24K Journal of Virtues Science – Three articles having to do with autocratic corruption, freedom, and the promotion of sins as virtues by corporations.
Welcome to the first official issue of 24K Journal of Virtues Science!
A great deal is happening in our World right now. There is a lot of pain and suffering, with a seemingly endless stream of new catastrophes being generated and sold to the public as the current most important thing. The corporations are in damage control, trying to create as many diverse and powerful distractions as possible. What this means is that there is a great deal of change occurring, with the wealthiest people in the most precarious situations. Change is difficult but it also provides opportunities. If you are one of those lucky enough to see through all of the rigamarole, then you came to the right place, and you are reading the right journal.
Live Well,
Dr. Roe
Editor-In-Chief
24K Journal of Virtues Science
Online ISSN: 2994-5844
Print ISSN: 2994-5836
AuraPura Publishing
“Losing a job in the modern healthcare industry is dangerous, especially if it pertains to insubordination or questioning any procedures.”
Caligula
After several unsuccessful military campaigns, Emperor Gaius was determined to claim a victory. He was the son of Germanicus, the famous general. Travelling with the army, he earned the nickname Caligula, “little boots,” from soldiers apparently amused by the child-sized suit of armour in which his parents dressed him (Woods, 2000). In desperation over the lack of victories and believing himself divine, he named his enemy Neptune, the god of the seas. This is akin to blaming the fields of mathematics for failure of people to understand them or blaming nature for a virus after spending fortunes on gain-of-function research (Lerner et al., 2021).
His enemy firmly established, Caligula’s next military foray was on a beach, or *against* a beach as it was in actuality. He ordered his entire army to line up on the beach. These soldiers did as ordered. An army has an excellent reason for absolute autocracy within its ranks. It was easier to lose a head against enemies when out of lockstep with fellow soldiers. Therefore, it is true, soldiers follow orders, at least the living and successful ones. The profession requires unerring compliance.
Insubordination
Do soldiers also comb the sands for seashells instead of plunder when ordered to do so? They did, under Caligula’s command, exactly as told (Woods, 2000). None of those soldiers wished to incur his infamous wrath. Contradicting the mad emperor is a bad career decision for any soldier. It meant an ignoble death for him. Worse still, it could curse his family with unending calamity and, very likely, also death.
For my own experience in healthcare, asking questions of any kind is discouraged, even if and perhaps especially with an advanced degree. I emailed a hospital executive, who was also a medical doctor, regarding vaccination policy. Specifically, I wanted to know why medical personnel did not ask patients if they already had COVID-19 before advising vaccination. I provided him evidence that the adverse reactions were far more likely in such cases (Joshi et al., 2021). I was curtly told the policy was to follow orders verbatim from the CDC (the American “Centres for Disease Control”). During the same period, I responded privately to an email sent to all employees from a major government health department head, my boss. I suggested that he not downplay VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System of the CDC) adverse reaction statistics, as he had been doing, and suggested his promotion of a controversial medicine can have major consequences for his employees. Again, I was ignored and patronised. I lost my job within four months.
Losing a job in the modern healthcare industry is dangerous, especially if it pertains to insubordination or questioning any procedures. Careers involving high degrees of mortality generate hostile and threatening industries from an employee standpoint. These industries rely on a workforce filtered for compliance. These professions require people who will not question authority. Healthcare institutions organise members beyond their individual determination, judgement, and best interests for the mission, a greater good.
Compliance and Conspiracy
Large organisations in these high mortality industries naturally gravitate into unipolar structures. This cannot be claimed beneficial due to efficiencies of autocracy in these dynamics, as might be said for military throughout history and civilisation. Advantages notwithstanding, the rank and file are silent partners, filtered as they are for compliance. They give little input on structure beyond their immediate station for fear of the blacklist in their trade.
Caligula’s reign only lasted for four years, however he nearly brought the Empire to ruin. The reason he did not rule for longer was likely to do with his ever-expanding list of enemies. Without provocation, he would attack, rape, and murder citizens. The Romans were forced to witness this all and they could do nothing to stop it. Foreign dignitaries and officials were executed without charges, trials, or warning. When his assassination finally happened, it was brutal and understandably passionate for many of the participants.
When investigating organised criminal activities in such environments, there is no need to seek additional traces of conspiracy as the most important mechanisms are already incorporated. In tightly controlled environments with forced compliance, such as with armies and medical facilities, a criminal case should only require establishing connections between a bad order and the malevolent intentions. The notion of a scope limit on conspiratorial interests in leadership of large tightly-controlled organisations is absurd, as theorised (Grimes, 2016).
