Posted on 01/18/2025 5:47:20 AM PST by Twotone
Recently, I read a phenomenal article in The Tablet titled ‘Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment’. If you haven’t yet, stop everything and read it here. It’s one of those rare pieces that crystallises so much of what’s wrong with modern governance and societal manipulation, dissecting how narratives are shaped and enforced in ways that feel insidious and disturbingly effective. Most people are completely unaware that this is how power works today.
The article explains a strategy used to manufacture consent and control dissent called ‘permission structures’— the societal cues and signals that compel us to conform or stay silent. (Also known as ‘social proof’ or social conformity.) These permission structures enable the smooth functioning of our ‘voluntary servitude’, where people passively accept and submit to controlling structures. Permission structures represent not just the visible hand of government, but the invisible one, a secretive network of organisations, that tweaks and moulds our beliefs and behaviours under the guise of the ‘common good’.
It made me wonder whether I should delve deeper and write more on permission structures, but I’m not convinced this is the right path forward. A book is a powerful medium, but it has its limitations. Ask any writer who spent a couple of years researching and writing a book only to be slightly disappointed that the world didn’t actually change. I’m not sure if I have the stomach or heart to dive deep into the same terrain of nudging, manipulation and propaganda again.
Having written extensively on adjacent topics in A State of Fear and Free Your Mind (the former exposed how governments weaponised fear during Covid, while the latter serves as a field guide for individuals to resist such manipulation) I fear that, for me, another book in this vein risks retreading old ground rather than breaking new.
Instead, I think it’s time for action.
My call for an inquiry into nudge fell on deaf ears, of course. And probably a good thing too, since I think the action we need requires more people power. Instead, imagine something akin to the Free Speech Union but focused on raising awareness about the dangers of permission structures, government propaganda, social media and government collusion, and the myriad ways our minds are covertly manipulated.
I’m not talking about the plain old advertising, PR and propaganda that are as old as human language, I’m talking about the modern convergence of manipulation and tech, exploited by governments and other organisations, notable for its complete lack of transparency. This manipulation of public opinion (your brain and mine) has the alarming potential to worsen. The intersection of social media, personalised nudging at a global scale, and AI creates a perfect storm for mass manipulation. AI might not pose the extinction threat the headlines trumpet, but its capacity for mass brainwashing is real, and rarely discussed.
Consider this: governments are already exploring brain-modifying wearables and AI-driven nudging tools, sold as solutions for public safety or mental health. The same neurotechnology which would allow the military to ‘mind-control’ weapons has been recast as being about health care, therapy and allowing the disabled freedom of movement. It’s hard to take issue with such laudable motives isn’t it?
There are so many ways we should be vigilant about the freedom of our minds. I propose we need a Charter of Cognitive Freedom to protect the individual citizen from the numerous and egregious ingresses of the mind, including:
Social media and government collusion: Governments and tech companies have worked together to influence or manipulate public opinion through algorithms, targeted ads, content suppression and the infiltration of fake accounts and coordinated bots. This creates a powerful mechanism for controlling narratives through social proof and limiting dissent.
Censorship: The suppression of speech, ideas, or information that challenges the status quo or government policies undermines free expression but also free thought. It often masquerades as protecting public order or safety, while stifling independent thought. God forbid you should think for yourself.
Surveillance: Governments and corporations increasingly monitor citizens through digital and physical means, collecting vast amounts of personal data. This constant surveillance can lead to self-regulation of thoughts and behaviours, diminishing personal freedom and privacy.
Secret Siri listening: Voice-activated assistants like Siri can continuously listen to conversations, recording data that may be used to influence or manipulate users' thoughts and behaviours.
Wearables which not only monitor your brain but modify it Advanced wearable technologies can track brain activity and, in some cases, even influence mental states. These devices, which may be marketed for wellness or productivity (or even something as prosaic as convenience), have the potential to shape thoughts and behaviours without explicit consent, posing risks to cognitive freedom.
These are not theoretical concerns; they are current threats to your cognitive freedom. And the future holds greater threats.
These concerns are not the purvey of fringe conspiracists (although I am sure some priest of truth verification will soon say that is the case) but have been the preoccupation of a handful of academics. These important issues have yet to break through into the mainstream.
An action group dedicated to cognitive freedom could advocate for transparency, expose unethical practices, and pressure governments and Big Tech to respect our rights. Neuroethics remains a niche field, largely confined to ivory towers, but a Charter of Cognitive Freedom could provide the necessary framework and pressure force to safeguard individuals from invasive technologies and manipulative tactics, filling the gap where academia has struggled to gain traction.
Many disparate concerns coalesce under the banner of cognitive freedom. If we could fight for the freedom of our minds, so many of today’s repugnant and chilling dangers could be fought cohesively.
