Sunday, 17 August 2025

Why the biggest Western civilizational strategies have Zero validity? A multi-level explanation

It is an interesting aspect of the most recent giga-dollar projects, schemes, and strategies (characteristic, especially, of Western civilization in its end-stage) - that they consist almost entirely of coloured lights, smoke and mirrors, vapour and blank-assertion. 

Among currently active projects of colossal size, scope and expense; there is the climate scam, the birdemic/peck scam, the antiracism scam, the AI scam, and the war-everywhere scam... 


These all share:

1. An absence of mass and grass-roots origins or support. Such projects are imposed top-down, multi-nationally. By simultaneously coordinating the many functional specializations, and integrated goals and bureaucratic-media methods, of the global totalitarian system. 

2. An absence of coherent reality in terms of need. Ends and means are alike invisible to personal experience. The rationale for these projects is wholly manufactured, and disseminated by "research" and mass media propaganda. 

3. An absence of rational credibility for the effectiveness of the vast schemes of "intervention". 


No demand, no coherence - no genuine need, no potential effectiveness...

There must be some reason why nothing-burgher projects are consistently chosen, in preference to schemes addressing real needs by valid measures?

In fact there are many reasons and at many levels by which to understand why strategy is rooted-in and aimed-at Nothing, rather than... something.


At the deepest (spiritual evil) level it seems obvious that to organize the world on the basis of nothing, fits with the nihilistic - anti divine creation - stance of the demonic motivation. Insofar as creation is subverted by incoherence and lies; the anti-God alliance is winning. 

At the level of the most powerful human leadership class; a strategy based on nothing, is - once established and launched - impossible to refute. Nothingness cannot be critiqued on the basis of either data or individual human experiences. 

At the level of the puppet-leadership class - those heading the nations, major corporations and most significant institutions - the only requirement is that strategies be backed-up by the largest possible and longest sustainable infusions of money and other resources; so that multiple forms of (mostly-legal) corruption can redirect benefits to their pockets. 

And when the entire project is phony, then such vampirism is less noticeable and less likely to be suppressed than would be the case if there was a real problem being addressed by a potentially valid solution. 

(Consider CO2 climate strategies or the Birdemic-Peck... When the whole vast theoretical scheme is shaped from nothing and lies, then nobody really expects anything to work - and they wouldn't know if it did.) 

In consequence; nihilistic indifference prevails; and nothing is done to prevent, limit, or punish the overwhelming incidence of tyrannical self-enrichment, expedient policy contradictions, and obscenely flagrant hypocrisy,   

At the level of senior and mid-level bureaucrats/ managers/ intellectuals - these types are indifferent to content, and wholly focused on proximate matters such as careers and status. They will willingly say and do anything required of them by their bureaucratic superiors - so long as this aligns with incentives; and will eagerly manufacture the necessary rationale or obfuscate the obvious: on demand.


At the level below the middle-managerial-myrmidons of evil - it does not matter what the masses think about these projects. The schemes are done-to such people; whose only job is to do the needful stuff and provide the necessities of living. The masses are the despised host; whose existence merely enables the thriving of an extractive parasitic superstructure.      


In sum, there are many reasons, from up-front and proximate to long-term and ultimate; why it suits the totalitarian system to prefer ruling the world on the basis of nothing, rather than something. 

19 comments:

AnteB said...

Good post.
I saw a chart over private investments in AI in different nations that made me realize the extent to which AI is the new great scam (if the chart is correct of course). The US dwarfs all other nations combined and invests ten times as much as China. My nation, Sweden, invests almost half as much as China does despite having a miniscule population in comparison. If this technology would really be as revolutionary as its proponents claim you would think nations like China and Japan would be at the forefront.

Chris said...

As I read today’s post Bruce, I had images of a scene in a political sitcom where things are being explained to the new boy at the office. A melange of disparate facts that altogether mean very little. And on we go.

Bruce Charlton said...

@AB & Chris - What saddens and disappoints me, is that every time "They" launch another of these big schemes; another sector of the small minority of "dissenters" gets fooled and falls away from simple obvious reality - and becomes an apologist - desperate to find good things to say, giving "the benefit of the doubt" (what "doubt"?!), making the best of things etc.

Inevitably, pretty soon the rot spreads, and they are talking pro-totalitarian propaganda on other System-themes - while (of course) still considering themselves to be of-so-radical and tough-minded truth-tellers.

