【推文】the palmer worm - Kant; Empire Builders & a Blueprint for Controlling Minds at Scale

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🧵Kant;

Empire Builders & a Blueprint for Controlling Minds at Scale

Imagine you’re trying to govern a large, diverse, restless population, not just with soldiers and laws, but crucially, with their consent. You don’t want rebellion, endless policing, or constant uprisings. You want people to believe that cooperating with your system is the right, moral and rational thing to do. You want people to internalize your system as their own freedom, to police themselves. Now imagine you could quietly rewrite how people think about reality itself, without them realizing it.

Instead of people believing that there’s a real world out there; a world of fixed laws, natural rights, and truths that exist whether governments approve or not, you teach them something subtly different. You teach them what they know and experience is shaped entirely by their own minds. That they cannot directly know reality itself, but only what their minds “construct” inside their heads according to shared rules. You teach them that freedom doesn’t mean living by a higher law beyond human control, but following rules that your mind would “rationally” create for itself.

🧵康德；
帝國建設者與控制大規模心智的藍圖

想像你正試圖治理一個龐大、多元且躁動的人口，不僅僅依靠士兵和法律，更重要的是，依靠他們的同意。你不希望有叛亂、無止境的警察行動，或不斷的起義。你希望人們相信與你的體系合作是正確、道德和理性的事情。你希望人們將你的體系內化為他們自己的自由，自我管理。現在想像一下，你可以悄悄地改寫人們對現實本身的思考方式，而他們卻沒有意識到。

而不是讓人們相信外面有一個真實的世界；一個有固定法律、自然權利和政府批准與否都存在的真理的世界，你教導他們一些微妙不同的東西。你教他們所知道和經歷的一切完全由他們自己的心智塑造。他們不能直接知道現實本身，只能知道他們的心智根據共享規則在腦海中「構建」的東西。你教他們自由並不意味著遵循人類控制之外的更高法律，而是遵循你的心智會「理性地」為自己創造的規則。

If you succeed in embedding this new way of thinking, you’ve just achieved something astonishing. People can no longer appeal to an authority higher than the system. They will accept that “rational organization” (which you define) is the ultimate good. People will police themselves morally, believing they are free because they are following the “laws of reason” even if those laws are designed by the system. They will even fight to preserve the system, thinking they are defending their own freedom. This is exactly what Immanuel Kant’s philosophy made possible.

It is commonly accepted that Kant thought he was solving a technical problem about knowledge and ethics. But the practical effect of his system was to turn human reason inward; cutting people off from any independent reference to real, external truths and to make self-regulating mental conformity the highest good. For rulers like Frederick the Great of Prussia, this was a dream come true. Instead of relying only on armies, Frederick could build a vast state where education, bureaucracy and civic life all trained people to understand freedom as obedience to rational structure. To accept that structure as universal and inevitable and to abandon appeals to any higher truth beyond the system.

Once this mental shift happened, governance became easier, cleaner and more scalable. The infrastructure build out via institutionalization, policy and bureaucratic codification ensured that the population would largely govern itself, according to the rational codes embedded in their own minds. The state no longer had to constantly fight dissent with force. It could manage people through education, moral training and civic rituals that reinforced the internalized system. In strategy terms; you shift control from external policing to internalized consent. You control frameworks of perception, not just behaviour and you reduce the cost of enforcement by making people enforce themselves.

如果你成功地嵌入這種新的思考方式，你就取得了令人驚嘆的成就。人們再也不能訴諸系統之外的更高權威。他們將接受你所定義的「理性組織」是終極善。人們會自我道德管理，相信他們是自由的，因為他們遵循「理性法則」，即使這些法則是由系統設計的。他們甚至會為保護系統而戰，認為他們是在捍衛自己的自由。這正是伊曼努爾·康德（Immanuel Kant）的哲學所實現的。

普遍認為，康德認為他在解決關於知識和倫理的技術問題。但他的體系的實際效果是將人類理性內化；將人們與獨立於真實、外部真理的參考點切斷，並使自我調節的心理符合成為最高善。對於像普魯士的腓特烈大帝這樣的統治者來說，這是一個美夢成真。不必只依靠軍隊，腓特烈可以建立一個龐大的國家，其中教育、官僚制度和公民生活都訓練人們理解自由為對理性結構的服從。接受那種結構是普遍和不可避免的，並放棄訴諸系統之外的任何更高真理。

當這種心態轉變發生後，治理變得更容易、更乾淨和更可擴展。通過制度化、政策和官僚編碼基礎設施的建設，確保人口在很大程度上會根據嵌入在他們心智中的理性編碼自我管理。國家不再需要不斷地用武力鎮壓異議。它可以通過教育、道德訓練和強化內化系統的公民儀式來管理人們。在戰略層面上，你將控制從外部管理轉變為內在同意。你控制感知框架，而不僅僅是行為，並通過讓人們自我管理來降低執法成本。

It’s a massive strategic leap and it only works if people no longer believe they can directly access real external truths that could challenge the system. Kant’s philosophy broke that access and the ripple effects are everywhere today. Modern education systems, HR departments, DEI programs, compliance training, even much of modern therapy and coaching all use versions of this same system. The redefinition of freedom as internal rational self-governance. Defining rational governance according to system needs and training individuals to internalize conformity as virtue.

