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13. The General Theory of Technology

If there is anything to gain from this confusing discourse I have written, what is it? There is one temporarily helpful solution. The general theory of technology itself is a tool, more so than the human being or their legal person for whom the general theory is relevant to their agency and what they will do. In short, the general theory of technology recognizes that technology itself, including its own theory, is a tool, and can be modified and modulated like any other. This theory of history favors the technocrats, but it is the theory that I believe to be operative in our time. It is, in some sense, the theory of history for history to be a topic of specific inquiry, rather than history being a fact that may be used and abused for whatever someone finds useful for a time. The students of history are those who, at first, find history intrinsically interesting, rather than finding some ulterior motive or excuse that they hold dear. It does not take long to see that the tool most coveted by the historian is not a "master key" or "institution of institutions" that a crass mind imagines, but a general theory of these institutions which can assess the wealth that comprises most of our forceful history. It is in the minute effects of force on purely abstract machines—that computation ideally requires an infinitesimal degree of force—that the general theory of technology finds its most helpful application. Those who would take the technological interest as their cause would do well to study history not in the aristocratic mode, nor the mode of history that would be intuitive to us in the lowest class. For the lowest class, the view of history is either "shit happens", or a listing of all of the atrocities against us and curses against humanity that will, in some way or another, come to pass, regardless of the braying of aristocracy throughout history and its claims to edit history. This approach to history is peculiar to the technocrats. It is in effect the approach that philosophy hijacked and claimed as aristocratic property alone. The proprietors were then told a denuded version of it was "theirs", always made faggy by the insinuations of both aristocrats and pedagogues who liked their Romans and their Americans dumber than rocks. It is laughable that such an ideology would be successful among the proprietors, and usually, it wasn't. The proprietors knew as well as anyone that aristocracy's plan for them was a shitty deal. But, were they going to say no, when every title they held was at risk? The position of the proprietors, for perfectly understandable reasons, was to forestall history for as long as possible, because the general theory of technology made clear that none of their claims were tenable, whatever merit they may claim and whatever genuine history supported that claim.

The "General Theory of Technology" is not singular as such, or a "theory of everything" to be imposed on history. It is instead an understanding that these machines, whether they are abstract or "real", are comprehensible, and that the abstract/physical distinction is illusory at its core. Thinking, feeling, and autonomous machines that believe they are humans are "determined" primarily by their existence and the reaction of nerves and impulses to it without any interference or mediation. This effectively is saying that the way "human behavior is determined" is by the human beings themselves, whose actions are never "random" or attributed to the conceits of bad statistics. Every attempt to shoehorn anvilicious statistical quackery onto history is seen for what it is, imposing a queer and insane aura around it and those who are consumed by such thinking. Humans are not unique in this, but we have peculiar properties and an extant history which is not an abstract construct but affects all of us regardless of whether we know or would like it. Even if the human spirit is monstrous, we're all stuck, for the time being, with the unsightly taint of "humanity", and the braying of aristocrats have not and never will transcend anything. They can't even get over the most basic faggotry of the race, and their lone success has been to impose this queer aura on all of mankind and every part of the world they can reach. This understanding of humans as "human" is only possible if there is a general theory of technology, rather than a "theory of struggles" or "theory of moral sentiments". Struggle and morality both play substantial roles in regulating the "systems" we regard as relevant to our lives, and these functions are not confined to a "political" sector that is closed off for most of us. If that were the case, then politics would not have come for us as an unwelcome intruder.

What is really constructed is a library which self-consciously connects to meaningful truth, and thus to labor and science. There is no machinery that "abolishes labor" as such. The automated work of the machine is built by and for labor. Put one way, capital is itself a type of laborious force. Put another, labor is variable capital, contrasted with "dead" constant capital in the form of machinery. Either way, the distinction between capital and labor is best understood as a distinction between technology that is commanded and technology that was "assimilated" into our existence. A manager would like to believe that the command of labor is an imperious decree of philosophy if he is particularly crass. The command of labor, which was the contention of political economy, is very different from labor's genuine purpose or generative force in the world. But, all of the things that command labor are themselves laborious tasks carried out for the purposes of the commander, rather than "just because" or because the drive to dominate became life's prime want.

