Bureaucratic Transcendentalism – all major societal structures are subsumed by a centralised bureaucracy designed to evolve in complexity until no individual authority figures can be perceived to exist from within or without. Administrative organs spring forth whose whole function is to obscure their own purpose. To hold power in this organisation is to relinquish any understanding of what holding power means. The doctrine of the Chinese room takes hold: messages are best transmitted in languages not understood by the speaker. Increasingly, the operation of the fractal organs of state are viewed as abstract religious practises, possessing sacred significance but no materially interpretable meaning. The bureaucratic headless hydra defeats global capital and pursues its own inscrutable goals.
Ornithocracy with Haruspitic Characteristics – on issues of economic policy, migratory birds are consulted. Most other social issues fall under the auspices of poultry; matters of war are handled by garden and hedgerow species, most commonly councils of sparrow and blackbirds. When no message can be divined from the local wildlife, or during freak avian vanishings, decision making is delegated to the production and interpretation of entrails. Though roadkill and other naturally spilled forms are preferred, during such periods, butcher’s shops may be nationalised as a precaution.
Kinematic Legalism – stationary justice is faintly conservative in its presuppositions, but is not the focus of broad vocal protest. By comparison, walking speed justice is relatively progressive. Racial bias in the justice system appears to evaporate at mach 2, and reemerges aggressively before mach 3. Velocity stratification dates back to precedents stemming from a number of (at that time) irregular defences of speeding violations, on the grounds of time/crime dilation. It is recorded that the presiding justice for all these cases was both an amateur physics enthusiast and suffering from a degenerative neurological condition. Increasingly, wealthy defendants employ kinematic paralegals who, via a complex series of vibrations and rotations, ensure that the defendant undergoes consistently aperiodic and unpredictable cycles of acceleration and deceleration throughout the court proceedings, such that no verdict may ever be reached.
Generative Adversarial Metropolitanism – city planning is entirely handed over to a deep learning algorithm trained on cities skylines playthroughs. Initial results show positive changes in traffic throughput in areas of high urban density, at the cost of a general decrease in road sign legibility. Acres of identical houses sit terraced against industrial slums. Car accidents on multi-tiered intersections increase tenfold. There are rumours of ‘sadist cities’, with inescapably looped roadways, sewage plants repeatedly flooding residential neighbourhoods next door, suffering written into the ground plan. The brainchildren of the amassed neural pathways of a thousand malicious gods, only recently graduated from killing sims in ladderless swimming pools.
Tachyonic idealism – clammy lipped politicians sit slack in seance circle, speaking the words of their far descendent. We are not sure if there is only one future. Sometimes the words seem to disagree. The prime minister collapses from dehydration, and is borne off, chanting still from the stretcher. He has not had children yet, so we can be sure he will survive, or who is it who is speaking? Unlicensed seances are held by groups of older men, as proof of virility. In town halls and churches and basements, in huddled groups far from sight, by tossed coin and rolled dice. Children acquire speech more slowly, and do not use the future tense. The finance minister twitches and drools as her mouth informs us that the future is bright, that we are on course for a better tomorrow.
slingshots to somewhere 