The right to cognitive freedom should be absolute. The stakes are simply too high for these discussions to remain academic. As that brilliant Tablet article highlights, the line between ethical governance and manipulation is growing dangerously thin and we risk the erosion of freethinking with each passing year.
The Western world’s failure to uphold cognitive freedom during Covid was a huge warning. Permission structures and their accompanying tactics are not going away, they’re evolving. We see it in action now on contemporary issues such as climate change and multiculturalism. The ability to modify and control how we think will always be dangerously enticing to governments, their security agencies and the military. If we don’t act, we risk sleepwalking into a future where our thoughts are not our own.
If this resonates with you, tell me what you think below, let’s start the conversation. The fight for cognitive freedom needs more than words, more than books — it needs a movement. Shall we?
We already HAVE this movement underway. Beginning in, at least, the 80s, most of us have had access to the worldwide internet, and it works just as well for those who resist the mainstream propaganda.
There have always been those who read a lot of books and took the time to research issues just so they would have some idea of the issues and another sizeable group with all those niggling little questions in their heads, “is this true?”.
And those numbers have been growing.
Yes, a lot of us realized what’s been going on & avoided a lot of the nonsense. But there are still way too many who need to realize what’s going on.
For me, I spend a lot of time on the computer, being retired. But more & more I just want to turn it off & go outside. Too bad it’s winter. ;-)
He's well worth studying for anybody interested in this topic and to see where this is all headed.
"The permission structure machine that Barack Obama and David Axelrod built to replace the Democratic Party was in its essence neither modern nor conservative, though. Rather it is totalitarian in its essence, a device for getting people to act against their beliefs by substituting new and better beliefs through the top-down controlled and leveraged application of social pressure, which among other things eliminates the position of the spectator."
Seems quite an apt and accurate description, and the blather of today's Left -- Democrats, Democrat Socialists and some RINOs as we watched 'Republicans' campaign for the vapid Harris-Walz -- is the result. Slogans replace sense, and evasion replaces clarity. Power is all that is being sought by these totalitarians.
Link to Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment by David Samuels:
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
FYI and not to hijack the thread.......
Yesterday David Axelrod lost the lawsuit against CNN brought by a person described as a Navy Veteran. The damages were set at $5 million. The second phase of the trial will set punitive damages. the guaranteed punitive damages are expected to be quite large.
The judge admonished Axelrod that in his court, Axelrod had no credibility. That is, the judge in effect declared him to be a liar.
I disagree.
The complete absence of basic critical thinking is the only threat to cognitive freedom.
The USA needs to demand more basic critical thinking from its citizens.
The basic solutions to most secular and material human problems are completely obvious.
The solutions to spiritual and personal problems are not obvious, and should never be a responsibility of government.
Not a problem, for you aren't hijacking the thread, as best I see it. I checked Reuters, CNN, NY Post, National Review, Associated Press, CBS, The Hill, and Seattle Times. The Zachary Young win is nifty, I am sure we agree.
But "The trial also included Judge Henry scolding CNN lead counsel David Axelrod, who is not the on-air pundit with the same name, several times and forcing him to apologize to Young on the spot for calling him a 'liar' when evidence proved he didn't lie about failing to earn work in his field on the heels of the CNN segment airing." Fox News, 17 January 2025.
Being skeptical of much, I like to look behind those curtains to see a wizard at his levers.
The Tablet article does rather nicely indict them all, even if one Axelrod is not the other Axelrod.
Here’s to cognitive freedom
On the way out the door, grabs coat
“Oh by the way...
I declare the ERA ratified!
Sir, this is a Wendy’s”
Well said. “Let’s skip the critical thinking and go straight to ad hominem.”
Bookmark
‘Walter Lippmann once identified, in his 1922 book, as “public opinion.”
‘Lippmann was a progressive Harvard-educated technocrat who believed in engineering society from the top down, and who understood the role of elites in engineering social change to be both positive and inevitable.
‘It was Lippman, not Noam Chomsky, who coined the phrase “manufacturing consent,” and in doing so created the framework in which the American governing class would understand both its larger social role and the particular tools at its disposal. “We are told about the world before we see it,” Lippmann wrote.’
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
“It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party’s new form of power. But control over digital platforms, and what appeared on those platforms, was a key element in signaling and exercising that power. The Hunter Biden laptop story, in which party operatives shanghaied 51 former high U.S. government intelligence and security officials to sign a letter that all but declared the laptop to be a fake, and part of a Russian disinformation plot—when most of those officials had very strong reasons to know or believe that the laptop and its contents were real—showed how the system worked. That letter was then used as the basis for restricting and banning factual reports about the laptop and its contents from digital platforms, with the implication that allowing readers to access those reports might be the basis for a future accusation of a crime. None of this censorship was official, of course: Trump was in the White House, not Obama or Biden. What that demonstrated was that the real power, including the power to control functions of the state, lay elsewhere.
