Technology:Law - What Makes the Law?

 The Law is/ as the Institutionalization of Evolutionary Technological Progress & Precedent

Call it the Post-Modern "Standard" or "Normal" Evolutionary Lawmaking Paradigm 

(as opposed to the "Revolutionary" or "Exceptional" Origination of Lawmaking Version)

Law begins in trauma. From the standpoint of the old law, the violent establishing of something new is crime. The old law is disobeyed, overthrown, transgressed, usurped. From the standpoint of the new law, this crime is self-negating. It vanishes (or is concealed) as a crime once the new order is constituted. Put somewhat differently, the establishment of law overthrows law, for example, the law of custom, the law of nature, or even law as an ideal that only existed at the very moment of its loss. And, because establishing is overthrowing, there is a risk--the negation of law such. Establishing manifests a disregard for law as it perversely (or criminally) turns crime into law. This paradox, this traumatic identity of law and crime, is the repressed origin of law.

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Hesiod, "Works and Days" (The Ages of Man)

[106] Or if you will, I will sum you up another tale well and skilfully -- and do you lay it up in your heart, -- how the gods and mortal men sprang from one source.

[109] First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.

[121] But after earth had covered this generation -- they are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth, and are kindly, delivering from harm, and guardians of mortal men; for they roam everywhere over the earth, clothed in mist and keep watch on judgements and cruel deeds, givers of wealth; for this royal right also they received; -- then they who dwell on Olympus made a second generation which was of silver and less noble by far. It was like the golden race neither in body nor in spirit. A child was brought up at his good mother's side an hundred years, an utter simpleton, playing childishly in his own home. But when they were full grown and were come to the full measure of their prime, they lived only a little time in sorrow because of their foolishness, for they could not keep from sinning and from wronging one another, nor would they serve the immortals, nor sacrifice on the holy altars of the blessed ones as it is right for men to do wherever they dwell. Then Zeus the son of Cronos was angry and put them away, because they would not give honour to the blessed gods who live on Olympus.

[140] But when earth had covered this generation also -- they are called blessed spirits of the underworld by men, and, though they are of second order, yet honour attends them also -- Zeus the Father made a third generation of mortal men, a brazen race, sprung from ash-trees [meliai]; and it was in no way equal to the silver age, but was terrible and strong. They loved the lamentable works of Ares and deeds of violence; they ate no bread, but were hard of heart like adamant, fearful men. Great was their strength and unconquerable the arms which grew from their shoulders on their strong limbs. Their armour was of bronze, and their houses of bronze, and of bronze were their implements: there was no black iron. These were destroyed by their own hands and passed to the dank house of chill Hades, and left no name: terrible though they were, black Death seized them, and they left the bright light of the sun.

[156] But when earth had covered this generation also, Zeus the son of Cronos made yet another, the fourth, upon the fruitful earth, which was nobler and more righteous, a god-like race of hero-men who are called demi-gods, the race before our own, throughout the boundless earth. Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebe when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake: there death's end enshrouded a part of them. But to the others father Zeus the son of Cronos gave a living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the ends of earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. And these last equally have honour and glory.

[169c] And again far-seeing Zeus made yet another generation, the fifth, of men who are upon the bounteous earth.

[170] Thereafter, would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterwards. For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them. But, notwithstanding, even these shall have some good mingled with their evils. And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have grey hair on the temples at their birth. The father will not agree with his children, nor the children with their father, nor guest with his host, nor comrade with comrade; nor will brother be dear to brother as aforetime. Men will dishonour their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them, chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the cost their nurture, for might shall be their right: and one man will sack another's city. There will be no favour for the man who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather men will praise the evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all. And then Aidos and Nemesis [shame of wrongdoing and indignation against the wrongdoer], with their sweet forms wrapped in white robes, will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.

Lindy, Lindy, Lindy! 

Alex Karp, Palantir's CEO

Alex Karp, "The Technological Republic"

The Technological Republic by Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his deputy Nick Zamiska is out.

The United States since its founding has always been a technological republic, one whose place in the world has been made possible and advanced by its capacity for innovation.

— Palantir (@PalantirTech) February 18, 2025 

...and Louis Mosley, Head of Palantir UK:

Why Isn't MY Life as Wonderful as all the Facebook Pages of my Digi-Friends?

 ...it couldn't be that they're selectively curating their pages to show only the good things, can it?  Why we all so FOMO? Excuse me while I go check my e-mail...

btw - Pen and paper to text & communicate?  Really?  Don't these retro-hillbilly's from the stix have I-Phone reception?

When AI Comes for the Corporate Globalist Diversity Jobs...

 

...the fretting over the Recent DC-Corporate de-Globalism Poly-Crisis begins in earnest... 