"AI" has been the most recent of these; and it has been remarkable how many of the bloggers on the synlogos.org aggregator instantly became "get with the program" evangelists of "AI" - coverts to the vapid propaganda that this is a breakthrough, net-valuable, significantly-useful technology.

It's not something that should need arguing - indeed it is not something that can be argued.

Once somebody gets onside with a Zero-validity scam-scheme - they have decided systematically to ignore the significance of provenance/ origin, common sense, ordinary reason, and personal experience - and it is already too late.

Maolsheachlann said...

Great post. It's so true, as far as I can tell. Certainly none of these issues seem to have any kind of popular demand, although they did stimulate a certain popular demand when it came to the birdemic, as you call it. At least, in the beginning. And the problem always seems to require more government intervention, more supranational institutions, more money...

I suppose my only hesitancy is that I never want to be purely tribal in my conclusions. For instance, when it comes to A.I., I cant help but be impressed by its speed and ability to replicate human thought. In all honesty it fills me with dread. Can this be much ado about nothing like so many of the other issues? I HOPE it is...

Bruce Charlton said...

@M - Yes, I am here distinguishing between the System being able to *stimulate* popular demand, and popular demand to focus on the issue *in the first place*.

wrt to so-called AI - I think you probably don't understand how it works, if you think it can replicate human thought!

Matias F. said...

With regard to so-called AI, I believe it helps as an example to illustrate that humans do not think nor communicate only using words. If people would communicate only using words (or by playing word games, as some cheap philosopher put it), no one could be sure of anything, as there was no way of knowing, what other people really meant when using a word.

The basis of any thought or communication of thought must be direct knowing of the thing thought of. When two or more people think about a thing, they must be able to think about the same thing, not just the word.

Nevertheless, AI as a scam has potentially a long life ahead. Every kind of bureaucratic procedure can be channeled via AI products so that all kinds of 'efficiency gains' can be fabricated to support the story. So, there will always be true believers and a potential for the resurrection of the scam, even if it fails once. Kind of like the climate change scam already went bust around 2010 ('Climategate') but was resurrected with Greta Thunberg et al. in 2019 by a massive media push. Interesting to see, how it turns out.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Matias - My understanding is that these things are sustained for as long as The System wants - as a long as there is managerial support, money flowing, and mass media support (which have the same origin) https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=zombie+science

No Longer Reading said...

The thing that gets me is when "AI" is framed as about the incompetent versus the competent. It's only the incompetent who are worried about how "AI" will be used. And anyway, the smartest people will use it to amplify their own work. Even if all that is true (and it is doubtful), it's beside the point.

For some time now, knowledge and skill hasn't been valued. For instance, people can talk about doctors needing high intelligence and that's true but missing the point. As you have pointed out, even before 2020, the trend had been for a few decades had been to view doctors as widgets within a bureaucratic system who needed to be managed into place. Their intelligence doesn't come into it: they are just supposed to implement bureaucratic directives. And that trend has been going on to a greater or lesser extent in almost every profession.

"AI" isn't about intelligence or knowledge or skill, it's just another part of the bureaucratic agenda.

It's almost as if the problem is something other than intelligence (https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-delusion-that-dumb-people-are.html).

Bruce Charlton said...

@NLR - That AI is a (very) bad thing overall seems a "no brainer" to me, given that the technologies come from and are pushed as part of the totalitarian bureaucratic agenda.

If you regard this agenda as intrinsically evil - the provenance of AI is all you need to know.

Another way to know it as evil is that the advocacy of AI is permeated with dishonesty (as well as with self-seeking and complacent ignorance).

As I've said before, it makes me feel almost embarrassed to be required to refute these Litmus Test issues - it's rather analogous to being asked to explain just-exactly-Why the sadistic torture of innocents is morally wrong.

In other words, the problem lies with the one who asks for the explanation.

wt said...

You could add space travel and astrophysics to the list.

Bruce Charlton said...

@wt - Indeed. But I suppose these are small scale compared with some of the other totalitarian ventures; consequently They have never felt a need to justify them to the masses, or enlist mass compliance - as with Birdemic, Climate, and world wars.

I suppose this is because astrophysics and space travel have a basis in reality; and are not, of themselves, evil - indeed (for those of us who were children in the 1960s) they have been influences for a kind of pre-spiritual good.