“Even more unusual, and alarming, was what followed Trump’s defeat in 2020. With the Democrats back in power, the new messaging apparatus could now formally include not just social and institutional pressure but the enforcement arms of the federal bureaucracy, from the Justice Department to the FBI to the SEC. As the machine ramped up, censoring dissenting opinions on everything from COVID, to DEI programs, to police conduct, to the prevalence and the effects of hormone therapies and surgeries on youth, large numbers of people began feeling pressured by an external force that they couldn’t always name; even greater numbers of people fell silent. In effect, large-scale changes in American mores and behavior were being legislated outside the familiar institutions and processes of representative democracy, through top-down social pressure machinery backed in many cases by the threat of law enforcement or federal action, in what soon became known as a “whole of society” effort.”
“It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party’s new form of power. But control over digital platforms, and what appeared on those platforms, was a key element in signaling and exercising that power. The Hunter Biden laptop story, in which party operatives shanghaied 51 former high U.S. government intelligence and security officials to sign a letter that all but declared the laptop to be a fake, and part of a Russian disinformation plot—when most of those officials had very strong reasons to know or believe that the laptop and its contents were real—showed how the system worked. That letter was then used as the basis for restricting and banning factual reports about the laptop and its contents from digital platforms, with the implication that allowing readers to access those reports might be the basis for a future accusation of a crime. None of this censorship was official, of course: Trump was in the White House, not Obama or Biden. What that demonstrated was that the real power, including the power to control functions of the state, lay elsewhere.
“Even more unusual, and alarming, was what followed Trump’s defeat in 2020. With the Democrats back in power, the new messaging apparatus could now formally include not just social and institutional pressure but the enforcement arms of the federal bureaucracy, from the Justice Department to the FBI to the SEC. As the machine ramped up, censoring dissenting opinions on everything from COVID, to DEI programs, to police conduct, to the prevalence and the effects of hormone therapies and surgeries on youth, large numbers of people began feeling pressured by an external force that they couldn’t always name; even greater numbers of people fell silent. In effect, large-scale changes in American mores and behavior were being legislated outside the familiar institutions and processes of representative democracy, through top-down social pressure machinery backed in many cases by the threat of law enforcement or federal action, in what soon became known as a “whole of society” effort.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
“Catchphrases like “defund the police,” “structural racism,” “white privilege,” “children don’t belong in cages,” “assigned gender” or “stop the genocide in Gaza” would emerge and marinate in meme-generating pools like the academy or activist organizations, and then jump the fence—or be fed—into niche groups and threads on Twitter or Reddit.
“If they gained traction in those spaces, they would be adopted by constituencies and players higher up in the Democratic Party hierarchy, who used their control of larger messaging verticals on social media platforms to advance or suppress stories around these topics and phrases, and who would then treat these formerly fringe positions as public markers for what all “decent people” must universally believe; those who objected or stood in the way were portrayed as troglodytes and bigots.
“From there, causes could be messaged into reality by state and federal bureaucrats, NGOs, and large corporations, who flew banners, put signs on their bathrooms, gave new days off from work, and brought in freshly minted consultants to provide “trainings” for workers—all without any kind of formal legislative process or vote or backing by any significant number of voters.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
“The entire aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and, hence, clamorous to be led, by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
America has always had a long list of foes.
The French will get ya,
The British redcoats will get us,
The Indian savages will get us!
The slaves will revolt!
The Yankees will get us!
The Yellow peril will get us!
Pirates! Outlaws! Red Communists! all going to get us.
In fact, most are just pipe dreams.
Excellent article that exposes the truth and psychology behind the head game.
“My call for an inquiry into nudge fell on deaf ears, of course. And probably a good thing too, since I think the action we need requires more people power. Instead, imagine something akin to the Free Speech Union but focused on raising awareness about the dangers of permission structures, government propaganda, social media and government collusion, and the myriad ways our minds are covertly manipulated. “
Some of us have been trying to do this very thing for decades now. But it isn’t working. The firewalls of ego and arrogance prevents any acceptance of logic at all. No one will admit they are being played, they are of course too smart for that. And this is what makes them perfect candidates for psyops...
I remember only two things about it, one was time with a recent Vietnam War vet.
The one thing I will remember until I croak that he said, was that "everything is a con game."
The other was being served by Russian defectors in the chow line, who did it just for fun.
One was Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, who, as well as the other as a joke spoke to us in Russian.
A few of us responded in Russian, so afterwards he spent some impromptu time with us.
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