By Jason Holland and William Hawes
“…the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.”
Neil Postman, Technopoly
Continuing on the ideas presented in Part I of this essay found here, we noted how science resembles something more of a subjective cult rather than an objective process of do-goodery, which is how it presents itself to the public. “Science(™)” operates like any industry, yet has been elevated to the status of a religion known as scientism. The faithful fall in line as soon as they hear the word science coming from overeducated, over-propagandized individuals sporting a PhD by their name; a designation given to them from institutions that must conform to standards set by corporate-captured academia and the agendas of corrupt nation states.
Science today has become little more than an appendage of capitalism. Wherever capitalism goes, science follows dutifully. Whether one dubs it “industrial science”, “applied science”, or whatever other moniker you prefer, contemporary science cannot function without requisite technology which is secured through the profit motive. That is to say, ruthless exploitation and destruction of natural resources are considered a necessary cost to maintain and further scientific advancement. It should be no surprise, then, that to enter the arena of “Big Science”, one has already had to cut off, repress, and bury many types of empathetic and emotional connections to nature and the web of life. Further, these cadres of scientists have to compartmentalize, and in effect rationalize faulty conclusions in the name of progress which outweigh the severe costs of environmental destruction, habitat loss, unnatural hierarchies of dominance in the human spheres, and alienation from fellow humans who do not share the same zeal for corporate profiteering at any cost.
As discussed in Part I of this essay, contrary to the prevailing beliefs about science, dissent is not typically welcomed within the industry, it more often is mocked than openly considered. There’s a reason for this too, because when the powers that be sell an idea to the public as a foundation that justifies the existence of that held power, they aren’t too keen on having that foundation pulled out from under them. Any imperial force gaining advantage from what they are selling will operate as such, for they all operate on the core western value of base opportunism and appropriation. Of course stealing and taking advantage of others is dressed up in contemporary euphemistic language that calls it progress and growth underwritten by the holy auspices of spurious free market capitalism which is said to bring about some kind of warped idea of what the establishment calls democracy.
It does seem that any expression of dissent on the status quo and the entrenched powers that be operate has been pre-propagandized via media, institutional “education” systems, and corporate marketing in some supremely reductionist manner, mirroring the reductionism in science itself.
Critiques on the economic system evoke a similar reactionary pattern as those on science, if one conjures the word capitalism in reference to its numerous problems, the rebuke from true believers commonly will be that you must stand for some oppressive system that eclipses the oppression of capitalism. Usually the words Marxism, communism will be mentioned, and some mention of a genocidal tyrant in a foreign land will be bandied about with extremely loose definitions and little context.
So too when science is critiqued: the pre-programmed reaction is that the critiquer must be anti-science, a Luddite, and somewhere in the rebuttal they’ll say something about a return to the stone age and cave dwelling. The reactions are so similar it becomes obvious that those ideas in their heads are typically not their own. They were heard somewhere else and accepted in an unthinking manner as a smug reaction that shuts down open dialogue. Another common rebuttal of scientific critique is to mention how the person offering dissent is using some form of technology in their life, thus making them ironic fools that can easily be dismissed; as if they are supposed to broadcast their ideas from a lean-to in the jungle with smoke signals to have a valid stance.
The act of mechanically reducing arguments is in itself an act of ignorance. Science isn’t supposed to ignore what is inconvenient to existing models, but it’s undeniable that is exactly what it has always done as an industry. The idea that science is an industry befuddles the average schmoe, since it contradicts most everything they’ve been fed. Science under capitalism acts as an industry and suffers from all the baggage that comes in capitalist systems. It’s an industry and tool for power to comprehensively dominate.
Technology is commonly looked at purely in terms of what is gained by it, which arguably is vastly overstated; rarely considered is what has been taken away socially by the advent of new technologies. We may have an endless supply of streaming music on demand, but music itself has become oversaturated to the point of losing significance it once had, and this is true of all forms of media; images, writing, art – all of it reduced to the next thing to consume. The technology itself is built with planned obsolescence in mind: it’s essentially disposable in the face of spurious cultural progress, and thus the past too is disposable… perpetually hurtling towards tomorrow 2.0, always promising better, yet better never seems to arrive.
Technology has a dark side to it like every other consumerist product. What goes unseen by the mass of eager consumers and proponents of scientism are the lives wasted in repetitive labor in drab factories where seeing sunshine becomes a special treat. The difference between prison and factory labor under wage labor which brings all these devices to American soil is minimal. The main difference being that you can technically quit that job and go to another job, but when the conditions in the next job available are likely to be no better than the previous, it harkens back to the old idea of enclosure where power removes other viable options so there is little ability to escape and what becomes normalized are merely a hundred shades of awful which as a supposedly free person you’re free to choose between.
