Your eyes and ears are just fine.
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Outside my window, there’s something moving about in the wind. It has these long, spindly arms that end in little tear-shaped green things. The arms connect to bigger arms, that connect a large central trunk. The trunk goes deep into the ground.
The surface of this trunk is covered in various living things: moss, microbes, insects. Amongst the arms are nests and birds. At the base of the trunk, the roots mix with soil that is exchanging energy and water with billions of other tiny organisms. The whole thing, swaying about, breathes in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen, in constant relationship with its wider atmosphere and surroundings.
So is this a multi-faceted living ecosystem, organic photosynthesis-based atmosphere converter and collective of plant and animal species - or is it a tree?
We are much more easily influenced and deceived than we care to admit. At the moment, there are people everywhere nudging discourse, subtly denying language, reframing things to appear as something entirely different to what they.
They engage in some pretty clever tricks. They will say it is you that don’t understand, that you are the one who is narrow-minded, that it is you who cannot see the ‘Truth’ - the implication being that they are the enlightened ones.
Pay attention. These people are busy everywhere, convincing us that what we’re seeing is not what we think it is, that what we feel in response is rooted in some personal flaw or victimhood, that we simply need to see the light, toughen up and get with the program.
If you pause and notice, you will see these people (I don’t have a descriptive term for them), will talk of things like freedom, free speech and openness but are in fact practicing the opposite. Speech is free until it isn’t. Say what you want but you’d better say the right things.
In certain circles, particularly conspiratorial ones, they talk of ‘psyops’, short for psychological operations which seek to change the way people perceive reality. Governments are often accused of this, indeed this is the very nature of propaganda.
What is more pernicious and effective is everyday people applying the same pressures and influences to how we think and feel, seeking to sow doubt or moral justifications into something as straightforwardly horrific as mass killing of children. People who are acting as agents of an ideology whilst cloaking themselves in goodness.
It sounds a bit tinfoil hat until you see there is ample evidence for it. Over 20 years ago, I read Jon Ronson’s book ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’. You wouldn’t know it from the terrible Hollywood film version but the book is a history of CIA torture techniques that rely on psychological breakdown.
These techniques began in the 70s, partly with the intention of bringing peace to conflict and thereby avoiding war altogether. By the time the US invaded Iraq, these techniques had evolved to waterboarding torture and locking people in shipping containers with kids music played at deafening levels for 48 hours non-stop.
That war itself was a prime example of what Noam Chomsky describes in his 1988 book ‘Manufacturing Consent’, engineering public opinion towards a decision that is not in their interests.
Then there’s Adam Curtis’ phenomenal documentary series, ‘The Century Of The Self’ which shows how mass psychological manipulation was essential to the growth of capitalism, consumerism and modern power. It tells the story of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the early 20th century pioneer of ‘public relations’. He applied Freud’s theories of the unconscious to enable big business and politics to persuade people by tapping into their fears and anxieties.
“The ideas that spread are not just spreading through a kind of natural selection of the goodness of the idea. They are getting oftentimes amplified by interests that want those ideas to spread. Duh, right? We know this. This is how political campaigns work. This is how advertising works. This is how propaganda works.”
— Daniel Schmactenberger
You could read pretty much any of Chomsky’s work, some Foucault, or look directly at how governments and organisations have used influencing techniques on mass populations.
It’s not a secret - the UK government is proud of its Behavioural Insights Team, known as ‘the Nudge Unit’, which works to influence populations. This work is always framed as for the common good of course, but if nudging can be done to reduce cigarette consumption, it can and has, been used for other purposes too.
And so, everywhere, and increasingly by everyday people, we’re being told that what we see isn’t what we see. It’s like one of those psychological thrillers where a spouse is manipulating the mind of their partner who has memory loss, moving things around, pretending things don’t exist, denying events that happened, which induces a kind of madness in the amnesiac.
Our very experience is under question. It’s not the full frontal assault of World War 2 propaganda posters, it’s much more subtle than that. We’re being asked to ignore our instincts, go endlessly searching for more ‘data’ so that we have a fuller context (as if full context is ever possible).
Or we’re being told that we simply don’t understand the grand strategy that is unfolding. As in cults and pyramid schemes, we’re being told we haven’t reached the highest level of understanding yet, we are stuck in our simpleton ideas of kindness and love.
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”
— George Orwell, ‘1984’
What we’re really being asked to do is ignore the evidence of not just our eyes and ears, but our hearts and guts too.
Hearts and guts - what woke bullshit right? We do all our thinking in our minds don’t we? That’s where we logically and rationally decide that we’re in love or feeling anger isn’t it?
What you’re looking at is not what you think, it’s a result of your own flaws and weakness - can’t you see that? Can’t you see that this murder is in fact great morality, that this inequality is in fact a God-given grace, that this barbarism is in fact just part of the road to progress?
After all, 2+2 equals 5 doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
Sometimes a thing is mostly a thing. And we can just call it that thing.
Those dragging us into semantics are playing a game, and they’re good at it.
“The power of words is so great that it suffices to designate in well-chosen terms the most odious things to make them acceptable to crowds.”
— Gustave Le Bon
Tipping Point: navigating collapse and crisis.
“We all now have a responsibility to not contribute to the fragmentation and polarisation that often tips or stokes collapsing systems. We need to calm the farm. But at the same time we can’t capitulate to bamboozlement. We must learn how to meet the bad faith, scared, “extinction burst” tactics with steadfast reasonableness. This is not the same as arrogant certitude.”
I read this excellent piece from Sarah Wilson just after writing this week’s post. It explores the same theme I’m exploring here and does a much better job of articulating the ‘dizzying’ sense that many of us are experiencing right now.
About me.
I’m a leadership coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin.
Contact me to:
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At the heart of my work is helping individuals and organisations to figure out what is really going on.
You can also find out more about my work with men & masculinity here.