/lit/ - Literature

>>11874445
i feel like i am being mischaracterized.
>but waddya gonna do
>get triggered! be triggered! you mischaracterized me, reeeeeee
>hm
>maybe not that tho

moving on:

>Two devices were essential to make the machine work: a reliable organization of knowledge, natural and supernatural; and an elaborate structure for giving orders, carrying them out, and following them through. The first was incorporated in the priesthood, without whose active aid the institution of divine kingship could not have come into existence: the second, in a bureaucracy. Both were hierarchical organizations at whose apex stood the high priest and the king. Without their combined efforts the power complex could not operate effectively. This condition remains true today, though the existence of automated factories and computer-regulated units conceals both the human components and the religious ideology essential even to current automation.

>What would now be called science was an integral part of the new machine system from the beginning. This orderly knowledge, which was based on cosmic regularities, flourished, as we have seen, with the cult of the sun: star-watching and calendar-making coincided with and supported the institution of kingship, even though no small part of the efforts of the priests and soothsayers was, in addition, devoted to interpreting the meaning of singular events such as the appearance of comets, eclipses of the sun or moon, or erratic natural phenomena such as the flight of birds or the state of a sacrificed animal's entrails.

>No king could move safely or effectively without the support of such organized 'higher knowledge,' any more than the Pentagon can move today without consulting its specialized scientists, technical experts, games theorists and computers-a new hierarchy supposedly less fallible than the entrail diviners, but, to judge by their gross miscalculations, not notably so.

>To be effective, this kind of knowledge must remain a secret priestly monopoly. If everyone had equal access to the sources of knowledge and to the system of interpretation, no one would believe in their infallibility, since their errors could then not be concealed. Hence the shocked protest of Ipu-wer against the revolutionaries who overthrew the Old Kingdom in Egypt was based on the fact that the "secrets of the temple lay unbared"; that is, they had made 'classified information' public. Secret knowledge is the key to any system of total control. Until printing was invented, the written word remained largely a class monopoly. Today the language of higher mathematics plus computerism has restored both the secrecy and the monopoly, with a consequent resumption of totalitarian control.

based crusty lewis

>>11718209
also, i really wish the first part of this thread hadn't been deleted so that this could be another glorious bump-limited submission for the schizoposting hall of fame.

Let's write a tale
>12th century BC
>Egyptian homeless man lost in the necropolis