Masters of Reality

Masters of Reality - Steve Rushton

Nudge Nudge

– facebook is participatory surveillance

– digital economy transforms the goals of a corporation into the belief you are making personal choices

- 17th century revolutions enabled a time when governments became super concerned with citizen welfare

- paradoxically when the state is the most violent it becomes the most concerned about citizenry

- human happiness became a political object

- the validity of the state became contingent on the happiness of the citizen, where state intervention on individual behaviour becomes a primary task of the government

- state uses tools such as the valuation of individuality in the citizen in order to enforce responsibility to the state

- key difference between liberal v. neolib is trade v. competition

- key paradox in liberalism is the drive to produce 'freedom' but inherently needs controls and limitations for this to actually function

- citizens as economic units produce their own freedom, the more you produce the more free you are

- self interest/investment becomes paramount to rights and laws within the competitive environment

- the current art of governance implores citizens to self-regulate and produce improvements

Control Society

- Same mechanism that generates massive data for surveillance gives citizens the agency of freedom and creative self-expression

- emerging networked citizen learns to distrust the welfare state and prefer libertarianism through behaviour modification

- oppression and exploitation become expressions of free will and self - agency

- GDP has now become Happiness Index

- Art of politics has become market research to implant happiness

- Unhappiness therefore has become an activist struggle against the new order