THE TECHNIQUE OF CONSENSUS
The pseudo reality of the liberal system from beginning to end
This is chapter eight of my forthcoming book, A Brief History of Liberal Democracy.
In it, I explore the technique of the creation of the postwar consensus - a pseudo reality whose purpose was to empower the replacement of our civilisation.
Ars longa, vita brevis
The second world war resulted not only in the mobilisation of mass culture as propaganda for the liberal system - it also provided much of the narrative justifying that system as the victory of good over evil.
The second world war is more a story than a fact today, with most people seeming to believe things about it which simply are not true.
What this has taught us, perhaps controversially, is that the perception of the second world war and its meaning is simply a matter of perception management.
Perhaps more controversially, this management is breaking down, and the meaning of that war and all that came afterwards is now being contested.
This is not due to misinformation or hate, but is a symptom of a dissolving system of power. Power is always part performance, and this performance becomes absurd without belief. We are at that stage now.
WHAT IS TECHNIQUE?
This is a story about technique, the methods used as mass medicine for the diagnosis and treatment of the human condition.
The postwar consensus created by the liberal order is one example of this.
In his Aphorisms, the Greek physician Hippocrates said:
Vita brevis , ars longa Life is short, technique is long occasio praeceps The opportunity fleeting experimentum periculosum The experiment perilous iudicium difficile The judgement, difficult.
In his original Greek, translated into the famous Latin above, Hippocrates used the word “techne” - meaning “craft” - or “technique”. It is translated into Latin as “ars” - giving us "art”. This is not the full picture.
His direction for the application of technique to solve the sickness of humanity may explain much about the crafty art of liberal democratic management:
“The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.”
He was also the author of the Hippocratic Oath, which is “first, do no harm”.
As we shall see, it was the inversion of this principle which inspired the liberal system- to diagnose and market our entire civilisation as a terminal illness.
CONSENSUS VS REALITY
The postwar consensus is breaking down. The power of the liberal democracies is dissolving, and with it the power to make belief in itself.
In culture it has produced what the Jewish immigrant Martin Esslin described as the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose.
The creation of theatre is known as dramaturgy. The use of political theatre to condition populations by shock and awe can be described as traumaturgy: the dramatic spectacle of a society transformed by managed catastrophe.
This near limitless power to transfigure consensus reality through man-made economic, military and social disaster has not produced victory - nor a cohesive or invincible power.
Politically, it has resolved in to a paradox it cannot solve - abolishing democracy to defend it.
The constitution Germany’s government now invokes to ban the counter-liberal AfD was written under American guidance after World War Two - and it was designed to do what it is doing today.
So were all the others.
The postwar liberal system was explicitly structured to prohibit any competition to its own ideology.
It would let you talk about alternatives - this was called “pluralism” by Isaiah Berlin - but the elections did not and do not permit them to be realised.
The liberal system is rigged, and its purpose is to guide the world into a postnational and posthuman future ruled through advanced technology.
CONTINUES BELOW THE GRIFTLINE…READ ON FOR THE ANTIDOTE TO BOOMERTRUTH
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