This makes me think of the hypnosis techniques developed by Milton Erickson:
"A famous example of using resistance and a “double bind” occurred when Erickson was a boy. One day Erickson was helping his father coax a stubborn calf into the family barn. Try as they might to pull the calf into the barn, it didn’t budge. He realized that the calf wished to resist, accepted it, and pulled the opposite end on it’s tail – away from the barn. The new input of the boy pulling on the tail negated the father pulling on the head and the calf went into the barn. He used this as a classic psychological example of a double bind – where the subject becomes overwhelmed and is emotionally “pulled” in two conflicting directions. Thus, the confused individual successfully accepts one form of resistance and fails to respond to the other."
Note that the calf will sooner or later be eaten.
It is a little unusual to read this post today, because not two hours ago I was sitting at home in front of the fire when I heard someone banging on the door. I opened it, expecting to see my girlfriend home early or perhaps the neighbor asking for another onion. Instead I saw two cops, just like in the movies, brandishing badges. "Polizei. What is your name?" barked the man in front of me without saying hello. Short-circuited by this completely unexpected question and situation, I told him my name like a programmed automaton without thinking to inspect the badge. If he had asked me to empty my pockets, take off all my clothes, or bark like a dog, I probably would have done it without even knowing what I was doing. That is a humiliating thing to realize. I mention the badge inspection because this happened to me once before, in France, except the two "cops" were actually actors filming a hidden camera prank. One of these two cops was a "sexy lady cop" whose badge turned out to be an obvious plastic fake. Although I saw it, I was incapable of perceiving it until I had already been apprised of the deception, at which point I realized how obviously fake the setup was. In both cases there were two cops who alternated rapid-fire questions (although I suspect one cop would be enough to do the trick). There is a reason they use the "good cop/bad cop" routine to bully people. It turns out today's cops were looking for the guy on the floor below me. I have not done anything particularly illegal recently, but as both Kafka and Freud point out, we are all inherently guilty before the Law whether or not we have actually done anything wrong. One of the ways governments force compliance is by making the Law subtly or explicitly self-contradictory so that no matter what one does, one is always guilty of SOMETHING. Ultimately, legal "authority" is not grounded in some political or philosophical necessity as we learn in school but in the pre-installed feeling of shame that is inevitably activated when we are faced with avatars of Power. Or to put it in the language of this thread, the Law is just the elaboration of a mechanism, the loyalty loop, which exists solely to trap prey. It is a pure sadism-masochism hypnotic program, in my opinion, one that I now believe has been installed on purpose, thanks in large part to Usselo's work. Freud argued that criminals are, as a general rule, masochists who are unconsciously convinced of their own infinite existential guilt. As a result, they tend to seek out opportunities to be caught and punished; having their chronic free-floating, objectless guilt transformed into a concrete accusation, for a concrete crime, associated with a concrete punishment, is the only way for them to "contain" and metabolize this original "transcendental" guilt and shame.
Here are the last two paragraphs of Kafka's "The Trial". For those unfamiliar with the classic novel, it begins with the protagonist, K, being arrested without explanation. We then follow his absurd and confusing journey through the incomprehensible legal machine, which ends with him being executed, having never understood what the charges against him were. Notice again we have two executioners who engage in a hypnotic back-and-forth ritual.
Then one of the gentlemen opened his frock coat and from a sheath hanging on a belt stretched across his waistcoat he withdrew a long, thin, double-edged butcher's knife which he held up in the light to test its sharpness. The repulsive courtesies began once again, one of them passed the knife over K. to the other, who then passed it back over K. to the first. K. now knew it would be his duty to take the knife as it passed from hand to hand above him and thrust it into himself. But he did not do it, instead he twisted his neck, which was still free, and looked around. He was not able to show his full worth, was not able to take all the work from the official bodies, he lacked the rest of the strength he needed and this final shortcoming was the fault of whoever had denied it to him. As he looked round, he saw the top floor of the building next to the quarry. He saw how a light flickered on and the two halves of a window opened out, somebody, made weak and thin by the height and the distance, leant suddenly far out from it and stretched his arms out even further. Who was that? A friend? A good person? Somebody who was taking part? Somebody who wanted to help? Was he alone? Was it everyone? Would anyone help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? There must have been some. The logic cannot be refuted, but someone who wants to live will not resist it. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised both hands and spread out all his fingers.
