The Technocracy is a fundamentally evil institution
So, I don't really feel up to engaging like, the whole post you made because I've got a slow burn fever rn, but lemme put another perspective on this matter, an engineers one to be specific. The Technocracy is evil as fuck, pretending otherwise is forgetting the entirety of their involvement most major Western political events from their foundation in the year 1850 to like, 1999 where their vast power was broken and they were rendered no more in control of the world than the Traditions.
However,
fundamentally an evil institution ignores their foundation in its entirety and likely is sourced from not being as anal-retentive a reader of lore as me lol. The Technocratic Union, prior to the mid-19th century was something known as the Order of Reason, an enlightenment-era organization that was originally founded as the Craftsmason order back in the 11th century for one specific reason, magical tyranny.
At the time, the home remedies worked, yes, a herbal tea could cure a malaria fever! However, another thing that worked was when the local pagan goddess rolled around and demanded your firstborn, neither did anyone stop her, but some of the local magicians would be
backing her and dragging your kids off. They were innately a reformist force that accomplished their goal of forcing an
innately negative supernatural in the vast majority back and away from the head of humanity, and for their first
half millennium of existence were completely in the right.
Dark Ages Mage goes into some of the twisted shit the Hermetic Order did as matter of course, or the sheer immoral sacrificial practices of the Old Faith, proto-Verbenae in a sense. But they can be pretty much nailed down to "Normal people aren't people" with various internal differences between the sects otherwise. The Hermetics also extended this to "all supernatural creatures aren't people, including our slave race of Djinn."
In this regard, I'd like to present the Technocratic Union as a fall by degrees. During the Sorcerers Crusade books, set in the Golden Age of Exploration era, heavily colonial, you have the Order of Reason begin cooperating with other Western Magick traditions such as the Order of Hermes to conquer, pillage and generally shatter other foreign Magi by force. During this period, a growth of cooperative anti-native thought prevailed instead of the uneasy peace and gentleman club-esque rival that had slowly come to life.
The Order of Reason become a colonial power in those centuries, and the fall by degrees continued further, here, the ideal was "If they refuse our
superior understanding, they are uncivilized." This was incentivized by their vast cooperation with other, more reactionary traditional magicians which influenced them with religion and faith, making the Order of Reason an arm of the Catholic Church at the time.
A few more years pass, the 18th century rolls around and the Order of Reason is very comfortable in its presiding position over global politics, becoming a decaying aristocracy of sorts, cooperating and comingling with the traditional magicians as they firmed up their control over the planet and beyond. Now, this was all well and good until the Order of Hermes, circa the 19th century had a sudden
massive resurgence in the Victorian occult craze.
The Order of Reason panicked somewhat, to put it mildly, and threw their lot in with royalty. In the 1850's World Technical Exhibit? Was that the name? You get what I mean, there was a massive Symposium, basically a meeting of big Technocrats, where a bunch of the old Order of Reasonites were brought together and, with a grand effort and likely
many, many Mind effects, they reorganized the Order of Reason into the Technocratic Union.
Here,
still, they weren't as bad as they were even a century ago, at the height of colonialism, fighting against slavery and the like due to humanist beliefs whilst slowly shedding the influence their rivals had on society, but then again, this is a fall by degrees, not all at once. They began getting involved in low-level politics, IE, of nations, once again putting Sleeper empowerment at the top of the priority list but, in doing so, became supportive of many ideologies which were otherwise ignored by the more laisses faire old Masters of the Order of Reason such as ethnonationalism, extreme socialism, all the pretty stuff that leads into the 20th century where they become the actual mess they are today with the endless support of wars, at least one
full xenocide on record, though in this instance the aliens did attack first and a general boot wearing, Illuminati, the Man, authoritarian totalitarian add your adjectives of choice they've probably done it and perfected it and then left it behind as an inefficient form of oppression.
Anyways, this is a long way to say, the Traditions aren't right, the Technocracy isn't wrong and neither are founded on
evil persay. But the Union having sins it must answer for is a very true statement.
In my opinion, the Traditions don't have similar crimes simply because they haven't had the opportunity to do so, as can actually be seen in Doissestep before it exploded, or any of the other traditionalist majority Horizon realms outside of like, Horizon itself, but they are definitely not actually guilty of the same level of things in the most part, ignoring the Order of Hermes and their multiple enslavements of entire species lol.
And by 1999, in my opinion, again, those sins are wiped completely clean, because everyone who was involved in them was
vaporized and everyone who was left was just the struggling, feared masses of 20-30 somethings desperately doing their all to stay alive. We shouldn't judge them by the sins of their fathers, but rather by their own merits.
Apologies for the long post, I have a slight fever as well, so if it turns into circular arguments at some point, gimme the benefit of the doubt.
