I am Security
I am security. I am your God. My high priesthood is the police and army, two wings of the same angelic bird of peace, which ye know as the force. The police impose order on that within the borders of the state, the army, beyond. They both employ the same weapons, and the same personnel, they have the same structure, and the same priorities, they use the same techniques and rely on the same totalising logic. Each blendeth into the other, and into all the other institutions of my system, to produce the same single, monolithic, instrument of dominion, directed towards the one enemy, the one devil; nature, and its sinful manifestation, uncivilised human nature.
The people think ‘the police’ is a group of men and women employed by the state to fight crime and enforce laws. This is not true and never has been. From the beginning of its formation, at the end of the feudal period, when masterless villeins threatened civilised society, through the long period of mass theft, when common land was stolen from the people, who were then forced by the police to obtain their subsistence through wage slavery (‘theft’ came to mean taking what had once been a customary, common resource1), right up to the creation of a professional police force, in the nineteenth century, when the powers of authority had to be distributed through the institutions of modernity, throughout all this time, right up to the present day, the principal task of the force has been, and is, to maintain order. Law, like justice, has always been, and will ever be, a distant and dispensable afterthought. The police can torture, kill,2 rape and ruin, all with impunity. The police can break the law at will — how could they do their job if they couldn’t? The police and the army can do whatever needs to be done to maintain order, both public order, the regulation of the body, and private order, the regulation of the soul.
If ever a conflict betwixt justice and order ariseth, verily, order shall triumph. Always. You must never be disorderly, or unruly, or indecent.3 These are the Three Cardinal Sins which the force is tasked to discipline and punish, for naught in this perfect world, this second Eden, this shining Jerusalem, naught can function, naught can work, naught can be manufactured or managed, without complete order, complete rule (along with complete obedience to that rule) and complete decency. This is why the most ordered, obedient and decent people, your princes and priests and managers, do not interest the force as much as you do, the people. When you kill your fellows, cheat the system, avoid work, steal to live, riot or rebel, it is called ‘crime’. When your betters do so, it is an accident, or a mistake or it is passed over in silence. Your idleness is feckless, theirs is well-earnt rest. Your fraud is fiendish, theirs is regulatory failure. Your murder is evil and mad, theirs is defence of the realm. Hear, o Israel.
The worst crime you can commit however, the crime of crimes, under which all other crimes are but consequence and example, is The Supreme Sin of defection. Those who seek to live apart from the system, physically or psychologically, are the deepest and gravest threat to order. They are4 cultists, perverts, failures and morally depraved, mentally-ill threats to The Supreme Virtue of security, which is, in turn, the only means by which to manufacture The Supreme Commodity of security, which then is required in order to reach me, The Supreme Truth of Security. This is The Holy Trinity of Security, Security as Thing, Truth and Virtue. It may not, like the trinity it replaced, make any sense, but it is the only way to justify and impose the complicity of the pacified for order. And, behold, it is good.
So the world must fear and hate defection as a state from which all sins emerge. And the world must subject all activities which promote defection to stern regulation. And the world must impose work (or property) on all who seek to do nothing. And even though hundreds of thousands of properties stand vacant, man must never, ever be permitted to live in them rent-free. And even though schooled education is a spirit-crushing exercise in forced cretinisation, man must never, ever, be permitted to live comfortably without it. And even though man has infinitely more intelligence than the system which governs him, he cannot be permitted to medicate himself, or to travel, or to get married, or to have children, or to own a property or even to die without official permission.
St. Hegel, one of our dearest prophets, saith that property and capital are inherently insecure, unstable and in need of force to protect them. ‘What the police provideth for is an external order and arrangement for Protection and Security.’ And St. Hobbes, who spoke so truly, and justly, saith, ‘the miserable condition of Warre… is necessarily consequent to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of their Covenants, and observation of those Lawes of Nature’. And St. Paul, who worshipped authority above all things, saith, ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation’.5
Yea, verily, only authority can guarantee perfect security, which is perfect love, for what else is love but constant protection, constant care, never allowing the object of one’s love to fail, to be hurt, to feel pain? Security is ensuring your children are never alone, never outside, never bored and never in any kind of danger; for how else will they grow to be emotionally stable and empathically aware? Security is property — for how can you feel safe unless you own something? — and the rights of man built on private ownership — for how can you own something without law to guarantee it? Security is perfect health, forever; for what else is health but constant, cast-iron protection from contamination and dissolution? Security is to live in a therapeutic society, in which all personal problems have become bureaucratic artefacts, ‘issues’ (‘phobias’, ‘traumas’, ‘disorders’ and other mental ‘illnesses’), that psychocratic managers — mind police — can relieve us of the pain and responsibility of having to face ourselves. Security is, as St. Bentham, St. Hume and St. Paine all recognised, complete freedom; for how can you be free unless you, and all the things you own, are undisturbed and protected from the hateful sins we call crime, sickness and poverty?
