It' s me "Benoît " !

Use of Prestige: ‘The Prestige’ from Christopher Priest.
As a prelude, this article refers to the front pages of ‘The Economist’ newspaper, which for years has enjoyed creating covers made up of icons, logos, and various drawings of characters and objects that in the following years all make sense.
In essence, it’s a game, a riddle of upcoming events, most often occurring in the following years within a margin of two to three years. It’s quite remarkable not to question.

Question one: Is this about foresight? Such as geopolitical questions? Long-term strategies.
Question two: How do they know about the next wars or epidemics?
The pangolin designated source of Covid / Common flu / flu. What are the chances of designating future event actors?
Display of first or second-tier politicians.

Context: Let’s go back to an earlier stage, that of the Opera.
In opera, there is a libretto supporting a story that allows for various types of staging as well as the mastery of the singers serving the musical score created for this occasion. The decorum does it all: its accessories, its sets, its costumes, its virtuosos, and the virtuosity of the orchestra.
These principles and their potential gaps allow for the introduction of interpretation, sensitivity.
This conformity to the sense of format is necessary and remains in various forms reappearing in advertising, entertainment, and politics; delight is the ultimate goal, truth as reality becomes accessory.

Observation: Creating a puzzle of possible succession of events is one thing. That they come true is another. Repetition commands respect but also curiosity and questions.
Is Form more important than content ?

This suspension of disbelief is necessary for the trick, this playful communication. It leads us to see and believe, like constellations, an immediate structure that is only a pareidolia arising from our vision system, which here plays with our mental understandings of facts, sequences of events, and visible physical possibilities.

The Opera is a spectacle that requires spaces to occupy and build (stages and their sets with storage areas for these and costumes). This place is also one of representation, reception, and welcoming all the protagonists.
This implies available time, a musical culture to be cultivated, and an understanding of the themes of the librettos, two very different things.
This time and these resources constitute what is called bourgeois culture. A unity formed by resources, education, and hence an elitist way of life.
There is a social hierarchy passing through both a cost and a placement in relation to the stage, first on the ground, then getting closer, and passing through the boxes above the ground which can also become completely private. It is a visible positioning for all to see which exposes one’s social status.
Interestingly, the cheapest seats are not on the ground but above the boxes and at the back of the room. The consequences; audition and vision of the sets and the actors’ singing are not very visible.

However, we must move forward in time again and approach the contemporary period. Let us keep in mind that each way of life is specific to its social class. A habitus according to Bourdieu,

Like Foucault’s episteme, but here linked to a specific social group with individual resonance.
They represent modes of representation and reflection that produce automatic reactions which are manifested in both public and private settings.
It is an anchorage that is difficult to lose or assimilate quickly; it comes from lived experience and familial, friendly, and professional immersion.
From opera to musical comedy and its counterpart in popular entertainment with
artifices.

At the end of the 19th century, opera is the cultural domain that will dominate the so-called upper classes and will continue its existence and its social elitism well after. Its counterpart, popular theater with its fairground performers, will also give for the popular classes (said to be at risk by the ruling elite) a new form of entertainment.

The musical comedy: An American form if not specifically Anglo-Saxon entertainment by extension.
It will borrow the necessary means to match the total art of opera, the art of consumer
entertainment that is the customer of fairs and then of shopping streets.

Decorum: the key word All power is exercised in different forms regardless of its sources (reread the novels of Frank Herbert ‘Dune’ and for the more curious, Machiavelli ‘The Prince’).
Here we will talk about form and more precisely formalism. But let’s distinguish!
Form: in Europe, it is inscribed through historical tradition in the orders in Architecture which give proportion, scale according to the nations that will apply them. Human scale, scale in relation to the Empire or to regional importance. The references will be the same (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian). In modern architecture, reference forms will be multiple, it is the scale that will give the measure.

Formalism: There is our subject. The formalism described is that of the spectacle, its twists and turns, its oratory preparations, its posters. The front cover is the semantic hook giving clues. It feeds on itself, by the absence of immediate references.
These voids are the new librettos, plots loose enough for us to fill them with meaning,
interpretive shortcuts, or designated paths. These orientations can be directed or simply suggested by the overload of information.
Formalism can be extended to forms of power dispensed through education in prestigious schools, universities, or in France the Grand Corps: Polytechnique / Centrale / Mines and less technical and more subject to ideological manipulation: Political Science.
These places of education produce the bonds, interactions, relationships that will perpetuate the bodies of powers in the society they will dominate after this transformative transition. It is the generational transfer that is at stake.
However, we will not go further.