We ask any American, are you willing to work under the conditions that are all too common in Asian factories just so you can get the next iteration of tech? Consider checking out the video below before answering.
And what value are we actually receiving from this technology? Low quality entertainment on demand, the ability to be tracked by your employer and potentially fired for being somewhere on your off time that your employer doesn’t approve of, as just recently happened in Florida. Or a range of voyeurism eliciting a bevy of cheap thrills.
People have become addicted to mental laziness while technology creates in actuality more labor and resources to maintain, along with more control and centralization of power. Since science primarily derives its funding from the same sources of power, the areas it focuses its research upon tend to primarily benefit the powerful. Technologies that might lead to decentralization of social power or may prove to encumber areas of profit are pushed to the side and disregarded.
Take for instance industrial agriculture; there is no reason food must be grown in this manner, and it’s tremendously destructive to life and requires massive energy inputs to create fertilizers and distribution methods. As opposed to food forests which up until recently wasn’t a term known at all in the public lexicon. Other examples are the suppression of psychedelics, marijuana, and electric street cars. At times very simple things have been pushed to the side to make way for more labor-intensive practices that prove both profitable and allow for power to coalesce for a certain class of people while disempowering a far greater number of people.
For most every desired result there are multiple pathways to resolving issues, but the thing we have come to know as science asserts there is only a narrow range of solutions that invariably will involve greater dependence on centralized social power. What receives funding for science has little tie-in to what actually benefits people’s lives in any substantial way.
The space program is arguably one of the most difficult to justify expenditures of US resources. As many 
are aware, NASA recently launched Artemis to go back to the moon and even publications completely in the tank for science like Scientific American couldn’t make it through an article without questioning – Why? As they note here:
“But the rationale behind the program, which is estimated to eat more than $90 billion of taxpayer money by the end of 2025, is hazy at best. Why, experts wonder, are we returning humans to the lunar surface? Is it for the sake of science? Is it for the sake of national pride? Or to satisfy an innate human longing for new horizons?
“Pursuing the principles of ‘science’ and ‘exploration’ is wonderful and noble,” Bimm says. But he adds, the Artemis program as envisioned ‘reminds me of [British explorer George] Mallory saying he climbed [Mount] Everest ‘because it’s there.’ Which was a b.s. nonanswer.”
Ninety billion dollars to go to the moon? It’s difficult to concoct any reason why this amount needs to be spent on a program that has virtually no benefit to humans or life on this planet, especially when basic needs are going unmet. This is a clear example of the arrogance coming from centralized power that pretends to know the needs of the people while continually displaying a disregard for pragmatic empathy. A rocket to the moon for no good reason? Sure, why not. A pillow for an elderly person on the street? Too much to ask.
The main funder of science in this country, of course, is the military industrial complex. With an outlay of over 850 billion dollars per year, the Pentagon doles out absurd amounts of cash to the most dangerous, destructive, soul-crushing, and frankly ridiculous weapons and research programs which, taken as a whole, cannot be said by any meaningful metric to be improving society. For every “good” invention connected with military research like transistors, the internet, and email, there are hundreds of gadgets and innovations built to hasten our collective demise. And the people directing the flow of what gets prioritized and which technology doesn’t do not seem to have a firm grasp on humanity’s core material and spiritual needs.
This kind of spending does so little for so few, serving primarily as a sacrament to the gods of Scientism. Priests of the cult must show their undying faith that more use of technology will lead to their utopian dreams of implication-free resource extraction somehow leading to perennial abundance, full domination over nature, and control of unwanted human behaviors, which constitute any behavior that isn’t congruent to what those in power desire.
Further, entirely unaddressed is the full ecological impact it takes to engage in a senseless competitive chase to sport the world’s largest rocket boner. The lack of stewardship or basic priorities among the people and systems allocating these resources defies any rational explanation amounting to the promotion of raw scientism.There is a pervasive lie that exists in this culture, that says objectivity is possible and we are told that this supposed lack of bias is quite limited in our government institutions, academia, and science. The reality is that almost no one who sits in these institutions stemming from nation states has an ability to be even slightly objective. They very much have agendas, and a narrow outlook that falls in line with bringing those agendas to fruition. It runs all the way through US policy.
