William Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy” after Horatio saw a ghost suggesting the limitation to our understanding of the universe and the existence of things beyond the range of the senses. Magic in one age is technology in another. Traditional magic was the precursor to modern technology both are ways to act on nature, to coerce it to do our will. Spells and enchantments were the arts and science of their day. The modern engineer plays a comparable role to the ancient magician. A robot in the bible should not surprise us bearing in mind that technology is mankind lying to itself in aspiration to godhood. Thus, Machinehead is the modern counterpart to the image of the beast, the artificial construct of mankind.[1] Technology, like magic, creates an illusion that fools us into thinking we’re someone we’re not, causing us to miss who we really are; it leads us down the path of the forbidden future; a potential world where we receive the full reward for our efforts at playing God. This technological paradise usurps traditional notions of God’s earthly kingdom by replacing it with a forgery.
It was commonplace for ancient Emperors to set up statues in their own likeness and demand worship upon penalty of death. The three Hebrew boys were forced to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s idol or face the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:1-24). Christians refused to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor and were thrown to the lions. Nero brought out statues of Caesar and forced Christians to worship them. This was really a practice of honoring the Emperor in his absence. The idol took the place of the king ensuring universal worship. The Book of Wisdom related the ultimate in distant worship when it says, “Then, in time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law and graven things were worshiped by princely decrees. Men who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presence copied the appearance of the distant king and made a public image of him they wished to honor, out of zeal to flatter him when absent, as though present” (14:16, 17 NABRE). No sooner was Julius Caesar assassinated then his heir apparent Marc Antony erected an image, a statue in his honor for the crowds to gawk at, and to their awe and wonder the image could speak and move, a sorcerer’s trick performed to amaze the people. Antony used an automaton to fool the masses into thinking Caesar had come back from the dead. However, primitive this technology was, a statue that could move and speak is upgraded to robot in the modern world. Emperors employed this clever illusion ever since to insure their control over the ignorant rabble. Scripture alludes to this hoax when it says that the false prophet an illusionist, “could animate the wild beast’s statue, so that the statue of the wild beast could speak and cause all those who would not prostrate before the statue of the wild beast to be killed” (Revelation 13:15, author’s translation).[2]
This represents the killer robot in the bible, the face of the unholy trinity in Revelation 13: the dragon, the first and second wild beast. The dragon is obviously the invisible power of the devil, which is the ability to craft the lie that mankind will live forever once he becomes a god. The first wild beast is a world ruler empowered by satanic energy, a Roman Emperor in the similitude of past emperors, such as Antiochus IV Epiphanies, “God Manifest,” the Greek Leopard or Cyrus the Great, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” the Persian Bear and King Nebuchadnezzar, “I am Babylon” the Babylonian Lion. The Roman emperor fashioned himself as Apollo the sun-god. The despot appeared to recover from a fatal headshot, a blow from a dagger. This phenomenal revival would cause the world to worship him−his war machine could not be defeated. His power was unprecedented in all history. He became arrogant, boastful and blasphemous. He persecuted all who did not receive his branding on their right hand or forehead: 666. This was the mark of a man who proclaims himself God on Earth. 7-1=6, one short of perfection the number of mankind repeated three times in parody of the Holy Trinity. His persecutions included baptizing his opponents in pitch and setting them on fire to light his drunken orgies. Others were thrown to the lions for sport. Many were crucified as enemies of the state and those he liked were beheaded.
The second wild beast was advocate for the first; it was his job to make the first look good. We call him, “the false prophet” because he is something like a sinister John the Baptist announcing the arrival of the new man-god. As the magicians Jan’nes and Jam’bres stood against Moses by turning their staffs into serpents and water into blood for Pharaoh, so he will perform miracles and great signs and wonders on behalf of the first wild beast. (Exodus 7:11; Second Timothy 3:8). These may very well be super weapons in space. He could call down lightening to strike whoever the Emperor wished, for all to see. The second wild beast serves the first by convincing the world that he is a god. He represents the Propagandist for the Antichrist. He erects a monument to the first wild beast, an automaton, a statue that speaks and moves to frighten the people and cause all who do not honor it to be killed.
