Monday 19 December 2022

Doubling-down - a characteristic of the middle managerial, bureaucratic mind

The often remarked phenomenon by which leftists double-down on their errors is interesting. 

It shows, in the first place, an indifference to truthfulness, combined with a dishonesty about motivation. 

Because, if somebody really believed in what he professed, he would carefully monitor outcomes to ensure that they were actually being achieved. 

But habitual lying means that adverse real outcomes can be ignored, and false motivations mean that there is no end point to this process. 


Doubling-down is mainly as aspect of that bureaucratic, totalitarian evil that I have been calling Ahrimanic

In practice, doubling-down is characteristic of the middle-managerial mindset; a level of person who denies his own agency, does not discern or evaluate; but instead regards his function (and being) as implementation of decisions made by those higher-up the System. 

I often observed this in bureaucracies. The attitude - at every level - including 'leadership' of major institutions like universities or health authorities - that it is not my job to question strategy. I found the same attitude when I had dealings with senior bureaucrats and politicians who headed national organizations. 

Where then ought strategy to be decided? Where is it actually decided? 

This is unclear; because even at the highest levels that we can observe - there is never any genuinely strategic thinking; not least because the pretense of strategizing is done by (often) large committees, and decided by voting - which tells us that the real deciding has already been done elsewhere.


Eventually, at some invisible level - and perhaps at a supernatural-demonic level - there are (there must be - given that there obviously-are long-term strategies) those who genuinely strategize: who set out the imperatives upon which everybody below (including supra-national, national, institutional, professional, and corporate 'leaders' - as well as the millions of bureaucratic and media minions) then doubles-down.  

The basic model, then, is a covert, occult real-leadership which sets the left/ evil agenda for the world; and then everybody else is just one of the double-downers.  


But evil is (ultimately) oppositional, therefore mutually antagonistic, hence strategies do not cohere. 

So there is a lot of doubling-down on multiple oppositional, incoherent, and therefore mutually destructive, strategies. 

Thus we get a world ostensibly in strategic pursuit of a single totalitarian System; which itself operates to prevent and destroy the possibility of its own implementation. 


Since evil also projects its own sins; this has led to the obsessive zeal directed against imagined dissidents, saboteurs and terrorists - who are blamed for the Systems own self-destructive incoherence. 

The System both aims-at and also sabotages a closed, complete, global totalitarianism. But those (real or imaginary) outside the System are blamed for the failure of coherence that originates within the System itself. 

(Consider inflation. It has wholly been caused by System strategies, but is blamed on causes such as the birdemic and the Fire Nation, that are - supposedly - outside the System.) 


On top of this; advanced evil has abandoned strategy, and pursues spiteful destruction of The Good directly

At the invisible level where strategies are made; there are increasingly-powerful anti-strategists, who seek to increase and spread chaos, corruption, ugliness, lies, suffering, death for their own sake - because that is what They want

This will mean less doubling-down in future. But (if Sorathic motivations are behind it) blind-implementation of plans will Not be replaced by adaptiveness, functionality and the capacity to learn. 


Doubling-down will not disappear. We should expect to observe middle manager types within the System, complaining bitterly and despairing that the higher-ups are not following-through on the long established strategies (and blaming Christians and subversives). 

These middle managers will continue, and escalate, doubling-down - to the limit of their ability - because doubling-down is What They Do, it is All They Have. 

Meanwhile the psychopathic types of the System will be moving into ever more obviously hedonistic, exploitative and short-termist behaviours. Extravagant, blatant, open, extreme and perverse personal corruption of behaviour will be seen from these 'elites'; whose 'enjoyment' will increasingly derive from come from the fact that They can do, in public, what the masses are forbidden to do.   

And the spiteful (Sorathic) types will be exhibiting an ever more naked sadism at the suffering and destruction they are facilitating. On the large scale they will provoke war, escalate war, fuel war, feed ever-more people into ever-nastier war. They will break-up functionality, provoke chaos, and export chaos globally.  

The Sorathically-evil have no need to advertise their activities, but will lie, plausibly excuse, and falsely misrepresent their destruction


This is, as I have often argued, an era in which the first necessity is discernment - understanding; and in which this must begin in the individual person (because this is what God wants of us, as well as because nearly-all potential sources of external authority - such as churches - are corrupted and converged into the System). 

On the one hand; we are not personally responsible for the large-scale events of this material world, nor can we affect them. On the other hand; we are and unavoidably responsible for our own understanding and evaluations. 

And right-understanding and true-evaluations have a positive spiritual impact that cannot be prevented by the strategists of evil. 


6 comments:

Jacob Gittes said...

"Safe and effective." I can think of nothing better to encapsulate the dishonesty you are talking about.
How many doctors know the truth? How many nurses?
I was just talking to a cousin today, however, who mentioned a doctor who told a patient/friend of hers that the birdemic sting is dangerous and has caused a lot of damage and death that he has seen.
But these outliers - the non-liars - will of course voluntarily leave or be purged.
I'm very disappointed in a local doctor who is a prominent member of the Church. He pushed the sting on my mother, who refused, because she has understood the truth, despite being 82 and suffering from some dementia. But most older folks just don't have the ability to say no.
It's rather amazing, the place we've gotten ourselves into.
But it's great for discernment.
It still causes me some sadness at times.

Bruce Charlton said...

@JG - I observed the corruption of medicine from close-up, and tried to push against it. In Britain, the medical profession were probably more resistant to corruption than most others - but their weaknesses (sins) were found and wedged.

Now the whole mind-set and perspective of doctors is such that it is almost impossible for them to understand the 'set-up' in which they work, and they vigorously deny their own detailed manipulation.

Saddest, is that this corruption seems (so far as I can tell, and for many) to go right down to the bone - even in private and in their own thoughts, discernment has been lost; and value inversions have been embraced.

Bruce Charlton said...

Guy Jean has left a comment:

-"In practice, doubling-down is characteristic of the middle-managerial mindset; a level of person who denies his own agency, does not discern or evaluate; but instead regards his function (and being) as implementation of decisions made by those higher-up the System."

-This is assuming that the doubling-down is done willingly by individuals acting under their own initiative.

-"even at the highest levels that we can observe - there is never any genuinely strategic thinking". I assume that there are levels that "we" (peons) cannot (and will never) observe, and that some strategic thinking takes place at those levels. Perhaps multiple levels, with ever-decreasing access the higher one goes.

Bruce Charlton said...

@GJ - There is the doubling-down we observe in public policy, which is bad - but the spiritually insidious (or lethal) kind is in private; in a Man's own thinking.

This is probable evidence of false and evil metaphysical assumptions, which immunize people against learning from experience: hence the doubling-down.

Guy Jean said...

In "Understanding the Peck Plan" https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2021/05/understanding-peck-plan-and-how.html you wrote
"if the peck-plan was straightforwardly Ahrimanic in its intent - that is, about surveillance and control; then the peck itself would have been made as harmless and low-risk as possible.

Indeed, a placebo peck would probably be the best strategy - since a placebo would allow the apparatus of surveillance and control to be implemented without adding unpredictable risks.

But there is No Way that a genetic 'peck' with unknown and potentially massive hazards would have been allowed by genuinely-Ahrimanic leaders "

But does it have to be either/or? I imagine lots of competing groups jostling for position and influence.

Bruce Charlton said...

@GJ - Do it does not have to be either/or - but (and this shouldn't really need to be explained!) with the peck plan we are dealing with a truly colossal, coordinated, multinational strategy spanning years (because it began a considerable time before 2020).

So, however many counter-currents; the direction of net-change in face of many obstacles and much resistance - makes it obvious that there is indeed a plan.