J. Hughes - Jan 23, 2010

Transhumanists, like Enlightenment partisans in general, believe that human nature can be improved but are conflicted about whether liberal democracy is the best path to betterment. The liberal tradition within the Enlightenment has argued that individuals are best at finding their own interests and should be left to improve themselves in self-determined ways. But many people are mistaken about their own best interests, and more rational elites may have a better understanding of the general good. Enlightenment partisans have often made a case for modernizing monarchs and scientific dictatorships. Transhumanists need to confront this tendency to disparage liberal democracy in favor of the rule by dei ex machina and technocratic elites.

Enlightenment Liberalism and Enlightened Despotism

The Enlightenment rationale for liberalism, most powerfully articulated in Mill’s On Liberty, was that if individuals are given liberty they will generally know how to pursue their interests and potentials better than will anyone else. So, society generally will become richer and more intelligent if individuals are free to choose their own life ends rather than if they are forced towards betterment by the powers that be. In order to ensure that all interests and views of the good are equally weighed in the marketplace of ideas and expressed in collective decision-making, society should guarantee free debate and equal legal and political empowerment. The most radical expression of these ideals was liberal and social democracy, which are often assumed to be the consensual political ideal of the Enlightenment.

In fact, Enlightenment philosophers were intensely conflicted about the virtues of powerful monarchies and technocratic elites versus popular democracy. Some believed an absolute state was the best form of governance. Thomas Hobbes argued that political absolutism was necessary to prevent the war of “all against all.” Voltaire said that he “would rather obey one lion, than 200 rats of [his own] species.”

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In the wake of the recent interview with Jay Hanson posted at The Oil Drum, there was some discussion of Hubbert’s role in the Technocracy movement.

I hadn’t been aware that Hubbert was a Technocrat (or that the technocrats were an organised grouping, for that matter), so in this post I’ll explore the Technocracy movement and Hubbert’s role in it.

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Peter Joseph is naive, and has been swayed by one after another “teacher.” In the first Zeitgeist - a Hegelian concept coined by Johann Gottfried Herder of the Bavarian Illuminati - he was obviously enamored with ‘Acharya S’ and her occult Theosophical “secret tradition” interpretation of ancient history. In ‘Addendum,’ he has found a few new (solution-oriented) gurus of the same ilk.

The one-time New Age Theosophical Christ-Maitreya, J. Krishnamurti — thrust upon the occult, Utopian socialist underground at the beginning of the 20th century by Theosophy head, Fabian socialist Annie Besant and pederast-Freemason, C.W. Leadbeater — begins and ends the film. For something that purports to espouse “a modern, non-superstitious based understanding” of the world, well, let’s just say that it is hypocritical and deceitful not to even identify the theosophical current throughout both films, or the outright socialism of the latest. Though Peter Joseph hasn’t admitted his Theosophical debt, at 1:35:37 he tips his hand by the obscure mention of “intellectual materialism” - a term used by Blavatsky herself in Lucifer magazine (also, see here for another theosophic source) - and touts the “true divinity” of Man (1:48:25). New Ager aka “economic hitman”-Perkins has experienced the seething energies of Lucifer as well. At 1:43:07 he talks of the bliss of connectedness and our “God spirit,” while an “Illumined” man makes a gesture with his hands of a triangle in front of the sun.

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