In the twenty-first century the image of world controller looks less like a talking statue residing in the public square and more like a talking head on live TV. It appears less like the historical pattern of flesh and blood as in Nero-the Mommy-Killer and more like flickering image or colorful pixels on a projected screen adored by all. Orwell’s Big Brother was a media composite incorporating the nation’s hopes and fears. People really loved him, torture, psycho and physical conditioning insured the worship was genuine. At the end of 1984 Winston Smith came to love him in all sincerity, tears and all, drinking his nasty tasting gin and smoking crumbling cigarettes. This image comes alive in our collective digital veneration and consciousness. We do not see one stock photo because Big Brother is a computer-generated collage. He is the projection of the grand sum of each of us constituting the global mind. No one sees it all at once because no one looks at the beast within. Self-reflection is out of the question. We refuse to take personal responsibility for our place in history. We will be more than happy to let things run their course. Machinehead, as I call it, the Man-God-Machine, then reflects the image of a world controller in the twenty-first century, programmed for universal control, a power we all acquiesce to. Just as no one ever saw Big Brother in person or even knew if he existed, so Machinehead will project the cult of personality beyond sensory perception.
Media over exposer is everywhere. We cannot escape the city by fleeing to the country without seeing a sky-writer, hearing an airplane or be haunted by billboards and cell-phones, TV and computer screens are everywhere including bathrooms, showers, the woods or the jungle. Media saturation produces morally ambiguous results. On one hand, advertisements provide information on how to meet basic needs, here are the groceries you must buy, on the other, they demoralize by normalizing obscenity; not a day goes by without witnessing a mass sacrilege, objectification of women, unconscionable exploitation of addiction, valorizing gambling, drug use and alcohol. Certainly, we are smart enough to feed, house and cloth the world without appealing to the lowest common absurdity.
The modern blueprint for slavery and totalitarianism is to meet all material needs, while simultaneously limiting intelligence among the proletariat and middleclass for that matter, making commoners just smart enough to take orders and get the job done. Education is granted according to station. The rich go to university while the poor barely graduate high school. The Machine creates social problems by its strict ethic of speed, disaffected people such as homeless, unemployed, dropouts, addicts, alcoholics, illiterate, criminals, stay at home moms, working moms, under educated, even over educated and mal-adapted minorities simply cannot keep tempo with the fast pace of our society; it’s education, technological and financial demands. Marxist Professor Herbert Marcuse argued that the proliferation of alienated groups such as hippies and rebellious students signals the disintegration of the system.[3] Slavery is a structure of consciousness and consciousness determines who we are. Media programing restricts mental acuity leaving users without the ability to think for themselves, to create our own consciousness. Mass media offers no possibility for dialogue and social media appears like a parody of democracy. They recreate history and reality to fit consumerist’s mentality. All this communication technology goes into amusement, literally, to cause one not to think; ignorance is bliss. According to commercials, nirvana is achieved by possessing one of every consumer object, all things, on the market, and the forbidden fruit was really a candy-bar, it’s fun to get drunk and lose control and cartoons, the children’s medium, pushes pharmaceuticals, convincing people they are sick when they are not in order to sell more drugs.
Mass media in Oceania consisted of little more than popular entertainment (to hold attention agreeably with amusement), its litany included: racy tabloids, dime novels, film, radio, and all pervasive TV screens, with cameras everywhere, whose content was strictly comprised of campy material covering a limited range of topics, not excluding a grotesque preoccupation with sex, crime, the lottery, violence and astrology, we might say “meteorology.” Sports of course, the ultimate distraction took center stage. Music was sentimentalism, electric swoon, produced by machines, not unlike the contemporary techno sound made without instruments, the imitation of music. Media, the computer and smartphone makes pornography and violent images more accessible to children. Parental guidance represents a false security. The kids know more about technology than the adults. The children become the teachers and the adults the students in a reversal of the natural order. In 1984 language was castrated by word reduction. Political control was reinforced through New Speak and the Thought Police by editing vocabulary and replacing traditional words with artificial ones in a sort of political correctness. Most of these alternatives eliminated complementary opposites in thinking; for example the dialectic between light and dark was recast by striking the word, “light” and substituting the inane “undark.” Fanatic ideology comes from hearing only one side of the story, the biased account. Extreme prejudice or propaganda leads to war.
