The Quality Agenda: The Search for Excellence

By Steve Madison

It’s not about surviving, it’s about thriving. It’s not about muddling along, it’s about undergoing an alchemical transmutation, a glorious transformation, a metamorphosis from a grub into a wondrous, iridescent butterfly ("psyche", to use the ancient Greek term). It’s about going through a phase change, altering from a humdrum human into a world-historic shaper of destiny.

It’s time to enact the Quality Agenda, to pursue excellence to its uttermost extent. It’s time for the glory of Meritocracy, the system that will change everything.

Don’t you want the best of all possible worlds – an optimized State, composed of optimized citizens? What could be superior to that?

Reboot the world. Revalue all values. Thus spoke Zarathustra.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716513442

Steve Madison

Steve Madison investigates all the mysteries of mind and soul.

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The Quality Agenda

The Search for Excellence

Steve Madison

Copyright © Steve Madison 2020

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-716-51344-2

Imprint: Lulu.com

Table of Contents

The Quality Agenda

Bug Man

The Positive Libertarians

A Word to the Wise

The Citadel

Ayn Rand

The Meritocratic Hierarchy

Humanity

The Revolt

The Institutions

The Judgment

Lockdown

Superheroes

The Family Secret

The Chameleon World

Timely Death

The Failed Left

The Valhalla Club

The Campaign

Compossibility

The Other

The Decisive Question

Concepts versus Percepts

Subversion

Privileged Terms

The New Left

Killing the Gods

The New Idol

The Unknown Self

The Cold Monster

The Anarchists

The Quality War

Glory: Rome versus Macedonia

Object and Subject

NPCs

The Rosy Dawn

Stonehenge

Conclusion

Bug Man

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from disturbing dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant bug. – Kafka

In his extraordinary short story Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka imagined a man being transformed overnight into a monstrous creature, a human-sized cockroach.

Much of life is horrific. It makes you worse, it grinds you down, it degrades you into base metal. It performs reverse alchemy.

Do you believe that democracy and predatory capitalism have as their objective the transmutation of every human being (base metal) into gold (higher humanity)? But why shouldn’t that be the aim of society? Why does society generate so many giant bugs, trolls and Discordians rather than excellent, high quality, meritorious Concordians?

In The Penal Colony, Kafka imagined a ghastly apparatus of execution which used vicious needles to inscribe onto the body of a condemned man what his crime was – so that he literally felt it on his flesh – and then killed him and pushed his mutilated corpse into a grave.

Why can’t we metaphorically inscribe positive messages onto people and elevate them? Why don’t we try to make the most and best of people, rather than getting the least and worst from them?

In The Trial, Kafka imagined hapless individuals being arrested yet never told what for, and then being subjected to a labyrinthine legal process that became more and more serious without ever clarifying what was happening and without giving the defendant any chance to defend himself against the charges (which were never actually brought), finally culminating in the accused’s brutal execution, while never having been found guilty of anything.

In a strange parable in The Trial, the protagonist Josef K. hears tell of a door to the law, but it’s guarded by a doorkeeper who won’t let the defendant (a man from the country) in. The defendant waits his whole life to be granted admittance, but the doorkeeper always blocks his way. As he nears death, the man from the country sees a radiant light coming from the room behind the door, the room hosting the law. He is struck by a curious fact and asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law (justice, truth, the answer), no one else had come here in all these years. The doorkeeper replies, No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

What could be worse than having your own personalized door to the answer to existence, but never being able to go through? While you’re alive, the door is always open, but guarded, then, as you’re about to die, it’s shut in your face and closed once and for all.

In The Castle, Kafka describes the attempts of a land surveyor called K – who arrives in a remote village to perform a survey that may or may not have been authorized and which he may or may not be qualified to undertake anyway (he may not even be a land surveyor and he may never have actually been summoned to the village!) – to carry out his task in the face of total obstruction at every level. The village is governed by a mysterious bureaucracy operating from a brooding, ancient castle overlooking it. No matter how hard K tries, he can never get the castle authorities to clarify and facilitate his task, which remains forever unaccomplished. Wikipedia says, "Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal."

People are highly accustomed to Kafkaesque bureaucracies where it’s impossible to get the system to make any sense. Frustration keeps building and building until some crisis is reached. Why can’t we imagine anti-Kafkaesque processes where the bureaucracy couldn’t be more helpful, has your back at all times, is always crystal clear in its communications, seems to anticipate all your desires and needs, and wants you to have the best experience possible? Why do we always get the worst of all possible worlds rather than the best?

In Kafka’s world, bureaucracies can only be indifferent or malevolent. Why should this be? After all, bureaucracies are simply groups of people. Why should they invariably be so vile and disturbing, so uncaring and negative?

