| Emphasis mine: > We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway. -- Hannah Arendt To me that's basically what the driving force of totalitarianism is in a nutshell, people who can't stand themselves and want to get rid of (the agency and the ability to judge of) free humans, and ultimately themselves, consciously or not. Insofar a person is cut off from themselves and depends solely on external validation, colossal projects that are "objectively impressive" are just perfect. Working hours, money earned, daily active users, anything of that kind of metric is great because it never asks you who you are. The more metrics, the better. That it never ends and never quite satisfies is actually a desired quality where the main goal to not achieve something, but to run away from oneself. > The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. -- Hannah Arendt If you want to get somewhere with others that isn't far off, a nice walk with calm conversations where everybody gets to speak might be a good way to do it. But if you don't care or can barely see where you're going because it's mostly drowned out by fear and insecurity, driving in circles endlessly in loud race cars, while communicating mostly with equally driven drivers over the radio, is so much better. |