Word reduction and the predominance in picture learning as in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) are two allies that have a stultifying impact on public perception making people scarcely aware they are being manipulated by a totalitarian regime. In the case of our technosecular environment subtle control proceeds not from tangible public representatives, rather we are seduced by our own desire for speed, order, ease and convenience. We have summoned the technocratic order. Complicated technology demands greater political control to prevent chaos; the proliferation of traffic lights and signs to facilitate automobile culture is a good example. Some say only with the creation of a world government can we control nuclear power. Big Technology means Big Government, the faster technology grows the more powerful it is. We are haplessly addicted to the premise that faster is easier, easier is better. We hardly realize that we have sold our souls for a better mousetrap and a richer cup of coffee. Like Esau trading the family birthright for a hot bowl of lentil soup, we barely notice what we have lost in exchange for instant gratification (Genesis 25:29-34), freedom itself!
Visual media ends free thought by telling us what to think. The image makes a final statement by whatever is pictured. Literary imagination never regains poise after watching a movie. When we see Star Trek or Star Wars, we cannot think of the future in any other light than fantastic speed and space travel. Mass media is the ultimate mind control machine. Reduce words. Abbreviate thought. Curb freedom. Show the people what to think. Program their reality according to pleasurable thought or vamp things up a bit when they become stagnate and in need of stimulation. German philosopher Karl Jaspers makes this frightening comment on the falsity of a visually framed reality. “Pictures deceive us by their visibility and vividness, and reality itself is changing fast: a comparison of travel accounts from the past century shows that what was once real yesterday is no longer real today.”[4] Images are a falsification of facts. They distort reality, then, claim to be depicting an accurate account of it. The TV projection is not real. Susan Sontag discusses in her famous essay On Photography (1977) that pictures create a voyeuristic society removed from reality.
Yet, the be-all and end-all in totalitarianism is the barbarization in public morality created by the death of privacy. We see something of this in our surveillance and Luciferian controlled society. Everything is visible and there is no longer any shame in bad behavior, everything is acceptable. Orwell was more accurate than we have the courage to take seriously,
With the development of television and technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit, simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen or at least every citizen worth watching could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the state, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.[5]
A world without privacy is a world without shame and a world without self-reflection. A world without guilt possesses no virtue. We can think of the transposition of Dionysus onto to Jesus Christ at the Paris Olympics. Society without virtue is democracy run amok. Such cultural chaos is the incubator for tyranny. A strong man will emerge to restore order.
The rock band Styx sings a poetically apropos song called the “Grand Illusion.” It brings indictment to the Luciferian Powers that hold us under a gentle tether; “Don’t be fooled by the radio, the TV or the magazines, they show you photographs of how your life should be, but they’re someone, else’s fantasy . . . America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition, get yourself a brand-new motor car, Someday soon we’ll stop and ponder what on earth’s this spell we’re under, We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are.”[6]
Sinful-Humanity will bring prophecy to climax by embodying rebellion. We play-God by assuming the powers of God; the Apostle declared concerning the World Controller that he will exalt himself, “proclaiming to be God” (Second Thessalonians 2:4 RSV). This supposes the perennial temptation to usurp God’s place and reveals the secret of lawlessness. Listen to Reformer John Calvin explain the deceitful origins to our temptation to Godhood. “[Mankind] cannot arrogate to himself one particle [gene, atom, molecule, etc.] beyond his due without losing himself . . . whenever our minds are seized with a longing to possess a somewhat of our own, which may reside in us rather than in God we may rest assured that the thought is suggested by no other counselor than he who enticed our first parents to aspire to be gods.”[7] This is the ultimate coup d’état; it prefigures the coming of “the tyrant whose presence is infused with Satanic energy working through the forsaken by powerful miracles, strange phenomena and much slander,” the Apostle warned us, “because they did not receive the truth in love to be saved,” he said, “so then God will turn them over to the grand illusion believing the lie, so that, they may all be judged who do not believe the truth but revel in wickedness” (Second Thessalonians 2:9-11 author’s translation).