There is no Kafka of the benevolent bureaucracy. Can such a thing even be imagined? Why is it almost impossible to imagine the system being sane and rational? Yet why shouldn’t a State be full of brilliant, efficient, enlightened institutions helping to make everything run better, more smoothly, for the benefit of all?

How can we have a Quality Agenda unless it’s an explicit goal of the State, reiterated in everything it says and does?

If an individual said they were pursuing excellence, we might be surprised but also impressed. We might wish them well and keep an eye on their progress.

Why is it that if the State declared it was pursuing excellence and was going to use all of its resources to make every citizen as excellent as possible, most people would be horrified and start getting ready to fight the State? They would immediately see the State’s goal as an attack on their personal liberty, religious beliefs and their right to do their own thing.

People endorse negative liberty – the individual free of the State – and hate positive liberty – the individual harnessed by the State.

People are all for the individual’s aspiration to become excellent, enlightened, vastly more effective and successful, yet find the collective’s aspiration – that of the State – to achieve exactly the same goals sinister and horrifying. Why is that? It’s because of the constant demonization of the State and the collective, and the relentless glorification of the individual, which has been happening ever since the Protestant individual rose up against the Catholic Collective, the medieval Church.

All of anarchism, libertarianism and anti-Statism can be traced back to the rise of Protestantism. The USA – founded by Protestants (often extremist Protestants expelled from their own countries) – is where love of the individual and hatred of the collective is practically written into its Constitution, which is extremely Protestant in its character.

The average American despises the State, the government, even society itself. (Many Americans agree with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that there is no such thing as society.) Everything in America is about the individual and the family, and the war of the individual and the family against any force trying to impose any restraint whatsoever on the individual and the family.

Millions of Americans love Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a hymn of hate against the collective, and the sanctification of the super-rich individual. Ayn Rand, born in Russia, is probably the most American individual the world has ever seen. She is quintessentially American – a lover of individual wealth and a hater of any collective expression whatsoever. She loathed communism long before the average American did.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand launched an astonishing attack on Robin Hood, the man who looted the rich to return the wealth to the people from whom it had been stolen in the first place. Rand’s character Ragnar Danneskjöld says, "I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in. … Robin Hood. ... He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I’m the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich ... [Robin Hood] is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practising charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. ... It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. ... Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

The idea of Robin Hood as a monster – and as the greatest threat of all – is at the core of predatory capitalist thinking. Rand wrote, Selfishness is virtuous. That is the core principle of predatory capitalism, the core principle of America and the American Dream, and the core principle of libertarianism and extreme individualism. It is exceptionally close to the Protestant principle of justification and salvation by individual faith alone. That’s why so many Protestants love Ayn Rand even though she was an atheist. She’s an honorary Protestant, with the same selfish individualism and same love of money and worship of the dollar.

What do you get when you promote the values of Ayn Rand, Protestantism and predatory capitalism? You get the USA. You get Donald Trump. Build the Wall. Lock them up. Send them back. America First.

Has the USA produced a citizenry of the highest quality, excellence and merit there has ever been? Or has it produced a Crony State, a State of dynastic elites, up to their necks in inheritance, privilege and nepotism? Is America the ultimate Propaganda State, doing nothing but lying to the world and itself in order to prolong the wealth, influence, and power of its ruling elite?

George Carlin, the supreme anti-Randroid, said, Everybody knows by now, all businessmen are completely full of shit; just the worst kind of low-life, criminal, cocksuckers you could ever wanna’ run into – a fuckin’ piece of shit businessman. And the proof of it, the proof of it is, they don’t even trust each other. They don’t trust one another. When a businessman sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who’s trying to fuck him outta his money. So he’s gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder. And he’s gotta do it with a big smile on his face. You know that big, bullshit businessman smile? And if you’re a customer – Whoah! – that’s when you get the really big smile. Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service... the... account. I am servicing this account. This customer needs service. Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, ‘We specialize in customer service.’ Whoever coined the phrase ‘let the buyer beware’ was probably bleeding from the asshole. That’s business.

It sure is.

Everything America does is to serve the interests of its plutocratic ruling class, the people that ruthlessly control predatory capitalism, the system that guarantees their unconditional supremacy.

America didn’t get rid of the monarchy. It just rebranded it. The American elite have all the power and wealth medieval European kings and nobles once enjoyed.

Can we imagine a different world, with a different ruling ideal? Can we imagine a system that has as its lodestone the desire to make everyone great, rather than just an elite handful?

Is the best world one where a few people are superlatively well off and leading fulfilled lives, and you, a member of the masses, can have an aspiration – labeled the American Dream – of joining them, no matter how improbable it is? Or is it one where everyone is well off and fulfilled? That’s your choice right there, the choice that determines both your fate and that of your country.

