We all operate based on ‘models’ of the world in which we live. These are our internal perceptions and understandings of how the world works. They don’t need to be FAFU1 models of the kind employed by Imperial College. Mostly, these internal models are somewhat mundane (if I don’t put the fries on now, they won’t be ready to eat with my burger - that sort of thing) and reliable.
However, sometimes these internal ‘models’ can give us a distorted view on things. And, let’s face it, sometimes they can give us a seriously fucked-up view of the world. Having our internal ‘models’ constructed from a base of reality, or as close as we can get to it, is really critical.
In essence the point of propaganda, or the pomo deconstructionist fetish, is not to change ‘reality’ but to change the filters and perceptions, the models, with which we interpret that reality.
Why do you think politicians and the like spend so much time and effort on perception management?
We’re all familiar with the mind model they wished us to construct with covid; deadly dangerous, can be spread even if you’re not ill, masks are necessary, you might kill Grandma (you selfish bastard), etc, etc.
We now know2 this encouraged model was not based on anything like reality - it was based on a carefully curated set of things, a Reality™, that led us into a very distorted perception of actual reality.
There are various techniques for nudging people into constructing a distorted model. They all rely on the presentation of The Facts™. The easiest way to distort someone’s internal model is simply to lie. This prevents the formation of a model based on actual reality. Instead, people construct a model based on Reality™. It’s a faux ‘reality’ that results in the desired behavioural and attitudinal changes.
Governments, by and large, don’t want you to know the facts, they want you to know The Facts™ - a specially curated set of things which promote the construction of approved internal models.
It’s better, though, if The Facts™ are actually facts - as long as it’s a partial set of facts that lead you into the desired mind model. You can mix selected facts with falsehoods too. Things like truth and objectivity don’t matter as long as you can get enough people to construct this desired internal model.
There are many examples of such manipulations3
For example, one of the big current models they’re wanting us to construct is one of climate emergency - it’s a crisis we tell you. They will have probably learned an awful lot about how to promote this sense of crisis from the techniques they employed during covid. Do ‘the powers that be’ really think switching to electric cars is going to “save the planet”? Of course they bloody well don’t. It’s laughably absurd.
But they’re all at it - we have to throw tomato soup over stuff and eat zee bugs, see, because wibble, wibble, wibble climate crisis and farting cows and nitrogen and C02 and other really dangerous shit.
Doubtless there are some politicians out there with mostly non-functioning brains who actually believe the utter crap they spout regarding the climate, but those with real power and influence clearly do not believe4 a frigging word of it.
Now, I don’t actually know whether we ought to be worried about the climate - I can’t claim to have studied the science to any depth at all, although I’ve little doubt that a good deal of FAFU ‘scientific’ modelling has been utilised. But the extremes they’re going to to push The Facts™ and The Message™, lead me to a position of extreme scepticism. There was one minister in Australia, for example, who claimed that the climate crisis would lead to an increase in domestic abuse. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
There’s also an issue of trust to overcome. They couldn’t be trusted over covid and the vaccines, so why the fuck should I give them my trust when they pontificate about the climate?
One of the most, quite literally, “in your face” examples of perception management was in the promotion of masks during covid. Nobody in their right mind thought that these useless bits of cloth did a fucking thing to mitigate against the spread of covid in any significant way, but they did massively warp our perceptions - which was their real goal.
I can understand why people, initially, thought they might help. It is at least plausible on the surface that they should. But when it was deemed ‘safe’ to sit in a restaurant without one, but ‘unsafe’ to stand up without one, the game should have been up. That it wasn’t for many is still a bit of an eye-opener for me. It’s even more astonishing to think of the money spent on plastic screens - some people actually thought this was a good idea (but it’s perception management again).
Arguing against masks was “misinformation” at best, and “disinformation”, at worst. Saying the (allegedly) wrong things was equated with danger. You and your opinions could get people killed, don’t you know? You dangerous spreader of misinformation - trust your government and its appointed Experts™. You’re practically a freakin terrorist for questioning the integrity and beneficence of our governments and the august institutions of medicine and science (which, as we know, are in no way at all, not in the slightest teensiest tiniest bit, influenced or affected by financial or other pressures. Scientists and medics are just uber moral objective humans who unfailingly and robotically implement the purity of their calling).
Notice also how our perceptions are being managed with regards to free speech and our ability to express an opinion. Covid provided a golden opportunity to ramp up efforts to suppress ‘misinformation’. Here was something plausible they could sell. If you discourage people from taking the ‘vaccine’, the Holy Goo of Deliverance, then more people are going to die, right?
It matters not one bit that, as time has shown, the Goo has actually made things worse (excess deaths, cough, cough) because the goal has been achieved. The linkage between ‘misinformation’ and direct danger and threat to life has been established.
In one of the more brazen statements of the last couple of years Jacinda Fillyface in New Zealand said that her government “will remain your sole source of truth”. Not many other leaders (none?) have come out and said things this starkly, but the attitude is implicit in many of their pronouncements.
