The Conformity Forge and The Alchemy of Evil

The Conformist Forge
A study by the German Federal Ministry of Education recommends a social credit system for universities like in China - independent thinking should then be a thing of the past.
by Maximilian Ruppert
[This article posted on 9/6/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/die-konformistenschmiede.]

Education and research are the foundations on which we build our future in a world of change. Or so it says on the website of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the "About Us" section. In the shadow of the Corona crisis, the BMBF has published a study that describes this very future in more detail. According to this study, a social credit system like the one in China will become the central constitutive factor of a completely new education system. The public discourse on this has so far been largely absent and overdue. The ministry's study provides a good basis for this. At the very least, it is an opportunity to turn those affected into participants and vice versa. It may even provide an opportunity to take a stand on the issue of education. This article was written from the perspective of a university lecturer who, as someone directly affected, is critical of the study in question.

The study on the "Future of People's Values in Our Country" by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is entitled "Germany in the 2030s" (1). It dates from August 2020, with an unchanged update from February 17, 2021.

It should be made clear at the outset: We are not talking here about the 1920s and 1930s of the last century, but about the new 1930s, i.e., the near future of our academic education. Although some critical readers might be tempted to draw certain parallels, as the author of this article I expressly distance myself from any comparison.

In chapter 5.5 of the BMBF study, we read about the envisioned "bonus system": "In the 2030s, a digital, participatory negotiated points system will assume a central political-social control function." Quite openly, it speaks of a "successful use of the social credit system in China" and that "other - meaning democratic or Western (author's note) - states are also discussing the use of such a system."

China as a role model

At first, it seems strange to me that a Chinese system is described as "successful" here. Where has the Chinese social credit system been objectively reported in the media? By no stretch of the imagination can we speak of a public discourse. There has been a points system there for a few years on a voluntary basis in the business variant and for the individual sector, for example "Sesame" in Alipay since 2015. It is roughly comparable to the SCHUFA known in Germany. I know from first-hand experience that the social credit system in China was again hotly discussed in 2019, but it was then - for lack of acceptance? - to 2021 and, as of today, apart from pilot tests, will not be used nationwide.

Now, however, the German government is taking it up, and we have to assume a corresponding thoroughness in the implementation. According to the BMBF, this reads as follows: "Points can be collected for certain behaviors in the points system operated by the state, for example, voluntary work, caring for relatives, organ donations, old-age provision, traffic behavior, CO2 emissions. In addition to social recognition, collecting points also results in advantages in everyday life, for example, shortened waiting times for certain courses of study."

Anyone who drives too fast, parks the wrong way or owns a car that is too fat will be asked to pay. This may all seem quite harmless and will meet with approval not only from government theorists.

Study place only with appropriate behavior

I was a faculty advisor and head of the largest degree program at my university for a number of years, and perhaps that's why the passage "shortened waiting periods for certain degree programs" makes me particularly thoughtful. Does it mean that if you don't behave as "participatively negotiated," you can put off studying at a state university until the never-never?

The paper has been available to everyone on the Department's official website for many months. Yet it has not been discussed, at least at my state university, and to this day receives no perceptible attention at colleges and universities. If I ask my colleagues, no one knows about it. I myself only came across it via a reference in the alternative media. Regardless of the content: That alone is a scandal.

Such a paradigm-shifting approach must face a broad discourse in a liberal democratic society. Instead, at our universities and colleges, we discuss at length language that takes all genders into account.

Today, anyone who refuses to address this issue is, at the very least, already conspicuous. Will my criticism of the gender mainstream even affect my Social Credit score in the future?

System criticism as a luxury good

But further in the text from the ministry: "Thus, the state and political institutions can realize certain goals via incentives to change behavior - for example, controlling the labor and education market - and also forecast future behavior more accurately. (...) Companies have the opportunity to dock onto the points system and monetize the data with the prior consent of citizens."
The fact that the well-behaved citizen is to be rewarded by politicians and companies for collecting points seems very harmless. Thought through to the end, it means nothing other than monetary advantages for the compliant at the expense of the non-compliant. Who can afford to criticize the new bonus system?

One has to be extremely naive and have a blind faith in governments to assume that such a system will not be used to suppress "wrong views." Rather, it takes relatively little imagination to envision the possible consequences of the system outlined in this study of the future.