Let the Show Be: Explanations of an illusionist’s trick and its stages:

It all starts with a story, a promise. That of realizing within the framework of the show a
surprising action.
It’s the Expected Surprise: The Promise.
Then comes the situation: This is what we call the Trick. It consists of a rapid and simple sequence of actions that seem easy to reproduce.
In this sequence of actions, the Prestidigitator (the one who performs the prodigy with his fingers, his hands) who realizes the future Prestige can give explanations, present subterfuges to lose and manipulate the attention of the spectators. Who are always in a passive situation.
Then comes the conclusion, the realization of the promise, the trick shows its realization which calls for the amazement of the public resulting in its ACME: the Prestige.

The Prestige: it is both the conclusion of the trick and its immediate consequence, the source of the joy and delight that this impossible moment provides, which we know is impossible. This cannot exist without the promise, without the demonstration of the trick and its artifices that never reveal both the artifacts used and the sequences allowing its realization.
If we are interested in magic as a representation of various cultures and practices, we can refine the approach.
Indeed, the next stage is the conceptualization of these moments and practices.
Let me explain; the space of representation or the public sphere of magical practices is
sanctuarized. We have a decorum that exists, settles, imposes itself.

1. The demonstration needs visibility, recognition.
   It is also necessary that a given action be carried out remotely with a delayed effect or immediately distant from the magical operator (illusionist).
2. This is tele-action or action at a distance.
   The last point that triggers recognition, the Prestige, the affirmation of power is a visible effect for all.
3. This is what we can call the Media effect.
   The starting point, the Front Page of ‘The Economist,’ participates in this staging with a nuance that belongs to the notion of play. Game theory can be applied subsequently to study secondary or expected effects.
   Let’s return to the display of icons, various drawings of this cover that I
   Let’s go back to the display of icons, various drawings of this cover that I won’t describe because each annual one is announced as such: it’s an expected poster in the Barnum style.
   Both attention and curiosity are conditioned, providing insufficient clear data to allow the resolution of the interpretive puzzle of future actions. Thus, manipulation occurs, with the enunciation of relevant or irrelevant elements creating confusion. In essence, given the repetition of these covers and subsequent revelations, there is also a promise.
   All of these methods are used in advertising, propaganda, and thus are basic in communication.
4. The new social order based on consumption was established and structured methodically in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
   Stuart Ewen’s “Captains of Consciousness”, as an American historian from 1910 to 1960, recalls this period. He exposes the notion of consumerism and the propaganda that essentializes and disseminates it throughout society.
5. “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” is a key book on consumerism and opinion-shaping techniques.
   One should read the right pages, revealing the social ideology and control methods written by Edward L. Bernays.
   Translated into French and commented on, it is enlightening. It sheds light on its techniques, its usage policy (Spin Doctor), and its social model. Despite all its artifices and pretensions, it will produce a charter of good use of the “Spin Doctor.”
   It entrusts it with an informative role that aims to be honest in its profession as a publicist, forgetting its role in the Reed Commission, which made propaganda for the American government, among other manipulations of opinion.
   A similar anecdote I noticed in the declaration of a modern pawnbroker, a nationally recognized credit company in England that wrote the charter of its very liberal English corporation. It’s tasty! It’s a friendly acquaintance.
6. In essence, a small example of consideration of free will:
   “Bernays’s thesis: ‘Invisible’ individuals who create ordinary knowledge, common sense, through propaganda, dominate the masses with the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen responses; ‘engineering consent’ of the masses would be vital for the survival of democracy.”
   Consistency and Perpetuation of Information:
   Here we enter into the sensitive, a clumsy slip between a coffee percolator and a drunken trickster Deva.
   • We will introduce here: Howard Bloom / Thomas Kuhn / Michel Maffesoli / Michel Foucault.
     Are ideas created from one generation to the next, or are they extracted from a Topos? This rather binary reflection has had various responses, either by thinkers embedded in a curriculum, a history of ideas, or by observations drawn from neuroscience. On one side, there is an ideal philosophical reflection, on the other, an approach like ‘the neuronal man’ which considers the extension of reflection leading to the realization of adapted concepts.
     For many so-called traditionalist religious individuals, this definition is inappropriate. However, no idea is born and persists alone. It feeds on the specificities of concept manipulators, their culture, and the place of application.
     The emergence of an idea, like illumination, is the result of an aporia or redefinition.
   • The meme: The meme, idea or ideas taking shape and consistency in group thought, in groups of thoughts. It is a specific mental representation of an era and thus the creation of a new pattern or structuring of thought. This is the work of Howard Bloom who expresses and produces this concept of almost Darwinian vitality of ideas. But here, he essentializes them by associating this production with its human support, creator, and disseminator of choices and models that leave it, surpass it to expand.
     The meme can live, evolve, and die, thus fueling the genesis of other same, other concepts.
     Historically, this way of bringing an idea or a thought current to life, which could become dominant with the objective of being materialized through actions, was referred to as beliefs or religions. When done just as operatively by independent humans of the aforementioned major
