The Dis-Mantled
September 2, 2024 Leave a comment
A certain meticulous copyist, a bibulous tailor, a prominent personage, and a coat-stealing ghost walk into a short story by “Russia’s most baffling comic writer” Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). Satirical and sobering, The Overcoat depicts the smallness of human concerns and the smallness of human hearts in the life of a ‘nobody’ dealing with exposure, humiliation, and public injustices. The Overcoat covers the dehumanizing problems of the “little man.”
The “little man” is a theme employed in 19th century Russian literature: “Due to his low social and career position, the “little man” had a difficult fate, which consisted only of difficulties and obstacles. “Little Man,” modest and meek in nature, was forced to endure humiliation. No one ever noticed such people who were completely defenseless against circumstances, no one helped them, which is why the life of a “little man” ended very tragically.”
The main character in The Overcoat is an unremarkable figure – a low-ranking government clerk. He is portrayed as a raw stripped-down version of humanity. He is a ghost of a man in the sense that his place in society is little or completely invisible.
Clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin lives a meager existence. He wears a patched-up overcoat that, with much wear, has also becomes meager. It doesn’t keep out the cold of the St. Petersburg winter.
Gogol’s clerk is also a “little man” in that his vital interests are extremely narrow, his world small. His self-contentment is derived from his copying work. There is something almost petty about his solitary life dedicated to repetitive work.
Unmarried and not gregarious, he doesn’t copy others who wanted more in life. Unlike many of his coworkers, he indulges in no diversion of any kind, not even the taste of his soup at night, to focus on copying. He goes to bed, after copying papers for pure enjoyment, “smiling at the thought of the next day and wondering what God would send him to copy.”
Of Akaky, Gogol writes:
“. . . in a certain department there was a certain official—not a very high one, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. . . he was what is called a perpetual titular councilor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.”
We learn that Akaky was given his father’s name, making him a copy of his father, a government official. When baby Akaky was christened, it was said that “he wept and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councilor.”
(A titular councilor was ranked at 9 out of l4 grades in the hierarchy of government positions.)
Akaky is seen as unchanging fixture and not human:
“When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same attitude, the same occupation; so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. . . His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.”
Akaky’s job was to copy official documents by hand and he is diligent in doing so. He worked, “as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.” Akaky doesn’t hate his uninteresting job:
“It is not enough to say that Akaky labored with zeal: no, he labored with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face: some letters were even favorites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councilor of state.”
When given an opportunity to advance and do more – change titles and edit pronouns – Akaky tries the new work, gets flustered and says “No, give me rather something to copy.” He does not want to deviate from his first love – the repetitive work of copying. (He seems to spend a lot of time in his head. He does have an imagination as we find out later.)
“Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty- meal color. Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day in the street. . . Akaky Akakievitch saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines . . . “
And though Akaky kept to himself and minded his own business, he is nonetheless made sport of by those around him. He is a running joke in the office. His overcoat – “they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape.”
But Akaky silently endures ridicule from co-workers, asserting himself only when they go too far. (He reminds of the quirky oft-rejected collator, Milton Waddams, in the movie Office Space.)
“The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakievitch answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter.”
Then one time, Akaky does protest the harassment: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”
These words affect a new hire who had participated in the constant teasing:
“In these moving words, other words resounded —” I am thy brother.” And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and noble.
Akaky is chaffed, not only by his fellow workers, but also by St. Petersburg’s Northern cold. His overcoat is threadbare and unable to fend off the icy wind. He goes to see his tailor, Petrovich, the imbiber, for another patch job. Living on a meager salary, Akaky goes to Petrovich with a budget amount in mind.
Seeing the state of the coat – “the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces” – the tailor balks at any more repair. Akaky is told that the coat is beyond salvation and he needs a new one. Hearing this, Akaky is beside himself. He doesn’t have the money on hand to pay for a new overcoat. After an unsuccessful back and forth with the tailor in hopes of another patch job, Akaky sets out on a singular life-mission to buy a new coat.
Pinching his salary of only four hundred rubles, he begins living an ascetic lifestyle for the space of one year. He curtails his living expenses and doesn’t eat at night. Less food, more imagination, and a labor of love for Akaky:
“He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth his existence seemed to become, in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life’s path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal.”
The desired overcoat becomes a substitute for the bond of normal human love. Is it also a symbol of dignity that needs repair? A chance at survival?
Akaky is finally able to get the money together to buy the material needed for the coat. He is overjoyed with it. He wears the overcoat to work and coworkers notice it. Gaining new status among them, he is invited to a party that night to celebrate the new coat and a birthday.