... so as to Save the DEI PMC Surplus Salaried Bureaucracy's Political Patronage Jobs!

'Ef the Populist MAGA Working Class Whiners!

Now Everyone Else, Back to the Pile!

...Covfefe Break's Over!

The Keeno Neutrino

The "Exceptional Exception" posed by Crypto-Sovereignty

Crypto-Sovereignty: Truth vs Power "Authority" as Sovereign

More on the "two-sidedness" of crypto; or Transference, the quintessence of capitalism:

“ousia phanera is property whose transfer was seen by others, and ousia aphanēs is property whose transfer was not seen. (In a visible transfer, the buyer and seller might exchange a symbolic deposit not as part of the purchase price but as a visible sign of their agreement.) The second meaning of the opposition involves money: ousia phanera is a nonmonetary commodity (such as land or "real" estate) and ousia aphanēs is money (such as a coin).”

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 "The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition. Sovereign is he who decides on the exception" 

-Carl Schmitt

Remember after 9/11 when the "War on Terror" was proclaimed a necessary and sufficient "exception" for the violation of the Constitutional Guarantees of sovereign American citizens by the National Security State?  We are now 24 Years into this violation.

Whence cometh the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to void the exceptional exception available through Crypto-Sovereignty?

Leapin'...e-r-r-r, no....FLYING Lizards!

from Oxford Reference

The actual mechanism of desire according to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari give as their example the machine formed by the child and the maternal breast. The idea seems to derive in part from a reaction to Melanie Klein's overly Oedipal theory of object relations (particularly her case study of Richard), but more directly from Bruno Bettelheim's case study of a schizophrenic boy, little Joey, in The Empty Fortress (1967). Looking at these case studies of how children play, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the objects that the children play with are not symbolic (e.g. they aren't representatives of the phallus), but machinic, meaning they give desire the means to not merely express itself, but form something constructive. It is in light of this they would later describe their work as constructivist. The concept first appears in L'Anti-Oedipe (1972) translated as Anti-Oedipus (1977), but interestingly is dropped thereafter. In the sequel to Anti-Oedipus, Mille Plateaux (1980), translated as A Thousand Plateaus (1987), they instead speak of abstract machines and assemblages, but they retain the core idea that desire's basic function is to assemble and render machinic.

Apocalypse Now? - Peter Thiel on End Times

Paul Krause, "What is the Katechon?"

Katechon is a Greek word meaning “that which withholds” or “one that withholds.” It is a biblical concept found in the writing of Saint Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. It has become a major point of focus in political philosophy (or if you prefer from the Hobbesian-Schmittian tradition: “political theology”). While the term as used by St. Paul has soteriological implications within the context of the story of salvation in Christianity, the term has become a “secularized” concept of the political – hence why it is popular in political theology if one agrees with Carl Schmitt’s understanding of the political as essentially being a form of secularized, or humanized, theology. The idea of the katechon is also popular in psychology too.

“Political Theology”

What is “political theology”? In academic studies political theology, an area that I do work in personally, is not “faith-based politics” as most illiterate commentators in the media perceive it to be. Political theology is a sub-discipline of political philosophy that explicitly looks at the role of theological concepts and how it has influenced political theory. Carl Schmitt, one of the most important (and controversial) political philosophers and theorists of the 20th century is generally credited with popularizing the term with his essay “Political Theology” in which he argued the conception of the political is based on theological concepts and language: the State (like God) is omnipotent, the State (like God) is Arbiter and Judge, the State (like God) is legislator of law, the State (like God) is all sovereign, the State (like God) is something eternal (an influence rooted in Schmitt’s radical Hegelianism).

The reason why the katechon is related to political theology is because religion was the first intellectual endeavor to deal with the question of being in relationship to order and chaos. This is the standard understanding of the mythogonies of the ancient Near East and classical world prior to the Hebrew Bible – although a closer examination of the Hebrew Bible (at least as it has been interpreted in Jewish tradition) reveals a world that isn’t too far removed from the old creation myths insofar as the ebb and flow of “rise and fall” is analogous to the chaos-order myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Thus, the ancient mythologies understand the world as one that is conflictual between chaos and order. This is generally represented by the gods: the sea god is disorder since water cannot be contained and is always in flux while the land god is the embodiment of order since one can live a sustainable and orderly life on land but land, as we all know from ancient stories, is still susceptible to floods and watery chaos. The idea of the katechon – as that which withholds – is understood within this context of chaos-order (katechon being something that allows for order in the world and allows for life to flourish).

