Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:37 pmRight now, I'm reading Dr. Joost Meerlo's treatise The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing. It was written almost half a century ago, and yet the dangers of which it warns could easily have been culled from the internet this morning. The techniques of mass manipulation do not themselves change, though the tools that are being used to achieve them are more sophisticated today. One comes away from his book with the overwhelming recognition that we are "being had," and "had" in the worst way, by our elites.
Next to me, on my desk, is a copy of The WEF's "Covid 19: The Great Reset." If it were not enough that guys like Ellul (who had his own study on propaganda, which I also have) and Meerlo were warning us, the imperious fools at Davos are coming right out and publishing their totalitarian intentions -- a grimy Socialism for the masses, privilege and elitism for them, is the sum of it. It's almost hard to believe that such rogues still crawl between heaven and earth...and these, today are our leaders and heads of technology...
Coincidentally I had ordered and just yesterday received the title
Battle for the Mind (William Sargent, 1957). An idea I had been working with to put labels on the very strange goings-on in America over the last 8+ years has to do with 'hysteria'. I used the term loosely, depreciatively, yet now I begin to think that what is going on today, deliberately or inadvertently, brings out conditions of genuine social hysteria. I am interested in the first major instance of fracture: the events of 9/11. It seems fair and accurate to say that here a huge *crack* appeared. It has not gotten better and is widening.
One of the tricks of totalitarians is to convince the public that a controversy that is actually secondary or even trivial is the central controversy. In that way, the autocrats can trick the public into expending all its oppositional energy on battles that, even if they win them, will actually not change anything important at all.
Let me illustrate, if I may. Consider the Coke-Pepsi "wars." These wars are actually a fake controversy. They are a cooperative project by both companies to make people think that deciding which carmel-flavoured sugar beverage to choose is very important. But the truth is (and the thing neither side ever wants you to realize is the issue), nobody needs a caramel-flavoured sugar beverage. Nobody. It's junk.
So long as people focus on allegiance to one company or the other, they will continue to invest belief in caramel-flavouored sugar beverages, and maybe even come to see them as a focus of loyalty, of character, or of group belonging, a signal of the good life. And consumption will continue apace, no matter who seems to be "winning" the Coke-Pepsi war.
In the same way, the Democrats and the old Republicans have been directing public attention to the question of who wins the next election. And it's not an unimportant question -- unless both candidates are essentially committed to the same kinds of policies and objectives...and the chief objective of increasing government power and influence, and thereby bolstering their own money and status. Then, like the caramel-flavoured sugar beverages, it no longer matters who's in: the puppet on the right and the puppet on the left are essentially working on the same project anyway. But the public is distracted from the main issue, which is that no
actual choice of a different candidate, policy, trajectory and outcome is being offered them. They will keep thinking they have won, when all that's really happened is they've found a different way to loose.
Does it matter who's on the Left and who's on the Right in America? Maybe sometimes it does. Maybe the new governor in Virginia, for example, is a different fish from the regular politician; in which case, great. But too many times, we think that because one side won or lost that the public also won or lost. And I think that the truth is that the public has been losing to a generaly corrupt political system for some time now, no matter who ended up on whatever side.
The authoritarians have been winning by distracting the public from the real issues with side-squabbles.
I am especially interested in the reaction that has been cultivated and inculcated and directed against one notable orangish political character. It seems to me fair and reasonable to say that the sort of cultivated fear & anger that became so prevalent, and then exacerbated by a pandemic and all the associated stresses (similar to war-conditions) have primed the population, but especially the susceptible in the population, to real manifestations of social hysteria.
In those conditions people are said to become 'highly suggestible' and in that sensitive, weakened state, become susceptible to fanaticism, credulity, and paranoia. So on one hand during times of extreme stresses during war and crisis, they become hyper-sensitive to suggestion, but another reaction is sometimes completely the opposite: incapacity to hear and consider reasoned arguments. So someone in the grip of extreme stress and hysteria (after a bombing for example), instead of being capable of reacting normally will react very abnormally and cannot be reasoned with even to preserve themselves.
Yes, yes. Absolutely.
Every autocrat knows that if you cause the people fear they will surrender their freedoms to the next guy who promises some stability. So the panic and craziness, the info overload and the babble of conflicting opinions, the COVID fears and the collapse of the supply chain, the price of gas and the empty store shelves, the wars in education and in academia...all of these are tools (or perhaps just opportunties) of the same goal: make the public nervous, then tell them you'll fix it if they surrender more authority to you.
In short this is where I think we must have, we must come up with, a sane, rational and accurate hermeneutics. To be able, even while in the midst of high-stress events and social manipulation, to see what is going on.
You're using "hermeneutics" in a very general way there, are you not? I think you're using it to refer to how anybody interprets anything, such as news events, perhaps. I don't think you're using it in a way limited to actual text, are you?
I'm not objecting: I'm just asking, so I'm clear on what you mean.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm
Once a state of hysteria...a state in which large groups of persons were temporarily able to accept new and sometimes strange beliefs without criticism.
That's a great quotation. And very true, I think.
It squares with something David Shenk wrote years ago, in his book
Data Smog. He talks about how Spinoza and Descartes had a controversy over the question, are people basically critical thinkers or are they basically credulous?
Spinoza thought people tended to believe what they heard first, and afterward to examine, criticize and accept or reject it on more intellectual grounds. Descartes, on the other hand, believed that people were sort of instintive cynics, who would first
disbelieve in new information, and then afterward, perhaps accept it and believe it if there was subsequent evidence or proof.
As modern psychology has shown, one of them was right. And it wasn't Descartes. People immediately believe information they hear for the first time -- perhaps only for as long as a second or so -- and then
afterward, to become more critical and thoughtful about it. And this fact is easy to test: just t tell somebody an outrageous untruth, like, "Did I tell you that it turns out I'm Madonna's cousin?" and see how frequently people's first response is "Really?" Then you'll see them think about it, and say, "Yeah, right...nice one." But it's too late. They already believed you for a second, and they realize they've been had.
So people believe lies instinctively, then quickly figure out they've been had. But, asks Shenk, what happens when people are denied the
time to think? What happens when the lies come in so thick and fast that no sooner have they heard one lie then they are hit with a new one, or even with the same lie repeated?
The answer turns out to be that people slip into a kind of mental "surfing" mode, where, instead of trying to slow and process the amount of information, they start to sort of "go with the flow" of the lies. They don't have time to do more. So they go into "believer" mode, and only if they have time afterward, get around to putting the lies to the test in "critical" mode. With no time, because the information flows so fast, people spend less and less time being thoughtful, reflective, critical and careful, and devote more energy to just keeping their heads above the flow of information.
That's where the "without criticism" part of your quotation comes in. With no time to think, people cannot be critical. They can only believe. Hysteria sucks up their psychological energies, and the pace of propaganda overwhelms them. They start to "surf," and just accept stuff as it comes. And that's when the totalitarian leader has them in exactly the state he needs them to be in, in order to enact any bizarre or morally reprehensible plan he may have. There won't be sufficient public critical awareness available anymore to call his projects to account. He has won.
I do think we're approaching that critical point of public confusion very quickly. And in some countries, I think we're already there.
! Will we move on from it in my lifetime, I wonder?... I hope so. 