Just when you thought you were winning the battle, the powers-that-shouldn't-be change their tactics. While the move towards technological decentralization seems to be at hand, the facts show otherwise. The global population continues to exchange their family plots for life in crowded cities. Most cutting-edge innovation and high-tech manufacturing still occurs in metropolitan areas. Worse, the vectors of technological disruption always seem to abstract towards greater globalist, technocratic control rather than away. But this time will be different, eh?
The perennial blind spot of technological innovators is morality. They simply attempt to ignore it as non-rational, nonsensical and non-productive. However, Facebook has shown us the future of the control grid, and technology has shown itself to be capable of addicting and controlling human populations. You can have your distributed manufacturing. You can have your socio-anarchic communities. You won't be able to control the youth. The technocrats have demonstrated their ability to addict and control young people, and you can't have a community without young people. Not for long.
No matter how free you think you might be, the technocrats can corral you any time they want. Your access to the job market may be peer to peer, but the reviews of your skill level will depend on your grasp of the newest trends in your field (no matter how stupid they might be). For example, perhaps the latest trend is something called "Six Sigma". You know it to be a useless time waster, but all your reviews will be forced to include the comment that you are "Not Six Sigma Qualified". Eventually you will have to become a master at Six Sigma to get jobs. This same technique will be used to examine and judge your adherence to social norms and trends. Did you comment in a socially constructive way about the latest fads? If not, then Internet users may have a hard time locating you on the World Wide Web. You might eventually be forcibly medicated.
No matter how far away you think you might be from the roar of the crowd, you will always be reliant upon the herd. They will judge you, even if you refrain from judging them. The experts will set the bar and then sit back and wait for people like you to be whipped into leaping at it - by your own peers. Every move you make to escape the control grid will result in little psychological and technological adjustments to haze you back into line. There will be the odd escapee, but our rulers are interested in controlling whole populations; they are not prison guards. The ones that do evade the group dynamics have isolated themselves more effectively than any technology could make efficient.
Technological Trends and their affects on society:
- Disruptive abstraction of monetary authority from gold, to paper, to electronic currencies, to virtual units of work efficiency leveraged by evidence of expertise with new tech.
- Disruptive abstraction of political authority from landlord, to king, to nation, to earthling leveraged by evidence of adherence to new social norms and trends.
- Disruptive abstraction of moral authority from the Church, to denominations, to cults, fads and trends adjusted by experts to maintain control.
Note: Traditional Distributism is a very close match to what is now being called Anarchism and/or Voluntarism. Free Will and Family must be the basis for all non-coercive forms of government. This is Traditional Catholic economic ethics. Ignore the Church at your own peril.
Today we are enslaved to usurers and bankers in a return to Pagan slavery; should we blame Christ and His Church for that? Usury is still condemned by the Church. Does anyone care? Does anyone who runs anything listen to the Pope? No. When Christ and His Church talk, they are talking to the slaves because the slaves are the only ones who will listen. Everyone else is too busy running the store to stop and sit at the feet of Jesus.
Some self-described "Anarchists" (while living in the lap of Christendom and bemoaning their cruel fate) claim that Christianity and Free Will are incompatible because of the Doctrine of Hell. Self-described atheists (while enjoying the benefits of Christian society) claim that Hell is the stick and Heaven is the carrot, designed by men to control populations.
If Christianity was made up, then yes, we might imagine that it would be a cruel and unnecessary addition. We might be tempted to make it sweet and palatable to the most immature, pampered adult children Western culture could produce. However, if Hell is a reality then to pretend that it is an empty threat would be the height of stupidity.
Troll: Hell seems contrary to human freedom, for no one would freely choose hell over heaven if given a free and open choice. Thus, hell would have to be imposed upon us, since no one loves punishment, pain or privation of joy, which is what hell is. Hell would render religious and moral choice unfree, just as the threat of torture renders a forced confession unfree. "Repent, believe and be good, or you'll fry"means that your repentance, belief and goodness are forced, not free. Fry and free are opposites.
Reply: Distinguish, as Augustine does, the freedom of liberty from the freedom of choice (libertas vs. liberum arbitrium). Hell is contrary to liberty but not to free choice. Free choice is a means to the end of higher freedom, liberty from sin. Those who fail to attain heaven's liberty reached their eternal destination by the same means as those who attained that liberty: by their free will.
We do, and therefore can, freely choose hell over heaven. We do this in principle in every sin. We do not want or explicitly choose sin's "wages," sin's inevitable punishment-banishment from the paradise of God's presence-but we do choose the sin and hope to escape the punishment.
Does the fear of hell remove free choice? Does fry contradict free? No more than the fear of falling off a cliff removes the free choice to skate close to the edge or to avoid it. If the threat "repent or you'll fry" removed free will, then all would repent. But this is not so; the threat is issued, but some respond and some do not. So in fact the threat does not remove free choice. {kreeft: handbook of christian apologetics}