Leaving the poor side of town, Akaky crosses St. Petersburg square to reach the party. He muses about the people living on the other side of town. For one night he becomes a socialite, joining in the food and fun. Around midnight, he picks up his coat from the floor, brushes it off, and heads home.
On his way he is assaulted by two thugs who steal the garment. The Square’s watchman is no help. His landlady tells him he must go straight to the district chief of police. She has some connection with him.
Akaky goes to the district chief of police and finds that he is never makes himself available. When Akaky finally asserts himself and gets in to see him, the chief of police, instead of listening to the stollen overcoat matter, begins to question Akaky about his late-night behavior – as if Akaky was to blame for the stolen coat. He leaves the office not knowing what will happen.
A co-worker, “moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakievitch.” He tells Akaky that the best thing for him to do is to go see a certain prominent personage who would expedite the matter.
“The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person.”
To increase his image, the prominent personage copied the protocol of what he saw being done by those in positions above him. For “In Holy Russia all is thus contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies his superior.”
And so it was that “The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system was strictness. “Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!”
Akaky arrives at the office of the prominent personage and has to wait. The prominent personage is in no hurry. When Akaky finally appears before him in his worn undress uniform, he gets a curt greeting: “What do you want?” Fearful and confused, Akaky explains that his new overcoat was stolen and that he came to him as an intermediary with the police.
The prominent personage then upbraids Akaky for not strictly following protocol. Akaky did not go through the layers of bureaucracy leading up to the prominent personage.
“But, your excellency,” said Akaky Akakievitch, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are an untrustworthy race.”
This response is taken as another breach of etiquette and the prominent personage goes ballistic:
“What, what, what!” . . . “Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? do you realize it? I ask you!” Then he stamped his foot and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakievitch.”
Akaky is stunned and becomes weak. He has to be held up and carried out by porters. The prominent personage is quite pleased with himself “that his word could even deprive a man of his senses.”
Coatless Akaky staggers home slack-jawed in St. Petersburg snow and cold, the wind blowing from everywhere. He catches a cold that becomes a severe fever and dies. Enter the ghost. And justice?
I’ll not say more so you can read what develops. My purpose here is to introduce the story.
I see the overcoat as symbolic of different viewpoints:
For Gogol, the old threadbare overcoat represents bar-bone humanity. How much can be removed from a person’s life before the person is gone? For Akaky, it meant just getting by with another patch job.
The idea of the future coat, as imagined by Akaky, represented no longer being cut off from life. The new threads are a life-line. When he finally gets the new overcoat, it represents a goal achieved, a baseline of survival in the cold, and acceptance in society where appearances matter.
For thugs, the new overcoat represented an object of illicit desire – “But, of course, the cloak is mine!” For the victim, Akaky, the dis-mantling meant a life changed forever.
For bureaucratic overlords, the stolen overcoat represented a nuisance. They could make better use of their time. They amuse their selves with their selves.
And for the ghost, the dis-mantling of the prominent personage represented justice for the dis-mantled “little man:
“Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that—by the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your own.”
~~~~~
Though you might not be a fan of Russian literature, Gogol’s last short story The Overcoat is considered one of the best in Russian literature and worth a read. And you are likely someone who can relate to those who are made fun off, insulted, considered unworthy, acknowledged only in negative terms, ignored by society, shown disrespect by bureaucrats, and robbed of dignity and life by those who boost themselves up by pushing others down
Both realistic and supernatural, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol is an appeal for compassion for the barely visible “little man” and the dis-mantled.
The Overcoat, short story by Nikolay Gogol, published in Russian as “Shinel” in 1842. The Overcoat is perhaps the best-known and most influential short fiction in all of Russian literature. Gogol’s Dead Souls and “The Overcoat” are considered the foundation of 19th-century Russian realism.
The Overcoat | Russian Literature, Satire, Comedy | Britannica
From the Father of the Golden Age of Russian Literature, Nicolai Gogol’s The Overcoat is one of the greatest short stories of all time. This satire on Russia’s 19th century bureaucracy is amusing, pointed and has influenced many renowned Russian writers.
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol | Goodreads
Gogol was also capable of piercing insight into the human condition, satirizing the banality of everyday life while not losing sight of the pathos of those who struggle to rise above it.
“Absolute nonsense”–Gogol’s tales | The New Criterion
~~~~~
Another unnoticed fixture?
A 60-year-old Arizona Wells Fargo employee scanned into her office on a Friday on what appeared to be an ordinary workday. Then, four days later, she was found dead in her cubicle.