The implications for professionals across all fields are enormous. In business, it affects how your employees are trained to view ethics, teamwork and mission. In law, it reshapes how justice is defined and what counts as legitimate authority. In healthcare, it impacts how autonomy, dignity and decision-making are understood. In education, it transforms how teachers and students think about truth, freedom and selfhood.

The core idea (that reality is not received but constructed) has quietly shifted entire industries from engaging with the real to managing internal compliance to systemic norms. If you are working in leadership, governance, education, human resources, strategy, law, or policy, you are standing inside structures shaped by this shift and those structures have formed You in your professional role.

If you are trying to lead or build within those structures, you must first recognize whether you are reinforcing mental captivity or helping reawaken real discernment and freedom. This is not a matter of abstract philosophy. It is a matter of how civilizations endure or collapse. If your professional frameworks teach people that “freedom” means conforming to system-designed rational rules, you are operating inside Kantian containment, whether you realize it or not.

If you want real integrity, real freedom and real excellence, you must rebuild ways of thinking that reconnect people to external, structured reality, not just internal compliance codes. You cannot reform organizations, law, education, governance, or culture without first reclaiming the mind’s access to the Real. Otherwise, all you are doing is rearranging furniture in a prison of mirrors.

這是一個巨大的戰略飛躍，而且只有當人們不再相信他們可以直接接觸到可能挑戰系統的真實外部真理時，它才會奏效。康德的哲學打破了這種接觸，而這種影響今天無處不在。現代教育體系、人力資源部門、多元化、公平與包容（DEI）計劃、合規培訓，甚至現代療法和輔導的許多方面都使用了這種體系的不同版本。將自由重新定義為內在理性自我治理。根據系統需求定義理性治理，並訓練個人將符合規範內化為美德。

這對各行各業的專業人士都有巨大的影響。在商業中，它影響著你的員工如何看待道德、團隊合作和使命。在法律上，它重塑了正義的定義，以及什麼是合法的權力。在醫療保健中，它影響著自主權、尊嚴和決策的理解。在教育中，它改變了教師和學生對真理、自由和自我概念的理解。

這種核心想法（現實不是被接受而是被建構的）已經悄悄地將整個行業從與真實的接觸轉變為管理對系統規範的內部符合。如果你在領導、治理、教育、人力資源、策略、法律或政策方面工作，你就站在這種轉變塑造的結構中，而這些結構塑造了你在專業角色中的身份。

如果你試圖在這些結構中領導或建設，你必須首先認識到你是加強精神囚禁還是幫助重新喚醒真正的辨別力和自由。這不是抽象哲學的問題。這是文明持續或崩潰的問題。如果你的專業框架教導人們「自由」意味著符合系統設計的理性規則，無論你是否意識到，你都在康德的控制範圍內運作。

如果你想要真正的完整性、真正的自由和真正的卓越，你必須重建將人們重新連接到外部、結構化現實的思維方式，而不僅僅是內部符合規範。如果不首先重新奪回心智接觸真實的能力，你就無法改革組織、法律、教育、治理或文化。否則，你所做的一切只是重新排列鏡子監獄中的家具。

Imperial Strategy & Tactics

Frederick II of Prussia was not merely a political tactician. He was a committed centralizer and rationalizer; a builder of Empire through systemic control of human life. He wanted a disciplined, manageable, predictable citizenry and a bureaucracy that could operate over vast territories efficiently. He wanted a population whose intellectual and moral energies could be channeled toward the maintenance and expansion of state power. An empire that could justify its rule not by brute force alone, but by an internalized framework of “rational” obedience and social self-organization.

Frederick was very aware that to control at scale, military force was necessary but insufficient. He needed mental and moral architecture, an epistemic environment that would train people to see themselves as part of a rationalized system, making them internalize obedience as “freedom” and severing them from independent metaphysical anchoring, so they could be guided by the state’s rational designs. He needed a population of self-regulating minds, not a population of free, participatory, metaphysically anchored individuals. Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy was the perfect imperial instrument. Kant’s metaphysical revolution (whether consciously intended or not) served Frederick’s imperial ambitions well.