The Grand Illusion is the lie that we can effectively play-God without losing ourselves. I simply advert playing-God is not worth the risk. We are delusional to believe technology frees us to be Masters of the Universe, closer to the truth we will destroy the earth in the liberation process. The cyborg condition will supersede the human one. We debase ourselves in deference to a superior race. Computer Science Professor Matthew Dickerson prophetically asked, what if the transhuman, “transformation is based on something that is not true?”[8] Into whose image are we transforming? It is an equally formidable task to decipher the image of mankind for mankind as it is to decode the meaning of the image of God in mankind. This problem is compounded when we try to discern that image in light of the atom bomb and AI. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, “it is not unfair to affirm that modern culture, that is, our culture since the Renaissance, is to be credited with the greatest advances in the understanding of nature and with the greatest confusion in the understanding of man.”[9] The Will of Mankind is more arduous to understand than the Will of God. To the question of what end Expressionist Vincent van Gogh painted, he answered, “je ne sais quoi” (I know not what).[10] This is the mystery of faith transhumanism cannot fathom. Medievalist C. S Lewis instructed that when humanity prevails over nature’s fury we subject the entire race to the caprice of a handful of, “individual men” and “those individuals,” he said, will lose themselves to what, “is purely natural−to their irrational impulses.”[11] Science fiction writer Frank Herbert in his famous novel Dune (1965) echoed Lewis, “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”[12] Men with machines are not liberators, but slavers. The device, agent that frees from limits, is the vice that holds us in place. The computer screen mediates the world reframing reality making it smaller. The world has shrunken since the advent of the telegraph. So the Cyborg will diminish human life by making it obsolete and inferior to itself. A techno utopian world will be dominated by machines and loss of personal freedom, individuality and peculiarity. Everyone is basically the same, addicted to speed and endangered by obsolescence.
Freedom encompasses three forms: religion, reason and community. Humanity is religious by nature. As creatures we identify with a purpose greater than ourselves, as I said in a previous blog, with a divine imperative.[13] Faith is the distinguish mark of humanity. Intelligence affords us the ability to make rational choices according to a higher principle, which gives meaning and coherence. This is freedom grounded in Being. Aristotle said, “Man is a social animal.” People have an innate connection with a larger group that provides a sense of belonging, stability and direction. We are communal: husband, wife, child, friend, tribe, language and nation; just as God is a family of persons: Father, Son and Spirit. People remain in fellowship with others ordering life according to this higher power and care for each other and creation.
By establishing human existence, we prove the existence of God. Our own conscience testifies to the Creator. We reflect the divine image. We are a synthesis between infinite and finite. “Infinity in infinite form,” said Berdyaev.[14] Any attack on the human shape is a reproach to the character of God. The denial of humanity involves the denial of God. We are only fully human in God. God is relevant to the world only when we believe in his existence. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarded of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6 KJV). A dead God is a mockery and means that the idea of God has no meaning in a world that is self-sufficient. God is dead to a world that no longer experiences his presence. The existence of God outside the divine-human encounter, regardless of its monotheism is idolatry. God lives in relationship with us, or he does not exist at all. Only in God do we transcend nothingness. Without God to give purpose to the world all values flatten because there no longer remains anything greater than ourselves. We are free to be ourselves only if God exists. Idolatry requires submission to an order lower than ourselves. Faith raises us to our true selves beyond the world, but located directly in it. Without the counterbalance in threefold division in human nature (God, Self, Others) we move freely in strength without wisdom and without metaphysical and ethical limits which is chaos.
