Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“This practice of singularized succession would capture the attention of all and would be repeated at all levels of the social order, as practices of succession would be modeled on those conducted at the top. The entire social order would be a kind of pageant of passing the scepter or baton, with each day bringing fresh scenes against an increasingly rich background of transmitted habits and institutionalized norms. The defining function of the occupant of the center, then, is to maintain a steady and curatable data set of samples of futurity for the study of all. The perfection of the imperative would involve the study of movement, which means separating specific movements from larger wholes and detecting new movements within the movements you have already analyzed. If you separate out and objectify ever more minute movements, you can off-load those movements into articulations of natural objects (themselves taken out of larger wholes and refined so as to be repeatable) and thereby extend the chain of imperatives into the natural world so that we are both giving imperatives to reality and taking them from some reorganized part of reality. The initial refinement of the imperative concerned the ritual scene, with imperatives taken from the center so as to construct rituals whose rigor can be enforced and can take in more of the world of practice in which the efficacy of the ritual scene is tested out.”

— Adam Katz, The Same Sample · Jul 23, 2021 · Bouvard Substack