Kant proposed that Man cannot know reality directly. That all human knowledge is structured by internal categories of thought (space, time, causality) which shape experience. He posited that Reason does not receive reality, but instead, that Reason constructs the form of experience according to built-in, universally shared templates. Under Kant’s paradigm, morality is not about conforming to a given natural law; it is about following the universalizable forms of rational duty. In Kant’s system truth becomes a function of internal structures, not an encounter with external reality.

Freedom becomes self-legislation according to rational form, not alignment with an order outside oneself. In Kant’s paradigm, order becomes a rational imperative, detached from participation in created reality. This completely redefined the relationship between man and reality. Crucially for Empire™️, it redefined freedom from; conformity to real order, into obedience to internally constructed rational law. Under Kant’s Copernican Revolution, Frederick’s Imperial State could now claim that it was merely organizing what reason demands. It could claim that citizens are free when they obey universal rational laws, crucially, laws framed and administered by the state.

帝國策略與戰術

普魯士的腓特烈二世不僅僅是一位政治戰術家。他是一位堅定的集中者和合理化者；通過對人類生活的系統性控制來建立帝國。他希望有一個紀律嚴明、易於管理和可預測的公民群體，以及能夠在廣闊領土上高效運作的官僚體系。他希望有一個能夠將知識和道德能量引導到維護和擴展國家權力的人群。一個不僅僅依靠粗暴力量，而是依靠內在的「理性」服從和社會自我組織框架來證明其統治的帝國。

腓特烈非常清楚，要實現大規模控制，軍事力量是必要但不足的。他需要精神和道德架構，一個知識環境，訓練人們將自己視為一個合理化體系的一部分，讓他們將服從內化為「自由」，並從獨立的形而上學錨點中斷開，以便他們能被國家合理的設計所引導。他需要一個自我管理的思維群體，而不是自由、參與、形而上學上錨定的個人群體。伊曼努爾·康德的哲學是完美的帝國工具。康德的形而上學革命（無論是否有意識地意圖）很好地服務於腓特烈的帝國野心。

康德提出，人類無法直接認識現實。所有人類知識都是由內部思維範疇（空間、時間、因果關係）結構的，這些範疇塑造了經驗。他假設，理性並不接受現實，而是根據內置的、普遍共享的模板，理性構建了經驗的形式。在康德的範疇中，道德不是關於符合給定的自然法；而是關於遵循可普遍化的理性義務的形式。在康德的體系中，真理成為內部結構的函數，而不是與外部現實的相遇。

自由成為根據理性形式進行自我立法，而不是與自身以外的秩序保持一致。在康德的範疇中，秩序成為理性命令，與參與創造的現實分離。這完全重新定義了人與現實之間的關係。對帝國來說至關重要的是，它將自由從符合真實秩序重新定義為服從內部構建的理性法律。在康德的哥白尼革命下，腓特烈的帝國國家現在可以聲稱它只是組織理性要求的東西。它可以聲稱，當公民服從普遍的理性法律時，他們是自由的，更重要的是，這些法律是由國家制定和管理的。

It could claim that external objective participation in reality is irrelevant. That what matters is rational consistency within the system. The Party making you disbelieve your own eyes and ears in allegiance to The Party Line has a long history; State Supremacy. Only the American Founding which upheld Popular Sovereignty and Self Governance fought against this and this was precisely why Kantian philosophy (with its specific metaphysics) was installed as the default reigning philosophy throughout academia, displacing Common Sense Realism. To maintain State Supremacy by the means of Epistemic Containment which would ultimately destroy the American Constitutional Republic from within via its Kantian aligned Institutions, Policy, Pedagogy and Practises.

The formation of generations of American minds; bureaucratic, administrative, professional functionaries - capable only of seeing and operating within The System. Completely lacking the cognitive architecture to discern and function outside of it and to fiercely defend the parasitic containment system from within. To defend the destruction of their own Liberty, in fealty to the System which had raised them and upon which they had developed complete dependency. This had devastating operational effects. It severed individuals from independent metaphysical anchoring.

They could not appeal to a law “higher” than the rational framework designed by the state. It trained individuals to internalize obedience as moral duty, rather than the grooming/coercion it actually was. It produced bureaucratic citizens who saw their role in the rationalized machinery of the state as virtuous fulfillment of “freedom.” It disabled metaphysical rebellion; you could not claim injustice by appealing to Natural Law, structured reality outside the system. Parents attempting to defend their children from ideologically motivated medical coercion and capture by the Education-Medical-Industrial Complex are caught in this philosophical fall out. It’s no ivory tower luxury pontificating. It devastates lives. It’s horrific.

