Instrumentarian power does not require conformity or mass submission to norms
Evidence
Under the regime of instrumentarian power, the mental agency and self-possession of the right to the future tense are gradually submerged beneath a new kind of automaticity: a lived experience of stimulus-response-reinforcement aggregated as the comings and goings of mere organisms. Our conformity is irrelevant to instrumentarianism’s success. There is no need for mass submission to social norms, no loss of self to the collective induced by terror and compulsion, no offers of acceptance and belonging as a reward for bending to the group. All of that is superseded by a digital order that thrives within things and bodies, transforming volition into reinforcement and action into conditioned response. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1203
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that conformity—the very thing totalitarian power historically demanded—is irrelevant to surveillance capitalism is a paradigm-shifting distinction between instrumentarian and totalitarian power.
- XREF: Contrasts sharply with totalitarian models of We (Zamyatin) and with Foucauldian discipline; also resonates with behaviorist accounts of conditioning in 2001: A Space Odyssey. — connects to: Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629; Power can be physically exercised without resorting to violence or ideology — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 73; Mass acceptance of a society does not make it rational or defensible — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 93 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion
#expands(0.92) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629 - Power can be physically exercised without resorting to violence or ideology
#complicates(0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 73 - Authoritarian conventionalism tracks authority-endorsed norms, not middle-class values specifically
#complicates(0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 609 - Mass acceptance of a society does not make it rational or defensible
#qualifies(0.70) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 93