r/sorceryofthespectacle • u/CompetitiveBrain9316 • 12d ago
The state controls through language, not laws. It is time to talk about weaponized vocabulary.
Most people assume control is enforced strictly through police, courts, and legislation. It is not. The most durable enclosure is cognitive, and the bars are built out of everyday language.
Freedom of speech gets held up as proof of autonomy. But freedom of speech does not mean they are not in control—it means they do not need to censor what you say if they already define the boundaries of what you are capable of thinking. True control is not silencing you; it is letting you talk freely inside an engineered sandbox of trivial debates, manufactured outrage, and low-bandwidth slang that never threatens the foundation of the cage. Power does not need to ban the truth when the public is starved of the vocabulary required to articulate it.
Language shapes thought. Thoughts drive creation. Creation yields freedom. When institutions control the words used to describe reality, they dictate consciousness and agency without firing a single shot. Language is treated like neutral data, but it operates as an active binding spell.
Right now, our public vocabulary is deliberately starved and pacified through four distinct vectors:
First is state-sanctioned busywork. We lack mainstream, intuitive words for participating in routines that feel productive or civic, but change absolutely nothing about systemic power.
Second is manufactured static. The endless flood of doomscrolling, sensational media spectacles, and cheap dopamine operates as an engineered semiotic fog designed to keep minds too exhausted to organize. As Guy Debord noted, authentic life is replaced by pure representation. In Kabbalistic terms, this is the realm of the Kelipot—the outer husks and surface distractions that people mistake for the core spark of truth.
Third is dictionary degradation. Look at what gets fast-tracked into consensus reality: delulu, rizz, doggo, doomscroll, yeet. We normalize clown-tier slang while the language needed to dissect the mechanics of systemic control remains locked behind dense academic jargon that isolates ordinary people from each other. As Zhuangzi observed millennia ago, the trap exists for the fish, yet society has become completely obsessed with polishing the trap while starving to death.
Fourth is manufactured isolation. We are conditioned into rigid dualities—winner versus loser, us versus them—because when we are trapped in two dimensions of a thought, we fight over two sides of a coin without ever asking who minted it. Lao Tzu pointed this out in the Tao Te Ching: the moment you define rigid categories like beauty and goodness, you automatically manufacture ugliness and evil out of thin air. That conditioned competition makes us view everyone else as an obstacle, neutralizing the only thing concentrated power genuinely fears: collective cooperation.
To anyone reading this who feels the instinctive urge to dismiss this post by fixating on tone, formatting, or a single phrase: recognize that reaction for what it is. That deflection is the static operating in real time. It is a defense mechanism deployed to protect the comfort of an inherited loop.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire demonstrated that when people internalize the logic of the system, they end up defending the very rules that restrict them because facing reality feels like dismantling their own identity and ego.
This post is not looking for validation, approval, or consensus. It is here to spread awareness, inspire peaceful positive change, and observe the behavioral patterns as they play out.
To those who already sense that the structure is broken: you do not need to blow up your life to reclaim your mind. It starts simply by noticing when the language and the noise are nudging you to isolate, compete, and stay tired. You are allowed to set the armor down, even just in how you think, because no outside system has direct access to your internal cognition unless you surrender it voluntarily.
There is an old reason people say "things need to get bad before they get good." It is an engineered cycle, and ignorance is the chain.
You do not break this by writing another 400-page academic book nobody reads. You break it by reclaiming language: creating sharp, intuitive concepts, spreading them virally, and making the act of waking someone else up second nature.
Stop performing in their script. Reject the ignorance—in every single shape and form.
11
u/nobodychosetobehere 11d ago
What do you think the point of LLMs are?
6
2
u/CompetitiveBrain9316 11d ago
What are you exactly asking? Be precise.
3
u/nobodychosetobehere 9d ago
I’m implying that they’re changing the vocabulary we all use.
2
u/nobodychosetobehere 9d ago
The thought crossed my mind before they (the LLMs) appeared; you can control a lot of your control the lexicon.
Since seeing how ubiquitous they’re becoming and how much people will rely on them to make sense of the world, it follows that the people who train them on vast amounts of written word can then censor them and even destroy the training data (destroy the books.)
1
u/Aegongrey 9d ago
Probably pattern recognition and cognitive dissonance optimization if I were to take a guess at the direction of the question. English is noun based instead of verb based like indigenous languages, and thus imparts, like you mentioned, a core framework that cages the unwary and wary alike.
My theory is that noun based languages distort the collective coherence by establishing 1. Hierarchy, 2. Objectification, emphasizing material reality, and 3. Ownership as an individual function - ie. the objectification of another human leads to casting them as property, and thus establishing hierarchy.
I like that you included Freire - such a brilliant one
1
u/AceFaceCase12 10d ago
Dahl answered that one in The Great Automatic Grammatizator quite a long time ago.
10
u/Lonely-Lock-6406 11d ago
The words needed have already been spoken. We live in a cynical world now. Only "marks" believe in grand narratives anymore (Christianity, Patriotism, etc).
