baudrillard’s “Hyperreality” which are now understood to be emergent phenomena of mass society where the technology of culture is captured, and most social structures and interactions are part of an engineered simulacra.

What all of this essentially means is that we are living in a system of systems, interconnected and reinforced. In the minds of its progenitors, it is damn near antifragile. At least in theory.

In practice, it is fragile. More so than most will permit themselves to ever believe. One major disruption to our supply chains and millions, perhaps billions, could die. But there is more.

In theory, many saw this as a way to manage the nature of the human being itself, a way to condition man into the new epoch, awakening in the age of Aquarius with the savage beast of man forever tamed.

In theory, this was the march of god in the world, man reshaping himself in the image of his own choosing, becoming his own god.

In practice, humans do not behave like other animals. We do not respond like a computer with set mathematical principles. Sometimes, 2 + 2 = 5. As much as materialists like to profess, we are not mere stimulus response machines. We have free will and agency. We have our own desires and need individual purpose and meaning. Culturally and evolutionary, the existence and prerogative of the individual matters. The presuppositions that humans would respond to the automatization of our lives without a hitch was a bit presumptuous on multiple levels. Our lives were not designed to be on long assembly line from birth to death, living on top of each other like rats in a cage. Consequently, there will be, and have been, real world effects that will strain the system. This system can only handle so much deviation before terminal decline sets in – which is where we presently are. We are also primed for what comes seems to be coming next, which is the shedding of the pretext that mass man is still free.

In practice, such a system was exploited by power. Either it was always designed to be, as a self-reinforcing epistemologically and protocol protected system, or the designers underestimated the beast in man and his tendency to exploit unequal power dynamics.

For me at least, with about as much certainty as I hold towards such things, this leviathan was indeed conjured intentionally. That does not mean every actor on this stage was knowingly playing a part. It also does not mean there must be a monolithic power controller, just that the reins of power were created for someone other than mass man, the individual human, to hold. With that said, there are others who disagree with me and say that the system is theoretically ideal, a liberal or constitutional democracy, but it suffers from the occasional bad actors.

This is a political question. While I feel I have made my position on this matter abundantly clear in previous discourse, this essay is not geared toward the political question.

Perhaps intentionally, perhaps out of hubris, we are fundamentally changing the human being.

Beyond the political question, there lies an even greater one of this process doubling as an anthropological project, one that has very real evolutionary consequences.

For the purposes here, I seek not to ask why we are here or to debate if it was a good idea.

I ask, what have we done?

I think we are becoming domesticated, addicted to our own Pavlovian psychology. Desensitized. Apathetic. Less cognitive. Something is changing in us, and I do not think we fully understand what is transpiring. In fact, only a few are even asking these questions.

This is a concerning period of time because what Mills recognized in the 1950’s has only accelerated during the computer age, and this process seems to be poised to go parabolic with the rise and integration of artificial intelligence into our daily lives. We continue to delegate more and more of our physical and mental labor to our technology. The first entry in this series touches on the evolutionary microtrauma where I posit that the sheer volume of entertainment is anesthetizing us emotionally and immersing us in a simulacrum that we are unable to differentiate appropriately. Consequently, this has created numerous pathologies and exacerbated previous survival instincts such as anxiety and paranoia.

This idea is not new or even my own, but it is pieced together from other thinkers. I have seen a few on the stack voice similar thoughts but in large there is not currently any public discourse on this topic. Hopefully, we will see a legitimate public discussion on this topic before we take the next technological leap, and the consequences grow more irreversible than they already are. We have been foolish like Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

In a brief manner, I want to touch on some of the concepts I am concerned with. One being the term Dysevolution which was developed by paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman in response to what he perceived as problems originating from mass conditioning. He noticed that conditioning affected natural selection and that traits that were not necessary or were even detrimental in the past are still hanging on. Cultural evolution drastically contributes to selective pressures on genes, leading to a rise in obesity, cavities and other metabolic disorders. He recognized many maladaptive cultural changes and noticed that we are now merely treating symptoms of mismatch diseases. (Diseases that emerge when there is a “mismatch” between our evolutionary biology and the conditions of contemporary life). Others have recognized the significant psychological impact of this modern environment, particularly the authors of the book “Darwinian Psychiatry”. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia are all being exacerbated by our artificially mismatched environment. Undoubtedly, many of our new mental pathologies are symptoms of this Frankensteinian system. Perhaps even our disappearing inner voice, a process called anaduralia, is a product of Dysevolution. Perhaps autism and other atypical psychological profiles are evolutionary responses to this selective pressure of modernity, or at the least are affected by it. We do not know because we do not ask.

It seems that some of this was known and desired. We needed to be unmoored from the natural human element to be herded into being compliant with transhumanism and/or full overt technocratic control. However, there could be a simpler explanation, or at least an addendum. Perhaps we really are just this foolish; to think we could engage in the engineered husbandry of the human species without consequences. Perhaps we were blinded by the mentality of gradualism and uniformitarianism, which place blinders on our perception of changes. Perhaps we did not think we could have such a profound impact on our species in such a short period of time. We have been conditioned to not think of ourselves as evolving in smaller timescales than geologic time, but this is a fatally flawed paradigm. Not only with our hubris of social engineering, but this flawed perception has had an impact on another topic, that of punctuated equilibrium. This will be the subject of a different discourse in the future.

I wish I could offer a solution for the entirety of the problem, but I cannot. I think it starts with having a widespread public discourse with genuine scientific inquiry. Although, I do not expect this to happen anytime soon.

I can offer a short-term solution for the individual. Live intentionally and with purpose. Do not become an automaton. Moderate your exposure to the world, do not immerse yourself more than necessary. Teach your children the same.

As far as Long term- now we have circled back to the political question.

In a world without political solutions…

This does not have an easy answer. The entire system is incentivized to not address this issue; as many of its economic appendages depend upon our addiction to creature comforts and the perpetual tide of rising expectations. In truth, the system is not only unprepared to address this- it is structurally resistant to even acknowledging it, especially if this domestication of man was intentional, a means of encapsulating power behind protocols and the architecture of the national security state.

Worse still, this problem lies beyond the scope of the middle of the bell curve. It is not easily articulated, and even less easily acted upon, which will inevitably stifle counter movements.

And yet, the first step toward any long term solution is recognition. We must identify the problem and make it visible, because what we cannot see we cannot confront. My role in this awakening may be small, but if I can see it, I know others can as well. And that gives me hope that one day we might reverse-engineer whatever it is that has been done.