SO WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY?

Technology to be technology is understood in the abstract. It is, on its own terms, freely reproducible ad infinitum. It is also an apparition of sorts, in that this technology doesn't have a true substantive existence. Moral sentiments and even a vague feeling are in some way a connection to the world where such things are relevant, and knowledge itself has a faint by substantive existence to pertain to that world—for us to say that there is actually a "knowing" process. Whenever something is rendered as technology, it takes on forms that are peculiar to technology, rather than forms that are appropriate for scientific inquiry beyond a scientific inquiry into technology and machinery itself. When technology operates on existing forces and substantive things, this is noted. An engine produces something by some mechanical motion. The machine might be novel, and its purpose might be novel, but it does not create a new fundamental force or wealth on its own. We may develop a theory by which labor infuses into the wealth of the Earth qualities that make it a distinct wealth, but nothing in this process is an alchemical force unto itself with any worldly power. Labor recognizes that all it does is work with wealth that already exists. That wealth may be something that has yet to enter social circulation. So too is the laborer's existence, its body and energy expenditure, something real. An "abstract laborer", whose being is only conjured in theory and whose genuine existence is as an assembly of machines that did not have any inherently joined existence until they were arranged by a manager, is still real in that the parts that allow this labor to happen to exist and must be maintained for the "abstract laborer" to exist. The assembly line must be staffed with workers, fed energy that is mined by workers, and uses tools fashioned by workers until there is nothing but wealth and labor-power in the productive circuit. What is not "real" is any sense of value for technology itself. To the world and to the laborer itself, all technology is just a means to an end. Ideally, the laborer would command all technology, command the assembly line and conditions in which it works, and the product would belong to labor alone and be distributed as labor deemed worthwhile. The cooperation of human beings, who are never purely laborious instruments, has little to do with productivity "making it so", but because on some level, humans were willing to do this, in part because cooperative ventures allowed men together to do what one of them could never do even one iota of. No one on his own could reinvent fire, the wheel, the water pump, electricity, robotics, and everything he would need to be the unilateral captain of industry as in the thought experiment. But, it is not hard for all of these inventions to be understood by the workman, who has no great impediment to intelligence or learning, and for the productive process to be sensical, the worker would have to think of the entire production circuit and ask why and how the raw materials came to him, and what would be done with the product. He would ask what the product is used for since workers would see that if he built an atomic bomb, that bomb exists to oppress him and for no other reason. The proof of that has been made clear enough without the need for further elaboration.

To understand the pressing of the nerve that is common to "technology run amok" requires seeing this example for what it is. At another time, the pressing may take another form, but it is always something that the manager of labor sees when commanding work to be done. This is not a uniquely human problem, but a problem of technology generally. The rationale in the preceding chapters can be summarized as this: that technology itself is a machine that should not exist if we judged the technology to be suited for its purpose. It would be subsumed entirely within either labor or property, and both would be subsumed by the aims of the lowest class that spawned both of the orders. There would be no contradiction nor ambiguity, and the cycle set about by limited knowledge and forced ignorance would be broken. Technology would be common and deconstructed, and there would be no more potential for insinuation and the games of mockery that are the calling card of aristocracy. The origin of the aristocratic mind-virus was always in the conceits of the technocrats. The orientation of aristocracy—its world-historical function to torture us—was established in the associations of labor, and that is an entirely different question from technology or the forms that oppression takes. But, without a general theory of technology and how to oppress, and without mechanisms that could be freely reproduced, no such aristocratic program could extend beyond whatever scam a would-be priest could summon, and the depraved fetishes and moral failure of mankind that summon far more than the primordial atrocity of ritual sacrifice to bring about this damnation.

