Digital concentration camp: data protection day or memorial for freedom?
We have reached a threshold beyond which a living soul is turned into an inventory number. On how to remain an icon of the Creator in a world of algorithms and social scoring.
January 28 is International Data Protection Day. But it would be more accurate to call it a day of remembrance for vanishing human freedom. Today we are crossing the final line before the living soul is finally converted into a digitized inventory number. After that, humanity will be wholly absorbed by the faceless Leviathan of the New World Order. And it is inevitable.
Any state stands on three pillars: control, exploitation, and violence. Control over every process within the state, exploitation of human resources and capacities, and violence as a system for suppressing those who step beyond the boundaries of state law. The difference between a totalitarian state and a so-called “democratic” one is only a small slackening of human freedoms and possibilities – but the essence is the same. Digitalization offers the perfect means of implementing all three mechanisms, and no state in the world will ever renounce their use.
The omniscience of the algorithm
In this new system of relations, the Algorithm will assume an almost religious function of Omniscience. This impersonal system watches your every breath, desire, and word, twenty-four hours a day – so that the system can exploit you as efficiently as possible and control both our outer and inner life.
The concept of the Panopticon (Michel Foucault) enters the world – a prison where a single guard sees everyone, while no one sees him. The global environment is becoming a soft concentration camp, where bars are replaced by services, surveillance cameras, and social scoring.
In such an environment, loyalty to the system becomes the sole condition of physical survival. Free will will be traded for a relative comfort and a promise of safety.
Artificial intelligence will construct a “bubble” reality, slipping you answers before questions even arise. Man as a bearer of intellectual knowledge and creative ability will become unnecessary. He will be needed only where the use of human hands and legs is more practical and cheaper than the use of robots. Our personal opinions and evaluative judgments will have to be hidden somewhere deeper, so that the system does not discover them and label us as an element potentially harmful to the social environment.
Life by subscription
Outside the system, existence will become impossible. Already today, in many megacities, biometric facial recognition operates in real time. The all-seeing eye of Artificial Intelligence watches your every step, knows your entire private life, and is ready at any second to give the command: “Sic ’em,” if that proves necessary.
In the longer view, a person will be able only to lease his earthly life under certain conditions – he will no longer be its owner.
Basic needs, as well as additional benefits – by subscription only. Everything will depend on social rating and loyalty to the system. In the world of Big Data, the person will be replaced by the “user.” The system will make choices for us, and free will will atrophy from sheer uselessness.
The assault on the Tower of Babel
The next step will be the creation of a post-human in whom there will be no room left for the image and likeness of God. The fusion of biotechnology and “the digital” will turn the human body into a terminal. When flesh becomes biomaterial for modifications, and the brain an interface for connection to a virtual cloud, man ceases to be an icon of the Creator. The new Tower of Babel will be built inside our own cells.
Even now, the System collects our personal data, including biological and genetic data, and in doing so it gains the right and the power not only to own but to design human specimens. People will be stripped of their final right – the right to a natural nature, given by God.
How can we prevent our world from turning into a digital concentration camp? The correct answer is: in no way. There are objective reasons. The main one is that people themselves want it, and they are striving toward it. Convenience removes the friction of life. When everything is accessible and within reach, when life is reduced to a single click, and Artificial Intelligence knows better than you what you need and when you need it, a person no longer needs to exert himself. A person will not need God – the System will take His place.
In a fraction of a second, the Algorithm selects everything you require.
Humanity chooses the passenger’s seat in an unmanned vehicle controlled by an artificial-intelligence system.
This can be seen in small steps. After all, it really is more convenient to use biometrics than to carry a passport you might lose at any moment. Easier to place your finger than to pull out your wallet. We voluntarily fasten a collar around our necks, mistaking it for a high-tech piece of jewelry. But the moment the system identifies you as “foreign,” that collar becomes a noose. Access to life itself will be blocked with a single click.
Islands of resistance
Of course, it would be wrong to say that people do not understand this. Many are sounding the alarm; protest movements exist worldwide among those who grasp what is happening. There are wonderful Luddite clubs in the United States and Europe whose members swap their iPhones for button phones, gather in parks and libraries, read paper books, draw, speak to one another face to face, and consciously refuse gadgets.
As a matter of fact, the workhorses – the hired shepherds of the New World Order – raise their own children in precisely this way. The Silicon Valley elite protect their children from their own inventions. They do not allow their children to use gadgets until the age of 12–14. They educate them, among other things, through physical labor (gardening, knitting, woodworking), art, and the teacher’s “living word.” Instead of textbooks, children often create their own notebooks with illustrations. Employees of Google, Apple, and so on send their children to such schools, where they are taught critical-thinking skills and where empathy is developed only through personal contact, not through social networks.
American Amish communities, many Buddhist monasteries, and other religious groups also refuse the dictatorship of the processor. This is a principled position for them. For them, отказ from a smartphone is not a movement “back into the caves,” but a search for balance – where a person remains master of technology, not its appendage. It is a struggle for the right to remain a creator and a man of prayer, not a consumer. These people consciously use technology only when it does not destroy the unity of the family or the community. They seek a human and religious rhythm.
Safety rules for the soul
And how are we to learn to resist a universal apostasy? Most of all, we must not forget that everything described above, in the broadest sense, exists only in our head. There is no “digital” in spiritual reality – these are fantasies imposed upon us from outside by the devil. Of course, in earthly life we cannot live in isolation from the outer world, but we can, as far as possible, refuse to let algorithms shape our life. We can fight to remain masters of our attention, not objects of manipulation.
Air out your mind preventively at least several times a day. Allow yourself at least 15–20 minutes of complete silence. Simply watch the world as it is (the sky, trees, people’s faces). Read paper books. Think with your own head. Make your own choices in defiance of what the algorithm offers you. Begin and end your day always outside the glow of screens. Reserve time for prayer, reflection, living conversation with living people, for reading.
Fix in memory moments of natural joy that are not connected with technology.
Affirm your bond with God, not with the network. Remember that a smartphone or a computer is the same as a hammer. We must not live inside a hammer. Use technology to accomplish a concrete task – and then immediately put it back in its place. Never forget that you bear an immortal soul, and no algorithm will ever contain the abyss of our heart.
The invisible zone
One must always preserve within oneself an “invisible zone.” Our freedom begins where the range of algorithms ends. Keep for yourself the right to be illogical and unpredictable – precisely what the system does not understand. Sustain living ties among living people. Nothing can replace physical presence, living conversation, and shared prayer. Build horizontal bonds founded on trust and love. Learn to do without digital intermediaries wherever possible. Skills of real work, natural exchange, and physical mutual support are the foundation of autonomy.
Let us remember that a human being is not a set of data, not a biological computer, but the breath of God.
The System fears what it cannot digitize. It cannot digitize the depth of silence. Hesychasm in theology is a path to God through the stopping of thoughts. In the world of digital slavery, it is a way to create an “invisible zone” inaccessible to cameras and sensors. Never make your life public and transparent. Leave what is sacred and secret only to God and to the closest people.
The return of “intimacy” is a revolt against “transparency.” Digital dictatorship is built on predictability, but it is powerless before the living chaos of the human soul. And so we must keep within ourselves what cannot be packed into program code: our spontaneity, our unrepeatable individuality, our silence – and, above all, our immortal soul.