Groups lobbying for greater centralisation in such industries use the potential for increased mortality as a formidable foil against which to rail. The problems with such efforts are lack of evidence for definite benefits and disregard for institutional risks of vertical alignment. The potential for damage from this risk is so extreme, as to negate almost any argument from efficiency.
Discourse
There are likely no simple answers to this problem. A discourse should begin on to how this institutional weakness for corruption is best alleviated. This is of most especial importance for the practice of trustworthy medicine. I will end the article with possible topics:
Basic limits on leadership and medical domain authority
Optimal organisational structures given various medical criteria
Governmental and business relationships in the practice of medicine
Methods of identifying and promoting critically talented individuals
Institutional ownership and stakeholdership
Overhaul of medical business practices
Multi-domain emergency analysis and planning
“When investigating organised criminal activities in such environments, there is no need to seek additional traces of conspiracy as the most important mechanisms are already incorporated. “
References
Grimes, D. R. (2016). On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs. PloS One, 11(1), e0147905. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147905
Joshi, R. K., Muralidharan, C. G., Gulati, D. S., Mopagar, V., Dev, J. K., Kuthe, S., Rather, A. A., & Sahoo, A. K. (2021). Higher incidence of reported adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) after first dose of COVID-19 vaccine among previously infected health care workers. Medical Journal, Armed Forces India, 77(Suppl 2), S505–S507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mjafi.2021.05.011
Lerner, S., Hvistendahl, M., & Hibbett, M. (2021). NIH Documents Provide New Evidence U.S. Funded Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan. The Intercept.
The World has never had a good definition for the word liberty.
Abraham Lincoln
You find out the necessity of liberty as you find out the necessity of air — by not having enough of it and gasping.
G. K. Chesterton
Definition
The many historical attempts at defining freedom philosophically put to mind the concept of the unicorn. Unicorns are majestic and coveted for unique features, such as a horn, with however little reason. Its unique and identifiable profile being the greatest consequence of said horn. It is a magical beast most known for its rarity, the horn, however poorly understood for its actual value.
“It is a magical beast most known for its rarity, the horn, however poorly understood for its actual value. “
“The twin tropes of unicorn scarcity and fatal captivity combine to suggest a deeper relationship between the fragility of liberty and its scarcity.”
“Unicorn” by Maerten de Vos
The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (late 15th Century tapestry France/Netherlands)
Unicorn Liberty
Rare
Captivity Unsurvivable
Related Liberty & Scarcity
Difficult to Maintain
Unicorn
The myth of the unicorn includes the limit of survival based in liberty. Unicorns are not able to survive captivity. They can only live if they are able to maintain control over their lives. The novelty imparts a desire in the reader or viewer for more unicorns to exist which, subconsciously, should mean more liberty. This is a good metaphor despite strangely referencing itself, however a good definition for freedom still eludes. Perhaps more can be extracted from this self-referential metaphor.
The archetype of the unicorn relates the nature of freedom and its scarcity. The twin tropes of unicorn scarcity and fatal captivity combine to suggest a deeper relationship between the fragility of liberty and its scarcity. This would mean freedom is rare because it is difficult to maintain, and that it is often lost the moment it is secured because of the contradiction in the usual definition of neutral liberty with the security needed for it.
“Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze
Just as the unicorn, these ideas fail at the moment of capture. Every freedom granted includes parameters and restrictions. However, restrictions contradict fundamental requirements for most definitions of freedom. So, does there exist a non-contradictory or good definition of freedom that can function? A more robust definition of liberty must be sought after that does not contradict its own security.
I begin with the unicorn metaphor and work backwards. What is liberty to the unicorn and what is liberty to humanity? Are they the same simply because of a fictional metaphor, a construct in fact external to whatever human liberty is entirely? On the surface the unicorn appears appropriate enough, however informative yet useless. In fact, this is because it does not describe the mechanics for this ‘death’ on capture, it simply mirrors it in loose representation.
“[Freedom] is often lost the moment it is secured because of the contradiction in the usual definition of neutral liberty with the security needed for it.”
The unicorn at liberty is mythological and magical, needing only its self-description to persist. It is perfectly complete as an abstract idea, however apparently failing to aid humanity in fully capturing freedom, historically. Does the unicorn’s weakness represent liberty’s fragility or does the idea of the unicorn represent the lifespan of liberty?
Then the weakness of the definition itself would not represent a ‘fragility’ of liberty per se but that weakness in that contributing conception of it. Liberty then is not at fault, as experienced, but rather the seeming inability to stabilise a consistent and useful definition. However, the reason for this fragility in unicorns is, ultimately, fictional status; once a unicorn is captured, it is discovered to be something else. This is also strangely appropriate.