~~~~~
Cindy Wity 
Bit By Bit
September 25, 2022 Leave a comment
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Revelation 22:1
In his farewell address sixty-one years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned the nation.
“. . . we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
Today, we must stand against both the massive military–industrial complex that stands ready to generate kinetic military action to sustain itself AND the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the bio–industrial complex also ready to sustain itself.
As I write this, a conjunction of medical, scientific, industrial, and economic cohorts is being formed to bring about the r-evolution of mankind (Man 2.0). And with it comes the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power. Joe Biden, who Is not in control of his own faculties, issued a recent executive order (in parallel with World Economic Forum efforts) facilitating the re-engineering and control of bodies and brains and society.
Reading past the executive order’s sales pitch – “to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security” – we get a sense of what the bio-meddlers are up to.
The order states . . .
We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence; and advance the science of scale‑up production while reducing the obstacles for commercialization so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.
And from the executive order’s Sec. 13. Definitions.
(b) The term “biotechnology” means technology that applies to or is enabled by life sciences innovation or product development.
(c) The term “biomanufacturing” means the use of biological systems to develop products, tools, and processes at commercial scale.
(d) The term “bioeconomy” means economic activity derived from the life sciences, particularly in the areas of biotechnology and biomanufacturing, and includes industries, products, services, and the workforce.
(j) The term “key R&D areas” includes fundamental R&D of emerging biotechnologies, including engineering biology; predictive engineering of complex biological systems, including the designing, building, testing, and modeling of entire living cells, cell components, or cellular systems; quantitative and theory-driven multi-disciplinary research to maximize convergence with other enabling technologies; and regulatory science, including the development of new information, criteria, tools, models, and approaches to inform and assist regulatory decision-making. These R&D priorities should be coupled with advances in predictive modeling, data analytics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, high-performance and other advanced computing systems, metrology and data-driven standards, and other non-life science enabling technologies. (Emphasis mine)
(k) The terms “equity” and “underserved communities” have the meanings given those terms by sections 2(a) and 2(b) of Executive Order 13985.
The disastrous rise of misplaced power? A LifeSite news article comments on a major concern for all of us:
Raising further privacy-related questions is Executive Order 14081’s establishment of a “Data for the Bioeconomy Initiative,” which calls for “biological data sets,” to include “genomic” (gene-related) information deemed critical for societal advances.
The Executive Order further calls for a “plan to fill any data gaps” and “make new and existing public data “findable” and “accessible.” This proposal raises the question of whether and how individuals’ genomic information might be publicly disclosed, and whether it would be done so only with informed consent.
if you used 23andMe you can be pretty sure that your DNA data will not remain private. Going forward, nothing about you will remain private as the executive order requires filling “any data gaps”. Are you willing to be “findable” and “accessible”?
1945. C.S. Lewis came out with the final book of his space trilogy. In the prescient That Hideous Strength we learn of the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) N.I.C.E. is a scientific and social engineering agency and a front for dark supernatural forces. There are significant parallels of N.I.C.E. activity to what is happening today.
Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, describes the workings of N.I.C.E. in C. S. Lewis: Science and Scientism:
The aims of the NICE, according to Lord Feverstone (who was Weston’s co-conspirator Dick Devine in the first book of the space trilogy) include “sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including prenatal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain.” Lewis was certain that a union of applied science and social planning with the power of government would result in the loss of freedom and individuality.
Mary Cuff, in That Hideous Strength: A Prophecy for Our Times, comments that Lewis wrote about the transformation of the main character who was in the ghastly hands of technocrats:
Importantly for us, while the N.I.C.E.—our era’s Sodom and Gomorrah—meets a fiery and bloody fate, Lewis is more interested in showing the arc of redemption for modern Adam and modern Eve. Jane and Mark spend most of the novel physically apart from each other, and yet they creep ever closer to that original harmony between man and woman. When Mark is suddenly confronted with the horrifying reality of the N.I.C.E., it is his relationship to the absent Jane that stirs his nobler instincts and allows him to discover both his manhood and his humanity.
Are you willing for technocrats to transhuman you? Are you willing to be tinkered with? To be genetically modified along with the crops? Are you willing to be used as a biotech R&D project, just as humans were used as lab rats for the biotechnology of the mRNA jabs? Are you OK with someone messing with your DNA?
This executive order isn’t about making new and improved artificial limbs or pace makers. This order is about eradicating the imago Dei in human beings and replacing it with coded genetics and AI that serves the elites. This executive order is about abiding in stakeholder programs and not abiding in the True Vine. For, there is no mention of God anywhere around this order. Have you ever heard Klaus Schwab acknowledge God? Where do you think such “progress” comes from?