It would no longer need paid thugs to beat up peaceful citizens and suppress diversity of opinion in the streets. There is no longer any need at all for the so-called quality media to denigrate people with their own opinions as radicals. The social point system of the new thirties is possibly much more effective than the union of powers of politics, executive and "medislative" of today. The words of the RKI president, according to which state-imposed rules "must never be questioned at all," were still theoretical in the summer of 2020. In the new thirties, his words are becoming reality. The state points system is to become a matter of course, and its realization is something the well-behaved points collectors are happy to take on. There are to be tangible consequences for having a dissenting opinion. The fact that citizens who try to undermine trust in those in power will be persecuted in the future was already apparent in a paper from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2022. With the new bonus system, this will be realized very simply in the implementation.

Critical spirits unwelcome at universities

Hardly any resistance is to be expected from our academic educational institutions; they have been particularly conspicuous in recent years for implementing the state doctrine 120 percent in anticipatory obedience. There the spirit of the new thirties experiences acceleration, if each individual university wants to surpass the other in the fulfillment of duty. And perhaps in the near future at my university, collectively collected scores of individual faculties will be compared against each other, and those with the highest scores will receive additional funding or at least more attention from the university administration. Based on my own experience there, I can imagine just that.

This in turn leads to the fact that from this side one looks very closely at whom one appoints as a professor. Will the score then even be a decisive criterion? Of course, voluntariness is always a prerequisite. A search for the word "voluntary" in the cited study yields 16 hits.

But whoever - for good reason? - is not listed in the application. The people who conform to the system will see to that. The end of the story will be that at universities, system-compliant students will be taught by system-compliant teachers.

Such an educational institution will not only be boring. It will also have an impact on the innovation of our country and thus on all of us. Has there ever been a true innovation that came from a club of conformists? As a professor who teaches, among other things, the subject "Technology Development & Innovation Management" in the master's program, I ask my students exactly this in the first lecture hour. It has always been the non-conformists who have moved our society forward in a livable way.

Identification displaces individuality

The intended bonus system formats people, which must run counter to the basic idea of free development, especially in the field of academic education. It contradicts the humanistic ideal and prevents independent research. Innovative strength and the chance for a future worth living are possibly destroyed in this way.

In the new thirties, "a (...) point system begins in Germany, (to) set incentives for behavioral change." So it seems that it is no longer up for debate, but is already "beginning" soon, and where it will lead is foreseeable: Such a system is doomed to self-destruction. However, just like all previous totalitarian fantasies, it will first cause collateral damage, only to fail in the end.
"In the new thirties, 'a (...) point system begins in Germany, (to) set incentives for behavioral change'." - you have to read that sentence at least twice: So our behavior is supposed to change as dictated by the majority opinion that follows politics.

Your behavior is evaluated and decides your value

This state-organized system will ensure that the "unworthy" are systematically excluded, disadvantaged and permanently left behind. This is how conformism, total and radical, is created. For the academic educational institutions this means: instead of the development of individual personalities, a levelling of all persons is created. Thus, the original idea of education is negated, the university sense is turned upside down, and individuals are reduced to the "resource human being" in order to be made subservient to a predefined system.

In the end, however, it is not a single leader, party, coalition, institution, or the like that will be blamed for this dilemma. Rather, society as a whole will be guilty. Each individual will want to withdraw later - after all, his or her partial culpability is relatively small. After all, "Where all are to blame, none is" (Hannah Arendt).

Division of society into point collectors versus the permanently disconnected

The BMBF study also contains some criticism: "The principle of voluntary participation was central to the debate before the introduction of the program. Critics repeatedly stressed in the debate that even a voluntary system creates social pressure to participate." But immediately further on in the text, it says: "Approval for this points system also increased in Germany due to the dynamics of climate change. This generated pressure to act to counteract it, and a points system turned out to be an efficient control mechanism for dealing with the consequences of climate change. (...) (New) conflicts arise: The 'permanently dependent' find it difficult to compensate for low scores. The point system itself is now only questioned by a minority, but they do not see themselves represented in their position."

So, as early as August 2020, all future critics of the system were officially given a title: "permanently disconnected."