Look at how our perception of the internet/social media is being managed - it’s a dangerous place where people spread misinformation that could result in violence or death. Governments, therefore, need to “do something” about that. This has grown directly from the management of our perceptions surrounding speech and safety; speech is harmful, speech is violence, there needs to be safe spaces, people need counselling after hearing speeches they disagree with, ‘hate’ speech is on the rise, people need to be protected from online hate, stochastic terrorism, and the like. And all of this was made much more palatable with the ‘concrete’ example of covid ‘misinformation’.
If you put it all together it paints a very worrying picture of manipulation and perception management. It’s a direct attempt to lead us into a particular model of the world. It’s a very FAFU model that would have been unthinkable only 2 short decades ago.
They never really gave a shit about covid, or the climate, but they very much give a shit about what you think about covid or the climate.
These attempts to manage our perceptions are everywhere. White cops are literally hunting down black people and killing them on our streets, said one interviewee explaining why she was afraid to let her daughter go to school. Dairy products offered at school are an example of racism, said others.
It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether society IS racist, only that you BELIEVE it to be so.
If it were only some rando nutjobs, like me, spouting forth on the internet and social media it wouldn’t be too much of an issue. But the speed with which these distorted perceptions have arisen and have been promoted with near ubiquity by our institutions and corporations and businesses is a real cause for concern. Only recently someone in Yorkshire in the UK was arrested for causing someone “anxiety”. The terrible, heinous crime committed? He called someone a muppet.
Yes. I’m not making this up.
It goes deeper, and it’s even more worrying, because much of this perception management has taken hold in schools. Children are being taught that our society is irredeemably racist, that everything good about our past has been tainted by 'colonialism' and must be given the enema of decolonization, that we're made up of beautiful and brave wonderful rainbow beings and that they can become one of these glittering rainbow beings too5. They're being taught a version of extreme emotional safety (no one wants bullying, but getting upset because someone got your 'pronoun' wrong? Give me a break) that will, to be sexist about it, emasculate them. Or that if you're "assigned" male at birth you can be surgically emasculated and it's a wonderful joyous thing to be celebrated on your magnificent and brave gender journey. If you've been wrongly assigned to be female you can be masculated by shaving chunks from your forearm off and making a penis - and that it's no big deal. Just another colour in this inclusive rainbow world of wonder to be celebrated.
They’re being taught that their feelings, their tender little lived experiences, trump everything. And it’s hateful if their unique and special gender soul is scoffed at. In a world where nobody has yet been able to define what the gender woman is, it is claimed that kids know their own genders, and that this feeling about their ‘gender’ trumps everything.
Of course we should pay attention to our kids feelings. But they are, after all, not properly developed yet. They could be telling us something important, but mostly they’re not. No, sweetie, you can’t have that candy. I don’t care if your feelings have been hurt - and if you throw a tantrum, you’re not getting a candy for the next week.
This issue of perception management is why they’re so keen on the pronoun thing. It’s not about labels, or being ‘polite’ or considerate, it’s about perception management. They want to lead everyone, and our kids, into believing there’s this resplendent rainbow reality of gender that must be affirmed by everyone else.
It seems ‘innocuous’, not to mention considerate, to use preferred pronouns, but it really isn’t. It’s about accepting a distorted model of reality.
If you base your behaviours and feelings on a distortion it can lead to all sorts of problems. At worst it leads to things like the Holocaust, or the Rwandan genocide, or the massive murders of communism.
You will doubtless have noticed that most news media these days isn’t simply about reporting facts, it’s about getting you to think and feel in certain ways. You should always ask yourself, even with this article, what is this loon trying to sell me now?
It’s important to make sure we’re not using FAFU internal models as adults. It’s important, not least for our own mental well-being, to base our internal models on something as close to reality as we can achieve - but it’s absolutely critical for our kids that we do our best not to let them grow up in FAFU world.
Fanciful And Fucked Up
To be fair, a lot of us knew back then too - but they couldn’t allow anything to interfere with their official, approved, curated set of chosen talking points. The defence of “we didn’t know” might wash (a bit) for the general public, but not for the absolute shower of shites in power.
It’s not just governments or politicians indulging in this kind of perception management.
Or, possibly, they do ‘believe’ it - but they see themselves as being above the rules because they are important people with the power to save the planet and can be forgiven for jetting all over the place and eating Wagyu beef. They need these luxuries to be able to do good, see.
And they even have books in their library detailing what women can do with their penises and men with their vaginas.
I am reading this imagining we're sitting in a pub, back in the days when it was a given that an english pub was a place where you could get a pint and a packet of crisps at the bar, carry them to your table, plop down and light a fag, and the barman would come with a bowl of water and a treat for your dog.
Back when it was up to the pub's owner if they were to have gents only-nights, ladies only-nights, no bloody strollers or kids, and so on.
I'm fondly imagining you pontificating at the end of the bar, right under the telly and next to the dartboard, trying to power through the sound of TV-experts droning on and on about whether or not its going to stop raining so the game at Wimbledon can continue.
We've lost so, so much - in England and Britain and over here too and elsewhere as well, so very much in such a short time.
These people driving all of what you write about, their target is to murder joy I think.
Calling someone a "muppet" is a terrible crime, to be sure, but it could be much, much worse, which is why we desperately need more censorship. Here's an example of how bad it could be if we don't suppress all speech that we don't like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSo0duY7-9s
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries."