The Perverse Society -- Part One

Ladies and gentlemen,

This report to the Committee will detail the particulars of a most unusual civilization; one which is unlike anything previously encountered in our travels.

This society is full of apparent contradictions and several behaviours which seem to be both self destructive and anti-intuitive. While studying the people of this society I found myself alternately bemused, disgusted, outraged, and most of all, frightened.

I scarcely know where to begin detailing the methods used by the masters to control their slaves; The convoluted weave of dominion is so elaborate, so labyrinthine, that even when one steps back to look at the pattern as a whole, it seems entirely too complex to fathom.

Let us begin, therefore, with a brief yet detailed overview of their society:

On the face of it, their civilization seems benign enough. The people generally appear to be happy, healthy, and the public image presented at all levels is one of great personal freedom, though scratching below the surface reveals a far more insidious reality.

Their culture is one of slavery, with vertically-integrated hierarchies in every aspect of their society. Invariably, a small, privileged minority rules over the majority. They use several different tools of control to keep the majority in line, most especially creating a cycle of addiction and dependency upon the ruling and governing institutions.

The carrot-and-stick approach of this society has successfully cowed the population for centuries; so long, in fact, that almost no one born into the culture is aware of how inherently wrong it is. The rulers control all the major institutions of the civilization: industry, education, religion, health care, government, infrastructure, public entertainment; everything is controlled by the same ruling class. They have successfully engineered perfect and absolute control over the masses.

The lessons of shame and conformity are repeated throughout the society, at all levels: religion is centered not around spirituality, but on conformity. Religious leaders instruct their followers to obey, above all else. Obedience to their gods is linked to obeying their masters; in fact, the people are taught to juxtapose the two. Government is seen as a protective overlord, keeping the serving class safe, and ensuring their personal freedoms, which are much talked about but aren’t at all real. Government controls education, infrastructure, and health care, and supposedly surveys the industries that in fact perpetuate that government. The industries, the government, the religious institutions are all run by the same ruling class: a series of loosely affiliated families who work together for mutual benefit, by ensuring that anyone outside their circle remains permanently below them in the echelon.

Indoctrination is the key to everything: the slaves are told from a very young age that they are in fact free, that theirs is a society where the individual is master of their own destiny. But from that same very young age the ruling class ensures that the serving class are trained to conform: Their system of education is used to train the people to conform to expected societal standards; stamping out personal expression and notions of true individualism and subservience to anyone in a higher position in the echelon of authority.

This subservience is reinforced by addicting the serving class to different forms of gratification, thereby distracting them from the reality of their lot. The class system is defined by who has access to the most coveted trinkets and baubles: humiliation is used against the lowest echelons by anyone and everyone perceived to be higher up, even among slaves of equal status.

Things like dress are used to delineate between the slaves: those who do not have the best available or most currently acceptable clothing are ostracised and persecuted. Likewise, even among children, those who do not have the newest toys, games or other child-oriented products are the least socially accepted.

This conditioning is repeated throughout the formative years of all children in this society. The learned behaviour of the slave class is therefore to always conform and to always work towards the imagined reward of being able to fit in among their peers. This obsession then follows the slave through all the long days of their lives, and becomes the sole ambition, both consciously and unconsciously.

The society perpetuates this by continually producing new and more expensive ornaments for the slaves to covet. So many new trinkets are made so often that they quite literally render obsolete by demand everything previously produced. When a slave has acquired everything that their station in life allows them to acquire, they are then told repeatedly, through the very industries they support through their labours, that everything they have acquired is now insufficient, deficient and valueless, necessitating that the slave classes are never able to complete their quest to acquire everything they are told they must covet.

Material possessions and the quest to acquire them aren’t the only means used to control the slave classes. This is just the most prevalent form of addiction and dependence that the ruling classes have created.

They have also co opted all forms of creative expression, most notably music, literature, art, drama and performance, to serve as a means of telling the enslaved people what they should desire while simultaneously controlling them by instilling whatever prevailing emotions are necessary to keep the people in line: fear, complacency, and anger being the most common.

Likewise, these creative media are themselves used to fuel the covetous desires so vital to maintaining the conformist controls: the slave must pay for everything, to watch a performance, to read a text, even to look at a creative work. The slave is taught that not to experience these popular cultural events is to fail, to be inadequate.

The servile class is also kept in line by creating true physiological addictions to several different chemical compounds that are found in every ingestible product made. Specialty foods are designed to provide biochemical reactions that create cravings to continue consuming them. These foods are not staples of their natural diet and are, like the ornamental goods produced by the industries that the slaves themselves labour to manufacture, considered to be a symbol of status among the people. Likewise, more direct drug consumption is done through products that are drunk, smoked or otherwise ingested. And once again, from an early age the slaves of this society are taught that to not ingest such things is to be an outcast, an abomination.

If loss of status isn’t enough to keep the slave in line, they must also fear the loss of their dwellings, which are either controlled through lease payments to the ruling class who own the land, or if a slave has somehow managed to acquire land, through taxation by the government. To be evicted from one’s dwelling, or to lose land to government seizure is considered among the most shameful infractions. Oftentimes, even if the slave manages to acquire a new dwelling, or (more often than not) if the slave manages to secure lodging with a fellow servant or (again shamefully) by going into a so-called “publicly funded” housing scheme, the stigma of the initial eviction remains.

Dossiers are kept on each slave, which detail their earnings, their ability to purchase, their histories of servitude and their infractions and supposed failures. These files are kept by all levels of the society: government, industrial, religious and even personal. Though supposedly private, these histories, including comments, observations and judgements of the higher echelons are frequently and openly exchanged.

Those who do not conform, those who are disgraced are not only ostracized by their fellow slaves, but by anyone higher in the echelon and especially by the ruling classes themselves. It is an unforgiving society; one which requires absolute obedience by the serving classes.

The next instalment of my report will examine the specific duties of the common slave in this society. I will highlight the tasks that slaves are expected to perform and how they are made to perform these tasks. I will also elaborate on the illusion of personal liberty, and demonstrate how successful this programme of slavery has become.

Until my next report, I extend to you, ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, my sincerest thanks for your interest in the study of this most perverse society.