Romans 1:18-24. The Unholy City—V. The machinery of slavery

From inside the machine, each person’s point of view tells him that he has, or does not yet have, the things that define him as an individual, his tastes, his comforts, his morals, his goals. From outside the machine, each one is simply another instance of the same entity, distinguished only by his metrics (technical jargon for the results of the measurements that presumably characterize and distinguish the individual.). And if one is to be part of a machine, one must be a thing of a certain known size and shape and function. This does not mean that one’s every detail must be known, only those portions that involve an interface to the machine. Within, one can be anything one likes, so long as the interface works right. In the long run, this is what modern, as opposed to classical, education means: building the interfaces so that they work properly.

Once that is guaranteed, one is granted a position in the City. The City can exploit the interface for its nourishment and provide nourishment to the individuals across the same interface. Then, even when size and shape and function change, it merely requires that the individual be moved to a place in the machine more appropriate to its new dimensions. Isn’t that what “upward mobility” means?

The machine cares nothing about what you think, except in so far as (1) your thoughts represent needs and impulses to be satisfied and figure into your metrics, and (2) your thoughts can be used in advancing the interests of the machine. Our thoughts are not the object of investigation so much as the subject of manipulation, not through some malign force, some subtle, mass brainwashing dreamt up by the wizards of cultural control, but by our selves, our appetites.

The path to our substance created by our appetites is the key to the survival and prosperity of the City. By satisfying your appetites, the City gains your efforts towards its goals. More to the point, it gains your acquiescence, in fact, your cooperation, in pursuit of its goals, without your approval, even without your knowledge.

Instant gratification is the key to understanding how the City works. It detects our appetites, and finds a cheap, easy, quick way to satisfy them, at least the most accessible ones.

• Our appetite for entertainment has produced, not Shakespeare, but mass marketing.
  
• Our appetite for knowledge has produced, not scholarship, but cookie-cutter mass-production education factories posing as universities, “experts” who have been granted vast and inordinate powers among us, tyranny by statisticians and pollsters, and quiz shows.
  
• Our appetite for cultural enrichment has produced not great art, but mind candy, pop culture, and MTV.
  
• Our appetite for morals and egalitarian ethics has produced not justice and mercy, but a gigantic, corrupt, legal and governmental system that drains the lifeblood out of all it touches.
  
• Our appetite for instant faith, religion, comfort, and the meaning of life, has produced canned worship, Christian TV, dial-a-prayer, and church relationships that are so impersonal that even each other’s names are not known.

And for these benefits, in exchange for its services, the City receives our acceptance, our acquiescence, our allegiance, our slavery, and our souls.

The City does not do this because it wants to enslave. The City itself does not think, or if it does, it has only our collective minds to think with. The City is a machine and therefore does not function as a separate cognitive entity. It functions as it was built. But it was designed by someone who does think. It implements his purposes. It serves not us, but the ruler of the City, the prince of this world. Make no mistake: “God gave them up to uncleanness...” God has abandoned our society to the adversary, determining to save only a remnant, His chosen sons and daughters.

This is the mechanism that lies at the base of the City. Hidden where no one can find them, the master strategists of hell are mapping out new paths to slavery, to sin, to spiritual death. At no time in the past have the prospects for success, at least in numbers, seemed so bright.

(Continued)