Social Credit Scores Today and Tomorrow

https://www.thehour.com/opinion/article/Data-isn-t-just-being-collected-from-your-phone-15451658.php

The Snowden revelations in 2013 confirmed our fears that the Orwellian TIA (Total Information Awareness) programme had lived on despite the fact that it had supposedly been canceled by the Bush administration.

The truth is that it continued and expanded and yet did so in fragmented form. Different agencies picked up the tasks and of course much was privatised. Twenty-first century war and intelligence are now more than ever public-private hybrid institutions with much in the hands of Wall Street.

And so Wall Street and its Silicon Valley cousin are for their own reasons (which work in tandem with the political powers) driving the Orwellian surveillance state. There are forces at work that seek authoritarian control –these are found more in Washington and yet control is a broader concept that includes not just the management of public conduct vis-à-vis the law, but spending habits, values and thoughts. And these too are commoditized by the market-driven (or rather manipulated) juggernaut that is American power. And it's when we take in the big picture that we can begin to understand how the interests of Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington overlap.

China has understood these issues as it quickly moved beyond a mere market understanding of capitalism. Authoritarian from the outset, the Chinese state had by the end of the 1980's realised that capitalism wasn't just a threat that could undermine and weaken the governing party's power but it (and the powers it spawned) was a rival power in itself – or would become one. It therefore followed that capitalism would have to be managed and appropriated by the political wing of society and that's what they did. Growing dissent over inequity and social upheaval, globalisation and the amplification of these threats in light of new twenty-first century technology drove Beijing to embrace more extreme forms of authoritarianism and just a few years ago we saw the culmination of this in the social credit score. Your access to society will be dependent upon your rating – your standing as a citizen. It's been done before but never with this kind of force and technological efficiency.

In previous monolithic and sacral societal structures the non-conformist was cut off or reduced to second-class citizenship. A non-Christian in the post-Theodosian context could live well enough in Roman late antiquity but would be excluded from the circles of power and influence. A Christian under the Ottomans could live and worship but would never be able to access the power centers. Likewise a non-conformist in 18^th century Britain could function and even flourish but there the upper echelons of society were closed to them.

China has taken this a step farther as technology has allowed them to micro-manage their population in ways never before conceived. The aforementioned models of second class citizenship will seem rather mild when compared to the harsh system that is now developing in China.

I (and others) have warned that this model would be coming to the West. Many laughed at this notion and yet the gainsayers (with their blind faith in Western Liberalism) have once more been proven wrong. It's not only coming, it's here. Its application won't be exactly the same and its introduction will undoubtedly be less draconian. The linked article indicates that the system is already functioning here in our society but as of yet has no real (or at least perceptible) teeth.

But suddenly in light of Covid-19 and the growing civil unrest – the idea of a social credit score suddenly takes on a very different and even ominous meaning. Covid-19 is one thing but in light of Smartphone culture, growing use of AI algorithms and things like facial recognition technology – this notion of a social credit score has nothing less than a menacing character.

In terms of the here and now we're already experiencing the frustration in the error-prone nature of these technologies. If you apply for an auto loan there's a good chance an algorithm is weighing you in the balance. You might get turned down, however if you had simply talked to a person face to face – in the context of a local bank, you would be immediately approved. Given the new generation's reluctance with regard to face-to-face or even voice-to-voice conversation, one expects this trend to continue and in many respects the new tech thinking which now (after a few years of conditioning) transcends the millennial generation is both driving and facilitating the automated algorithm-driven nature of our culture. We are in the midst of a tech revolution to be sure – but also a social and cultural revolution. No one could have imagined a period in which people would just willingly give up their private information to corporations and the state, but it's here and increasing numbers of people can't even understand what the issue is. Our public schools have done their work well.  They've educated children but not in the way their parents would have thought. They haven't taught them history but they've taught them every kind of self-indulgent decadence and in the context of that pseudo-individuality they've taught them to be good conformists.