The first dream is that of individualism. It’s Ayn Rand’s perfect world. The second dream is that of collectivism. It’s Robin Hood’s perfect world, where he doesn’t need to steal from anyone because everyone has exactly what they need to live a satisfied life, and the rich aren’t natural-born looters. It’s always Rand versus Robin Hood.

It always comes down to these two competing visions: 1) individualism, leading to small elites (individuals and families) ruling over everyone else, and 2) collectivism, where the aim is to treat everyone fairly, justly and as equally as possible. The first vision is the right-wing vision, the second the left-wing vision.

On the whole, the right-wing vision has been the dominant theme of human history, but it has been challenged by the likes of the great Roman brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, the rebel slave Spartacus, the French Revolution, socialism, communism, and so on.

Right-wing systems are ruthlessly efficient at transferring wealth from the people to the elites, while left-wing systems are grimly unsuccessful at efficiently redistributing wealth and providing equal opportunities for all. Meritocracy is all about changing this pattern – by finding the smartest people, from any background, putting them in charge, and empowering them to be as ruthlessly efficient at creating equal opportunities as the right-wing elites have been at creating unequal opportunities.

Don’t you want the best of all possible worlds: an optimized State, composed of optimized citizens? What could be superior to that?

It’s not about surviving, it’s about thriving. It’s not about muddling along, it’s about undergoing an alchemical transmutation, a glorious transformation, a metamorphosis from a grub into a wondrous, iridescent butterfly (psyche, to use the ancient Greek term). It’s about going through a phase change, altering from a humdrum human into a world-historic shaper of destiny.

It’s time to enact the Quality Agenda, to pursue excellence to its uttermost extent. It’s time for the glory of Meritocracy, the system that will change everything.

Reboot the world. Revalue all values. Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Would Kafka ever have written about Gregor Samsa – Bug Man – having wondrous dreams and awaking to discover he had become an angel? No one can believe that kind of thing. In The Matrix, Agent Smith said, Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

Could humans accept heaven? Would they want to? Heaven would seem unreal to people, and hell all too real. Hell would be much more familiar and understandable.

Does humanity block progress to much more advanced societies because it is, oddly enough, happy with hell? The devil you know, right?!

Isn’t it time to do something else? To become God?

The Positive Libertarians

A strong, proactive State is all about strong institutions. The strongest State there has ever been was Sparta. Its great lawgiver Lycurgus – one of the most brilliant men in history – set out to create, to design, the perfect State.

Wikipedia says, "Lycurgus is credited with the formation of many Spartan institutions integral to the country’s rise to power, but more importantly the complete and undivided allegiance to Sparta from its citizens, which was implemented under his form of government.

Lycurgus is said to have been the originator of the Spartan ‘Homoioi,’ the ‘Equals,’ citizens who had no wealth differentiation among them, an early example of distributism … This radical lifestyle differentiated the Spartans from other Greeks of their time. … Instead of having rules simply written down for people to follow, Lycurgus wanted his laws to be ingrained into the Spartans as a part of their character, forming a greater bond with them. This would also allow flexibility to the laws so that they could change and evolve in times of need, rather than referring to firmly written rules.

America has a written Constitution. Lycurgus wanted the Spartan Constitution to be written into Spartan souls, to be fully internalized by them. They didn’t follow the Constitution as Americans do. They were the Constitution. They carried it in their hearts and minds. Because their values were built into their inner coding, they could respond to new circumstances, unlike conservative Americans who treat their Constitution as unchangeable holy writ and who appoint conservative Supreme Court justices to ensure that modern Americans live as if they were still in the 18th Century, still fighting the British Empire.

A people, not a parchment, and not a Supreme Court, must be the Constitution. The people are the walking, talking, living Constitution.

Positive liberty is all about enshrining the Constitution in the citizens themselves. They live and breathe it, and always know how to do right by it.

The Spartans made security their No. 1 priority, and so they created the perfect State soldiers, the perfect military society. Man for man, the Spartans were the best soldiers the world has ever seen. They were trained for it from childhood. No one else in history has been trained so exhaustively and obsessively as they were. An individual Spartan soldier was the ancient equivalent of a tank.

Plato looked at the Spartan State and was awestruck, but Plato was an intellectual genius, not a soldier. Plato saw himself as a somewhat different lawgiver from Lycurgus. He wanted to create the perfect philosophical State, the perfect intellectual State, the perfect State of reason, logic and wisdom. This State’s military prowess would come second, directed by its intelligence. The smart people would rule, not the soldiers.

The head must rule the spirit.

A negative liberty State hates the Big State and hates State institutions. It always privileges the individual and the family over the community and society. The only institutions negative liberty States revere are those concerning the military and religion: war