You can tell when someone is going authoritarian on you because they actually stop acting like a human being. Suddenly, the human being in them ceases. There is not so much as even the pretence to be human any longer. The machine takes over.
This machine is called Skinnerian behaviourism. It is supposed to work as an impersonal mechanism on you in order to get you to do what the authoritarian wants. The authoritarian dissociates his own personality from this mechanical system of leverage which he or she seeks to employ. The authoritarian is morally coy, and doesn't like to see himself or herself as using their personality to dominate you. The western authoritarian dissociates their personality from human sensitivies, thus allowing them to operate in a nasty way, on behalf of the social order whilst feeling pure and unaffected in what they still mistakingly take to be their separatable self.
This authoritarian will not take the trouble to ask you to do something because "this is what the system expects." No such honesty or directness is attempted, as a rule. Rather, he or she will use Skinnerian behaviourism to attempt to impress upon you that "Reality itself" demands that you behave a certain way. Thus, this type of authoritariansm is potentially much more insidious and damaging than any direct humanising use of personal authority (which, by appearing to be contingent rather than absolute can be rejected more easily by the dominatee.)
Western authoritarianism is as common as can be -- but it is hard for some people to see because its thousands of adherents reject the term, "authoritarianism", as if this feature of civilisation belonged to the past when authoritarianism has mutated into a stronger form and dug in beneath the level of social consciousness or awareness.
Having lived under a different kind of authoritarianism -- a more honest kind, perhaps -- I have felt pained whenever some authoritarian robot has sought to apply its behaviouristic leverage. The reality of this cowardly failure to engage in direct communication has never escaped me. When a robot ceases to address me as a human being, I don't see the transcendence of the system working through them I see an ape.
This machine is called Skinnerian behaviourism. It is supposed to work as an impersonal mechanism on you in order to get you to do what the authoritarian wants. The authoritarian dissociates his own personality from this mechanical system of leverage which he or she seeks to employ. The authoritarian is morally coy, and doesn't like to see himself or herself as using their personality to dominate you. The western authoritarian dissociates their personality from human sensitivies, thus allowing them to operate in a nasty way, on behalf of the social order whilst feeling pure and unaffected in what they still mistakingly take to be their separatable self.
This authoritarian will not take the trouble to ask you to do something because "this is what the system expects." No such honesty or directness is attempted, as a rule. Rather, he or she will use Skinnerian behaviourism to attempt to impress upon you that "Reality itself" demands that you behave a certain way. Thus, this type of authoritariansm is potentially much more insidious and damaging than any direct humanising use of personal authority (which, by appearing to be contingent rather than absolute can be rejected more easily by the dominatee.)
Western authoritarianism is as common as can be -- but it is hard for some people to see because its thousands of adherents reject the term, "authoritarianism", as if this feature of civilisation belonged to the past when authoritarianism has mutated into a stronger form and dug in beneath the level of social consciousness or awareness.
Having lived under a different kind of authoritarianism -- a more honest kind, perhaps -- I have felt pained whenever some authoritarian robot has sought to apply its behaviouristic leverage. The reality of this cowardly failure to engage in direct communication has never escaped me. When a robot ceases to address me as a human being, I don't see the transcendence of the system working through them I see an ape.
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