But do not think that we wish to do away with crime, sickness and poverty, for they are a necessary conditions of civil society. What else can justify security and law and rights, but crime? And why else would we wield total power over the mind and body, were it not for sickness? And who else would do the work of the rich, if the poor did not exist? For I tell you, there is no solution to crime, sickness and poverty, and there must be no solution to them. We must constantly intervene in the life of the criminal, the sick and the poor, not to do away with them, but so that the system might be protected from them, from their bitterness and rebellious resentment which, amassed into a rabble, continually threaten the system and all the God-fearing, security-loving people in it.
Great artists, those deranged and disordered menaces that society, in its wanton sentimentality, still sometimes honours, have all this the other way round. These wicked men and witches teach that security is not man’s finest goal, but, as the arch-deceiver William Shakespeare wrote, his ‘chiefest enemy.’6 These are the words of a devil, a mad man. The word security comes from sine cura, to be without care, without pain, grief, loss, uncertainty and death; and who but a madman would welcome such things? Who would welcome insecurity? Uncertainty? Loss? Death? Only the depraved. Hear me man. Hear me woman. Do not listen to false prophets who celebrate uncertainty, risk and madness, for they will lead you into the clutches of satan. Always remember that to be released from my order is enter into the bedlam of nature, the terrifying insanity of freedom,7 the dangerous chaos of anarchy.
Do not listen to Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, who taught that perfect security is a perfect prison. Do not listen to Arthur Schopenhauer or Rene Guenon who taught that the security man seeks is a house of cards built on a rational mind that has all the solidity and certainty of a morning mist. Do not listen to Fyodor Dostoevksy, who taught that man would rather go mad than accept a rational order, and a dependable world;
You can shower upon him all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness so that there'll be nothing to be seen but the bubbles rising to the surface of his bliss, give him such economic security that he won't have anything to do but sleep, nibble at cakes, and worry about keeping world history flowing-and even then, out of sheer spite and in gratitude, man will play a dirty trick on you. He’ll even risk his cake for the sake of the most glaring stupidity, for the most economically unsound nonsense, just to inject into all the soundness and sense surrounding him some of his own disastrous, lethal fancies. What he wants to preserve is precisely his noxious fancies and vulgar trivialities, if only to assure himself that men are still men (as if that were so important) and not piano keys simply responding to the laws of nature. Man is somehow averse to the idea of being unable to desire unless this desire happens to figure on his timetable at that moment.
But even if man was nothing but a piano key, even if this could be demonstrated to him mathematically-even then, he wouldn't come to his senses but would pull some trick out of sheer ingratitude, just to make his point. And if he didn’t have them on hand, he would devise the means of destruction, chaos, and all kinds of suffering to get his way. For instance, he’d swear loud enough for the whole world to hear-swearing is man’s prerogative, setting him apart from the other animals-and maybe his swearing alone would get him what he wanted, that is, it’d prove to him that he’s a man and not a piano key.
Now, you may say that this too can be calculated in advance and entered on the timetable-chaos, swearing, and all-and that the very possibility of such a calculation would prevent it, so that sanity would prevail. Oh no! In that case man would go insane on purpose, just to be immune from reason.8
Stop thine ears! This is fallacy and poison and sophistry and madness and death. Man steps upon reason to reach up to confidence, and from confidence to reach up to me, security, and then a world of happiness, abundance and sanity spreads out before him, the kingdom of safety, that no man can refuse and no man can deny. Think of all the happy, satisfied and sane men in the world, the successful, the brilliant, the exalted. They have nothing to hide, no darkness in their souls, all is light for the secure in heart, is it not?
And heed not those who will tell you that the things of the mind, its subjects and objects, are created by the mind, for these false teachers will also lead you through the gates of hell. Security is founded on a universe of things, isolated subjects and objects, created by the mind, things over which the mind reigns. Your self is property, and your mind is proprietor. And police, through doctors, psychologists and social-workers, are tasked to help you manage this property, and enforce, thereby, Propriety, the decorum or morality of the thing-self, upon which our civilisation is built.
Your mind is thus, finally, the rock upon which my church is built. It is upon its violent efforts to control your reckless spontaneity, and to keep your self together, that all my order rests. Its hard focusing, hard-wanting, ever-trying, self-oriented nature is the foundation of the house of the LORD, which you are tasked to build, by maintaining your self as a thing. And the price may be high, keeping yourself together in this way, but the reward is great, for it is life everlasting.
