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One may view every scientific advance as a means towards approximating and recreating the infantile environment of omnipotence.  When the stimulus of hunger, with its accompanying representation in thought and feeling, is sated by a caring parent, the association is then made between that complex of sensation and ideation and the ensuing gratification. In other words, the wish to be fed is sufficient in and of itself to ensure that feeding takes place: the wish alone makes it happen and the child is godlike in his or her power.

Therefore every step in humankind’s mastery of the physical and natural world brings us one step closer to that ideal of effortless supremacy. It follows that science over the ages has become revered for the power it confers rather than the knowledge it reveals.  Knowledge for knowledge’s sake, knowledge with little or no practical value, is generally ignored or dismissed or, if taken up, is taken up because it provides the illusion of achievement or control, the way a neatly solved riddle may give satisfaction.

I write this as a kind of preface to some general observations about the exercise of power, particularly in groups and by so-called leaders, and in the context of a live-action demonstration, thanks to Covid, of governmental manipulation at a scale unprecedented in human history.   I write so that we who wish to resist propaganda and phoney narratives and the attempts to deny us our livelihoods and, indeed, our very lives, by measures imposed to ‘keep us safe’ may better learn, the better to oppose these measures.

First, those in power – individuals or groups – never willingly give their power up. The entire history of Western law is a record of the struggle of the weak who, by aggregating, sought protection from those who have ruled over them in the form of justice, the Magna Carta being a principal example, and the Declaration of Independence of the United States representing a culmination.

Second, those in power seek relentlessly to augment their power. If the weak besiege them with legal redress they will attempt to subvert the judiciary and, if possible, work outside the law to achieve their ends. For those in power the law works only when it works for their own ends.

Third, the astonishing advances in the concentration of technological force via computerization have allowed for an immense increase in the facility of exercising power. In short, it has never been easier for the ‘elite’ few to control the many.

Fourth, the endpoint of political State power is complete control over its population of underlings.  We have had a taste of this with the coordinated subjugation of the world under the pretext of protecting us from Covid –  lockdowns, distancing, masking, mandatory inoculations, the destruction of small businesses and individual lives, and the rending of the very social fabric that makes life worth living. We see it in even starker nakedness in the form of the social credit system and the Total Surveillance State exercised by Chinese authorities over its citizenry.

Fifth, digitization is innately a form of dehumanization. We have long been accustomed to regard Capitalism as the system wherein human beings have been rendered into dollars and cents, as it were. However our now-universal digital culture, in its essence, translates complexity into on-off states and seeks to reduce human choice to a sequence of multiple digital ‘decisions’ – left or right, up or down, yes or no, plus or minus.

Sixth, the Power Elite will employ every method of persuasion to manipulate its subjects – with every degree of truth and deception, every sophisticated lure, with fear, covert and overt threats, and with physical force.

Seventh, with every technocratic/scientific advance the distance between thought and action, between wish and deed, is lessened.

Eight, every scientific advance is appropriated by those in power to enhance their power.

The Covid era has brought the machinations of the Power Cartel into relief, and they have included deceitful diagnostic tests, the suppression of truthful information about ‘vaccines’, the silencing of physicians who attempted to conduct themselves in accordance with the basic principles of Medicine, the propagation of fear through traditional media outlets that have functioned as propaganda mouthpieces, the depredation of human liberty under cover of a so-called health emergency, and even outright large-scale murder, the details of which – and much more – are superbly delineated by Michel Chossudovsky in his recent book The Worldwide Corona Crisis.

We cannot and should not expect those in power to act lawfully or to respond to appeals of conscience.

Those in power today quite openly aspire to immortality and omnipotence, and this leads me to what I believe is the most pressing practical and philosophical question of our time:

If no further scientific or technological advances could be made; if, in fact, humanity were stuck with only the knowledge and tools at its disposal today; if nothing new could be discovered; if no novel use of technological power could arise – what would then occur?

Might the renunciation of godlike ambitions result in a fairer and more just world?

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.