Technology presupposes life. A higher purpose for which it was designed; however, it fosters perverse nihilism by usurping that sacred end with its own cause. Technology for its own sake is knowledge that kills the user. Research and development without reverence for life produces the hydrogen bomb; the final limit to all horizons. As a child growing up during the Cold War I identified with American Architect Richard Ross’ feeling concerning what life was like for youth living in the shadow of the nuclear arms race, “by the time I was old enough to start planning a future, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have one. I am still amazed I got to grow up. Amazed!”[15] Albert Einstein said, “The atomic bomb has changed everything except the nature of man.”[16] The invention of the atom bomb and the absolute necessity for its abolition is the defining element for all time. If we want a rallying point for a prosperous future, if we care about the lives of our children’s children, the earth and the world to come, we cannot entertain human extinction. Japers stressed the importance in finding a solution to the global problem raised by unleashing the nuclear genie. “Without world peace,” he said, “there is no preventing the extinction of mankind in an atomic holocaust.”[17] Why work toward of future devoid of people? How can we live comfortable today knowing we will execute our children tomorrow? Why fight the future when we can change it? Everything we do has significance and impacts those around us and future generations, no matter how small or great. With each joyful smile and good deed we inch away from the abyss. For better or for worse we hold the power of the future in every decision regardless of how private, trivial or grandiose. “Now, unless all of us live with and for one another, we all should be destroyed together” Jaspers remarked soberly; we do, “in miniature what on a larger scale makes mankind destroy itself.”[18] Whatever ethic causes people to rise to the occasion in times of crisis must be woven into our daily fabric to be effective. People face trials and tribulation the same way they do the normal conditions of life with courage and fortitude or in fear and ignorance, as in life so in death. The truth remains one and always the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Limitless behavior ends in self-destruction. Extinction looms over an indefinite technological horizon like the Sword of Damocles, threatening any attempt to refit ourselves for immortality with a grand explosion, painful, asphyxiation and subtle replacement. Albert Einstein said, “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and hence annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities.”[19] Astrophysicist Stephan Hawking, once hailed as “the smartest man alive”, recently proclaimed AI and genetic engineering menaces to global survival over the next 100 years, “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he said frankly.[20] SpaceX founder Elon Musk exclaimed concerning AI, “We are summoning the demon.”[21] And partner in DeepMind Shane Legg said bluntly, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this.”[22] A limitless future is never possible for a limited creature regardless of how advanced. There is always an endpoint. The biological needs to eat, sleep and procreate are guidelines placed on us to curb excess and produce a social order to accommodate their needs. With these needs guidelines gone we lose social order that goes with it. We will never experience romance, beauty and machismo in space. Their relationship is strictly technical. The gender or sexual baseline disappears in a new race of Astronauts. Space people are asexual and have no need for genitalia. They have risen above the procreation imperative. Soon they will be able to live without food and sleep. They will transcend the human condition or they will soon retire. The body itself will become irrelevant and ultimately discarded. They have reached humanity’s zenith “ye shall be gods!” Death is the final limit, without which new life and growth could not occur. A thousand-year Reich was possible if the regime’s fathers never died, effectively murdering all further progress. Tomorrow Land, Futurama, Epcot, NASA and the Atomic City, the City of the Future and the enthrallment with spaceflight as the new ascension is a lie for those who believe that death is the final obstacle to immortality resolved ultimately upon resurrection and ascension. To believe that death can be overcome with technological enhancement will create an abomination.
Technology that destroys life kills itself. Regression began when progress lost its spiritual ground with the advent of history’s first technological Singularity at the dawn of the nuclear age. For the first-time humanity acquired the means of its own annihilation. We effectively acquiesced to extinction. It will close any further intellectual horizons. The imminent convergence of ICBM’s and AI is flirting with disaster. No further progress is possible until we resolve the approaching danger unleashed by the Manhattan Project, the near simultaneous invention of the computer and rocket technology. Fascination with the Moon and Mars is a distraction that fails to account for the hypothesis that the reason we do not encounter Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, is that, it is not possible for civilization to advance beyond its industrial phase without destroying itself. Faster is the future, yet we remain the same. Since 1945 acceleration has been bound to a perpetual repetition in the present order. The future is no different today than yesterday, or tomorrow only faster. Efficiency as guiding light has not abated since the Computer’s First Coming, but has accelerated the future’s arrival, as fixed destiny; technological progress supersedes human freedom. We have resigned ourselves to extinction. People no longer care if humanity lives or dies. We have reached the tipping point, so be it, you can’t stop progress. Extinction does not disturb them, some may even think it is necessary for the earth to go on.