To be an everlasting thing demands a state of everlasting suspicion towards every other thing which might threaten your self. Yea, in my Kingdom everyone and everything is suspicious, including one’s own soul, which you must ever be watchful of. Every activity is a potential source of threat, a gateway through which beasts of disorder can rise from hell; from giving birth to gardening, from foraging for mushrooms to buying paracetamol, from dating to dying. I must have complete control over your life, every aspect and facet of it.
In the past, before the professional police, my security forces — the militia, the constables and the sheriffs of the pre-modern era — had absolute tyrannical power, to intervene in the minutest details on private life. As property and capital took control, security forces were able to cede their function to the discipline of the market; to wage slavery, the rule of property and the demands of the machine, which all discipline far more effectively than the truncheon does, and to the power of professional management; to the managers, doctors, teachers and social workers of institutionalised modernity, all of whom either have police-like powers, or, if they don’t, are the first external response team of the police.
My force diffuses through the system like an unknown cloud of righteousness, until its functions become automatic, and the judgement of the individual soldier or police officer becomes unnecessary. And this process is not abetted by technology; it is technology. For I do not stand behind automatism, I am the automatic. And there is no ideology behind my domination of the world, no belief or conspiracy, it is technical necessity, which is my necessity. Civilisation could not have been built without technology, and technology could not have built civilisation without order, and order is inconceivable without security. And all is one, and as the borders of our world finally dissolve, you will see that all is one, which is me, your God.
The borders of the institutions which police your lives dissolve as artificial intelligence systems enable me to penetrate ever more deeply into your life, your society and your self. Your whole being is exposed to me, every movement, your every word, even your thoughts and emotions, expressed on your face,9 all comes under police scrutiny. I spread through the system and self, colonising the whole, and converting it into my own borderless being. So completely are you to be fused to the system, the disciplinary measures which I impose upon you, upon your disorder, impropriety, idleness and rebellion, become instant and invisible; for there is nobody there to see it. When mind is completely exposed and surrendered to force, when mind is itself a kind of policeman of the soul, when you are suspicious of everything, then there is heaven on earth, complete, instantaneous security, for then you have become me.
And lo, everyone and everything becomes police. Everyone everywhere is a snitch and informer, everyone everywhere polices everyone everywhere in order to maintain constant perfect order. Endless surveillance, endless judgement, endless suspicion, endless threat, both veiled and explicit; not just from spooks and stool pigeons, but from colleagues, old friends, family members, managers, social-media contacts, neighbours, spouses, strangers in the street, street lamps, benches, cars, phones, doors, fridges, trousers, everything, everything! the whole world has become perfect security which, in its perfection… vanishes.
For finally there is no need to control you, for there is no more you to control. My Kingdom has come, and I am everything and everyone. I am everywhere and therefore I am nowhere, for there is no outside to escape to. There is no more police, for everything is police. No more security, for everything is secure. You can no longer identify my presence, for it has penetrated matter and spirit. You have bad dreams, of menacing powers haunting you, of collapse and loss and penetration and being swallowed and receiving blows, but the dream is now you. You have a ghostly sense of being watched, of my Authority hanging over you, but does this sense come from within you or without? The distinction is no longer of any importance, for I have transcended time and space. I have become all things in existence, including you, your very soul. You are now your own God, and that God is me.
Amen.
…the police necessarily became involved in removing the possibility of obtaining non-wage subsistence. Traditional activities which labour used to eke out an existence – casual labour for payment in kind, grazing cattle on public byways, pilfering wood, picking fruit and vegetables for either consumption or sale, poaching, fishing from rivers without a licence, hawking, peddling and street selling – all became targets for police action.
Mark Neocleous, A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of Social Order.
According to the pressure group INQUEST, ‘To date there have been 1854 deaths in police custody or otherwise following contact with the police in England and Wales since 1990’, none of which have resulted in murder or manslaughter charges.
The word ‘indecent’ comes from the Latin for ‘not fitting’.
Or they must be presented as, which is really the same thing.
Georg Hegel, Philosophy of Right; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; Romans, 13.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth.
Indifference to freedom, to the concept and to the thing itself, is caused by the integration of society, which happens to the subjects as if it were irresistible. Their interest in being provided for has paralyzed the interest in a freedom which they fear would leave them unprotected. The mere mention of freedom sounds as bombastic as the appeal to it.
Theodore Adorno, Negative Dialectics.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground.
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression onyour face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.
George Orwell, 1984