Many extremist ideologies throughout history have combined elements of scientific or pseudo-scientific planning with rigid social control and militarism. These combinations are abused to falsely justify extreme measures by claiming they’re necessary for some (typically racist) idealized future state or preservation of a particular (caste based) social order.
The merger of two names (Seldon and Lycurgus) fits this pattern.
Seldon refers to fictional Hari Seldon from Asimov’s Foundation series. The name represents central control and planning for society’s future, using mathematical modeling of human behavior. It’s like Bentham’s utilitarian social engineering, but without his modesty or intelligent ethical constraints.
Lycurgus is a name from ancient Greek history and mythology, associated with Sparta. Legend has it that the mythical Lycurgus created their ruthless (e.g. cruelly “efficient”) militaristic social system around 9th century BCE.
Seldon’s fictional psychohistory (using mathematics to control societal outcomes) with Lycurgus’s mythical austere militaristic social engineering contains obvious troubling authoritarianism fantasy. Both names invoke significant control over populations and limitation of individual freedoms in service of a perceived “good” in militant tyranny.
The combination of pseudo-scientific justification with militaristic enforcement, as symbolized by combining these two historically loaded names, would create particularly dangerous systems that rapidly lead to human rights abuses, as demonstrated by 20th century fascist regimes that employed similar ideological fusions.
- Technical experts have absolute authority to implement their vision
- Society rigidly structured into pseudo-science principles
- Individual freedom subordinated to “efficient” outcomes
- Secret militarized police enforcement of compliance with technical directives
- Values preserved or discarded arbitrarily, based only on utility to the tyrant’s whims
History has repeatedly shown that when mathematical or scientific authority merges with militaristic discipline, the result is not enhanced human flourishing but rather dehumanizing systems of control. The symbolism embedded in this naming choice evokes precisely this troubling ideological legacy.