Speed fastened into place the cardinal value. Accelerated time has no purpose except for the hell of it, an irresponsible attitude that beckons the day of reckoning. No universal consensus prevails on the rush to the future, not even human improvement. Humanity as presently constituted is not on the agenda: otherwise we would not be talking about a Posthuman Singularity, or Donna Haraway’s, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) and Transhumanism. I hear no universal definition for “better” other than “faster.” Speed facilitates control in order to avoid anarchy. When liberation ceases to be the goal for progress we have crossed the Rubicon. There will be no turning back. The law of reverse effects dominates and transvaluation pervades all. We now serve the Computer or the Luciferian Powers that be, not the other way around. Liberation will bring free choices according to self-determination creating a meaningful universe because it will be one in which we feel responsible, where we can affect the course of change through our Higher Power. The fact that we have a choice between 31 flavors of ice cream and from red, white and blue cars, but we cannot disarm a hoard of nuclear warheads, is not liberty, but the illusion of freedom on parade. A hypnotic spell cast by the media grid further entangling our loyalties with instant gratification not spiritual satisfaction for a life well-lived grounded in the mystery of faith. Faith without a center is anarchism leading to nihilism; it is zeal without knowledge going nowhere fast. The illusion of progress spawned by mass media hides the reality of our regression into impending oblivion.
The Posthuman refusal to define human nature in male and female distinction above the world does not open our minds. We cannot create ourselves without presupposing a greater definite center. We are left defenseless and exposed regressing into a rarefied scientific order as final reference devoid of God. Media closes the future through eternal recurrence. The same materialist theme: buy, drive, fight is repeated endlessly. Space the Final Frontier is a fiction that prohibits alternative conceptions. Contemporary thought on the future is limited by the fast-foreword version predominate today: more of the same just faster. This means the twilight of humanity, the end of history, frozen in whatever petrified lump, the Second Technological Coming, that is, the Singularity, will find us. There are two Singularities, a past one and a future one, a beginning and an end, the joining of all things as one. Our final form will be indistinguishable from our Paleolithic ancestry up from Africa, a brutish imp.
Simulacra replaces reality with a digital copy made in our own image−the copy of a copy. The duplicate of course, is never greater than the original. “The disciple is not above his master, or the servant above his lord” (Matthew 10:24 KJV). Mankind represents God, the earthly prototype to the heavenly Father, the imago dei is the glory of God on earth; art captures him in a technological medium, which is religion, it is that facsimile that provides the outlook for how we view ourselves through the digital prism−the copy of a copy, the shadow of an image.[23]
To believe that a glorified reproduction, a snapshot somehow surpasses the unique person demonstrates how far along the popular illusion has accrued. Media qualifies as a delusional influence by remaking us into the likeness of the simulation creating a soulless drone that is blind, deaf and dumb and sterile. Media technology’s bombastic proclivities silence its user. The drone equals a deconstructed humanity imitating God. A divine resemblance once removed that recreates Homo sapiens as an appendage in abbreviated form. Believing in the Machine-god literally repeats the biblical model for idolatry. The Transhumanist enterprise fashions an ideal, the cyborg in the form of a replicant exalting itself to godhood, but brutal subjugation places us lower than our own design. Mankind builds a Machine, he feels represents God, which in truth is a replacement of itself in the likeness of a clone less than God. He lowers himself to a sub-human thing that appears real but does not exist outside faith in his own highly-stylized self-projection.
The image of God means God comes to earth in the birth of a child; however, we degrade that likeness by projecting our highest qualities along with our greatest vices onto a machine. The semblance between God in heaven and Adam on earth diminishes to a fearsome shadow lower than both. The Artilect will always be inferior to us, but we are entrapped the instant we believe the creation greater than its Maker.
Marcuse says we have all the technology we need to create a New World Order, but we refuse to use them for peace; “All the material and intellectual forces which could be put to work for the realization of a free society are at hand. That they are not used for that purpose is to be attributed to the total mobilization of existing society against its own potential for liberation.”[24] He is saying technology is suicidal when it is used for exploitation instead of freedom because its users will eventually turn its power on itself. This was the great fear after the invention of the atom bomb that our opponents would use it against us. Then the Soviets exploded their own bomb; then the Chinese. Technology must liberate everyone or its acquisition simply allows for the few to control the many and finally one to control all. How is this even possible without technical aid? Media technology is used to control the world and redirect history, to whatever end. People will follow their devices into purgatory. They believe what they see on TV. The one world ruler will assume control of all media technology and recreate the world in its own image, a collusion of asexual humanity and machine. Some speculate that the Antichrist may very well be an asexual cyborg. Big Brother and hijacking cell-phones to impose a new dictatorship may sound like a cliché by now, but throughout third world revolutions the winning parties always take the radio and television station first. This is how world war two was started; the Germans accused the Poles of attacking a German radio tower. The use of communication technology can bring us to war or peace. These two conditions are often confused with doublespeak. War becomes police action for the greater good. Genocide becomes liquidation. “I made a desert and called it peace”−Scipio. Think of it, Luciferian Powers already control the 911 feature on your phone, they can find you anywhere you go and give special alerts, such as dangerous weather conditions, incoming missiles and missing children. TV always interrupts with emergency broadcasts. The police monitor Facebook. They have assumed control of your media device for a greater cause. This should all be obvious.