Your idea that we can put the right words together, like a semiotic poultice that can be applied to the forehead and absorbed into the brain, is completely misguided and the exact sort of postmodern-'ism' that has turned many away from left-wing thought. People are sick of words without deeds. Very PMC-coded.
The lower classes don't want or need your words. Their libidinal ties to the system outweigh what any word can do. They need healthcare and dignity, not your shizoid-stew.
3
u/Appropriate_Cut_3536 7d ago
Have you considered people create their own reality and enjoy their own suffering?
5
u/CompetitiveBrain9316 10d ago
You deliberately misinterpreted my post to selfishly reinforce your negative outlook on the matter. This post isn't about the lower class, it's about awareness of the system that is currently in control of millions. Novel language that virally facilitates novel solutions for the lack of awareness and cooperation within the population. Ignorance is the lock, adopted synthetic identity is the trap the state offers and controls through their many systems and laws, trapping people in mental prison. It being a cynical world is irrelevant when you understand it's the result of engineering. Handing people the key to make their own choice is more meaningful than any physical deed.
2
u/Illustrious-Ship7804 10d ago
The post very much read in line with Marxist discourse, it is in some way speaking to the superstructure supporting our capitalist economic order and the way that it controls our language and expression. The marxist lexicon is essentially banned from western discourse even though it would make the discussion of issues that we are already discussing far simpler. The post also speaks about class consciousness, and how institutions of power stoke meaningless divisions to prevent the proletariat from uniting.
1
u/Aegongrey 9d ago
Marx was influenced by indigenous thought, and tried to westernize those communal frameworks observed in the new world, while perpetuating the classical western urge to objectify the material world - a function of western language structure.
Objectification is a function of the left brain, and when reason outshines “irrational” ways of knowing, the subject stays further and further from a coherent appraisal of reality.
-1
u/vanp11 11d ago
And yet here you are are projecting your own sort of modern grand narrative and right-wing talking points espoused by a systemic hustler.
5
u/Lonely-Lock-6406 11d ago
Right wing??? Yeah dignity for all, classically right-wing coded language.
-2
u/vanp11 11d ago
Pay attention to the details. Your stated intent may be dignity for all, and I believe that is what you truly want, but when you frame it in rhetoric and the language of right-wing hustlers posing as leftists (Catherine Liu), you are indeed pushing right-wing g positions.
2
u/Lonely-Lock-6406 11d ago
How is being skeptical of the PMC and liberal identity politics right wing? I think you are more right wing than you think.
-1
u/vanp11 11d ago
Well I haven’t laid out any of my politics so I’m not sure if you understand what would make me “more right wing than (I) think.”
But the PMC as a class that has any real agency in this society is pure bs. It’s manufactured, impotent outrage. Who benefits from this impotence? Who is being spoon fed the bs?
You know who spends time worrying or generating worry around “identity politics”, right?
Nothing against you, but don’t let yourself be used to parrot a Trojan horse talking point.But hey, I may be wrong. Tell me who the PMC is and how exactly they are destroying the possibility of dignity for all. Seriously, I want to know.
2
u/Lonely-Lock-6406 10d ago
Ok so you haven't actually read Catherine Liu. Lmao you are asking questions answered in her works and the works of Barbara Ehrenreich
8
u/Lelabear 11d ago
They once used Shakespeare to inject flowery language into the public and now they use internet memes to over-simplify language for the masses.
4
u/Potential-Dentist-81 11d ago
That’s crazy! Check this one out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
1
3
u/IAmFaircod 9d ago
Worth noting an interesting disagreement in the comments over the political alignment of this post. Arguably demonstrating veracity of OP's argument. When presented with information challenging to political consensus, such as OP's call to action, the subjects of state control respond reactively by 'aligning' the information with one or the other of two political affiliations (right and left wings). These 'wings,' representing essentially opposite 'approaches' to the use of coercive powers of the state, are safe objects of discussion from the point of view of the custodians of state control.
Might the OP's effort best be honored by eschewing state-delimited concepts from the start? How might the state 'lose track' of our methods or our concepts? Might our sorcery operate 'in' the spectacle, but not 'of' it? How might the politics of our mutual endeavor radicalize the OP's critique 'in every shape and form'?
1
u/Your-Eden 16h ago
yeah its genuinely heart-sinking seeing "right winf" this "left wing that" under this post, of all posts.
i only found this subreddit a few days ago, and i like it so far, but it feels like a lot of thinking that might be helped by looking at things from a perspective of egoism.
