Randomness and Totalitarianism
A herded people are more predictable than individuals left to their own devices.
Thoughts…
The best thing to me, when it comes to finding ideas, is not finding new and exciting ones. It is about finding its retelling in places you never expected or planned. That feeling is paradise. And that was how I felt when I read this quote from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:
“While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.”
Arthur Conan Doyle; The Sign of the Four
One such ruling idea is that every individual human with their thoughts, actions, and behaviors poses a problem to totalitarian regimes. This idea has been stated in various ways and forms by different authors across time. And that, people, is how I know that I am in good company.
The same idea, as told by a physicist is common:
Think how hard physics would be if particles could think
Murray Gell-Mann
And as described by Aldous Huxley (easily one of my favorite essayists):
“In a word, the laws of single molecules are entirely different from the laws of the gases they constitute. Something of the same kind is true of individuals and societies. In groups consisting of large numbers of human individuals, certain regularities can be detected and certain sociological laws can be formulated. Because of the relatively small size of even the most considerable human groups, and because of the enormous differences, congenital and acquired, between individual and individual, these regularities have numerous exceptions and these sociological laws are rather inexact…Gas laws are not the same as the laws governing the particles within the gas.”
Aldous Huxley; Variations on a Philosopher.
Think again why every dystopian fiction author integrates surveillance technology into their narration to describe what horrific future we may be walking into. They may have varying themes, different imaginations, and different settings. But intuitively, these authors understand that randomised human nature is a problem. To solve that problem, man must be under consistently watchful eyes. Those eyes, all-knowing, can then herd people and treat them as one pathetic group and direct how they must live.
A herded people are more predictable than individuals left to their own devices. That’s why then when confronted with a security crisis, the first thing a sane government has to do is reduce the randomness involved.
Summarily, all you sometimes need to introduce chaos is one person who brings a level of variation to the existing model and activity that you have going for you. This then is why totalitarian governments use a lot of surveillance: to strike fear in the heart of their citizens, to monitor their every move and counter it as soon as they fall out of line, and to enforce a schedule that eliminates all randomness from the aggregate citizen life and make control possible. Oh, and to treat everyone as a number tag and not a person.
Lastly, C.S Lewis said:
“On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.”
Human randomness is the Achilles heel of a totalitarian regime. Stay buzzing.
Here is your picture for the week:
Have a buzzing week.