The majority of the world’s population lives under dictatorship including Russia and China. They are using digital technology to index and profile its citizens. They want to create the perfect digital dictatorship. Everyone is suspect. Everyone using digital technology gets monitored. We would assume the Chinese hinterland is relatively free from government control because they don’t use digital media or watch TV. We should ban digital voting as a threat to democracy. Imagine hackers being successful even one time could change the course of history forever. There is no inerrant digital system. All algorithms should be tested because they are not 100% accurate.
The fight for the future is a fight for a quality of life we will leave to our children. Will they be able to make free moral choices, hold to unorthodox views, find love, experience the beauty of nature without a programed algorithm? Attorney for the German Society for Civil Rights Bijan Moini says we must preserve free rights today in order to save them for the future; “We can prevent all this from happening. We still know life in freedom, but our descendants could be born into a zoo, ignorant and comfortable. They would know nothing but a life in which invisible higher intelligence permanently observes, cares for, entertains, and protects them from their environment’s adversities.”[25] Digital profiling whether for profit or security should be made illegal to insure a free tomorrow.
[1] Lawrence J. Terlizzese Machinehead: Rise of the Technology God (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2019). https://www.christianpublishers.org/product-page/machinehead-rise-of-the-technology-god-by-lawrence-j-terlizzese-ph-d
[2] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, The Book of Revelation: The Climax of Hope (Cambridge, OH: BookMark Press, 2024). https://www.christianpublishers.org/product-page/the-book-of-revelation-the-climax-of-hope
[3] Herbert Marcuse in “The End of Utopia,” 1967; https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1967/end-utopia.htm
[4] Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind trans., by E. B. Ashton (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), 96.
[5] George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Signet, 1949), 169-170.
[6] Styx, “The Grand Illusion” The Grand Illusion (A&M, 1977).
[7] John Calvin, Institutes II, 2, 10.
[8] Matthew Dickerson, The Mind and the Machine: What it Means to be Human and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2011), xiv.
[9] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 5.
[10] Vincent van Gogh quoted in Gabriel Vahanian, The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era (New York: George Braziller, 1960), 182.
[11] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 79, 80.
[12] Frank Herbert, Dune (New York: Ace, 1965), 11.
[13] Lawrence J. Terlizzese in “Space Travel-Here-Now” (2024); https://dr.terlizzese.com/2024/07/27/space-travel-here-now/
[14] Nikolai Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (New York: Harper, 1952), 36.
[15] Richard Ross, Waiting for the End (Princeton, NJ: Architectural Press, 2004), 12.
[16] Albert Einstein, quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 36.
[17] Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, 16.
[18] Ibid., 24, 25.
[19] Albert Einstein quoted in Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Avon, 1982), 12, 13.
[20] Stephan Hawking quoted in, “Rise of the Machine” in The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, February 14, 2016), 1P.
[21] Elon Musk quoted in, “Elon Musk’s Future Shock” Vanity Fair (April 2017), 118.
[22] Shane Legg quoted in, “Elon Musk’s Future Shock,” 118.
[23] Lawrence J. Terlizzese “The Technological Simulacra” (2015) https://probe.org/the-technological-simulacra-on-the-edge-of-reality-and-illusion/
[24] Herbert Marcuse in “The End of Utopia,” 1967; https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1967/end-utopia.htm
[25] Bijan Moini, Save Our Freedom: A Wake-Up Call in Digital Times, trans., by Oliver Latsch (Stamford, CT: Arctis, 2021), 79.