The Apparatus of Power & State of Emergency

Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski, in his book Political Ponerology, gave us the study of evil in contemporary politics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Łobaczewski’s research had found high percentage levels of psychopathic behaviour within the very top tiers of the political establishment across varied societies. Łobaczewski concluded that if abnormal ways of human behaviour become engrained at the highest levels of our political institutions, then these abnormal modes of behaviour and perspectives are more likely to trickle down and become ‘normalized’ within human cultures. As Łobaczewski says: ‘If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic.’^[1] An epidemic of psychopathic thinking is not that hard to create, for thought forms are just as contagious as any biological virus. In fact, they can spread quicker ― almost simultaneously. One person can post an idea online, or express an opinion or ideology, and this can be received by other people almost instantaneously at the other end of the globe. That is, people across the world can become ‘infected’ by an idea/opinion/ideology (a thought form) instantaneously. Through the medium of our technological communications, mass or mob psychology, mental intoxication, and a reprogrammed cultural identity is relatively easy to achieve. According to Prof. Mattias Desmet,^[2] the four socio-cultural conditions that allow for easy manipulations of a mass psychology ― or an epidemic of psychopathic thinking ― to emerge are: a lack of social bonds; people experiencing life as meaningless or senseless; free-floating anxiety; and free-floating frustration and aggression. In recent years especially there has been a progressive build-up of nihilism, purposelessness, and a sense of denial, that is now being intensified through the techno-materialist environment of our lives. These are all strategies carefully concealed with the ‘apparatus’ of power.

The Apparatus of Power

The term ‘apparatus’ is a particular designation that refers to the technology of power. It was used in a specific way by French social theorist Michel Foucault, who described it as the strategic forces of power supported by specific knowledge. In these current times, this knowledge is highly technological and aligned with deep occult understanding of the metaphysical or unseen realms operative within this dimension of existence. Further, the Apparatus is a deeply pervasive network that has been established between the technologies that create power and those networks that sustain these power relations. These Apparatuses or technologies of power are both material (physical) and immaterial (digital) and must, by their necessity, produce their ‘subject’ (e.g., the human being) within its mechanized (and increasingly automated) arrangements of social control. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has more recently expanded upon Foucault’s notion of the ‘apparatus’ to define it as: ‘… literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings.’^[3] Perhaps today there is not even a single instant in which the life of individuals is not surveyed, influenced, or controlled by some apparatus. The instruments of this control are the gadgets and devices, the software and the algorithms, that are all surreptitiously programmed into a network ― an Apparatus ― of social management that captures not only the physical vessel of the human being but also its soul.

Modern forms of power have been furtively embedded within the fabric of our societies through Apparatuses that are now predominantly technologically composed. This road to continued segregation and categorization is contrary to the sacredness of life; in fact, it constitutes the path of anti-life (in the organic sense, at least). Such profanity is the very negation of the human being into ‘non-being.’ It is no doubt for this reason, the encroaching profanity of our contemporary societies, which is responsible for producing a widespread sense of subjectification and loss of purpose within so many individuals. What the current epoch is witnessing is a rampant agenda of dehumanization upon a scale hitherto unseen. And if global humanity remains on this path ― the path of denial ― then it is facing imminent catastrophe. The bio-techno-political machine within the Apparatus has driven the human civilization into a state of exception. How can the ‘state of exception’ be defined? The state of exception is closely related to civil war, insurrection, and resistance in its connection to a state of emergency. With no defined timeline, the notion of ‘peacetime’ becomes meshed with socio-militarization to produce a state of terrifying peace. The globalizing agenda is plunging much of the world into a state of mental and emotional warfare; the heightened activities of terrifying peace now characterize the social construction of the emerging multi-polar world order. Along with this, the global world has been maneuvered into a permanent war economy.

As such, many modern states now appear to be in a ‘permanent state of emergency’ where the exception has become the rule. And the dominant paradigm currently utilized by technocratic authorities is the state of emergency (or the ‘state of siege’) which gives these ruling powers an expansion of executive powers. The state of emergency is usually declared during hostilities and internal civil unrest, which then gives a further excuse for expanding non- democratic executive powers. This is the polarizing strategy of creating the problem in order to elicit a reaction so as to enforce a solution.

