Whom Do You Serve? WIP

I’ve been working on an essay and perhaps more, but rather than reduplicate my efforts, I share the podcast and two seminal links to the Substack contents.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

Note that this remains decidedly a work in progress; experience it as it unfolds.

Working thesis and abstract

This essay examines three mechanisms of institutional silence: the inhibition of inquiry under sacral authority, the inhibition of avowal under social consensus, and the inhibition of uptake under structural non-reception. Through the paired metaphors of the Grail (via The Fisher King), the Emperor’s New Clothes, and Cassandra, I argue that modern power often survives not by establishing truth but by organising silence across the social life of diagnosis. The result is a normatively managed gap between what subjects can perceive, what they are permitted to ask, what they are permitted to say, and what institutions are structured to hear.

Outline and thoughts

Psychopaths and Psychology

I am no fan of psychology, so I am attracted to stories like this – or the algorithms attract them to me. This article lays out the evidence that psychopathy doesn’t exist. By extension, sociopathy shouldn’t exist, since it’s effectively an extension of psychopathy. If unicorns don’t exist, neither do unicorn horns. In fact, one might look backwards to note that the psychopathy of unicorns doesn’t exist, nor does psychology (unicorn farms). Of course, this is faulty logic, but I’m running with it.

I published a post on Substack just because.

Audio: Extended NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.