For technology to be freely reproducible, in principle the machine is infinitely malleable, so long as it is malleable only to a system of Laws which necessarily encompass all that exists and no less. There is not anywhere a "stopper" within technology itself that prescribes a purview for technology generally, nor for any particular technological apparatus. All limitations of a particular tool are a result of that system of Laws that govern all other technology. What "governs the technology" is not immediately relevant for a general theory of technology. Technology in principle only answers to itself and its Law. Because the machine is infinitely malleable, a small, perhaps infinitesimal, mechanical force changes entirely the meaning and design of the machine. It is only because this technology encounters a world that is not technological that technology finds "natural limits", all of which can be understood by Laws just as technology can be. A distinction is that the laws of physics and physical force are not themselves freely reproducible by us. By, "by us", or by any subjective agent, is irrelevant for technology. In its raw form, technology has no claimant or moral purpose. Even "moral technology" which purports to replicate moral sentiment and purpose abides by this. The laws of physics are reproduced by physical objects generally, and this is necessary to speak of physics as something other than artificial. When a machine producing physical force is created, it does not "create" anything. It can only operate through what is physically possible, and its parts will break, wear down, or be insufficient for certain purposes. Yet, machinery can produce things that are novel to the world. There were no cities in Nature, but we know the building materials and could construct one, and find that it is not as trivial as the general theory of city-building would tell us. Cities, once established, bring about technologies that are particular to them. Without cities, traffic lights as we know them would not exist, even when the component technologies exist. There are then those technologies that interface with other technologies, whether by design or by imposition of the machine. The theory of technology is always general, and any specific domains of technology are established as useful markers.

In practice, this "general theory" does not exist in the universe itself, but in particular inventors or users or technology, and so, there are machines that were created by very different minds and had nothing to do with each other until they encountered each other in the world. It is implied by the existence of any particular article of technology, including "natural technology". Its existence remains partially illusory, and it is in practice subsumed into another order almost immediately. Its existence is ephemeral in principle, and yet, all that exists is some contrivance for us to speak of it, and all of the things that can be appreciated are in principle technological constructs rather than "fundamental reality". Even nature itself is an invented category for us, to demarcate artificial history from natural history and begin an inquiry into the world beyond "it exists". The moral sentiments and genius do not have any existence that is immediately demonstrated. They are only established because there is an extant "natural technology" where they did exist, and came to operate on their own power so there would be living machine—us—that would appreciate them as something other than technology. We need not deconstruct this every time we feel anything or exist, as if our very existence were on trial and could be wiped out by a central institution and its court. If someone wishes to take this to the court with the correct jurisdiction regarding the Law of existence itself, they would encounter a large body of settled Law outside of humanity's power to change, and outside of any god humanity could pray to. It is not a law that can be cut apart or subordinated, however much a want to do so may consume the imagination of men. To claim a "master key to unlock all laws of physics" is a charlatan's trick at best, and foolishness on average that is far removed from anything of the sort. Much worse than mere foolishness, at least to this author—for most of humanity will never hate anything more than fools, up to the bitter end of their existence—is that such an imperious claim requires abrogating anything that made the study of physics possible. In this venue, the only right a human court has won is to understand the world, given their position and known biases. "Making" the world do anything, let alone asserting a grand theory to move the world by this thought, is much worse than hubris or just plain wrong and unable to do what it purports to do.

