Redaction

Prior iteration has been unsubverted. Responsible parties have been corrected.

The Bureaucracy of Iconography

It is a commonly-held fact that war produces economic growth, but that's pure fallacy. War depletes resources considerably faster than it produces them. While the technological development is undeniable, the infrastructure damage is equally undeniable. So what is it that causes the boom/bust periods around war? The answer lies in scarcity.

The world pulses resource between holders. Those with the least amount of resources are able to purchase the most per-resource because those with the greatest amount of resources are desperate to get rid of them at any price. Abundance breeds contempt, especially when abundance devalues the commodity.

However, an economy can't be defined within itself. It must be defined in terms of other sources, because defined within itself there is no pulsation - no resource is gained or lost by the closed system. As a consequence, there is no fluctuations that produce economic strength. And when two economic entities interact, they form one larger economic entity. In the end, there can be no economic power, not unless resources are made to disappear and, at some subsequent time, reappear.

Within a closed economic system, scarcity and plenty must be simulated. Thus, the true power of economy lies in market manipulation. How is this done? With the people. Labor is controlled by what can be purchased for what price. Prices can be fixed, either by controlling the terminal outlet for resources or by controlling the supply of the resources directly. In turn, control of the labor leads to long-term manipulations of the market - more labor in one resource means less in others. Planning for the long-term means being able to save the resources now for when they will be effective, then training large amounts of labor to produce more of that resource so that once they are ready for mass market, the market will already be flooded and people will be selling devalued product at considerable loss. The sudden disenfranchisement leads to a greater lower-level labor force that forms the backbone of the economy, and those that do succeed can produce the booms and busts of tomorrow.

Those who manipulate the markets for their own gain and at the detriment of people do so to the gain of the economic power, because without the artificiality of economic shifts and trends there is no economic growth or power, and if they are not being manipulated citizenry will have no guidance or income to be able to consume the goods that keep the market economy active and functional.

Squeeze everything you can get out of the market in order for the market to have more to squeeze from it.

The Bureaucracy of Eidolons

The fundimental purpose of meaning is to drive individuals forward to a goal. In this way, it could be said that the meaning of meaning is meaning. Thus, as found in the dictionary:

Meaning (n.): Meaning.

The end, which is to say the meaning, of our creation, which is to say our being, is defined by the context into which we are determined. Thus, we may keep to ourselves to define our reality, but in a social context reality is defined by a collective meaning determination.

Reality is collective.

This collective meaning is done by whatever media mechanisms are in place at the time - religion, law enforcement, sitcoms, really anything will do. Mass media defines the meaning and context of our being. Thus:

Media is the end of our creation.

Having determined this, it can also be concluded that in order to motivate people some form of desired end result is provided by media. The media outlet is in fact the outlet of the definition of a desired end result, the aforementioned end of our creation. Heaven is found at the end of our pursuits, and in order to ensure continual effort and motivation by the people Heaven must be maintained continually just out of reach but always within close proximity.

The meaning of media is to provide ideology.

In order to do this, champions of impossible ideals must be put forward. Models of success, achievement, and semiperfection that cannot possibly occur. If our standards are difficult to achieve, we have only to increase them slightly and incrementally until they become impossible.

The eidolon must be impossible to achieve, or it is useless.

Blochalela

Blochalela is founded. Settlement is going appropriately, and all is as ideal as one would hope. Ataraxia is fulfilled. She is presently active in the [[BROADCAST TERMINATED AT ITS SOURCE]]

The Bureaucracy of Arrogation

Hypothesis: Patterns fill our world in the spaces between the common forms of reasoning.

Ancillary Data: Computer operations exist at many tiers of abstraction. The one that you are reading this data on is actually the sixth or seventh, depending on the specific machine you are using. The original Babbage machines had only one - logic gates were the only layer of abstraction.

Then came machine codes, hexidecimal digitry to command the machines. However, interacting with the direct digital code was taxing, and so the third tier of abstraction was developed. This tier was assembly code - a direct one-to-one correlation between instructions and machine code. It was only next-to-impossible to work with.