The question of whether this title originates from any fantasies of self-appointed philanthropists or is pure conspiracy theory no longer arises. It is now a term chosen by our government, captured in an official paper of the Ministry of Education and Research.
Self-thinking is a prerequisite for a human society

Dear student "point collector"! As an engineer who has spent years in business and employed many academics, I tell you already today: a high score in the new social credit system is not an award, at most an indication of your adaptation to a system doomed to failure.

Dear non-student "permanent dropouts"! Possibly all this comes to you as a dystopia. But there is always a shiny flip side to every dirty coin: For example, "The Academy of Thinkers" (2) is celebrating its 10th anniversary at the beginning of the 2030s and is already offering a "Studium Generale" to self-thinkers.

The world needs critical individuals more than ever. And if this scenario of a possible "future (...) in our country", created in the shadow of the Corona crisis, becomes reality, then self-thinkers will be unwanted at state universities. So it is high time that the quoted "minority" openly and loudly questions this new education system while it still works without deducting points. As the author of this article, I am pursuing no less and no more than the goal of calling for introspection. Hannah Arendt once told us quite clearly, "One could well say that a person's living humanity diminishes to the extent that he forgoes thinking" (3).

Sources and Notes:

(1) "Study (Long Version): Future Values of People in Our Country," "VORAUS:schau - Orientierung für die Welt von Morgen," https://www.vorausschau.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/vorausschau/de/BMBF_Foresight_Wertestudie_Langfassung.html, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, February 2021.
(2) http://www.die-akademie-der-denker.de
(3) Hannah Arendt: "Menschen in finsteren Zeiten," edited by Ursula Ludz, PIPER Verlag, April 2012.

Maximilian Ruppert, born in 1972, holds a doctorate in engineering. He worked in the automotive industry for over 20 years, including 12 years as managing director of an engineering firm for innovative development technology. Since 2016, he has been a professor at the Ingolstadt University of Technology, where he was head of the industrial engineering course until the beginning of 2022. In his view, thinking for oneself creates the basis for a future worth living. Since April 2022, he has been offering a "Studium Generale" at the Academy of Thinkers.

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The Alchemy of Evil
The rulers' formula for subjugating the world has remained the same over the centuries-only the means have changed with technological progress.
by Willy Meyer
[This article posted on 10/7/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, Die Alchemie des Bösen.]




Die Alchemie des Bösen

Die Formel der Herrschenden, sich die Welt untertan zu machen, ist über die Jahrhunderte gleich geblieben — nur ...
The state of our world and our society now triggers a very deep sense of unease in many people. What is brewing on the horizon has long since left no silver lining whatsoever. Sleepwalking and yet with full force, we are hurtling toward a wall. Is there really no critical mass calling us to pause and turn back? Is there no way out of this system? The political scientist and women's researcher Claudia von Werlhof shows ways to a radical reversal with her "Critical Patriarchy Theory".

The situation is muddled, and the news does not bode well. After the now two and a half years lasting conversion of our allegedly liberal western democracy towards a proto-fascist facade democracy with arbitrary rule and collapsed separation of powers, the green-red federal government is arming itself for war in foreign policy and for scarcity economy and continued health dictates in domestic policy. The majority of Germans, however, hardly seem to be affected by this. While some even advocate tightening the draconian measures, the majority willingly follows the mainstream's tally, hoists blue and yellow flags and voluntarily wears masks to send their offspring to school - you never know.

Gloomy plans

In the background of the international stage, fundamental changes have been brewing for quite some time, almost unnoticed. Global think tanks and supranational clubs are working as diligently as they are discreetly to transfer the fate of the world into their hands within the framework of "multistakeholder international governance" (1). As tools for this, they have devised, among other things, Natural Asset Companies (NACs), the asset class of so-called natural resource companies that want to buy up and monetize the rights to all natural resources (2). This is matched by "environmental social governance" (ESG), a set of rules for evaluating, investing in, and financing companies that elevates factors such as sustainability, climate neutrality, treatment of minorities, and governance structures to binding corporate benchmarks (3).

For the population, concepts such as that of "smart cities" have a more direct impact. The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUNBR), for example, in its "Smart City Charter - Sustainably Shaping Digital Transformation in Municipalities," bluntly explains to the astonished reader that in the BMUNBR's vision of a "hyperconnected planet," there will be neither money nor possessions for him and the behavioral data collected about him will replace his direct participation in decision-making processes (4).