Other Definitions
Buddhists teach freedom is giving up on desires but how can they essentially recommend the same lifestyle for householders as mendicants, begging monks? Do their vastly different lifestyles have the same demands? The non-desirous mental state may work for monks who have given up on the World, but a wider application of this practice (i.e., Kant’s categorical imperative) would prove quite demonstrably disastrous, that a planet of beggars would starve. Giving up on all desire is not something human society can do, and continue to progress. What is freedom without a society? Further what is freedom worth without a progressive society?
Is human liberty the same as unicorn liberty, or does it not rely upon so many other things? Humans require love, light, education, sustenance, meaning, and attachments. Unicorn liberty in neutrality is completeness for the unicorn but this cannot be so for humanity, because humans are real.
Is human liberty a neutral thing? With the majority of definitions of liberty, there is a common value of neutrality expressed. But how does this unicorn, or neutral, liberty relate to human liberty? How does the unicorn maintain its own liberty? Simply, it does not and cannot.
A person ‘at liberty,’ in a neutral sense, is instantly in need of more. With mere neutral liberty and little else, a person is beholden to needs. This is because a person is rather incomplete without a great number of other things. Is an incomplete person capable of freedom? What is it that can make a person complete? The unicorn is imaginary and maintains itself, much like the concept of neutral liberty.
A definition of freedom between species, or societies, is simpler than within societies. A person is either captured or they are not. However, this is not useful inside societies, where freedoms have certain expectations and responsibilities. For instance, an individual within a suboptimal society cannot expect to attain an optimal freedom. Do the philosophical definitions of freedom match the practise of law and general expectations? Perhaps a definition of freedom can be more easily attained by describing examples of individual freedoms, and then manipulating them in theory.
Neutral Liberty
Being allowed to build a structure on a piece of land is generally considered a freedom. On the other hand, suppose one is allowed to build a structure in a way that will collapse, killing them and their whole family. Is this freedom? By the strictest philosophical definitions, it should be. However, definitions that do not touch upon reality, should not remain.
What is the difference between the constructions? The easy answer is one is causing harm and the other is not. “Do as thou will,” philosophers often adjust their definition of freedom to work out an exception here, “so long as nobody is injured.” Aside from being an ungainly definition, it lacks utility in that it provides no guidance.
In either case, one has the freedom not to build a structure at all. However, is the option to refrain from desired actions freedom? Most people would wish to say no, but how do the common definitions of freedom account for this?
Lady Liberty at Duomo Cathedral in Milan
“Is an incomplete person capable of freedom?”
Say one were allowed to build a tower that blotted out the Sun of neighbours’ gardens, is this freedom? Theoretically, there should be nothing to stop a person in many communities, however most would agree it is a terrible thing to do. If one owns the land around a river, does that include the right to divert it away from its current course, to the property of other people?
Taking such actions without agreements in the community are poor decisions, most people would agree. Should a person be allowed to make those poor decisions? Is this freedom? How might this be handled and explained philosophically?
Summary
A definition of human liberty that cannot maintain itself is necessarily an instruction manual for human enslavement, therefore it must be logical and consistent. So, what is freedom? Unicorns and neutral liberty are ephemeral. A neutral liberty does not exist for humans as freedom must not be neutral for them, it demands qualifications. Unicorn liberty ceases at capture, just as with human liberty. Can a proper definition of liberty guide the construction of a more appropriate archetype than the unicorn? The next article defines freedom philosophically.
“None of the actual virtues… are valuable for the purposes of corporations.”
Corporatism
Corporatism encourages favoured sins to the public, and most especially to the corporate labour pool, disguised as virtues in order to dominate and maximise profit off them. None of the actual virtues (Roe 2023b), least of which those basic to honesty, are valuable for the purposes of corporations. Envy, disdain, and hubris, while valuable to corporations, also stall genuine cooperation of labour, making workers less cohesive and easier to manipulate.
With the spread of these sins organisationally, social interactions become obsessively oriented to the particular, instead of toward the universal in coordination. This state allows moral considerations to be ignored. Generally, people are incapable of absolute honesty without some role model, present or known through literature, on whom they may focus. This is why Pythagoras required five years of silence from initiates, and Christ required them to be humble.
Figure 1 – Sin Chart – The three aspects of Materiality are labelled on the left with the four moments labelled above. The ‘Dirty Dozen.’ For more information: https://24K.cc/ResurrexitSpiritus/
Figure 2 – Star of Demoralisation – This represents the sins and the relationships between them. The centre sins are the most immanent and least visible. The rays are the visible sins. For more information: https://24K.cc/ResurrexitSpiritus/
As seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2, republished from Structural Virtues Theory (Roe 2023c), the sins of the conceit aspect are the outward manifestations of more immanent corruptions. As this internalised sin deepens, the outward presentation magnifies and sharpens to a cutting edge, so that they are mistaken for virtues, albeit corrupted. This is because those exuding them achieve a materialistic success, especially within society captured by extractive institutions.