What science can never be is a panacea for every problem of humankind, and earthlings more broadly. It is never stated so by professional scientists. By the implicit and subconscious meanings are there- science, technology, and progress will take us to Mars, ignore our material shackles and spend time in the VR/AR “metaverse”, cryogenically freeze our bodies to be reanimated later, live forever by uploading our consciousness to a computer, etc.
By quantifying everything science has deliberately made the world a colder place, precisely because it needs to freeze objects, time, and space in amber in order to amass data for models that only work within the tiny parameters given. Yet still, subjective experiences, aesthetics, art, the creation of the universe, how life first formed on Earth, the hard problem of consciousness, and many other questions about our reality remain a mystery, and most likely always will.
The fraud seems to start from the top down in most all cases. After the top is corrupted even if the people below are honest, the people lower in the hierarchy have an assumed trust which is defined from the hierarchy above. It’s the same deal how the US can launch completely unjustified military occupations and yet some people in that military can be honest underneath that malevolent corruption; they’ve just been fed a lie somewhere that became assumed and they never questioned.
It seems our society largely suffers from fragmented perceptions regarding the nature of this system. Many hold onto specific ideas sold to the public which aren’t integrated with the entire context of the social dynamics at play. Oftentimes we pick and choose which parts of this society we identify with, which provides grounds for legitimizing the system as a whole, not realizing overriding agendas of the powerful co-opt all that falls underneath the umbrella of the ruling hierarchy of power.
Therefore when those that believe there is no way so many people could be doctors and scientists and be in on some conspiracy to deceive the masses what they are missing is that there is no perceived conspiracy going on for most people that work in medical and scientific fields. They are simply following orders knowing that if they don’t there will be financial consequences to them and their families.
The reaction to Covid-19 being Exhibit A. The mass panic, overreaction, and fear and propaganda campaign was obviously part of some sort of conspiracy, and at the same time, most doctors were not in on it, per se, but following orders from higher-ups within their fields all the way up to the World Health Organization.
Also, lots of researchers work under nondisclosure agreements where they cannot speak out to corruption even when they see it. We can look at a real world example with the company Theranos whose CEO was sentenced to eleven years in jail for her deceptions.
At the height of their scam most of their employees worked under an NDA agreement and they worked with limited information around what other departments were doing. Thus people at the top only fully understood the scope of the deception and those at lower levels were mostly just doing what they were told. So when we look at research from Big Ag and Big Pharma we can see parallels that exist where there is an authoritarian control over the flow of information and built in penalties for people speaking out against the company.
Striking a Balance Between Desire for Knowledge and Care for the Living World
The notion of personal responsibility to fellow conscious beings to not cause undue harm cannot be casually dismissed if we really care about creating a more loving world during our time here. It’s hypocritical to say one loves flora, fauna, and care for the well-being of humanity and then go off to research, engineer, build, fund or promote organizations of people who are directly invested in dominating others through high-tech systems of threats and oppression.
These chosen systems of industrial development with a focus on coalescing power and resources in the name of creating endless growth are nothing more than the material expressions of a thinly-veiled desire for our egos to endlessly grow, while creating more volatile and unsustainable centralized socioeconomic systems. The product of our hierarchies and lust for more are at all times negatively impacting every ecosystem on Earth, as seen by the extreme loss of biodiversity that science itself is measuring while being complicit in accelerating at the same time.
The industry of science could stand to learn some basics in how to do unto others as you’d have done unto yourself. For if someone was engineering your personal demise from a distance, not a single person would take that well; yet there are still many who don’t mind helping systems that are doing just that to other people, for example like people working at some positions in universities, or anything having to do with the military industrial complex. They almost all rationalize their actions under the premise of contributing science and technology, as if they were innately good without question while actively enhancing the powers of empire.
However, simply because there is someone willing to offer a reward is not a justifiable reason to serve dark intentions, and the industry of science seems to have little awareness of who they serve, which borders on intentional ignorance on a collective level. As thematically noted over two hundred years ago in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, just because you can theoretically do something, doesn’t mean you should.
The Dark Arts of Modern Tech
Arguably the most vital portion of tech that’s heavily relied upon today to bring the techno-dystopia into reality is the microprocessor. Manufacturing the microprocessor though takes destroying considerable amounts of land and water resources. From the mining, to the industries of power distribution, road construction, the automobile industry, to landfills and waterways where toxic materials are dumped. As a small article from Scientific American mentions that the process of making microchips involves massive levels of pollution: “Of particular note are the thousands of potentially toxic chemicals used in the manufacturing process.”