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) "System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Food" seeks to place food production in the hands of a few large corporations in the name of sustainability and innovation, based on the 17 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (5).

Small-scale, local or even organic farming will no longer exist, and hungry customers will have to eat what is on the shelf or what a delivery service drops off at their door. Hovering over all this is the very real specter of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution," which interweaves artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology and military geoengineering and holds a technocratic surveillance state in store for us.

Clueless public

The interested contemporary can know all this; most of the information is freely available on the Internet, even though neither the so-called quality press nor radio and television say a word about it. And although the emerging sociopolitical transformation process will have a lasting impact on every individual, there is apparently no particular interest in learning about the emerging development. How can this be? Why does the passive majority even disparage the few who point out the impending dystopia with information booths and small demonstrations as "conspiracy theorists," "science deniers," and otherwise crazed "swindlers"?

One possible answer may be that governments, the media, the legal system, and the vast majority of the population are firmly embedded in a sociopolitical system that not only does not want anything about it to be questioned, but also actively prevents an awareness from arising in people of a radically different view of the world in which they live. Consequently, we need nothing less than a social paradigm shift; only in this way can the foundation be laid for a reorientation, a new beginning.

Critical Patriarchy Theory

With her Critical Patriarchy Theory, Claudia von Werlhof not only provides a set of tools for the urgently needed stocktaking of our increasingly hopeless situation, she also points out ways for overcoming it and for a social reorientation.

In her seminal 2011 work "Die Verkehrung" (6), Claudia von Werlhof defines patriarchy as male domination, which five to seven millennia ago displaced matriarchal social orders almost everywhere in the world, social orders that were not based precisely on a "domination" of women, but were simply the beginning for women, the starting point of all life.

If these societies, which today, with very few exceptions, have been completely erased, were constituted in a peaceful, life-oriented, egalitarian and in principle discrimination-free "maternal order", in its place arose "a warlike system of exploitation and domination led by men, despising life and especially women/mothers, subjugating men" (7).

Patriarchy now suffers from the very beginning from its essential flaw of not being able to bring forth life itself. As givers of birth, women remain irreplaceable; as givers of life, neither nature nor Mother Earth can be dispensed with. Patriarchy covers up this fundamental dilemma in a series of judgmental dichotomies that stabilize and justify its domination. Everything natural is degraded in the name of a transcendent order. The key to this metaphysical order lies beyond all that is earthly, which is considered intrinsically deficient and base and can be plundered, destroyed, and negated accordingly.

In our time of globalized neo-liberal capitalism, this system of rule "based" on war, exploitation and destruction opens up completely new, basically absolutely frightening possibilities, since its campaign against nature can now be waged with nuclear weapons as well as with plasma weapons based on Nikola Tesla's scalar wave technology and geoengineering.

Alchemy of "creative destruction"

The goal of such destruction is always the utopian long anticipated new creation of life, the project of "Genesis Two", the creation of a new paradise, free of all natural weaknesses and deficiencies, a perfect world, born from the "womb of male creative power" and thus per se superior to any life brought forth by women. A mother-oriented world is to be replaced by a father-oriented world (8).

Von Werlhof recognizes in this hubris the continuation of medieval alchemy with the means of modern natural sciences and information technology. The "philosopher's stone", which is supposed to transform the lower, worthless into the higher, nobler, has now mutated into a "world formula" for global transformation. Capital and machines are supposed to transform supposedly low-value raw materials into higher-value ones; the method for this is mortification, the violent separation of matter and its subsequent recomposition. Not only does the world's leading nuclear research center, CERN near Geneva, work according to this principle, where the long sought-after Higgs particle was "created" by the collision of protons (9), but it is also explicitly the program of the WEF and meanwhile of many a Western government when they speak of "creative destruction" and "build back better" (10).

In the socio-political realm, the "divide et impera" (divide and rule) approach to domination follows this principle, the efficacy of which we have become very aware at the latest in light of the divisive political narratives and interventions of the recent past.

On a technical level, the entire over-exploitation of our planet, the manipulation of genetic material, the use of artificial intelligence and the substitution of human or natural substances by artificial ones must be viewed from this perspective. Transhumanism and the conversion of our planet into a completely dominated military superweapon (11) in the style of the Death Star of the Star Wars saga seem to be the logical as well as dystopian culmination of this patriarchal alchemy project.

