The establishment in O Lucky Man is a Westminster club of maritime vintage. Lindsay, as the anti-establishment figure, remorselessly pursues a satirical objective - with the loyalty of his actors a given - and it's a fine edge from that to dictatorship - but it's a long way from being a slave to finance, number or any of the other modern ills.
LA represents the 'old establishment' of spirit and force, not a million miles from the ancient Roman Vesta (eternal flame) and legions. In If, the feeling is that the old traditions (of the public school - which in Britain means private) are dying or corrupt (he is on record as saying he enjoyed his school days.)
Rebelling throughout history is all too common, but there is a question in modernity as to what the establishment is. I remember reading Charles A Reich's The Greening of America; somewhere in there he says the seat of power is empty, there is no one there. According to Carpenter's They Live! the seat of power is on Mars.
Rebelling creates frisson, and it's a sign of individual consciousness ('consciousness 3' in Reich's book, or the 60s counterculture.) In ancient days (and maybe in the British Empire) frisson was par for the course (along with poison and knives at night.) The world was a response to the desire and personal reaction of the individual consciousness.
In that way, the 60s and the hippies were going back to pre-industrial times. So, possibly 'the establishment' in modernity is simply a distorted truth of calculation and hyper-accuracy (in relative time) that makes it impossible to rebel when everything is blandsville?
However, as noted in 1/2 Essay 4, the distortions are not mechanically true. They are true relativistically, not mechanically - the large-scale similarities and the wheel of the zodiac.
'The establishment', in other words, is a parallel reality of number (head, not body.) This impinges quite a lot on what one considers to be healthful both psychically and physically.
There is something quite fantastical about the doctrines of establishment figures like Richard Dawkins because they take place inside the head. The body is a system of moving joints so athletically balanced that they are able to operate as one organism in action.
One can't correlate movement (time) in an athletic dimension with non-movement (genes on DNA) - It's physically and mechanically inconceivable. So, why is DNA so highly regarded by the establishment? Because it's a creation of the head and the illusions of logical thought (that convincesthe ego.) DNA is detectable via X-ray diffraction (electromagnetism) and essentially that is a parallel reality of hyper-accuracy.
If one was to study the sun up close one would be entering a parallel reality; the balance is achieved by the moon and tidal forces of water (in the womb.) The moon in Dumarest has a running motif of a white skull, which is how the hero remembers it from his savage days as a child-hunter.
Again, large-scale similarities implicate cyclical movements (spin) that are mechanically true. In the mechanically true situation (of animals that move and hunt and spin webs), plants grow prophylactics and germs are free-flowing. The body is exposed to risk and cure and grows strong.
In other words, a cyclical situation of mechanical truth engenders health. The body responds positively. Psychically, desire is a reaction to the mechanics of the situation.
The difference with a robot is it has no desire (the news item on a google-bot that apparently had human characteristics must have been confusing meaning with wholesale copying of tropes. I mean, it's fairly easy to so; the whole of pop music is copying, it's a case of individual taste.)
There's no point denying that humans can have ro robotic attributes as both have to be mechanically accurate, but robots cannot have psyche or the consciousness of desire. The google-bot episode could indicate a certain danger of the future telling stories (through expressive algorithms) that are distortions of human desire.
As for desire, the entire porn-industry is irrelevant if one can express one's desires with relatively few inhibitions. Ironically, the more inhibited the society the more penchant for porn (this was partly the subject of the Moore/Gebbie Lost Girls.)
The fertile world is not that inhibited and is the province of health. The jungle is the province of psychic calm.
SUPER APEYoutu.be/IJErlguYAZ8