On Abuse Team, or Facing the Era of Total Alienation
The folowing is my translation of the text written by a rabbi Avrom Shmulevich (avrom), a leader of the "Be'ad Artzeinu" movement. He is a traditionalist Jew, to whom I hold a great respect. Avrom lives and works in Israel, but he is of russian origin and his LJ is written mostly in russian. I would like to emphasize that he did not participate in "anti-NATO" flashmob and does not support it - on the contrary, he shamed the participants for using a poster and symbol of the Great Patriotic War, which carried away around 30 millions of russian lives, in such a low and cheap "action".
Yet in the actions of Abuse Team he saw the reflection of certain processes which take place in our society, gradually transforming it into something very different. Some people just don't want to notice these changes, some do. And some are worried abouth what they see. Therefore Avrom wrote the folowing text which I personally translated on english (blame me for any mistakes), as a message to those of you who give a damn.
Alexandre Karpov.
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Avrom Shmulevich. On Abuse Team, or Facing the Era of Total Alienation.
The recent case with Abuse Team is just a plain demonstration of the processes, which are running in the society around us, as well as inside us. We stand in this river for a long time now. And all of it has nothing to do with “American idiots” - it’s happening everywhere, and no one can run away from it, just like we cannot run away from atmosphere.
So what’s happening with our civilization?
1. Complication of our society, division of labor, and, consequently, each individual is getting more and more dependent on the society.
2. An unprecedented, exponential growth of the means to control all aspects of life of an individual. A revolution here came with use of recording devices of all sorts - the private space itself is eliminated. And it is getting worse.
3. Atomization of society. Authority always gets power through unification, and individual is what opposes unification. In old times individual had his clan, big family, community, guild, brothers-in-arms, people of the same religion, nation etc behind his back [to oppose that unification]. All those groups clearly saw themselves opposing to other entities, and any pressure on an individual was treated by his group as a pressure on all and every member of the group. Nowadays, most people don’t even think in terms of “group” interests. That change, that disappearance is in fact natural. It is the basic principle of modern economy to give advantages in personal well-being to the “atomic” individual, to one, who cares but for himself, rather than to people of the “communal” type [who care for each other]. That’s why all groups who still keep their “communal” way of living are to be found on the bottom of economical pyramid. Such are Haredim (orthodox Jews) in Israel, gypsies in Russia. In USA these are not only ultra-religious groups, but also, for example, Latino people, or, in some cases, Jews and Chinese, because their ancient cultures still keep some of their traditional “communal” mechanisms.
4. As a result of atomization the individual became almost absolutely defenseless against the Authority (or control system), and has to accept it’s rules totally. In modern multimillion societies the proportional weight and significance of an individual is literally insignificant.
5. As a natural consequence of that, the concentration of power in the hands of authority figures (or bodies) has become immense, bigger than ever in history.
6. And, naturally, authority, being a control system, is very much interested in making the society as controllable as it can be. Specifically, it doesn’t want to allow any fast changes in the society. So, “controllability” is now a synonym to “stability”.
This happens because
a) The complexity of the management processes is constantly growing. Even now the resources of control systems are hardly enough for sustaining the stability in the subject systems already existing. Therefore, the control system needs to reduce the complexity of it’s controlled “subjects” to ensure stability.
b) As it was mentioned before (3. , 4. , 5.) , the concentration of power on the upper levels of authority pyramid already happened. Also, the transfer of power to lower levels is very difficult. Even if it wasn’t, the lower levels also end up using all of their control resources.
c) That situation gets even more amplified by economical and social circumstances, for we are now living through the end of of the Kondratiev Cycle, and this is the time when introducing new technologies and processes is economically unprofitable.
7. So, the control system, or Authority, is interested in maximal controllability and standardization of citizens (individuals) for the sake of it’s own stability. The most effective way of achieving that goal is implantation of the “appropriate” behavior and mentality. And not only as “appropriate”, but also as one without an alternative.
8. This is being done by the means of:
a) Implementing branchy systems of “proper” conduct, of perception and analysis of information, formal and informal restrictions.
b) This rule have to be presented as natural, not a subject to a discussion.
c) Such standardization of behaviors, reactions, perception is needed so that the control system would be able to easily change the society’s development course, to slow down or speed up needed processes.
9. That project requires an ideology capable of giving the maximized standardization and control of all members of society. The most appropriate ones are:
a) Western socialism of Keynesian type, hiding under under the name of “liberalism”
b) Moslem fundamentalism, based on Salafi
And these are precisely the two ideologies which are currently on the rise.
