A Slave To Power

[sus]

Not capital-P Political but more like, everyday political. Soft trauma, ambient gaslighting.

What are the ways you've been warped and changed by power? The ways you feel less curious, less free? The voices you introject? The ways abusive (in the banal way) landlords, bosses, partners have fucked with your head.

X: Absorbing others' implicit expectations and models was actually historically something I was very bad at when moving to DC, which maybe meant I was relatively immune to the sort of "latent atmospheric trauma" you can get from institutions. OTOH, this inability meant I was very bad at picking up on (and thereafter vibing with) that particularly complex cocktail of freedom and authoritarianism, of radical 'personal expression' and prudeish hyper-repression, the hyper-conformist lip service to non-conformity that's hip in among young Democratic political elites

Y: There's some weird subterranean thing that connects: (a) the various forces that you're evoking & describing yourself as becoming decreasingly-oblivious to; (b) whatever it is that makes me try to limit my exposure to the most obviously Prestige In The Institution bits of university life; and (c) the thing that makes some of my once-interesting friends (from various lifeways) become kinda dead behind the eyes.

 

[sus]

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people who hold power have this insane inability to process bottom-up information. Everything is incredibly top-down and they make everything conform to their top-down hypotheses, and then there are catastrophic ruptures when they can't handwave away the differences between their illusion and reality.

One of the big giveaway signs is that these people don't listen. They literally don't listen to people. They don't hear a word you say. They live in their little fantasy narratives.

They also tend to babble a lot. Like ChatGPT. Bla bla bla bla. They don't make any sense. They don't have any actual ideas they just are a collection of memes. And then they beat you over the head with their memes.

Apparently this works on some people? Like, this bludgeoning-people-into-narrative-submission trick appears to work? People build multimillion dollar companies with it? Those companies eventually fail, yes, but they get surprisingly far.

 

[sus]

It's exactly like GPT too, sometimes you're fooled and you're like, that makes sense! And then every once in a while they say something that is so deeply confused that it would be impossible to think or believe if they had a shred of understanding. And then you remember they're a babbling machine.

This is common in bureaucratic admin types. Babble babble babble their little performances, untethered from reality. But they bend and warp you. They batter you down. You get caned enough times that it's not worth it. You don't say things that might upset their illusion. You begin forgetting it's an illusion. Pretty seen you live in a dream.

 

[version]

Rough day at the office?

 

[version]

An example I've encountered is when you come across someone who always seems as though they're subtly taking piss out of you. An air of sarcasm that can make you doubt everything you say, and which only becomes more palpable when they assure you that's not what they're doing.

 

[linebaugh]

Ive found people with this type of power are 'nice but not kind.' When speaking of them you couldnt say a single bad word because everything was perfectly pleasant, yet when reflecting back on it you feel uneasy about them. And i think whats going on is more subtle than them just being 'fake nice.' Often I think these are genuinley nice people.

 

[linebaugh]

I think its that you can sense the connection between you two ends the moment you seperate. You have them fully in that moment but become strangers again the second its over and they have the ability to continue on in that pattern forever

 

[sus]

Rough day at the office?

Everyone's fallen under the influence of a dark sorcerer

 

[version]

Everyone's fallen under the influence of a dark sorcerer

Joe Biden?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Joe Biden?

 

[sus]

Joe Biden?

More insidious. I can't talk about it in public. People may be watching.

 

[sus]

Who is the person most mentally enslaved by power on this board? I'm tempted to say Corpsey.

 

[sus]

It's interesting, people here are actually pretty liberated from this sort of soft trauma conditioning. I think it's because they're mentally ill. Or maybe they became mentally ill to cope with power? Hard to say. But you have to be socially sensitive to be subliminally trained. A lot of the "narrowness" of normie mindlife is a product of internalizing power structures. The realm of social possibility and the realm of private possibility are collapsed. You strive , above all, for acceptability

 

[sus]

I like to think that I'm a "dramaturgically loyal" normie. Dramaturgical loyalty is a phrase Goffman developed during Cold War pressures on academic work (McCarthyite inquisitions etc); it basically means "acting loyal to the regime in public as a means of maintaining private freedoms." But you have to be willing to split yourself. Hence why many free people end up schizo. The schizo is protective against their enslavement.

 

[sus]

Many of the people here have rigged up their lifestyles so as to maintain freedom without going full schizo (with varying success). Perhaps it would've been better for them to just submit and give in and become One with the System. It's very hard to work and live in normal institutions and hold salaried jobs if you're not willing to submit. So you end up as a night watchman or working barges in winter or selling drugs to make ends meet. Or not making ends meet and living in the sewers. The Invisible Man. Steering clear of false consciousness.

 

[Clinamenic]

And i think whats going on is more subtle than them just being 'fake nice.' Often I think these are genuinley nice people.

Yeah this is similar to lying/deceitfulness too, in that if a person is naturally able to behave this way, or is able to rewire themselves to behave a certain way (IE conveniently believe their own lies), then it can be a lot more effective than if you were faking it, because I think people can generally detect when you're being disingenuous, even if they can't quite explain it or put their finger on it.

I'm starting to get the sense that I'm rather good at all this stuff, really lends itself to much of what Machiavelli seems to have been arguing.

 

[version]

I was talking about a specific kind of low-level competition with a couple of people last night.

One thing you'll see, which I've done myself, is if someone shows you something and you want to acknowledge them whilst letting them know it isn't new to you, you respond with "classic".

 

[Clinamenic]

I'm starting to get the sense that I'm rather good at all this stuff, really lends itself to much of what Machiavelli seems to have been arguing.

EG in my domain of work, much of it is entrepreneurial or "solopreneurial" even though its a largely nonprofit sector, and a considerable bulk of the work to be successful is making connections (with podcast hosts, developers, thought leaders, etc). I'm learning there is a subtle artform to what can be described as filling the room (or group chat) with people who respect you and trust you, especially in settings of power vacuums and structurelessness.

That said, I'm not especially motivated by wealth, and even less so by sex, but I'd say my "vice" here is more philosophic glory or self-aggrandizement or something to that effect, and being transparent about it seems to go a long way in establishing trust, but its a fine line between simply being aware of that, and actually manipulating people. Could simply be a matter of perspective.

 

[linebaugh]

I like to think that I'm a "dramaturgically loyal" normie. Dramaturgical loyalty is a phrase Goffman developed during Cold War pressures on academic work (McCarthyite inquisitions etc); it basically means "acting loyal to the regime in public as a means of maintaining private freedoms." But you have to be willing to split yourself. Hence why many free people end up schizo. The schizo is protective against their enslavement.

Normies love to measure their dramaturigical levels its true

 

[Clinamenic]

Anyway this stuff fascinates me, stuff like social engineering, charisma, leadership qualities, magic (in the Fortunian sense), building social institutions, navigating structured and structureless fields of power, etc. And when to trust that one's own intentions are genuine, and that one isn't deluding oneself in order to pursue vicious goals which, in the end, are known to not be meaningfully fulfilling.

In my experience, what has been meaningfully fulfilling is creative expression and forging relationships with people based on mutual respect and admiration. Ideally, these things can result in some kind of social good.