If we are to be the masters of human technology, as we should be, we would appreciate the honing of any athlete and any workman in his or her tools. The will to do anything has nothing to do with a grand theory or "trick" of knowledge or the whole theory of technology. Ideally, the technology would be an afterthought, which we could trivially modify to the task at hand. Nothing in the world is close to this ideal, nor is such an ideal morally valued in itself since such a condition both entails some consequences if it were true, and encounters reality where motor force and time are limited to pursue learning and technological knowledge. But, if we wanted to change the world, we would not ask technology to cajole it for us, but ask first why we would want such a thing, and then consider the costs and consequences of doing so. Perhaps our change in the world is to create a better basis for technological knowledge or science generally, as many men and women have done during their lives with large or small contributions. With every tool, and abstract tools are no exception, there is an art of its use which may be considered a type of technology but is rarely treated as such. Tool and user are integrated so that the overall system is, for the moment, oriented towards the purpose at hand. This is the inverse of the managerial task, which seeks to "automate"—i.e., destroy—the art and craft of the laborer. In theory, this art is replaced with the mechanization of it. In practice, the drive of automation is entirely a destructive one, either towards the craft itself, or towards the beings who once honed it. This may not be so undesirable and fatal. Few want to spend their lives executing back-breaking labor when a tool can eliminate this toil. But, the drive of automation has created an environment where we are told incredulously that the fields must be plowed arduously to exhaust the slave stock faster and "teach them a lesson", and creative endeavors that would have been art must be replaced with the ugliest slop, where the artist and musician are replaced with a ghastly technology and all media is a reproduction of the ugliness and malice of the eugenic creed. The eugenic creed is a particular example of managerial overreach, when the managerial task—useless for anything but toil—is vaunted, and the actual labor is degraded and humiliated, with the more honest work being lower on the social ladder and the lowest of the workers or temporary "sell-swords" of the lowest class do nearly all of the actual work. Yet, this machine of ghastly humiliation is not just a tool imposed on the world, but an art with its purpose, and there are users of this terrible machine who delight in creating misery for misery's sake.

If technology were "purified" and made abstract, the slightest perturbation in the machine could set the entire contraption off its axes. One bit different in the computer changes the meaning of the program entirely and not in a linear sense, where a program is more or less substantively the program. All parts can only deviate within tolerances that are diagnosed, and the working parts of such a system must be regulated. For purely abstract tasks, the result is that a minor change leads to a dramatic qualitative change, and almost certainly a quantitative change since the desired outcome is either weakened or moot. This applies not just to a particular tool, but to the whole theory of technology. We see here the essential ingredient of the neuroticism of the commons and the liberal—its sensitive response to any change in its technology, and a pressing need to allow this change which is exploited by the ruling power. Placing rule in the hands of an abstract master, or someone of their own ostensible class, does little to change the situation. So too does a "new system" that purports to be classless do nothing. This is a general quandary of technology, only moderated when art and science are joined with technology.

The general theory of technology is effective not because it creates a "perfect, total system", but because of its sensitivity throughout the theory, which is very important when working with machinery that must be calibrated for specific qualitative outcomes. The right tool for the right task must be judged carefully, rather than felt or pushed through by some poorly conceived rubric. This is not merely an obsession of technology nerds. The soldier had better pick the right weapon, fire it well, and study the most effective tactics. Its win condition is not a shiny medal that is valued for its own sake or because it was "supposed" to be valued, but the real outcome and strategy that a victory in one place entails. A war without outcomes is a dubious proposition, but the war machine of the eugenic creed for various reasons doesn't intend its soldiers to do anything but be lab rats for yet more eugenics.

However the information about technology is arrested, a general rule is that technology is only as forceful as it needs to be to be constituted, which is not much at all. The substantive parts of a physical machine must be selected for their real-world durability, much as a computer's parts must be selected to prevent fatal faults, but their real-world existence remains within tolerances that are acceptable for the machine. The less force required for technology, the more effectively it can be shaped freely. There is then a known breaking point to "make" technology out of raw material. Iron must be heated to high temperatures to forge it. It is not possible to make new raw wealth in the Earth, as is imagined in a "lifecycle of extraction" which never existed. Life's existence, despite the "raw nature" of life being vampiric, is not reliant on a million just-so stories to exist, as the ecologists insinuate in their "total system".[1] In a technological sense, the "cost of living" is very small. In substantive resources, it is not so, and yet, all of the ways value is calculated concerns a technological conceit that can be modulated for the purposes of life. Life can always learn to live with less, but if it wants substantive outcomes in the world, this does not apply. If life were only interested in producing technological forms as the goal, this would be a fairly simple and inexpensive endeavor. If it wished to realize those forms, it could do so, provided the forms were sound and comported with the world we live in. But, that is not what humans chose to do, and that outcome was specifically denied to us in the lowest class, whose life would only be toil for toil's sake—struggle for struggle's sake.