Breaking the Paradigm

So how can this Critical Patriarchal Theory help to eliminate the socially rampant kyndiagnosia, the inability to recognize danger? In this regard, Von Werlhof notes that patriarchy as a whole is firmly embedded in the collective unconscious of our world (12).

Domination, war and violence are considered an inevitable part of our earthly existence. Believers think they can draw hope from patriarchal religions with their transcendent promises of salvation and ritualized transmutations from the banal to the sacred. But no one questions the power of the fathers or men with impunity; any attempt to do so is punished or transferred into one's own narrative and thus rendered harmless. An example of this is the originally patriarchy-critical feminism perverted into the divisive and system-stabilizing genderism (13).

And yet it is quite simple in itself. Just as the ancient alchemists did not succeed in transforming lead into gold in their athanors, just as the magician on stage does not really saw the lady in the wooden box in spite of all his hullabaloo, just as humans cannot create a better, second nature out of the destruction of nature. For if the lady were actually sawed through, blood would flow, and no magician in the world could resurrect her afterwards.

It is a very simple truth that every child immediately understands when it is no longer subject to the magic of illusion. With her Critical Patriarchy Theory, Claudia von Werlhof provides us with an approach that is as effective as it is comprehensible, to wake up our fellow human beings who are caught up in the patriarchal system as if hypnotized, to disenchant the patriarchal project and reveal it in all its deadly ugliness.

Trapped in the socio-political narrative of a "thoroughly patriarchalized" (14) modernity, the vast majority is in a state of denial of reality and must be awakened from this deadly illusion. Those standing outside of this illusion are challenged to get behind their fear, to transform pain, despair and grief because of the mistreated nature into constructive courage and from their enormous love and by means of a planetary thinking in a global outcry to confront the perpetrators with their misdeed and to wake up their fellow men. In doing so, they must act and feel spiritually, and at this time that means, despite active political action, not to expect anything, but to observe what happens as a result.

In the sense of Gandhi it is important to act "innocently", to tell the truth without calculation (15), because this consciously innocent action seems to be the only way to the other side, that of the wilderness and the original matriarchal societies, which existed in harmony with mother earth, nature and their fellow human beings for thousands of years.

In addition, she and other matriarchal researchers such as Heide Göttner-Abendroth (16) point in their social designs to practical ways to a life-affirming world where humans, nature and the planet as a whole can thrive together and harmoniously in the here and now. Concrete projects such as the Cooperative Kassel in Transition (17) show how such a matriarchal-oriented social transformation can be approached. Let us share this good news with our fellow human beings!

Sources and Notes:

(1) German roughly "international cooperation of governmental, semi-governmental and private interest groups based on a self-given, globally binding set of rules"; see also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistakeholder-Governance
(2) https://norberthaering.de/macht-kontrolle/nac-natural-asset-companies/
(3) https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-de/services/203f40d1/environmental-social-and-governance-esg
(4) German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, Smart
City Charter, Bonn 2017, page 43.
(5) https://www.weforum.org/communities/shaping-the-future-of-food
(6) Claudia von Werhof, Die Verkehrung. Promedia 2011.
(7) In the place indicated, page 54.
(8) https://www.globalresearch.ca/heirs-rosalie-bertell-her-significance-women-movement-view-today-new-war-against-all-life-mother-earth-herself/5793198
(9) https://atlas.cern/Discover/Physics/Higgs
(10) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/creative-destruction-bridge-income-inequality-gap/
(11) See: Rosalie Bertell, Weapon of War Planet Earth. J-k-fischer-verlag 2018.
(12) Claudia von Werlhof, The unrecognized core of the crisis. Arun-Verlag 2012, page 13.
(13) Claudia von Werlhof, Die Verkehrung. Pages 112 following.
(14) Claudia von Werlhof, The unrecognized core of the crisis. Page 40.
(15) Claudia von Werlhof, Die Verkehrung. Pages 214 following.
(16) Heide Göttner-Abendroth, In the beginning the mothers. Kohlhammer 2011.
(17) https://kassel-im-wandel.de/

Willy Meyer, born in 1963, is a single father of two children and a teacher. He lives in Hamburg and has been involved locally in education and social change for two years.