I must say that while reading this article I feel vindicated in some respects. Though I run websites and am not inept at computer use I am selective in my use of technology. I have resisted having my picture online, my voice recorded, video calls and the like. Though I am often met with shock, I refuse to text and additionally I refuse to own a Smartphone – for various reasons. While my personal information is out there I do what I can to obscure and confuse it and flood websites with false data. Already my 'personal score' on some websites is zero – not zero as in I'm a totally bad person but zero as in the data is contradictory. This alone marks me as dubious but I'd rather be dubious due to data confusion than on the basis of biased and false information that might be out there – or to be judged by the metrics of Silicon Valley and its cadre of decadent effeminate techies.

Do I have something to hide? No, actually I don't. I have my enemies to be sure but for the most part I'm not trying to hide. But at the same time I do expect that at some point I will run afoul of the governing authorities – the Materialist pseudo-egalitarian orthodoxy of secularism or even worse, the forces of Sacralist Neo-Christendom. The latter (if empowered) would pursue the likes of me with greater vigour and so the last thing I want to do is give them fuel – not just to hunt me but to lie about me and manipulate my data. They'll do it anyway. Local police will certainly do that even now, but not having Facebook and things like that makes it a little harder. That said, my words alone (and obviously I have literally millions of them online) 'condemn' me but they also express my true ideas – even if the nuances are lost on many.

The pressure to conform and possess a good social credit score is basic to the world but actually touches at the heart of what the Mark of the Beast is. It's not a barcode or microchip in the forehead or hand but rather the mark of worldliness and conformity to the world system that governs your thoughts and actions (symbolised by your forehead and hand). The Mark isn't a tangible thing nor is it any one specific thing. It's rather a concept that is borrowed from the imagery of the Old Testament – especially as seen in prophetic visions. There are those marked out and claimed by God and those that belong to the god of this world and his Beast orders. When one understands this, you grasp that the whole world already has the Mark of the Beast. All the lost people already bear it. You either have that Mark or the mark of Christ as it were. It's much bigger than something to do with the economics of buying and selling. That's just a case of where the rubber meets the road – where our principles are put to the test and come to bear in daily life. Nonconformity means struggle, trial and persecution. The fact that the Church in the West doesn't 'feel it' now, is not a testimony to the goodness or supposed godliness of the West, but to the compromised nature and even apostasy of Western Christianity.

The projected Antichristian dystopia of Revelation 13 shouldn't be taken in an absolute sense though are there times it does become almost that extreme. It's not merely a futuristic scenario but one applicable to the whole of the Church Age. Sometimes it's hard to eat or even live apart from conformity. In other circumstances it's hard but by no means impossible – such is our time in the West. How is it hard? Again, it's not hard at all for the already compromised and apostate worldly Church. But the faithful will certainly experience financial hardship, struggle and social ostracisation. And this is not something recent. Its recent amplification is due to some Christians waking up but for the most part the 'conservative' leaders of our day promote theologies that function within the prosperity spectrum. Middle Class life, values and expectations are the norm – which I would contend are the equivalent of taking the Satanic Mark – selling out to the world and conforming to its system.

I found the link between the growing social credit scoring system and the already existing financial credit score to be of great interest – a point I've tried to make before. This was the precursor at work in a less technological age. And ironically (or perhaps not) the many Evangelical financial gurus have made much of Christians pursuing high credit scores, building credit and the like. And increasingly in the cities your credit score is linked to your ability to get a job, rent an apartment, what level of payment and perhaps deposit you'll have to put down for utilities as well as your access to health care. It is very much like the Revelation 13 Mark but the 2020's are going to see this transformed and taken into new territory. And yes, though I'm not actually a Covid conspiracy theorist I am willing to grant that taking the vaccine might be linked to one's social credit score.

Even for those of us who embrace second class citizenship as a New Testament ethical norm and expectation – life is going to get more challenging and in some cases – in certain contexts (like the city for example) it may become next to impossible. We can only hope that the clampdown will produce a vibrant underground (and yes, even a Black Market economy) – an alternative to mainstream life. We may be able to find our place somewhere between the fringes of the two – refusing to fully embrace either and in another sense playing them off one against another. This is not a moral imperative of course but a practical outworking, a pragmatic response. It won't be easy. For those with their eyes open it's not easy even now. But the nascent presence of a social credit score had better wake us up and it's certainly a cause to re-think how we live and think about money, access to society and social standing.