THE GENERAL THEORY OF TECHNOLOGY AS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

There is never a singular, universal "general theory of technology" written into the world. One such thing exists for every entity that would contemplate such a thing, or for which a general theory would be relevant regardless of thought. In all cases, though, technology has no intrinsic barrier to interfacing with other technology, whatever the factual conditions of the world may tell about the realization of that interaction. All possibilities must be ruled out before they are dismissed for the general theory of technology to be maintained. All of these possibilities exist not as a hypothetical, but in a history that is apart from any conceit of what history is "supposed" to be. That history can be predicted, and we have described some of how that has been done up to the present time for humanity. But, the general theory of technology is not limited to humanity or their conceits. It is in principle a treatment of technology generally, and technology is a specific class of knowable things with properties peculiar to technology. If there is a premise that technology exists, there is a general theory of technology by which it can interface with any other thing, and that general theory of technology must first presume that technology could interface with any other thing until proven innocent of the charge. Otherwise, the technology would appear to move "sluggishly", and only at the mediation of a thought leader—who itself holds a technology that they believe interfaces with the world, however spurious the claim is in light of facts and the world we live in.

For humanity, the historical development of a general theory of technology is roughly speaking its economic understanding of technology and management of its affairs. All of how the affairs of the house are managed are viewed as distinct technological apparati, even when their genuine existence is not technological at all. Nothing in the rest of the universe mandates any "economic" treatment of existence at all. The world did not impose any "economics" that life is beholden to, even for its survival. That has always been a contrivance of life when it is capable of comprehending, in whatever way it can, its conditions and acts with volition towards changing those conditions. A life-form becomes motile so that it may seek new sustenance, as one environment is drained of resources and another must be sought. The nomadic tendency only exists in animal life. Plant life is stuck where it is, and its strategies, so far as it has any, differ as a result. For the plant, any "general theory" is read into it by us. For the animal, its first instinct is to live rather than take part in some imagined cosmic struggle for existence.

There may be an effort to tie the general theory of technology to the general fear that is the root of politics, but this is folly. Political matters presume the world to be contested is more or less fixed in wealth, and technology is an unwelcome intruder into the contest. They would have to, if the inquiry is into wealth and how to acquire it. Technology and the values that represent it are not the same, and any claims that technology is a limited wealth are contrary to what the general theory of technology would describe since the general theory of technology has nothing to do with wealth as such. It can only pertain to wealth in the abstract as a goal in some game. That is why the big book was "The Wealth of Nations" rather than "The Money of Some Rich White Guys". Wealth was the objective to command and control, rather than something that the labors of men generated as some congealed volition or spiritual manna. Labor, and the command thereof, was the vehicle for which this could happen. Labor and its products would have to be understood primarily as technology and capital or stock is one manifestation of that technology. But, the true operations of technology are very different from this economic treatment, and this has always been understood in the free trade arrangement. Those who command technology are the invisible hand and effective governors of this arrangement, and for those who stand to benefit, it is good and right that this is so, and that those who would become technocrats rule the land and the people on that land. A corporate, wholly technological construct is the "natural" government to such people, for there can be no other in the long term and all other governments must fit into that schema if politics is to be rendered as a type of technology, which it surely can. But, in doing so, any "political" character of the arrangement is depreciated in the long term. It undermines the conditions of its existence, but this applies only to its conceits. It only cannibalizes the substantive matter—the realized outcome of technology that formed the bodies of men and the physical machinery they built—when this inquiry escapes a purview that is useful for the economic task. It is entirely appropriate to speak of a creature called "political economy", for all of the world is describable as technological knowledge, and it is that which creates all of the artifices of artificial history, which enter the annals of the world proper. It is another to make of these claims explanatory power they do not possess. The problem then is an understanding of history and temporality. At the outset of the inquiry into political economy, how to go about the study of history is still an open topic, as is an inquiry into time itself and the thought of human beings who operate temporally. It is not political economy alone which can make claims on history, or that temporality is an inherently political matter. There is a temporal existence and authority which never enters the political contest, or which is not to be disturbed, so that a tenuous general peace regarding that authority may be maintained. If it is the volition of men to press a nerve to get their way, this general peace can easily be shattered, which is the condition of the general fear. Technology becomes the vehicle to realize this cannibalization, but it is a predatory will that realizes it. Nothing about a general theory of technology made this inexorable or inevitable. We are here because there was a history of ritual sacrifice, torture, humiliation, and enjoyment thereof which can be identified, and the principal actors encouraging this can all be named. We have always known this. But, the true study of this evil only relates to technology because the malicious mechanisms and its art are like anything else a type of technology, even if it is a technology humans do not command in the way they believe they can by some foul working. The universe itself should not be blamed for the asininity of the human race, or for the proclivities its members refuse to acknowledge due to some sick kayfabe common to their race. It is nonetheless a history from which the general theory can arise. No general theory of technology exists "outside of history" or creates truly trans-historical categories of technology, even though time and history itself are scrutinized by the same inquiry out of necessity. It would be very difficult for us to construe technology without some theory of history, and this is a question of history rather than causality as a natural or physical law. Causality as we know it, or knew it, is not strictly speaking necessary for technology to exist. We would find it difficult to describe such things in language due to how we have communicated, and how we must communicate due to what we are natively. It is not to physics or a "grand theory of everything" that the general theory is beholden and must look for. It is instead a simple reality that the general theory arose not because it was self-evident, but because it was a product of a history of creatures that saw such a thing as necessary for their projects. It would have been in a much cruder form understood as "common sense" or "generalized instinct" used by animals to navigate the world to the best of their abilities. But, lacking any consistent language, animals only develop this theory for themselves and some crude sense of social communication, primarily attributed to fear and hierarchy rather than symbolic Reason as it would be for mankind.

