bsmall2Aug 21, 2025
The existence of a certain technocratic mandarinism is another way in which the university strengthens and perepetuates the established order. By technocracy I mean, along with Roszak, "that social form in which and industrial society achieves the highest level of its organizational integration." In such a social form "everything aspires to be purely technical, everything is subject to professional treatment." According to Roszak, the great secret of technocracy, which today is experienced in certain sectors as a kind of cultural imperative, is its ability to convince us of three premises that are interrelated:

  • a) "That the vital necessities of humanity are of a technical nature";
  • b) that an analysis (highly esoteric) "of our needs has already attained a 99 percent level of perfection" and that
  • c) "the experts that count are those that are highly certified."

The basic strategy of technocracy, again according to Roszak, consists "in taking life to a lower level which the technical is able to control, and then, on this exclusive and false basis, proclaim and intimidating omnipotence over all of us thanks to its monopoly of experts" (Roszak, 1969)

--- Ignacio Martín-Baró (1974!!)

Towards a Society that Serves its People: The Intellectual Contributions of El Salvador's Murdered Jesuits
p. 223 (1991)

, #IgnacioMartinBaro #MartinBaro #ElSalvador #MurderedJesuits #Technocracy #Roszak #TheodoreRoszak #TechnocraticMandarinism
tiksi@net

bsmall2Aug 21, 2025
1. Ours is, above all, a tragic reality. Neither the most optimistic statistics nor the most ideologically contaminated explanations can disguise the situation of inhumanity and injustice in which our societies struggle. As long as we do not recognize the catastrophic state of certain societies in which the great majority of their people living in perpetual life-threatening situations, everything else, as a consequence, will be out of focus, and totally lack any semblance to reality. --- Ignacio Martín-Baró (1974!!) #MartinBaro in #ElSalvador
Show threadbs2Jul 13, 2024
🧵
> what we find in actual human beings is not the simple need for eating and sleeping but the need for eating certain things and sleeping under particular conditions, and both needs are manifested in a very specific reference system... instead of #PrimaryNeeds we look at what psychologists call #SecondaryNeeds-needs that are less biological and more specifically - human, like the "need to have one's own car" - the argument becomes yet more compelling.
#ActualNeeds are #SocialNeeds
#MartinBaro
Show threadbs2Mar 3, 2023
> #MartinBaró.. [and] the "massive campaign of #PoliticalTerrorism" in #ElSalvador.. with U.S. backing and initiative.. "since 1984, with the coming of.. democratic government in.. under #Duarte.. things did not change.. the terrorized population..[had] two options.. go to the mountains and join.. the rebels, or to comply.." The killings then reduced in scale.. "there was less need.. people were so terrorized, so paralyzed."
- https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/chomsky/dd/dd-c12-s14.html
#NoamChomsky #DeterringDemocracy
Deterring Democracy: Chapter 12 [14/20]

bs2May 29, 2022
Keep away from #Cliches about #religion and #ThePope #Popes #LiberationTheology #Gospels #PreferntialOptionForThePoort #Chomsky #NoamChomsky #CatholicBishops #ElSalvador #Ellacuria #MartinBaro #Reagan #PresidentReagan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4
Chomsky on Religion

YouTube
Show threadbs2May 19, 2022
@natecull @TMakarios Towards the end if the Cold War Reagan was killing Jesuit priests as godless Marxists. It's like they sold a War against the Catholic church in Latin America as a War against atheist communists. The power of thought-stopping cliches is murderous. #Ellacuria #MartinBaro, and those Maryknoll nuns as another example...