What are all these computers doing now? How much processing power do we need? If humans were able to develop the technology of living in peace with one another they could stop dumping trillions into military research and production. Then if they could agree to place trust in their local relationships instead of trust in money they could shut off all those computers running Ponzi schemes in financial markets and all those computers doing all that money counting. The efficiency of all this tech has been almost exclusively built to increase the power of the dominator; shifting the money system into hyperdrive and strengthening the surveillance state.
The establishment loves automation because machines can’t say no. They just do what they are instructed. Whereas when you must always rely on humans they can irritatingly deny you total egotistical hegemony.
Technology is there so that power has something to rely upon that will never be able to revolt. Computers won’t unionize or have an ethical problem with how they are being used, nor will they raise a stink if you’re trying to do something incredibly dangerous that shouldn’t be done at all. Technologies chosen are no coincidence, the tech we see before us today is a direct outgrowth of the ideas at the heart of dominators and the microprocessor is their best friend.
Science Backed by Peer Review Is Fool’s Au
Peer review is supposed to be the trick that decides whose research holds weight and whose does not by way of developing a consensus, it’s considered to be the gold standard for greater truth in industrial science. Except there’s a problem. There are careers on the line and disagreeing with the status quo can have consequences. There’s an entire hierarchy at play, and just like everywhere else in this socioeconomic system, academia and government institutions are beholden to the whims of those providing the funding. Funders decide what kind of science to do and how it is done, it’s not an open discussion as purveyors of industrial science and technology would have you believe.
In the book The Fourth Phase of Water, a book written by scientist Gerald Pollack, one of those guys that has the PhD cred people admire, he says the following in the preface about the industry:
“Serious challenges abound throughout science. You may be unaware of these challenges, just as I had been until fairly recently, because the challenges are often kept beneath the radar. The respective establishments see little gain in exposing the chinks in their armor, so the challenges are not broadcast. Even young scientists entering their various fields may not know that their particular field’s orthodoxy is under siege.
The challenges follow a predictable pattern. Troubled by a theory’s mounting complexity and its discord with observation, a scientist will stand up and announce a problem; often that announcement will come with a replacement theory. The establishment typically responds by ignoring the challenge. This dooms most challenges to rot in the basement of obscurity. Those few challenges that do gain a following are often dealt with aggressively: the establishment dismisses the challenger with scorn and disdain, often charging the poor soul with multiple counts of lunacy. The consequence is predictable: science maintains the status quo.”
We believe this to be intentional within many fields of science. Things happen a certain way because they benefit certain people. Such is the norm in a centralized social hierarchy that is competitive and highly weaponized. This is not a system conducive to truth, yet sloganeering catch phrases like “follow the science” still hold weight with people.
We submit this Vox article for review, a very mainstream source we might add, who in a single essay functionally discredits the whole of science as a trustworthy system, but then ends each section with hopium suggesting that institutions of a dominator system can somehow be reformed while being funded by that same domination based system.
Then there is the section in the piece that is titled “Peer review is broken” – Just this section alone debunks the infallibility of science, since peer review is the gold standard for validating accurate research, and if it’s broken, which it clearly is, then how can we trust much of what we’re being told when scientists admit themselves the system they are running upon is preposterously corrupt. See also here, here and here.
So, there doesn’t seem to be a statistically significant chance of science reforming itself when, just like capitalism, it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do all along: be another tool for power to rule over people with greater precision.
It can’t be ignored that modern science disrupts social equilibrium giving supreme advantages to a class of people who deserve no help in their predatory ambitions, but science is there to supercharge the maniacs of the world and their petty aspirations. Without the priests of science fulfilling the needs of the global elites, non-hierarchical communities based on reason and the free-flow of information could more easily flourish.
Science and technology should be of universal benefit to all life, yet the manner of thinking in which tech is brought to market primarily benefits the wealthy while causing new problems to arise with every scientific fix. This is because the minds that have brought us dominator culture are the same minds that have decided which avenues of thought pursue with the use of science. They have little regard for the harm they cause and simply focus on what serves those at the top of the social hierarchy.
By flipping over the money-changers table and creating a socioeconomic system that doesn’t depend on the profit motive, “Science” as an industrial-backed venture could recede into the background and not fully dominate humanities’ attention and labor. This would allow space for an efflorescence of balanced systems-based, ecological, and holistic sciences to rise in a new age, an age that seems impossibly out of reach from the current status quo, yet is possible somewhere down the line if we dare to understand the full spectrum of our actions and not simply be blind cheerleaders for every supposed technological marvel thrown our way.