The sins of amnesis (forgetfulness), disdain, obsession, and hubris are falsely represented as “pragmatism,” “self-righteousness,” “drive,” and “self-confidence,” respectively. They mirror their internal counterparts of procrastination, cowardice, corruption, and absolutism. In a society enslaved by corporations, these are the only so-called virtues that are glorified.
False Pragmatism of Amnesis
The ability to forget is most fundamental for sin. This allows a person to ignore their problems and transgressions. Sinning is easier to do as the person forgets who they are and their purpose, resorting to procrastination. Procrastination is a very internalised process, that allows a person to disown their failures.
A person with Elevational Motive (EM) (Roe 2023b) uses failures for greater self-understanding. A psychopathic apathy develops in those who hone amnesis to maximise sin, while pretending it is something akin to pragmatism. Corporations thrive in amnesis and its resultant amoral “pragmatism.”
Confusion of Sins and Virtues
Material success based in false virtues
Forgetfulness is Pragmatism
Disdain is Righteousness
Obsession is Drive
Hubris is Confidence
Self-Righteousness of Disdain
Disdain allows for the continuation of amnesis by diverting attention toward the imperfections of others. It stems from a fear of confronting difficult truths about the self. A person so predisposed to this cowardice detects elements of sameness in the objects of disdain. No better euphemism is possible than self-righteousness. The reaction is a comfort-preserving temporary revulsion initiated to assuage the deeper shame.
The advanced in this material skill ignorantly present themselves as agents of a progress informed by bald-faced corporate profiteering, as well as social engineering. It is the hypocrisy of which all humanity has been guilty, in the shadows of amnesis, at ignorant conceit. Airs of superiority are very much in vogue. The most accurate mascot for corporatism would be an anthropomorphic representation of disdain.
False Drive of Obsession
Obsessions, if profitable or non-threatening to corporate overlords, are acceptable in a slave society. If a distraction is profitable then the obsessed person is called “driven.” If a distraction is simply non-threatening, it is called a “hobby.” If somebody obsesses about the potential for corporate power to be exploited toward evil, sinful, or harmful ends, they are considered crazy.
This is simply because the person poses a threat to the exploitation of the invested power, for evil and selfish ends. Such people are subversive and dangerous to the corporations that capture governments. In reality, obsessions mount with the confusion of corruption, and not only through the disinformation and lies. This is because distractions become ever more important mechanisms of temporary escape from the intensifying personal, moral, and societal degradations.
False Self-Confidence of Hubris
Hubris is conceit aspect response to fear. This is a reaction of false confidence closer to preemptory disdain for anything outside the self. Absolutism is the immanent backbone of hubris, also based in fear.
Hubris, in presentation as an exaggerated ego, is the materialistic skill proving internal acceptance of sins in false roles as virtues. It attends an unwillingness to recognise actual virtues as anything more than pompous pretending, a constantly ready self-projection. The default hubristic reaction to legitimate superiority is frantic hatred. Supernational mega-corporations are the living embodiment of hubris as they edge out smaller businesses known to be fairer and better fitting for the needs of community.
“Obsessions, if profitable or non-threatening to corporate overlords, are acceptable in a slave society. If a distraction is profitable then the obsessed person is called ‘driven.'”
Summary
Corporate captured servants sell their most precious possession on this Earth to mindless profit engines. They are unnerved by the sight of legitimate virtues, mistaken for eccentricities. These people are sadly trapped in the spiral of materiality. This mental state forces the mistake of true excellence as self-hype or tricks, which they have no choice but to hypocritically reject in confusion (Roe 2023b).
As can be seen, these are the sins sold as virtues to an audience in awe of the “success” of these extractive entities, and the “geniuses” at their helm. These sins are enshrined in the framework of the corporatist cultural memetic infection as instrumental, and exemplified by the manipulated executives themselves much as historically and especially with high mortality industries (Roe 2023a). The next article will explore how the demoralisation described above sustains the corporatist hierarchy.
Roe, M. A. (2023a). Little Boots on the Beach – How Organisational Mortality Invites Autocratic Corruption. 24k Journal of Virtues Science. Series 01 Issue 01. https://24K.cc/Article/LittleBootsBeach/
Roe, M. A. (2023b). Resurrexit Spiritus part 3 – Resurrexit Theory – The Dualist Expansion of Structural Phenomenology. 24k Journal of Virtues Science. https://24K.cc/ResurrexitSpiritus/
Roe, M. A. (2023c). Structural Virtues Theory – The Dozen Skills in Reason – Resurrexit Spiritus part 5. 24k Journal of Virtues Science. https://24K.cc/ResurrexitSpiritus/