它可以聲稱外部客觀參與現實是無關緊要的。重要的是系統內部的理性一致性。黨讓你不相信自己的眼睛和耳朵，忠於黨的路線，這有著悠久的歷史；國家至上。只有美國立國之初堅持人民主權和自我治理，反對這種現象，這正是為什麼康德哲學（及其特定的形而上學）被安裝為學術界默認的主導哲學，取代了常識現實主義。通過知識控制手段維持國家至上，最終會從內部摧毀美國憲法共和國，其康德對齊的機構、政策、教學和實踐會起到破壞作用。

這一代又一代的美國人的心智形成；官僚、行政、專業官員——只能在系統內看到和運作，完全缺乏在系統外辨別和運作的認知架構，並從內部強烈捍衛寄生性控制系統。他們會捍衛自己的自由被摧毀，忠於養育他們的系統，他們對系統產生了完全的依賴。這產生了可怕的運作效果。它將個人與獨立的形而上學錨點斷開。

他們不能訴諸國家設計的理性框架之外的「更高」法律。它訓練個人將服從內化為道德義務，而不是它實際上的培養和強迫。它產生了認為自己在理性化國家機器中發揮作用是美德地實現「自由」的官僚公民。它癱瘓了形而上學上的叛亂；你不能訴諸自然法，訴諸系統外的結構化現實。試圖捍衛自己的孩子免受意識形態驅動的醫療強迫和教育-醫療-工業複合體抓捕的父母，陷入了這種哲學的餘波。這不是象牙塔中的奢侈討論。它摧毀了生活。這太可怕了。

Kantian premises allowed scalable moral standardization across vast imperial domains, using rational “education” rather than constant violence. When that scalable moral standardization is Social Justice✊🏻derived and Imperial funding strings drive its colonization and conquest, people are defenceless against tyranny. Kant’s system created the architecture for inner consent to external rational domination. Where earlier empires needed armies on every street corner, Frederick’s heirs could rely increasingly on schools, universities, civil service systems and moral training, all built on Kantian metaphysical containment.

There is no direct evidence that Kant set out explicitly to serve Frederick’s Empire. Such strategy and tactics are rarely announced, if anything they are often codified in veiled writing incorporating plausible deniability and the noble intent of overcoming or reconciling problems, difficulties etc. However, Kant lived in Frederick’s Prussia. He praised Frederick’s commitment to “enlightenment” under rational rule. His philosophy functionally served the Empire’s needs with remarkable precision. The Prussian state eagerly promoted Kantian idealism as part of its official moral-political philosophy throughout the 19th century. Even if Kant did not consciously design his philosophy as a tool of imperial control, his metaphysical system became exactly that and it was used that way with ruthless efficiency.

Kant’s metaphysics prepared and enabled mass-scale imperial governance without the costly problem of constant external violence. It made mental captivity appear as moral liberation. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest strategic deceptions in the history of Western thought and it continues to poison modern governance, education and legal philosophy to this day. One of the most potent, insidious tools of Empire. Someone really needs to make the film; ‘Capture of Reason; Kant’s Hidden Empire’. If so, you’d need to know (operationally speaking) what it was that enabled Kant’s Theories, philosophically and metaphysically. He was part of a long lineage.

康德的前提允許在廣闊的帝國領域內實現可擴展的道德標準化，使用理性的「教育」而不是不斷的暴力。當這種可擴展的道德標準化源自社會正義，帝國的資金驅動其殖民和征服，人們就無力抵禦暴政。康德的體系創造了對外部理性支配的內在同意的架構。早期帝國需要在每個街角都有軍隊，而腓特烈的繼承人可以越來越依賴學校、大學、公務員體系和道德培訓，所有這些都建立在康德的形而上學控制之上。

沒有直接證據表明康德明確地為腓特烈的帝國服務。這種策略和戰術很少宣佈，如果有，它們通常以隱晦的文字編碼，包含可信的否認和崇高的意圖，如克服或調和問題、困難等。然而，康德生活在腓特烈的普魯士。他讚揚腓特烈對「啟蒙」的承諾，在理性統治下。他的哲學在功能上精確地服務於帝國的需求。19世紀，普魯士國家熱切地將康德理想主義作為其官方道德-政治哲學的一部分。即使康德沒有意識到他的哲學是帝國控制工具，他的形而上學體系確實成為這樣，並被無情地高效地用於此目的。

康德的形而上學為大規模帝國治理做好了準備，並使其成為可能，而不存在不斷的外部暴力這個昂貴的問題。它使精神囚禁看起來像是道德解放。在我看來，這是西方思想歷史上最大的戰略欺騙之一，它至今仍在毒害現代治理、教育和法律哲學。帝國最有力、最陰險的工具之一。有人真的需要拍攝電影《理性的俘虜：康德的隱藏帝國》。如果是這樣，你需要知道（從操作上講）使康德的理論在哲學和形而上學上成為可能的東西。他是長久傳統的一部分。