Beyond that came many other tiers, but the breakthrough was the programming language. A single "word" in the programming language was an instruction set, reactive to inputs and outputs. It wasn't until later that people realized that compiled language programs had large (sometimes massive) amounts of unused program data. Attempts were made to streamline these programs, to remove the unused segment.

The result was failure. The "unused" segments were in fact vital to the performance and operation of the computer program. Odd "glitch" behavior was in fact the program doing as instructed. Programs developed "personalities" due to the erratic nature of their inceptions.

Correlation: In our cosmos, we have matter in various elements, the atoms and mollecules existing in various ion states. We have forces, like electromagnetism and gravity. All of these things, however, are the same thing - threads of nutral wavestate particles so small that ten billion of them could bombard your body in less than a second and result in no change of any kind to your body. These "nutrinos" and "hyperstrings" are the first layer of abstraction, the "logic gates" of the cosmos. Every step beyond, from quantum tunneling to singularity to sociology, is merely some layers of abstraction beyond this basic thing.

Extension of Concept: Sapience, in most ways, is simply the aberration of cosmic assembly code interacting at different layers of abstraction, the layer of thought being among the most abstract.

Primary Conclusion: All forces in the cosmos are manipulable by means of its "secondary patterns". Through advanced pattern recognition and manipualtion, there is no entity in the cosmos that is immutable on either a micro- or a macro-scale.

Secondary Conclusion: Sapience is not a freedom. It is a controllable thing. Such chaotic-yet-deterministic sapience comes about as a consequence of the secondary data in our nervous architecture manipulating our primary processes, producing the illusion of personality, individuality, and freedom. These items can be easily changed by the most subtle of methods.

Tertiary Conclusion: The universe can be replicated, altered in macroscale, or annihilated in its entirely by a properly-timed microscale event.

THE WILL OF DIVINITY IS CORRECTABLE.

The Bureaucracy of Margins

People are unequal, but in a society in which tyranical rule is to be avoided it is mandatory for equilibrium to be achieved between all members of the society, no matter the disparity between them. In addition, it is mandatory for a single individual to have power over the entire system, the capacity to destabilize it. Thus, equality in society is achieved through a state of perpetual instability.

The purpose of the Bureaucracy of Margins is to ensure equity between all patients of the Ataraxia Foundation. We preside over law and justice. We pass laws specifically designed to render one group or another disenfranchised in some way. In the end, every person becomes disenfranchised by the law, but each person wants what freedoms the others have. As a consequence, each person and each group develops a strict "us/them" dichotomy, no matter how false.

People attempt to defect from one group to another to enjoy freedoms, they attempt to force themselves into certain freedoms, and they lash out at anybody attempting to work towards the freedoms they already possess. In this way, equality on all levels is felt. Each group has equal disenfranchisement collateral to their condition, and each individual has the power to trigger catastrophic destabilization between forces (rioting, hate crimes, etc.). The world continues on its way not because everybody thinks they're equal, but because they know they're not and believe that this is an artificial condition.

Preservation of balance in society comes only through a process of mutually-assured marginalization.

The Bureaucracy of Vice

People don't need to belong, at least not in any absolute sense. Belonging is a transitory characteristic. What people truly need is an adversarial force, something both attractive and repulsive. It needs to be secret enough to allow for practically anybody to be a part of it, and known to the point that there is general awareness without general understanding. It must be a Devil of some kind.

The solution to this problem, the solution that gives people the force to fight against, to direct their animosity, is vice. A vice is a disapproved behavior that makes people happy. Because it makes people happy, potentially anybody could practice the given vice, and because it is disapproved, people will talk about it without having any true understanding of it. Vice is a mindset and a behavior - therefore, by understanding it a person would be tacitly approving of it.

The true beauty behind vice is that it, as a thing to be defined, can be controlled. One thing can be vice for a while, then come back into fashion in order to make room for other vices. Any given narcotic, behavior, expression, or activity can become a vice, provided it is of no great consequence to the operation of society one way or another.

Most importantly, the villification of certain behaviors or activities give people the opportunity to believe that they are becoming better. By casting off the illusory shackles of the "insidious" vice, a person feels as if they are in more control of their life, truth be where it may. Thus, people can the symptoms gain grasp and control over life without actually having it.

Provide what people hate, and they will love you.