10. At this moment we face an undergoing standardization of the electronic information space. TV in both West and East had already became totally controlled. In Russia the free TV was also eliminated in the beginning of Putin’s second president term. And now it’s the time for internet.
11. We are entering the era of the Totalitarianism, the Second Edition. The first one happened in the first half of the twentieth century.
And altogether it is called the Era of the Total Alienation. And running away is not an option.
Yet in the actions of Abuse Team he saw the reflection of certain processes which take place in our society, gradually transforming it into something very different. Some people just don't want to notice these changes, some do. And some are worried abouth what they see. Therefore Avrom wrote the folowing text which I personally translated on english (blame me for any mistakes), as a message to those of you who give a damn.
Alexandre Karpov.
=================================================================================================
Avrom Shmulevich. On Abuse Team, or Facing the Era of Total Alienation.
The recent case with Abuse Team is just a plain demonstration of the processes, which are running in the society around us, as well as inside us. We stand in this river for a long time now. And all of it has nothing to do with “American idiots” - it’s happening everywhere, and no one can run away from it, just like we cannot run away from atmosphere.
So what’s happening with our civilization?
1. Complication of our society, division of labor, and, consequently, each individual is getting more and more dependent on the society.
2. An unprecedented, exponential growth of the means to control all aspects of life of an individual. A revolution here came with use of recording devices of all sorts - the private space itself is eliminated. And it is getting worse.
3. Atomization of society. Authority always gets power through unification, and individual is what opposes unification. In old times individual had his clan, big family, community, guild, brothers-in-arms, people of the same religion, nation etc behind his back [to oppose that unification]. All those groups clearly saw themselves opposing to other entities, and any pressure on an individual was treated by his group as a pressure on all and every member of the group. Nowadays, most people don’t even think in terms of “group” interests. That change, that disappearance is in fact natural. It is the basic principle of modern economy to give advantages in personal well-being to the “atomic” individual, to one, who cares but for himself, rather than to people of the “communal” type [who care for each other]. That’s why all groups who still keep their “communal” way of living are to be found on the bottom of economical pyramid. Such are Haredim (orthodox Jews) in Israel, gypsies in Russia. In USA these are not only ultra-religious groups, but also, for example, Latino people, or, in some cases, Jews and Chinese, because their ancient cultures still keep some of their traditional “communal” mechanisms.
4. As a result of atomization the individual became almost absolutely defenseless against the Authority (or control system), and has to accept it’s rules totally. In modern multimillion societies the proportional weight and significance of an individual is literally insignificant.
5. As a natural consequence of that, the concentration of power in the hands of authority figures (or bodies) has become immense, bigger than ever in history.
6. And, naturally, authority, being a control system, is very much interested in making the society as controllable as it can be. Specifically, it doesn’t want to allow any fast changes in the society. So, “controllability” is now a synonym to “stability”.
This happens because
a) The complexity of the management processes is constantly growing. Even now the resources of control systems are hardly enough for sustaining the stability in the subject systems already existing. Therefore, the control system needs to reduce the complexity of it’s controlled “subjects” to ensure stability.
b) As it was mentioned before (3. , 4. , 5.) , the concentration of power on the upper levels of authority pyramid already happened. Also, the transfer of power to lower levels is very difficult. Even if it wasn’t, the lower levels also end up using all of their control resources.
c) That situation gets even more amplified by economical and social circumstances, for we are now living through the end of of the Kondratiev Cycle, and this is the time when introducing new technologies and processes is economically unprofitable.
7. So, the control system, or Authority, is interested in maximal controllability and standardization of citizens (individuals) for the sake of it’s own stability. The most effective way of achieving that goal is implantation of the “appropriate” behavior and mentality. And not only as “appropriate”, but also as one without an alternative.
8. This is being done by the means of:
a) Implementing branchy systems of “proper” conduct, of perception and analysis of information, formal and informal restrictions.
b) This rule have to be presented as natural, not a subject to a discussion.
c) Such standardization of behaviors, reactions, perception is needed so that the control system would be able to easily change the society’s development course, to slow down or speed up needed processes.
9. That project requires an ideology capable of giving the maximized standardization and control of all members of society. The most appropriate ones are:
a) Western socialism of Keynesian type, hiding under under the name of “liberalism”
b) Moslem fundamentalism, based on Salafi
And these are precisely the two ideologies which are currently on the rise.
10. At this moment we face an undergoing standardization of the electronic information space. TV in both West and East had already became totally controlled. In Russia the free TV was also eliminated in the beginning of Putin’s second president term. And now it’s the time for internet.
11. We are entering the era of the Totalitarianism, the Second Edition. The first one happened in the first half of the twentieth century.
And altogether it is called the Era of the Total Alienation. And running away is not an option.