Self-referential humanists view themselves as gods. With access to tremendous wealth, they are able to exploit technology for their own ends. With such means they believe that they can achieve immortality via genetic engineering. With such means, they come to see themselves as transcendent – all-seeing, all knowing, and all powerful- and above death itself.
As gods, they demand your servitude, your praise and your worship. As the Transhumanist Psalm says . . .
For it was the WEF who reformed my inward parts;
WEF put me together in its genetics and molecular biology lab
I praise WEF, for I am genetically and socially remade.
Wonderful are your stakeholder programs,
That is what you would have me say.
With growing digitalization, do you see that app by app, rung by rung, command by command, and bit by bit we are being programmed for The Great Reset? With each input and AI response you and I engage in, we are being coded (trained) to execute certain functions in certain ways within a “stakeholder” program designed “to make positive change” as decided by the gods among us.
Globalist programmers chose the variables, the syntax, the keywords, decision making, the loops, the arrays, the functions. Data type “Human” is being concatenated with data type “Machines”. Our God-given high-level programming code is to be rewritten and compiled down into the lowest-level software to create an executable stakeholder program activated via an imbedded machine interface. With digitization driving everything, the once secure border between human and machine becomes an open border where “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist”.
I choose the crystal clear “river of the water of life” over a murky and mucked up data stream.
*****
Science can only describe things on a physical level. On that level we are complex chemical machines . . .
“A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries….” -R. Buckminster Fuller, US architect & engineer (1895 – 1983)
*****
Follow Joe:
Joe Allen on Twitter: “WHY “TRANSHUMANISM” IS THE ISSUE OF OUR AGE Technocracy is rising all around us. We’re watching a cultural revolution. If LSD was a precursor to the PC… If ubiquitous TVs are a precursor to the Metaverse… If 24/7 screen time is a precursor to neurotech…” / Twitter
*****
*****
Informed Dissent:
Trends in COVID Anxiety – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)
Booster Nations – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)
Tell your congressman no more money for bad CDC policy and no more data collection | Stand for Health Freedom
Dr. Paul Offit, one of the world’s most respected vaccine experts, is now officially an anti-vaxxer! (substack.com)
Study Reveals Masking Kids In School Made ‘No Significant Difference’ In Stopping COVID Spread. (thenationalpulse.com)
Transgender Surgery- Common Sense and Decency are Needed (substack.com)
“It’s big money”.. what they aren’t telling you about the shock video promoting trans mutilation of children… – Revolver News
Dr. Malone – Inventor of the mRNA tech that was used by Pfizer and Moderna to develop their covid injections:
“The more DOSES you receive…, the HIGHER your RISK for INFECTIONS, DISEASE and DEATH compared to the unvaccinated.”
Florida Versus Davos – The American Mind
Digital Harassment, Intimidation:
Biden Regime Moves Forward with US Central Bank Digital Currency So They Can Ban, Censor and Shut Down Accounts of Boisterous Conservatives and Starve Them Out (thegatewaypundit.com)
“e” is for Evacuate:
Good Grief Green Energy:
The Global ‘Green Energy’ Push is Causing Fertilizer Shortages and Threatening The Human Food Supply. (thenationalpulse.com)
(WATCH) Power Problems | Sharyl Attkisson
Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One – WSJ (archive.ph)
Huh?
Liberal Logic: Martha’s Vineyard Calls 50 Illegal Immigrants a “Humanitarian Crisis” – But 4.2 Million Illegal Immigrants Crossing a “Secure Border” (thegatewaypundit.com)
No, No, No! to ESG:
Elon Musk [ESG] “has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
Analysis: Musk’s ESG attack spotlights $35 trillion industry confusion | Reuters
The ESG Investing Backlash Arrives – WSJ
Financial Advisor IQ – Peter Thiel-Backed Startup Rolls Out ‘Profits Over Politics’ ETF
DRLL ETF Alert: What to Know About the New Anti-ESG Fund for Energy Stocks | InvestorPlace
Economic Disaster:
WARNING SIGNS: Estimated GDP by Atlanta Fed CRASHES 1 FULL POINT This Week! (thegatewaypundit.com)
Defeating the Marxian Panopticon | Michael O’Fallon, Charlie Kirk, James Lindsay
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Filed under 2022 current events, humanism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Science, social commentary, social engineering, The Great Reset, transhumanism Tagged with Biotech, Genetic engineering, Human 2.0, humanism, Joe Allen, Klaus Schwab, politics, progressivism, Progresssivism, Technocracy, The Great Reset, transhumanism, World Economic Forum