Chapter Sixteen:

Larger Group Dynamics

The Mayan control system is based on the principles of time-binding, based on calendars, festival days, and seasonal changes. Language, or at least the standard languages, are linear methods of time-binding, and increase the memory of a system while also affecting decisions any given system may influence, and knowing how to use this to structure society is, quite simply, magic. The high priests knew what states of consciousness people would pass through, and knew the physical conditions that triggered these states. The academic control factors now present rely on lab books for science, logbooks for navigation, ledgers for business accounting, and other forms of recording and structuring data⁷⁹. Power is based in the faculty of prediction, in knowing where something is going to occur and when. Science reads its lab books, spots patterns, and makes predictions. Because the Mayan system was homeostatic the priest always knew what was going to occur, thereby wielding power over their society.

We are still subject to this control system of time-binding, as we are still reliant on the clock and we consume media according to a broadcasting schedule. If anything, today's work world is more finely sliced time-wise than the Mayan calendar could ever have been. Marketers, political organizers, and other social engineers are tracking, capturing, and controlling people right now, in a way very similar to the calendar keepers of the Mayan priesthood. They track the marks you make, how you vote, the websites you visit, and where you spend your money. They know your timetables; they feed you the media you passively consume. Humanity was captured long ago by the meme of civilization, and ever since civilization has been working on humanity's domestication.