I was recently reading in Hugh Nibley's book The World of the Jaredites. For those who don't know him, he was a brilliant, extraordinarily well-read LDS scholar.
In talking about the conspiratorial structures one encounters in Asiatic cultures and specifically the Jaredites, an ancient Book of Mormon culture he believed to be both historically real and also Asiatic, he said this:
"[T]he key to control over one's fellow men, i.e., to power and gain, lies in three things: secrecy, organization, and freedom from moral scruples, especially from squeamishness in the matter of shedding blood."
Let's consider these three items in light of current trends and new, not-always-widely-publicized technology.
1) Secrecy has been around since there were two people to share a secret. Nothing new there as far as human nature. But technology has changed; we can write programs to hide and decode secret messages in text (when existing languages get boring, we can even invent new ones!), images, sound files, song lyrics, data headers and artifacts, etc. and transmit them in many different ways. The diversity of mechanisms to share secrets has never been so large as it is now.
To end secret combinations, one logically targets secrecy. Go cryptography experts who use their talents to do good!
The research done in the field of neuromarketing can also be used to see what people prefer deep down. Maybe only God could look on the heart two thousand years ago, but modern technology can allow us to get a much better photo of the heart's outlines than human societies used to be able to capture.
2) Organizations have also been around forever. We start out being born into families.
Modern technology allows organizations and networks to develop and thrive between people who would never meet in real life.
Got an ex-wife you want to harass over the internet? Find someone, or more likely some bot-providing programmer, on a "dark" web to do it for you while you're super busy with other things and can look uninvolved. (Sounds improbable? Hmmm, you hang out with a nicer crowd than I have.)
Modern technology can also be used to track down these connections and networks, though. It's only a matter of time till law enforcement realizes how easy the "smart" criminals are to catch and have convicting evidence on, due to the criminals' heavy reliance on the internets. If there's not a quiet market already for scrubbing one's tech activity, there certainly will be.
3) Lastly, lack of squeamishness. That's a tough one because we are currently dealing with a world where hearts have been being hardened.
There is a temporary feeling of superiority that comes from feeling above taboos. I think it's a sad, ultimately doomed way to feel good, for it inevitably ends with everyone else (even other taboo-breakers) disliking you if you go too far. Those taboos developed for a reason; either nature has selected for them or God put them there, but they are like kite strings that hold us aloft--cut them, and one plummets after an initial upward rush.
Algorithms and technology influence what we see and hear and thus what we think. Our feelings get manipulated regularly to drive us to make decisions in the marketplace, at the ballot box, with respect to social trends, etc.
I don't think we can end algorithmic manipulation of us. But I think we can harness it for good. Most people hate, absolutely hate, being told what to do. But they will obey their paid fitness coaches because they want the results of heeding them.
Organizations and people should be up front about how they manipulate people and let them choose for themselves whether they want that technology used on them. (And vague "terms and conditions" aren't what I am talking about.) I want to be able to find services that help me be more creative (without them being creative instead of me), a better cook, more perceptive in my interactions with others (again, without doing it all for me), less addicted to harmful behaviors and prejudices, and so forth.
Help me achieve the goals that bring me actual satisfaction, and I will support you in return. I want to see a truly interdependent marketplace of goods and services instead of the one we have now that is too dependent on using each other--maximizing ignorance in order to do so--in exploitative ways.
What if medical care actually cured? What if dating sites helped people find someone they're going to stay with instead of being a repeat client in five years? What if churches were less divisive and heeded Jesus's call to unity? What if life insurance companies didn't reap financial benefit from other companies' clients suffering harm? What if plowshare manufacturing were prioritized over weaponry? What if people were taught how to live peacefully with each other instead of being "radicalized" via tech?
I think we are in a messy time right now where some early developers of new technology decided to use it foremost to make money rather than sharing it publicly. Nothing wrong with earning money honestly, but as so often happens, dishonesty existed side-by-side with honesty and has temporarily won out. Nobody has more to gain from non-disclosure than do criminals.
I hope we get through this time to a brighter future.
[Update 5/11/2025: Another point Nibley makes is that Asiatic and Jaredite wars both tend to be ones of annihilation, often mutual.
The insane wars of the Jaredite chiefs ended in the complete annihilation of both sides, with the kings the last to go. The same thing had almost happened earlier in the days of Akish, when a civil war between him and his sons reduced the population to thirty....This all seems improbable to us, but two circumstances peculiar to Asiatic warfare explain why the phenomenon is by no means without parallel: (1) Since every war is strictly a personal contest between kings, the battle must continue until one of the kings falls or is taken. (2) And yet things are so arranged that the king must be the very last to fall, the whole army existing for the sole purpose of defending his person. This is clearly seen in the game of chess, in which all pieces are expendable except the king, who can never be taken.
To me, this means we should do all we can to prevent having unequal strata of governance, since the people at the top will "sacrifice" others to preserve their lives and positions.
(I put sacrifice in quotes here because tossing a loved one off a cliff, a la Thanos in the recent Marvel movies, is what I call murder, not the "sacrifice" he claims it was. Thanos is wrong to say he loved his foster child when he was willing to use her as a pawn to get something else. Love goes deeper than the mere fondness he exhibits. Love includes a desire to promote the well-being of the beloved person.)
Government "by the people" as an egalitarian society is a goal we should seek if only for survival, although it has much else to recommend it. :)
The Jaredites' final battle is interesting in that the two opposing sides roughly kept balanced numbers with each other as they fought to the death, kind of like a Frisbee or flying saucer working to stay horizontal as it spins into an incinerator. What philosophies are so convincing that people will forfeit their own futures to be able to kill others? Whatever the philosophies are, they are foreign to the ideals and truths Jesus taught and do not bring happiness, so I think most people reject them.]
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