A Brief History of Katechon

As for what the katechon is remains a contention in scholarship. The early idea of the katechon is the Logos: speech, reason, or wisdom which allows humans to communicate with one another and resolve their differences so as not to engage in violent conflict or struggle with one another. In this reading language is the great katechon because speech brings order to the world and allows for peaceable coexistence. This view is also rooted in the Judeo-Christian cosmological tradition where God brings order to the void through the act of speech (in Genesis) and that Jesus is understood as the Logos in traditional Trinitarian theology and Christology bringing order to the world and one’s life through spoken truth. This is a more psychological and sociological reading of the katechon.

The understanding of the katechon as speech or truth is also foundational to natural law theory: reason, as Cicero, along with traditional Christianity, affirms is the shared “divine spark” that humans share with Divinity. Since God is Reason and Reason is God, and since humans have the capacity for reason (though we may not always be reasonable in our thoughts and actions which is what “sin” really is), humans are “children of God” or “images of God.” Disorder, in this view, is brought about by uncontrollable passion which lead to destructive lives and the destruction of the external world and its system in uncontrolled fits of “passionate rage” or general ignorance. As Cicero says in Republic/Commonwealth, it is people “in their folly” who destroy “admirable systems” [of political order] despite their imperfections.

From the perspective of moral theory, especially moral theology and natural law theory, the katechon is the “moral law” that is – in the words of St. Paul – written on the hearts of all humans that help to guide human action. Of course, classical natural law asserts that this “voice of God,” so to speak, is pushing us toward happiness. But this happiness is primarily ontological in nature and not bodily (e.g. “hedonism”). There are also serious anthropological overtures in this reading that I do not have time to go into in this post but I might do in a later exploration of the katechon.

***

In political theory the katechon takes on a more political tone – naturally. For Hegel, although he does not use the term katechon, the first embodiment of the katechon is the Hero. For it is the hero who struggles against disorder and chaos, slays the monsters and foes, saves his tribe from destruction, and becomes the first “emperor” or “chief” or “king” of his people. Thus, the hero is the embodiment and outpouring of order in the world by which the state emerges as having been found by the hero (albeit unknowingly). This is foundational to Hegel’s philosophy of history. The katechon is a person: the great hero who brings order to a chaotic world so as to allow his people to flourish.

From the Hegelian concept of hero is also the more ancient view, although it is in this view Hegel took his idea of the first order of history: that the katechon is the “great monarch” or “great chief.” It is the monarch or chief who establishes the nomos of society by which order is manifested in society. Think of Hammurabi’s Code or Moses bringing the Decalogue down from Sinai. Thus, the great monarch can better be understood as the “great lawgiver.” This is even present in cinema and popular culture. Those who have seen the original Planet of the Apes film will remember “the Great Lawgiver” whom Dr. Zaius and the apes idolize as a literal hero (confirming Hegel’s reading of the first emperor, chief, or lawgiver as the “hero” whom individuals look up to and seek to emulate). In this reading the katechon is understood primarily in the form of law, for law establishes the order by which civil society can flourish without chaos. Law is the great withholder of chaos. (Here the katechon is rooted in a person but will transfer to his great accomplishment.)

But beginning in Hobbes we see a more important and common view of the katechon as the State itself. In Hobbes’s state of nature, in which the “moral law” is simply the law of self-preservation for the purpose of bodily comfort and pleasure (hence why Hobbes and Locke and the liberal tradition really doesn’t fit “natural law and natural rights” theory because it is revisionist), there is a war of all against all leading to a life that is poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. Reason informs us that this unpleasant life, rooted in the chaos of the state of nature, can be better – if we only form the social contract and surrender our absolute freedom of action in the state of nature over to the sovereign “mortal god” that is the State in order to have comfort, peace, and security in life.

In Hobbes we see the katechon become the political apparatus – itself, perhaps, the logical ramification of understanding the katechon as the law which is foundational to the State. It is the State that literally saves us from killing one another and living miserable lives in the state of nature. This view is equally contained, albeit in a less pronounced form, in the political thought of John Locke (which is why Locke is universally regarded as “the wolf Hobbes in sheep’s clothing”). In this view the State as katechon is Schmitt’s secular god: the State embodies all the characteristics and attributes of God. Schmitt found this tradition of political philosophy as political theology beginning in Hobbes and Locke. Building from this is also Hegel’s statism in which he equally sees the State as the culmination of the world-spirit (although for Hegel the purpose of the State is not pleasurable political hedonism as in Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and the liberal tradition).

The Enduring Relevance of the Katechon

Is this idea of the katechon still relevant in political theory or general sociology? That depends, perhaps, on how one answers the question quid est autem homo, or how one understands the world in which we live and our relationship to the world we inhabit. If the world is chaotic and order must emerge from chaos, then the katechon is a relevant topic. As Schmitt wrote in his diary, the task of understanding history is knowing what the katechon actually is and isn’t. If humans are “fallen” or essentially “evil” and bring harm to each other, something would have to work as a barrier to such engagement as man encounters himself in the world and would rip himself apart. After all, such encounters of man with man would be a chaotic world.

