“[T]he political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The [Progressives and Libertarians are always] dissatisfied with [any Regime]; the Anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the [Third Place] than [the Shopping Mall] – the Philosopher, the Artist, the Believer.”

[L]aw and Custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The Anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The State will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him. In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation.”

[I] begin with the respect that the Anarch shows towards the rules. Respectare as an intensive of respicere means: ‘to look back, to think over, to take into account.’ These are traffic rules [in the everyday school life of the Student Body]. The Anarchist resembles a pedestrian who refuses to acknowledge them and is promptly run down [and gets the bullet]. Even a passport check [at airports and seaports] is disastrous for him. ‘I never saw a cheerful end,’ as far back as I can look into history. In contrast, I would assume that men who were blessed with happiness – Sulla, for example – were Anarchs in disguise.”

–Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil, ca. 1977

Heideggerian Being-Towards-Death: Dead-Hand Feedback Loop (DHFL)

The metaphysics behind the 1970s technical term “Afterschool Special,” as a Household Appliance, implies potential compatibility with specific Equipmentalities, Dual-Purpose Technologies, Manual-Shift Transmissions, and the Total Educational Effort of the Socialist Student Economy (SSE). Like the “Shopping Mall,” the “Afterschool Special” operates differently, otherwise the practicality and feasibility of Afterschool Specials as a ding an sich would have become more obvious to younger generations, especially the “Millennials” and “Generation Z.”  

• For Production for Profit/Utility, the Reagan Revolution later unveiled the concept of the “Very Special Episode,” which later became in the 1980s commonplace, together with its ubiquitous “Viewer Discretion Advised” or “Parental Discretion Advised,” warning viewers that the Afterschool Special will be exploring controversial social topics whose implications may or may not be ‘detrimental’ to the ideological aims of Neoliberalism.
• For Production for Dasein, the potential is there for the Afterschool Special to have elements of Aesopian Language and Cultural Imperialism installed. Masking a Message’s Marker with its corresponding Screen is reserved for amateurs as far as the State-Builders and Nation-Builders are concerned.

Thus, I have recently devised the Dead-Hand Feedback Loop (DHFL) for State-Builders and Nation-Builders to avoid being identified (or deliberately misidentified), manipulating Carl Schmitt’s Friend-Enemy Distinction to enhance the overall performance of Political-Economic Crossdressing. The technical abbreviation ‘DHFL’ fits the definition of State-Builders and Nation-Builders of recontextualizing and reinterpreting the plots, themes, characters, narratives, plot devices, clichés and tropes of a designated Afterschool Program for the Total Educational Effort. Unlike Postmodernism’s Pastiches, the Afterschool Program must always be left unchanged, unaltered and uncensored for the SSE as part of the Political-Economic Crossdressing.

Our Nation-Builders begin by choosing a Relevant and Referential Work of Art, leaving everything such as its corresponding Life-Themes, Artform and Cassandra untouched for the Student Body and Student Government to Field-Strip. While the DHFL treats “Non-Fiction” and “Fiction” as its own Manual Shift Transmission for Dual-Purpose Technology applications, a wide array of media such as novels, poems, national epics, television shows, operas or stage plays, movies, songs, video games or other media that can be easily procured by the Student Body and Student Government at the Third Place. Whatever is chosen by the Reconstruction Command is listed on the One-Time Pad as the “Personal Discretionary Autopsy” (PDA).

Every PDA will include the DHFL’s Work of Art, Life-Theme, Artform, Cassandra Coefficient, a Field-Strip, Solidarity Preference and Solidarity Trap!

1. Where there is a “Work of Art,” there is the DHFL’s Personal Discretionary Autopsy.
2. Where there is a “Life-Theme,” there is the DHFL’s Death-Theme.
3. Where there is a “Artform,” there is the DHFL’s Equipmentality.
4. Where there is a “Cassandra Coefficient,” there is the Nation-Builders’ DHFL’s Sophia Variable, acting as the Screen for the Marker, which should include the “Field-Strip,” “Solidarity Preference” and “Solidarity Trap.”
5. Where there is a “Field-Strip,” there is the Hanged Man. To “Field-Strip the Hanged Man” is to Perform an Excision on the “Solidarity Preference” and the “Solidarity Trap.”
6. Where there is a “Solidarity Preference,” there is the Signaling of Uncanniness.
7. Where there is a Solidarity Trap,” there is Signaling of Conscience.

The Signaling of Uncanniness acts as the Message, instructing the Student Government Body about the ideological vulnerabilities of the OECD-Type Economy.

The Student Government then proceeds to relay the Signaling of Conscience for the Student Body, giving the Socialist Student Economy to a limited window of opportunities to conduct the Dark Arts of Weltanschauungskrieg and Finanzkrieg on the OECD-Type Student Economy.

“[For certain ideologies], a high scientific standard of proof cannot be met in time to act. [They] cannot be accurately created, simulated, and repeated [in an ethical and moral manner within the laws and customs of the Total Educational Effort]. To avoid the disaster, it may be necessary to abandon the normal protocol of waiting for all the evidence to be in and act instead on incomplete data and early indications.

[P]eople with something to lose from the revelation of a risk, or from the solutions, may criticize Cassandras for illegitimate reasons based on this self-interest. [Certain] experts in a [given] field may instinctively react badly to the [Quality of Arbeit from] a Cassandra if the new investigation unseats something that they had earlier developed or championed themselves. Some experts react negatively out of simple jealousy that another expert, or worse, an outsider, got there first or is getting a lot of publicity.

Some ideas, once exposed to peer review, gain general expert acceptance but are still heavily assailed by non-experts, many of whom may have a vested interest either in keeping things as they are or otherwise not acting to prevent or mitigate the disaster. If the vocal critics are not experts in the [given ideology in question] and don’t argue on the basis of relevant data, there is cause for concern.

[Try to minimize Heuristics to when it is absolutely necessary.] The problem with Heuristics is that they tend to become Cognitive Biases, inaccurate prejudices against one decision or one person versus the alternative. One form of bias is when our ancient brain gives preference to subjective points of view over rational and objective facts. Some of the characteristics we discussed above are examples of these mental shortcuts.

[M]any of our Cassandras were ignored because they weren’t considered personally compelling by decision makers. There was something ‘wrong’ with them, and this subjective judgment biased decision makers against looking more closely at the Cassandras’ evidence. The analysts at the SEC made a biased snap judgment about Harry Markopolos. Based on the fervor of Markopolos’s argument, his paranoid demeanor, and the fact that he worked for a Madoff competitor, he was immediately assessed by SEC personnel as self-interested, slightly unhinged, and ultimately not trustworthy. They ignored his well-evidenced complaint, in part because of a subjective personal bias that blinded them to the objective, data-driven proof that Bernie Madoff had stolen billions of dollars. Respect for authority is another heuristic. Trust in hierarchy can interfere with accurate decision making and become a bias. In the Bernie Madoff example, it prevented the junior employees at the SEC from thoroughly investigating a highly respected denizen of the business community.”

-Richard Alan Clarke and R. P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes, ca. 2017

Categories: Blog Post

Tags: ARPLAN, Cassandra Coefficient, Compendium, Economics, Finance, German Reich, Mary Perkins Ryan, Pan-Germanic Socialism, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, SMP, Socialist Finance, Socialist Student Economy, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Johann Neumann, United States, Work-Standard