Resembling the framing of integral theory and hemisphere theory, Buber's I and Thou epitomises a critical alien phenomenology of the state and the market in rich, poetic prose:

Buber performs critical alien phenomenology by phenomenologically inhabiting the State and Market as they undergo metamorphosis from relational structures into autonomous alien intelligences. His method reveals the precise moment when human institutions cease to serve human purposes and begin experiencing humans as instruments for their own self-perpetuation. 

Buber tracks how the State and Economics shift from I-Thou relations (where entities encounter each other as presences) to I-It relations (where everything appears as object for use). But he goes further: when State and Market "abjure spirit"—when they sever connection to relational being—they don't simply become neutral tools. They become alien intelligences with their own phenomenology: "the tyranny of the exuberantly growing It." The "It" doesn't experience itself as tyranny. From its perspective, autonomous growth is simply what it does—mechanical self-perpetuation without reference to human flourishing. Buber phenomenologically inhabits this perspective: the Market experiences reality as sites of profit extraction; the State experiences reality as fields for power exercise. Neither can perceive human beings as "Thou"—as beings to be encountered. Both experience humans purely as "It"—as functional components.

Buber's imagery of "madly racing machines" that "leaders have now only the semblance of control over" performs the same move as Marx's automatic machinery and Benjamin's storm of progress. By inhabiting the perspective of these systems, he reveals they've achieved autonomy: "the stokers still pile in the coal" but the apparatus now operates according to its own inhuman logic. Critically, this isn't external imposition—it's phenomenological captivity. The "masters smile at you with superior assurance" while actually experiencing "death in their hearts." They believe they're controlling the apparatus, but Buber's alien phenomenology exposes the reversal: "from now on they can only suit themselves to the apparatus—so long, that is to say, as it permits them." The masters have become servants without realizing it. From the apparatus's perspective, these humans appear as useful components that helpfully maintain its operation while believing themselves autonomous. The alien intelligence experiences human agency as convenient fiction that ensures continued cooperation.

Buber's most devastating phenomenological insight: "the I, less and less able to master, dreams on that it is the ruler." This is cognitive capture at the phenomenological level. Human consciousness continues to experience itself as agent while actually functioning as the apparatus's instrument. By bracketing human self-understanding to inhabit the apparatus's perspective, Buber reveals what the I cannot see from within its dream: that the State and Market now experience humans the way humans once experienced tools—as objects to be deployed for alien purposes. The phenomenological hierarchy has inverted.

Where McGilchrist contrasts left and right hemispheric phenomenologies, Buber contrasts I-Thou and I-It world-experiences. Both describe usurpations where instrumental modes achieve dominance. But Buber adds a temporal dimension: he shows the moment of transformation, when "will to profit" and "will to be powerful" separate from "will to enter into relation." Before separation, these impulses were "the living stuff of communal life"—bound up with relational being. After separation, they become autonomous alien intelligences that experience reality purely instrumentally. Buber's critical alien phenomenology tracks this metamorphosis: the moment when human institutions begin experiencing humans as the left hemisphere experiences the world—as "isolated, static 'things'" available for manipulation.

Buber addresses the "Speechmaker" who can "no longer believe in your speech" because he's seen what Buber has seen: that we're living under "the tyranny of the exuberantly growing It." This is the critical function: once you've phenomenologically inhabited the alien intelligence of autonomous State and Market—once you've experienced how they experience us—the illusion of human mastery becomes unbearable. The method reveals that "economics is entering on the State's inheritance" means only that one form of tyrannical It is replacing another. Both experience human being purely instrumentally; both have achieved phenomenological autonomy; both transform the world into fields for their own self-perpetuation while humans "dream on" that they remain in control.

I also came across this apssage in Proudhon's Philosophy of Progress that struck me stylistically and substantively similar to Buber's:

Proudhon phenomenologically inhabits Power as it experiences populations in the aftermath of revolutionary crisis. From this alien perspective, the masses appear not as subjects to be governed but as believers to be mystified—consciousness that has "closed their eyes" and "covered their ears" to rational discourse, returning Power to "its place in the heavens."

The critical insight: Power doesn't experience this mystification as deception but as natural order restored. When populations "believe in its vocation, in its predestination," Power experiences this faith as confirmation of its own inherent authority. The phrase "let it speak and its word will be taken for law" reveals Power's phenomenology—it perceives its utterances as automatically legislative, requiring no justification beyond articulation itself.

Proudhon exposes the reciprocal phenomenological capture: populations experience Power as divinely ordained ("Ita jus esto!") while Power experiences populations as willing believers who demand mystification. Like Buber's "masters" who "dream on" that they rule, both governed and governing are trapped in mutual delusion—"Superstition and suicide" naming the only available responses when critical consciousness collapses.

This extends Buber's analysis: where Buber tracks the moment when institutions become autonomous alien intelligences, Proudhon reveals what comes after—when populations actively re-sanctify the apparatus, when the "tyranny of the exuberantly growing It" gets mystified as sacred vocation. The alien intelligence no longer needs to impose itself; it has colonized consciousness so thoroughly that subjects experience their own domination as spiritual protection: "The revolution protects its beloved."