Conversely, the self-centered anthropology of the Enlightenment, per Spinoza’s understanding of humanity in the state of nature as knowing no law and knowing no boundaries or barriers to his wanton desire of conatus (e.g. no barrier to acquisition), or Locke’s understanding of humans as homo economicus, if wrong – and humans are, in fact, social animals – then we have the conflict of self-interest and self-preservation that leads to the dissolution of the state of nature and the emergence of the commonwealth or State as the katechon to allow hedonistic flourishing in civil society. (In fact, the inherent contradictions of political liberalism testify to the need of the katechon in Hobbes, Locke and Spinoza since life in the state of nature is chaotic precisely because we live as atomized individuals and the commonwealth, or civil society, is necessary to live a peaceful, comfortable, secure, and orderly life – hence humans are social because sociality leads to order.)

On the other hand, if you’re a strict anarchist, and humans are essentially benign and the world not chaotic, then there is no reason for the katechon and the katechon, in whatever form one understands it, is a “barrier” to man’s natural state (e.g. as consuming animals per the Anarcho-Capitalists or free moving and free associating animals per traditional “left”-Anarchism).

How Much Power Do Other Countries Think That America Has?

"The History of the Intelligence State" -- an essential 40 min lecture on the origin story of The Blob. Thanks to @Hillsdale for a beautiful event. Timestamps in tweet below pic.twitter.com/GTRrgPpLqt

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) September 24, 2024

Saul Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals"

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."

2. "Never go outside the experience of your people."

3. "Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy."

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

8. "Keep the pressure on."

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."

Is the fact that Trump is currently both exposing AND burning down the NED and USAID an indication the Peter Thiel's Palantir no longer requires the "old Intel apparatus"... or an Alinskyan bluff intended to buy time by convincing our enemies that we have more power to control world events than they had previously imagined, while we await an AI breakthrough or technological singularity event?

And can America  return to the pursuit of George Kennan's original 'mad' vision before his "whole of society" doctrine was implemented and turned the people of the world into "mere rags" of US manipulation?

Isaiah Berlin 2/13/51 letter to George Kennan (excerpt):

When armies were slaughtered by other armies in the course of history, we might be appalled by the carnage and turn pacifist; but our horror acquires a new dimension when we read about children, or for that matter grown-up men and women, whom the Nazis loaded into trains bound for gas chambers, telling them that they were going to emigrate to some happier place. Why does this deception, which may in fact have diminished the anguish of the victims, arouse a really unutterable kind of horror in us? The spectacle, I mean, of the victims marching off in happy ignorance of their doom amid the smiling faces of their tormentors? Surely because we cannot bear the thought of human beings denied their last rights--of knowing the truth, of acting with at least the freedom of the condemned, of being able to face their destruction with fear or courage, according to their temperaments, but at least as human beings, armed with the power of choice. It is the denial to human beings of the possibility of choice, the getting them into one's power, the twisting them this way and that in accordance with one's whim, the destruction of their personality by creating unequal moral terms between the gaoler and the victim, whereby the gaoler knows what he is doing, and why, and plays upon the victim, i.e. treats him as a mere object and not as a subject whose motives, views, intentions have any intrinsic weight whatever--by destroying the very possibility of his having views, notions of a relevant kind--that is what cannot be borne at all.

What else horrifies us about unscrupulousness if not this? Why is the thought of someone twisting someone else round his little finger, even in innocent contexts, so beastly (for instance in Dostoevsky's Dyadyushkin son [Uncle's Dream, a novella published in 1859], which the Moscow Arts Theatre used to act so well and so cruelly)? After all, the victim may prefer to have no responsibility; the slave be happier in his slavery. Certainly we do not detest this kind of destruction of liberty merely because it denies liberty of action; there is a far greater horror in depriving men of the very capacity for freedom--that is the real sin against the Holy Ghost. Everything else is bearable so long as the possibility of goodness--of a state of affairs in which men freely choose, disinterestedly seek ends for their own sake--is still open, however much suffering they may have gone through. Their souls are destroyed only when this is no longer possible. It is when the desire for choice is broken that what men do thereby loses all moral value, and actions lose all significance (in terms of good and evil) in their own eyes; that is what is meant by destroying people's self-respect, by turning them, in your words, into rags. This is the ultimate horror because in such a situation there are no worthwhile motives left: nothing is worth doing or avoiding, the reasons for existing are gone. We admire Don Quixote, if we do, because he has a pure-hearted desire to do what is good, and he is pathetic because he is mad and his attempts are ludicrous.