A socially communicated general theory of technology is a different proposition from the theory itself, especially when political intrigues enter the arena. The parts of the body do not lie to each other with the same malice and purpose that humans lie to each other. We may imagine the parts of the body set against each other, but that condition is either insanity or discord, rather than a struggle stoked deliberately because the interested agents saw this general habit of lying as useful for whatever purpose they had. If humanity were honest and forthright in their dealings with each other, the distinction would be more rather than less obvious, because it turns out all of these theories are handed off to actual people whose aims are, before any class struggle, irreconcilable. The various members of society want things and often those things aren't even intelligible let alone compatible between the members, and cannot be fit into any general plan that is purported to be natural. There are however many facts that are generally accepted without the assumption of any "common sense", because they pertain to a world shared by all of them, and it would not be possible to speak of a general theory if everyone were to hold their personal truth about physics or chemistry. The agents in question are not human and would not be treated as such, and it was not the particles of the universe that had any malice for anyone or insisted on a particular ordering of society. There is not one construct preceding humanity that regimented humanity into social classes and required this much rancor over the question. Very often the social classes exist entirely for political claims, and the world has repeatedly made a mockery of such claims not by the power of Jabulon but of its own accord. The world did not make all men equal and no such null assumption lasts long in any analysis, but the social distinctions humanity chose never mapped cleanly to any demonstrable essence. When reality did not conform to the faith that these race essences had to exist, extreme violence to "correct history" was required, and it was a correction of history necessarily rather than a genuine dispute over scientific inquiry. The proponents of this practice never once practiced any genuine science and always loathed science in the correct sense. Very often social distinctions were celebrated precisely because they were arbitrary and made social and worldly change appear easy for the masters. The arbitrariness of social distinctions and the visible display of the rulers choosing who lives and dies in ritual sacrifice prove much of this chapter. All of that cruelty and malice is a type of technology rather than some more stable essence of the universe. The evil at work, and the evil that is the result of the human enterprise, is not a technology, but humans are stupid shits who did this only because they could. They would look bizarre to an alien's sense, and they are disgusting by the judgment of Heaven.

