"Social credit will function as the apotheosis of foucault's soul training mind trick"

1.    I Read this sentence in the book SURVEILLANCE STATE by Josh Chin...just sharing the interpretation of this as below

2.    The phrase suggests that China's Social Credit System represents the ultimate realization of Michel Foucault's ideas about how power controls individuals. Foucault described how modern societies exert influence not just through force but by shaping individuals' behaviors and thoughts, using surveillance and self-regulation. In this context, individuals internalize societal norms and act accordingly, without needing direct punishment. The Social Credit System does this by constantly monitoring citizens and rewarding or punishing behavior, pushing them to conform to state-approved standards.

3.    The term "apotheosis" implies that the Social Credit System is the peak or most advanced version of this form of control. It embodies Foucault's concept of "soul training," where individuals are trained to regulate their own behavior, guided by external surveillance and societal expectations. The Social Credit System takes this idea to an extreme, making self-regulation a societal norm, where citizens adjust their behavior not just through external penalties, but by internalizing the rules set by the government.

4.    Thus the sentence suggests that the Social Credit System represents the ultimate realization or culmination of Foucault’s theories of surveillance, control, and self-regulation. In this view, the system embodies a highly advanced or perfected version of how power can be exercised over individuals, not just by punishing them directly but by shaping their behavior and beliefs through constant monitoring and social feedback. In essence, the Social Credit System could be seen as the "final" or most sophisticated expression of the mechanisms Foucault described for training individuals to govern themselves according to societal expectations, without the need for explicit force.

5.    The sentence is a critique of how modern systems of control (like China's Social Credit System) could take Foucault's ideas to a new extreme by embedding surveillance and behavioral conditioning deeply into daily life, making people self-regulate and conform to state-imposed norms more effectively than ever before.