     currents, it was referred to as magic, and more precisely as a mechanism emerging from the will of an egregore.
   • Egregores: A definition originating from so-called spiritualist or occultist currents.
     Conceptualized egregores: A secular definition stemming from both Freemasonry and used in sociology with Michel Maffesoli. It can be defined as equivalent to an aggregation, a timely and lively precipitation of a theme by a circle of individuals. This occurs within a given group and at a chosen moment by the participants.
     Applied in a historical context In short, no era repeats itself; one should not confuse repetition with reiteration.
   • The Paradigm is the key concept, or more precisely, the key moment using an idea that changes understanding and allows for a reinterpretation of past knowledge as well as future knowledge.
     It has a transcendental function. It allows for moving to another level of understanding.
     It’s the key concept of Kant which opposes the transcendent which is not forged; it is immediate and given. It’s an idea of deistic, religious origin.
     In science, we speak of epistemology, the study of sciences and their various bodies and disciplines. The notion of paradigm is the quintessential conceptual tool for understanding and envisioning a complete revolution of entire fields of knowledge.
   • But let’s extend the application of the paradigm to the social body: the Episteme.
   • Episteme, as defined by Michel Foucault, encompasses the doxa or corpus involving knowledge, philosophy, and sociology over a long and homogeneous period.
     The change in the episteme only occurs when the main paradigm, generating other concepts, declines, either encompassed or definitively annihilated by a more encompassing or effective concept to describe and explain the disciplines where it is applied.
     There are only three epistemes for the latter: that of the Renaissance, that of the classical era, and finally that of the modern era.
     What articulates the Mme and the constituted episteme is the concept, the founding paradigm that demands to endure. In the same, there is the Darwinian idea of the vitality of the idea to grow, persist, expand before inevitably extinguishing.
     Strictly speaking, the meme can be understood as an element of the episteme of an era. The structuring principles: the theater in three acts then transitioning to that of the spectacle with its Promise, tower, and prestige, an unconscious emanation as in lyrical art, opera opposed to the popular spectacle or concepts as seen previously.
     The Front cover meaning; that’s the question.
   • Previously:
     The use of imagery in a context where it is not employed to convey a clear concept, but rather deliberately in a confusing manner, by juxtaposing objects and known individuals either in a disorderly fashion or with a pseudo-chaotic order. This approach creates a visual labyrinth where images can be interpreted either as directly representing their objects, along with their known applications, or as symbols representing something invisible.
     In both cases, this approach makes icons of meaning visible while obscuring the way they are read and therefore understood.
     It is a deliberately labyrinthine construction aimed at multiplying interpretations and messages.
     In the case of publications like “The Economist,” it may even involve a retrospective anticipation of events.
     The idea is to create interpretive paths that deliberately lead nowhere.
   • A simple or simplistic hypothesis is put forward: It is a game playing on the propagation of associations forming meaning similar to memes, but without playing a role in understanding, dissemination, or the creation of a new paradigm. It is an opening waiting to be exploited.
     Impregnation by a mass of curious or interested people is necessary. It must persist, be consistent over time, provide access, promising the tour, here the meaning of events, without valid explanations. It captures attention and focuses the intellectual energy of the spectators.
     They are seized because there is a promise. A promise, in the form of a prayer with negative effects for many. This is the effect of social egregore.
     Events happen, always surprising, and in the case of this publication, never in good taste. It’s not a poorly executed trick or without spectacular actions, but always dramatic. It channels the direction of thought, emotions, and future reactions.
     The use of this artifice employing an artifact such as the front page of newspapers towards an objectification on a more delicate terrain, politics, deeply rooted in a period and in different human societies and their strata. All this is like a show in the short term.
     We manipulate the episteme of a period that we want to make transitional.
     We enter a game of representation because here everyone is both the spectator and the involuntary actor of the tour because we are all on stage.
     Passive or not, the actor and the prestige become invisible and are only overplayed in circles that do not necessarily decide together, no real contractual collusion but rather collusion of interest and opportunity. Only those who know the stakes and certain mechanisms can either benefit from them, play them, or simply wait for the outcome to bounce back.
     Stupor and trembling: recycling of a sought-after state.
     Only the horror is left, various forms of guilt to control the sequel of an action already carried out that the spectators will have to assume alone.
     These representations in several acts each have their own dynamics (financial, political, social).
     The genius of the trick requires staging, a deliberately subjective unveiling with a promise that can only be revealed by an expected state which, as the Japanese practice of respecting the Samurai as well as the rest of the circles of power dictates, seizes the whole being, preventing any action and reflection. Contemplation of power is sufficient in itself.
     The desired effect is called submission, loss of meaning, atomization of the individual.
     Welcome to the world of ideas: Whoever is not Plato.
     To be sent to the formidable judge from the friendly proctologist. I shake your depths but you will be grateful to me.
     To do: Cite sources: authors, books, publication date, and collection.