Maolsheachlann said...

Well, I wasn't going to make this point, given what you said about people who don't see the evil of artificial intelligence, but I'll press ahead given what you just said.

This seems to me the difference between AI and the other things you mentioned (anti-racism hysteria, birdemic, climate change, etc). Fifty or sixty years ago anyone who could foresee all the other things on the list would be stupefied at the overreactions. However, haven't people been expecting artificial intelligence to come along for decades? Isn't that essentially what all the robots and talking computers in science-fiction represent? If you told someone in 1950 that we would all be hiding in our homes because of a mild flu, or that colour-blindness was racist, they'd say: "That's crazy". If you told them that a computer would be able to churn out a lengthy and reasonably-written essay on any topic in a matter of seconds, they'd probably say: "Yes, I expected that". They might even have expected it to happen sooner.

A.I. seems like a very bad thing to me but I suppose I feel fatalistic about the progress of technology-- if we CAN do something, we generally do it. Hasn't that been the pattern for centuries now?

Bruce Charlton said...

@M - Well, there's nothing new about plagiarism!

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2025/04/current-ai-is-industrial-scale.html

I know that many people have been (ignorantly) predicting real computer artificial intelligence for decades. But that is Not what we have with current "AI".

What was expected did not happen, because it is impossible - and based on a fundamental (and indeed, over the long term, wilful) misunderstanding of what intelligence actually is.

Much can be said about what is really going on behind the facade of "AI" - and I've personally said a lot! (https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=AI)

But all we really need to know about AI is who developed and is pushing it; and That was obvious from the way it was launched by coordinated worldwide-bureaucratic-media diktat at the end of November 2022.

wt said...

Thanks for your reply. Does space travel have a basis in reality? I am not so sure. For example, the vehicle that landed on the moon was destroyed, instead of being preserved for a museum. How likely is that? There are many things about space travel that remind me of the birdemic, climate change and AI.

Bruce Charlton said...

@wt - wrt space travel. I think that the skepticism relating to the moon landing is caused by projecting our current inability back onto a time when mankind was at its peak of capability. Several major records were set in the 1960s that have not been broken since.

So, I think the moon landings really happened, and were perhaps Mankind's greatest achievement (no longer possible); however (unfortunately) quite a lot of the key photographs (and the like) were apparently faked - presumably because the real ones weren't of sufficiently good quality for mass consumption.

No Longer Reading said...

On the topic of space travel, I understand why people can be skeptical because of the influence of governments and megacorporations upon it. Also, its association with highly speculative ideas. For example, even if we assume faster than light travel is impossible, a generation ship would require engineering and scientific capability beyond the US at its mid-century height as well as social cohesion and coordination exceeding ancient Egypt (and possibly lasting as long or longer).

Nevertheless, the fact that space travel had the prestige it did in the mid 20th century and that "AI" has the prestige it does now says a lot.

Space travel is pretty much the opposite of "AI". It's not about making a virtual world, but engaging with the real world in an unforgiving domain. Also, space travel involves genuinely new knowledge; actually trying to find out how to do things that haven't been done before and finding ways to test them, rather than rehashing things people have written or drawn and claiming sole credit for modifying them. Furthermore, it actually creates new jobs in a variety of areas rather than taking jobs from people so oligarchs can enrich themselves.

Bruce Charlton said...

@NLR - It is facile to be skeptical about anything or everything. For instance, it would be easy for someone stone deaf to prove that there never was such a thing as music. But if you can experience music, you know they are talking nonsense - however it would not be possible to prove that to those who deny it.

I feel the same about science, especially those parts in which I was personally involved. Yet I know that it is impossible to debate those who are not and never have been actually engaged in real science.

But I've said it in my book on the subject, and am not interested in rehashing the argument.

No Longer Reading said...

You're right. I don't personally doubt the existence of space travel; I was just trying to be fair to the fact that it doesn't come out of nowhere. And that interstellar travel is highly speculative.

But the main thing that struck me was what sort of things people in the mid 20th century admired and what people now admire and the significance of that.

Bruce Charlton said...

@NLR - Your point about civilizational factors was well made (and something I haven't seen discussed, in recent years) - and also about the engineering engagement of the space program, versus the virtual-worldism of 2025.