But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. "Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.
First, I believe that great artists are in contact with universal fantasies, experiences and memories, and I think it is possible that Kafka is here channeling a real collective trauma, that of submitting voluntarily to sacrifice by blade. Note also that the "ontological" feeling of shame is so strong that over the course of the novel the main character never once really questions whether or not he deserves what is happening to him. He just accepts it. It has been suggested here at IHASFEMR that the mechanism by which victims are tricked into self-sacrifice is religious exaltation. I would like to suggest that shame may be just as effective a means of pushing human cattle to offer themselves as literal food for their masters. Or even better, by creating two irreconcilable poles (shame and exaltation) between which the individual is made to cycle with no possibility of resolution, a "gap" is opened into which pure, naked, sadistic authority can be poured. Look at the paradox of Protestantism, for example. Grace cannot be "purchased" through either indulgences or good works. One either has divine grace or one does not and nothing can change that. You can't "buy" your way into Heaven. One would think that a theology like this would lead people to live apathetically or even anarchistically, but the contrary is true. Since there is no external mechanism in place to guarantee whether one has been saved or not (such as the blessing of a Catholic priest, corrupt or not), Protestants lose themselves in rule-following and virtue-signaling paroxysms. They have to, because they are trying to prove to themselves that they are saved, not to an institution limited by rules and traditions. Obviously they will never encounter any guarantee, so they must continue until they exhaust themselves in orgies of gratuitous morality and finally die. It's a much more clever mechanism for creating self-farming animals than, for example, Catholicism. Perhaps this Protestant logic could be described as not just a loyalty loop, but a triple octane self-catalyzing loyalty spiral. There is a reason the Northern European countries are so excited about the new Green Slave System: it is just Protestantism 2.0 with The Climate in the place of God. Make no mistake, many of the Germans who are freezing at home right now are pleased as punch that they have this new opportunity to prove to themselves and each other how good they are (not to mention the even more exciting opportunities for snitching it presents). The supplicants are (probably) not going to be eaten this time, but the demand from Power is the same as it always was: SACRIFICE YOURSELF. Actually, I do find convincing the theory that disembodied entities feed on energy released through suffering and death, and suspect that the "human on human" (or "unknown chimerical biological entity on human") cannibalism so horrifically detailed here is more a case of humans imitating gods than humans simply indulging in forbidden gourmandise. In other words, cannibalism has a "cargo cult" element since the disembodied "gods" never actually ate the flesh, as ancient texts make clear, just the energy. (This also explains why the Covid measures were more nakedly authoritarian in Catholic Europe. They had to be, since Catholics still function within an external loyalty loop paradigm rather than an internalized loyalty spiral. They need to be beaten every once in a while, otherwise they will cheat. Hence also the constant anti-Catholic propaganda: the NWO control grid is fundamentally Protestant in its functioning in that it is self-policing, masochistic, and horizontal, with very few priests necessary, whereas the older, more sadistic Catholic control structure depends on a hierarchy of priests that always risk being lured into venal corruption.)
There is also the hypnotic technique known as "anchoring", in which the would-be hypnotist presents two options to the target ("Do you want to eat at McDonald's or Burger King?") in order to lock him into a false binary choice and most of all, to subtly establish dominance. Abusive spouses alternate tenderness and violence to create a bond of complete hypnotic dependence. Derrida's "deconstruction" technique starts from the idea that all texts are structured around more or less hidden "binary oppositions" that subtly hypnotize the reader into identifying with the point of view of the author, which can also be seen as a form of submission. By finding and exploding these false "anchored" oppositions the reader is released from the tyranny of the author. (My endorsement of the deconstruction technique ends there because ironically, Derrida used this constant undermining of all pretension to objective signification to establish his own guru-like authority over his untethered followers.)
Usselo, moderators, I hope this post does not digress too far from the topic of loyalty loops in the context of IHASFEMR, if so I will move it elsewhere.
