I can't imagine a nation with a culture that has not been successfully out-thought and programmed by its "elite." That's what "civilization" is. What gets problematic for the "elite" is when they out-think themselves. Forgetting that the way to keep their power is to duplicitously manipulating those they oppress, instead they treat in that way their friends, relations, and other social peers -- or even often themselves. Remember that someone who can be struck by conscience is of only minimal social power, or thereby is persuaded to relinquish any but minimal control by the self: that is what "submission" is.
Woe betide the powerful person who believes and/or practices their stratum's ideology they strive to enforce upon the poor. What worse thing can happen to someone than losing or surrendering control of one's own mind and life? That shows you've been persuaded to bullshit yourself. To the extent that if you were already powerful or had the potential to be, you've revealed yourself to be incapable of exercising that personal power properly -- if you manage to keep any of it at all. In this respect your fellow "Athenians" are doing you a favor by not beating you to death. But is it any wonder that monks and nuns died in miserable droves from nursing plague victims, something no person of consequence would contemplate, when that keeps down the part of the educated citizen population who are unable -- perhaps too stupid -- to be trusted with themselves.
E.g., the only psychotherapy the elite can afford to indulge in, without some kind of winking and nodding that are necessary when one is being taught something deemed very important, is to preserve one's social power by swindling the many of theirs. Imagine an emir or emperor, or vital person of their class with connections to others, who has been educated and manipulated to surrender completely at the earliest opportunity. No successful "oppressive conspiracy" has even tried to tolerate in their siblings the kind of nymphomania they encourage in those peons they intend to use as prostitutes. Either society thereby becomes inbred and uncomfortably socially entangled, or sections of these segments are triaged out to make room for fresh blood and new money.
To maintain the position of conspiratorial masters they must always remember that they're conspiring together, albeit each for their own advantage. And to remain in the Club one must acknowledge one's own capacity for mental jiu jitsu (or worse) and advertise a certain relish for it as a word to the wise. To let it slip that you take what you teach others seriously will make it likely that your social peers do that shit to you. The Club too must be culled, after all.
Even to an anarchist, properly considered, voluntary submission is a sin. To remain free one must not act like a slave. That's what fascism is: a means of inspiring one to sort oneself aside, or inspiring others to render you at least useful.
The inability to volunteer for slavery is a prerequisite for not winding up a slave yourself. That's what freedom most frequently is. Too bad that only a random few in every generation are capable of thinking in those terms about themselves: the culling is necessarily relentless and ruthless. Thus a sense of honor must remain "among thieves," and a society's ethics must be the kind the "best" will profit from most when they don't participate in it themselves.
St. Augustine was obviously a has-been, or maybe a never-was, to have devoted so much energy to trying to persuade others of his own class to join the slave religion or caste. To perpetuate it you've got to learn to avoid tasting it. Don't Use The Product. This is the practical meaning, regardless of intent, of teaching about Nietzsche and Foucault: if you don't immediately grasp that even society's ways of thinking are set up to facilitate control by (and participation in) the Inner Party you don't deserve to be included.
Big Brother is your bestest friend when your worst enemy is yourself: one culls best when one culls oneself. Room 101 must be staffed somehow, and they might as well enjoy it.
Don't be poor Winston, is the message.
Those who do not display rigid ethical self-control, whether or not they bother to practice it themselves, perhaps should be programmed to self-destruct. There are certain things that just are just not done, or that one must never be caught at. See for example an example of how one purges oneself in Judaism.
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