Such states of exception (or state of emergency) have historically been viewed through periods of dictatorship, which now has been transmuted into modern forms of technocracy. The overruling, or the modification, of established rules of law give the state new powers to deal with extraordinary circumstances such as arise during hostilities; and more so when such hostilities and crises are asymmetrical and may include contributing factors such as a dissolving civil society and economic collapse. Hence, the creation of a state of exception allows for a theatre of operations that is devoid of law and where the distinctions between public and private are intentionally dissolved. Legality is not required to create new laws ― only the power to create laws is necessary. This leaves a dangerous space, and sets a hazardous precedent, where the Apparatus shifts up a gear and further distances life from the sanctity of life.

Life has now come under the jurisdiction of a technologized global Apparatus that regards ‘biological life’ as a state to be regulated within its framework. This is because once biological life (bio-life) is registered within the framework of a trans-national body of power, then it can be included within its scope of governance. Bio-life then gets interpreted as bio- power. And to uphold the authority of bio-power, biological life has to become subjectivized and thus transformed into weak or docile bodies. This stripped-down representation of biological life is what I refer to as tokenized life; that is, as a physical, biological construct that has been stripped of its spiritual and sacred aspects. The sovereign human individual is thus modified into a machinic construct; a set of data that can be uploaded into the AI-fuelled Apparatus of occult, techno-materialistic power. The ‘tokenized life’ constitutes human life through the datafied framework that targets the technologies of the self. These are forms of fragmented subjectification of the individual based on ‘identities’ ― social, political, and sexual. These identities are linked to external doctrines of power that have become increasingly indistinct. We can now see how our current global civilization has been hijacked from above (above national governance) and mutated into an indistinct state of exception. Meta-power over the individual is now shapeless, fluid, and vague, so that it cannot be clearly seen from the micro-position despite it being duly enforced from the macro-position.

Biological life has been subjectivized as a ‘tokenized life’ so that it becomes easier to merge it into a centralized technological Apparatus of power. In other words, human life is subsumed by a machinic framework that then translates it into a transhumanist agenda. Conscious life ― and especially an interiorized, spiritualized life ― is an abomination for the technocratic tyranny where the AI god is close at hand. The organic sacred, a realm where the biological body and spirit-consciousness are in correspondence with cosmic forces and psychic powers, is regarded as the number one threat to the Apparatus of power. The human individual is effectively a non-being within a docile body, devoid of social distinction. Any person born within a physical location will become a data-body under the jurisdiction of a technocratic Apparatus. No one is granted immunity unless they succumb to the new rules that are, by contrast, established to create conformity to the dominant program. The only true immunity available within this profane realm is through a sacred rebellion. The real threat to this artificial Apparatus of power is through the metaphysical or spiritualized gateway: awakening to greater perception and expanded awareness is now the greatest crime.

The ‘Apparatus of power’ demonstrates a future that will become even more anti-human than at present. It is a path of denial of the human spirit ― of the soul within humanity ― and a subjugation (willing or not) to forces beyond the human that do not have our better interests at heart. On the contrary, these forces of technocratic power aim to mute and transmute the human individual into a form of golem ― a lifeless and automated data-body that is dependent upon an external body, or ‘master,’ that wields ultimate authority. It is a pathway into density and darkness, away from the natural light of development and growth. The realm of greatest darkness is that place furthest removed from the light and the warmth of the human spirit. This is the moment where the human spirit must come forth and reclaim its sovereignty or be submerged into an artificial construct of tyranny and control. This is the moment when life must face its opponent ― anti-life ― and take the future into its own sacred hands by embracing the biological, organic component of life. We are approaching that threshold now where we must choose between life and anti-life. The choice we make today will decide our future tomorrows.

The realm of greatest darkness is that place furthest removed from the light and the warmth of the human spirit.