#pillarisation

Intentionally or by accident, the West is developing the equivalent of the Chinese reputational rating system. The New York Times describes how in Xinjiang "children are interrogated. Neighbors become informants. Mosques are monitored. Cameras are everywhere." Then the data is fed into a system and scored according to a Communist Party virtue rating system. Fact-checkers monitor social media to see who's expressed offensive opinions or joined any Hate Groups. The virtuous are rewarded but low scorers on Beijing's community guidelines can be stopped from traveling, excluded from admission to schools, banned from social media platforms, charged in court and doxxed.

If non-Chinese find it disturbingly familiar it is no coincidence. The same technology is involved in policing both the West and the Middle Kingdom. In the West the social scoring system is not yet official but Newsweek has already asked: should racism and hate be illegal? It happily pointed out that "most of those who advocate a ban insist it need not interfere with American democracy. As Jack Greenberg of Columbia University points out, incitement to racial violence is outlawed in most liberal democracies, including Britain, Israel and most of Western Europe."

Organizations dedicated to identifying "hate groups" have proliferated, most notably the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its blacklist is so extensive it has to be divided into categories, including male supremacy, hate music, and radical traditional Catholicism.  Ironically the SPLC has itself also been accused of being a hate group after its founder and guiding light, Morris Dees, was blamed for sexual harassment and racial prejudice. Over time there will be many more organizations dedicated to resource and platform denial.

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Self-sovereign identity, reputational scoring systems and the Internet of Things have made possible the  subdivision of the public space. Through identity devices and ultimately biometrics "every lock, lock access controller, card reader and other associated devices" can be told whether to let a particular individual pass or not. China already has a Muslim tracker system called the "Integrated Joint Operations Platform (Ijop), a regional data system that uses AI to monitor the countless checkpoints in and around Xinjiang’s cities. Any attempt to enter public institutions such as hospitals, banks, parks or shopping centers, or to cross beyond the boundaries of his local police precinct, would trigger the Ijop to alert police" to someone on the blacklist.

That blacklist system is coming to the West. The New York Times already has suggestions on "how banks could control gun sales if Washington won't:"

Here’s an idea.

What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America?

Collectively, they have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to take a stand.

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It worked not by building bridges but by accepting walls. "One country, two systems" has already been proposed by Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney as a possible solution for Northern Ireland after Brexit. There need be no checkpoints because modern technology makes it possible to apply different rules to individuals in the same physical space making it feasible for affinity groups intermingle yet capture the costs and benefits of the identities they choose.

Imagine a world where Red Card holders cannot apply for abortions at Blue Card institutions nor illegal immigrants will find their cards honored at Red Card institutions; where the Blue Cards can't buy guns and pay higher taxes but the Reds forswear public education and health in favor of a school and insurance voucher. It would not be so very different from the place we already know today.

The space we inhabit is already delimited by many boundaries described by membership.  Private airline lounges are closed to economy travelers at airports. The doors to restaurants, hotels and shops are effectively shut to illegal aliens and poor people who go to San Francisco. The deceptive absence of physical walls belies the fact there are virtual barriers everywhere. It's those barriers that count.

Tjerk Bottema - Cartoon of Abraham Kuyper "Lousy Sinterklaas" - December 5, 1909

Abraham Kuijper (29 October 1837 – 8 November 1920), publicly known as Abraham Kuyper, was Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905, an influential neo-Calvinist theologian and also a journalist. He established the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, which upon its foundation became the second largest Reformed denomination in the country behind the state-supported Dutch Reformed Church.

In addition, he founded a newspaper, the Free University of Amsterdam and the Anti-Revolutionary Party. In religious affairs, he sought to adapt the Dutch Reformed Church to challenges posed by the loss of state financial aid and by increasing religious pluralism in the wake of splits that the church had undergone in the 19th century, rising Dutch nationalism, and the Arminian religious revivals of his day which denied predestination. He vigorously denounced modernism in theology as a fad that would pass away. In politics, he dominated the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) from its founding in 1879 to his death in 1920. He promoted pillarisation, the social expression of the anti-thesis in public life, whereby Protestant, Catholic and secular elements each had their own independent schools, universities and social organisations.

Pillarisation (Dutch: verzuiling) is the politico-denominational segregation of a society. These societies were (and in some areas, still are) "vertically" divided into several segments or "pillars" (zuilen, singular zuil) according to different religions or ideologies. The best-known examples of this have historically occurred in the Netherlands and Belgium.

These pillars all have their own social institutions: their own newspapers, broadcasting organisations, political parties, trade unions and farmers' associations, banks, schools, hospitals, universities, Scouting organisations and sports clubs. Some companies even hire only personnel of a specific religion or ideology. This leads to a situation where many people have no personal contact with people from another pillar.

Austrian, Iraqi Arab, Israeli, Lebanese, Maltese, Nigerian, Northern Irish, and Scottish societies may also be considered to have displayed aspects of pillarisation, historically or in the present time.

Tjerk Bottema (Bovenknijpe (municipality of Schoterland) 4 March 1882 - died on the sea on 21 June 1940) was a Dutch visual artist.

Bottema was born in 1882 as the son of the farmer Johannes Bottema and Tjitske de Vries. He was educated at the arts and crafts school Quellinus in Amsterdam. From 1901 to 1904 he followed the course at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. He was a pupil of August Allebé, Georg Sturm and Nicolaas van der Waay. He also received lessons at the Academy of Antwerp. Bottema worked as a visual artist in various locations in Friesland and outside Friesland in the province of North Holland and in Amsterdam. He worked abroad in Belgium, Germany, England, France and Italy.

Bottema was, among other things, draftsman, painter and graphic designer. For example, he produced prints for the political-satirical magazine De Notenkraker.

Bottema died on June 21, 1940 when the ship the Berenice was torpedoed in the Channel. On board the ship were also the poet Hendrik Marsman and his wife.