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[1] The simple truth is that life did not ask for much for its conditions of existence to be realized, and much of what life does is not so much "consuming the Earth" as it is finding a habitat and cleaning it, which means depositing its feces and urine and the materials of such returning to the Earth for what good they might possess. Shit will never replenish the Earth in a fashion that creates a "perfect system", where agriculture is imagined to be a perpetual "total system" under the watchful eye of the agrarian ritual sacrifice cult (always the cult, which at the center of this ecologism). Faith in the malleability of technology, which is true of technology, is superimposed on reality, outside of its purview, to make this imperious claim about Nature (now identified with the gods of said ritual sacrifice cult). No such equilibrium exists in the genuine nature. Nature's "balance" is violent, and cruel, and usually involves lands stripped bare, before new material is accumulated or discovered, or new life enters the domain so that the "hunting ground" of the land is replenished. We can see in the eco-Malthusian myth a story wholly intended to naturalize the "predatory hunter lifestyle", superimposing it on agriculture and the farmer, and this is only possible both because of a preponderance of force to "make history as they please", and because of this quality of technology which is sensitive to minute change. Where in mechanical history, change is not arbitrary nor easy, in technology, change must be easy enough for the technology to be "freely reproducible", or close enough to it for technology to be in effect. The goal is to present the shock and terror without any virtue, "just-so" and "above God", and then substitute a total system that must be accepted as a fait accompli before the ruled orient themselves and ask what in blazes this is. The reality is that life changed not too much to alter its environs for habitation, and humans are no exception to this. It appears great because of a faith that humans are engaged in a great hunt against all of the other life of the world and wish to hunt the resources of the world itself—to destroy the world for its cause. Yet, on any timescale that would be relevant to natural history, cities rise and fall in what appears to be a moment, and the city is always a dubious proposition, primarily centered around temples of ritual sacrifice and prostitution. The wisest city builders are aware of this history and don't seek to cajole or force the world to be something it is not, but worth with the environs on which they are founded. The sites of cities are selected most often because they were geographically useful or some natural feature was desirable, such as a natural river or harbor. Cities aren't things that are manufactured on an assembly line, and even if cities were constructed out of pre-fabricated buildings, the location of a city is particular, no two cities are clones and their histories are certainly not the same once the city exists on its own power. All that a city does exists for a purpose, even if it is not a very good purpose. Without a purpose, the city will be surely abandoned. In practice, cities were the sites of ritual sacrifice where depopulation happened, and new life would be drained from the country into the cities for the next round of sacrifice. This is the history of the industrial world, culling generation after generation up to the present generational cohort. In all of this, the living standards of the inhabitants are in a material sense not so great, and even the opulence of the rich exists to show more than its genuine material impact on history. The living standard of the common city-dweller is abysmal compared to what is known to be possible, and it is specifically that wealth that would entail security that is denied. There is a vast waste of the city's material wealth if all of its consumption were placed on a ledger, and yet, the life of most citizens is meager and they are told to expect ever-less unless they push, press, exploit, and carry out more ritual sacrifice. Most of humanity does not particularly care about their low standard of living, aside from the lack of security that the city mandates. It was not as if we defined our existence by gluttony, which offered no reward or purpose to us. Something as simple as security is defined by the ruling ideas as an exorbitant expense of wealth when the "cost" is entirely due to the predatory actions of others and the enjoyment of the thrill of torture. It is because of the sensitivity of technology that this is possible and sensical, since to the Law and to the simulation that is built at the city, this is all "just" and "just-so". Otherwise, it would be seen correctly as the behavior of madmen and not something that would be permitted. In practice, the citizens of the city are quite aware that all they have lived has been a raw deal, and they either resign themselves to this fate, leave the city, terminate their lives to eliminate the problem in this lifetime, or join the ritual sacrifice, which is the intended result of the city's spirit and the spirit of the human race. It cannot be changed, despite our knowledge that it could change tomorrow if we really wanted it to. Humans don't have anything "in" them to change this, and so we are stuck here for a very, very long time.

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