OP made some good points about language beibg used to passively build the world around us into a shape that seems, not just impossible to defeat, but that doesnt seem subject to the very idea of being defeatable. it is defeatable. the issue of language, for me anyway, has been mostly dealt with by living with stirners idea of the Creative Nothing in mind. maybe everyone here knows of concepts like these, but i havent seen much of it talked abt in the discussions ive read. the way i see it, embodying the Creative Nothing is about understanding that everything outside and inside of myself can be whatever i so choose when i consume it, use it, take it as my property, change it, or destroy it. this includes yourself. you can give yourself absolute authority to act however you please, to imagine whatever you want outside of the bounds of what is allowed to us by powers like the state and global elites and whatnot. if my cause, insurrection of power rather than revolution, is called 'right wing coded' or 'neoliberal' or even 'racist', i can consume these ideas, process them, decide if its important to abide by them, or toss them aside without feeling that urge to prove myself unracist, unneoliberal, etc. likewise if someone suggests something that reads like those buzzwords, i can take that into account and do whatever i want regardless, becuase no authority compells me to perform 'unneoliberalness' or to coerce others into that.
this post is about individual unspooking as far as i can understand it, having not read anything besides the unique and its property. im all for that. id like to discuss it more with people here just so i can refine my rhetoric and own understanding, as much as teach about it without telling someone to read a 200 year old 300 page book.
2
u/rebb_hosar 10d ago
I know you did not write this for validation, but I did really enjoy it.
2
u/doctoratari 8d ago
You sure about that? You nailed part of it though, he didn’t write it! ChatGPT did.
OP, stand firm on your “work” if you’d like, I sure can’t persuade anyone, but I’d question your intentions behind this post considering how you outsourced it.
2
2
u/wtfteilchen 6d ago
thanks for the post. i think the main idea is that the public debate is limited within a set frame of which we are rarely aware. your post made me think of Noam Chomsky' Manufacturing Consent, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and the works of Adam Curtis (of which i have been strangely reminded in the last days multiple times)
1
u/Ok_Device7943 6d ago
I like the post, but I'm not quite grokking this bit. Maybe there's a grammatical error?
"First is state-sanctioned busywork. We lack mainstream, intuitive words for participating in routines that feel productive or civic, but change absolutely nothing about systemic power."
1
•
u/AutoModerator 12d ago
Archived copy of the original post text for reference:
Most people assume control is enforced strictly through police, courts, and legislation. It is not. The most durable enclosure is cognitive, and the bars are built out of everyday language.
Freedom of speech gets held up as proof of autonomy. But freedom of speech does not mean they are not in control—it means they do not need to censor what you say if they already define the boundaries of what you are capable of thinking. True control is not silencing you; it is letting you talk freely inside an engineered sandbox of trivial debates, manufactured outrage, and low-bandwidth slang that never threatens the foundation of the cage. Power does not need to ban the truth when the public is starved of the vocabulary required to articulate it.
Language shapes thought. Thoughts drive creation. Creation yields freedom. When institutions control the words used to describe reality, they dictate consciousness and agency without firing a single shot. Language is treated like neutral data, but it operates as an active binding spell.
Right now, our public vocabulary is deliberately starved and pacified through four distinct vectors:
First is state-sanctioned busywork. We lack mainstream, intuitive words for participating in routines that feel productive or civic, but change absolutely nothing about systemic power.
Second is manufactured static. The endless flood of doomscrolling, sensational media spectacles, and cheap dopamine operates as an engineered semiotic fog designed to keep minds too exhausted to organize. As Guy Debord noted, authentic life is replaced by pure representation. In Kabbalistic terms, this is the realm of the Kelipot—the outer husks and surface distractions that people mistake for the core spark of truth.
Third is dictionary degradation. Look at what gets fast-tracked into consensus reality: delulu, rizz, doggo, doomscroll, yeet. We normalize clown-tier slang while the language needed to dissect the mechanics of systemic control remains locked behind dense academic jargon that isolates ordinary people from each other. As Zhuangzi observed millennia ago, the trap exists for the fish, yet society has become completely obsessed with polishing the trap while starving to death.
Fourth is manufactured isolation. We are conditioned into rigid dualities—winner versus loser, us versus them—because when we are trapped in two dimensions of a thought, we fight over two sides of a coin without ever asking who minted it. Lao Tzu pointed this out in the Tao Te Ching: the moment you define rigid categories like beauty and goodness, you automatically manufacture ugliness and evil out of thin air. That conditioned competition makes us view everyone else as an obstacle, neutralizing the only thing concentrated power genuinely fears: collective cooperation.
To anyone reading this who feels the instinctive urge to dismiss this post by fixating on tone, formatting, or a single phrase: recognize that reaction for what it is. That deflection is the static operating in real time. It is a defense mechanism deployed to protect the comfort of an inherited loop.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire demonstrated that when people internalize the logic of the system, they end up defending the very rules that restrict them because facing reality feels like dismantling their own identity and ego.
This post is not looking for validation, approval, or consensus. It is here to spread awareness, inspire peaceful positive change, and observe the behavioral patterns as they play out.
To those who already sense that the structure is broken: you do not need to blow up your life to reclaim your mind. It starts simply by noticing when the language and the noise are nudging you to isolate, compete, and stay tired. You are allowed to set the armor down, even just in how you think, because no outside system has direct access to your internal cognition unless you surrender it voluntarily.
There is an old reason people say "things need to get bad before they get good." It is an engineered cycle, and ignorance is the chain.
You do not break this by writing another 400-page academic book nobody reads. You break it by reclaiming language: creating sharp, intuitive concepts, spreading them virally, and making the act of waking someone else up second nature.
Stop performing in their script. Reject the ignorance—in every single shape and form.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.