“I think retroactively…People know they’ve been living the Shock Doctrine since 9/11. That that shock…that that blow to the psyche was expertly harnessed by this administration to push through policies that they could not push through otherwise.” -Naomi Klein

I came across an interesting book the other day by Naomi Klein called the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In her book, she discusses the idea that once a person is placed into a state of shock, or regression, their personal narrative becomes severely disrupted. When this disruption in their personal narrative occurs, they don’t understand the context of the event that put them into shock - and so a gap opens between the event and understanding. It is in this gap that they become highly suseptable to manipulation from outside influences.

Once you understand this about people, you can manufacture a shock or you can just wait until it happens – then take advantage of the situation for your own gain. Events that rock the psyche may or may not be orchestrated, but the doctrine – whether used by individuals or institutions, operates like a ratchet or anaconda. First you scare or find someone who is scared and then you manipulate - usually by operating a father archetype who will address the threat with a protective solution. The more shocks, the more you can fill the archetypal roll and provide solutions that benefit yourself in the name of protecting others. Think of it like psychological mining or mental slavery.

Events resulting from blowback (like 9/11 as reported in the 9/11 Commission Report on page 120) are by their nature particularly shocking. They seem to come out of nowhere because there is no narrative for us in society to place them in context – many struggled with why anyone would want to attack us (including myself) because they never really considered the covert nature and Machiavellian history of the US Government’s involvement abroad. If I’d read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History prior to those events I’m sure I’d have not been as susceptible.

There are likely to be more shocks to come. The 900+ billion dollar bailout might be one. The current/following depression (global) might be another. But something interesting is happening. People seem to be sensitizing to reducing the impact of these kind of tactics. The pattern of shock doctrine has been identified (even if only subconsciously) and I can see this newfound sensitivity all around.  I think people are going to react properly poorly once they realize they’ve been taken advantage of in this manner. I am very interested to see how our centralized government opts to implement or leverage shock doctrine in the future…and how our fellow citizens will choose to respond.

Here’s Klein on The Colbert Report for the quick and dirty version:

She references some of the economic mafia tactics that the US Government has historically employed against developing nations. This caused me to recall a number of talks I’d seen by John Perkins – a self described Economic Hitman.

“Basically, what Economic Hit Men are trained to do is to build up the American empire. To create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful.

“This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.”

 

 

 

“The shock of discovering that most of the power in the world is held by ignorant and greedy people can really bum you out at first; but after you’ve lived with it a few decades, it becomes, like cancer and other plagues, just another problem that we will solve eventually if we keep working at it.” –Robert Anton Wilson

I suppose it might be easy to lose faith and become apathetic when you’re dealing with a system that Klein and Perkins describe. However, in my opinion there is enough chaos inherent in any system to disrupt it. One of the reasons I am so fascinated by subjects like chaos, complexity, and emergence is the vast opportunity for change and growth they imply is possible.

For a quick refresher check out:

Additionally, information that would have take hours, days, and maybe even months to acquire in the past is available to us at our finger tips today. Combine this extraordinary access with the critical thinking that is required to navigate all of the noise in an information system like that and you’ve a recipe for change that is fully charged.

In Steven Johnson’s book: Everything Bad is Good for You he argues that the pop culture we soak in every day has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. I find this to be especially true when navigating the internet. If this sharpness gets applied in the right direction, conspiracy becomes more and more difficult until it becomes obviously self-defeating (conspiracy is always self defeating but most conspirators don’t actually realize it). Johnson describes how gamers learn probing:

The player must probe the virtual world (which involves looking around the current environment, clicking on something, or engaging in a certain action.

Based on reflection while probing and afterward, the player must form a hypothesis about what something (a text, object, artifact, event, or action) might mean in a usefully situated way.

The player reprobes the world with that hypothesis in mind, seeing what effect he or she gets.

The player treats this effect as feedback from the world and accepts or rethinks his or her original hypothesis.

Put another way: When gamers interact with these environments, they are learning the basic procedure of the scientific method.

This is occurring billions of times a day and is obviously not just limited to gaming. The internet is fully engaging individuals on a perpetual and exponential basis. The evolution of ideas has entered its phase transition and it is moving faster than any Shock Doctrine can keep up with. New philosphies and world views, new technologies and methods of collaboration and cooperation all contribute to outpacing the old and slower ways of doing things.  By participating in this change you’re a part of the fight against the dead idea of control whether you know it or not.

Further detail for your research:

John Perkins, the Economic Hitman:

Klein in an interview with Charlie Rose:

“Where is it written that the United States will last forever?” -Chalmers Johnson

“What power Rome slowly built, an unarmed traitor instantly overthrew.”  -Claudian (CE 365 - ~408)

I love the concept of differentiating between America and America^TM.  This is clearly demonstrated in Culture Jam: How to reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge - and Why We Must by Kalle Lasn.  It’s a very good read, amazingly patriotic, and here’s an excerpt:

“Act Four of the story of America is about breaking the media-consumer trance.  It’s about taking the TM out of America^TM.  It’s about putting corporations back in the box and revoking many of the constitutional rights we have granted them over the past two hundred years.  It’s about calling these subordinate entities to heel.

“The goal of this workshop is to spark a dramatic personal mind-shift that will change the way you relate to corporations.  Once you’ve experienced this shift, you’ll feel ashamed for having been so docile and subservient for so long.  Your days will be charged with a new sense of autonomy and mission.  You’ll derive immense pleasure from tussling with corporations, putting them in their place.  You’ll train yourself to always take the position of power, to be mindful of the fact that you are a human being and the corporation is merely a legal construct your species thought up.

And further on…

“Two generations of chronic overconsumption, decadence and denial have weakened America^TM.  American cool is now every bit as vulnernable as the Soviet Utopia was ten years ago.  A revolution couldn’t happen there but it did.  It can’t happen here, but it will.  This is a momentous occasion and we shouldn’t doubt or fear, but celebrate.  In the dawn of this new millennium, one dream is ending and another is being born.

“And I can’t think of anything much cooler than that.”

I’d also add that governments are also legal entities.  A government is a contract between peoples on how they choose for themselves to be governed.  In the United State’s case, that contract is the constitution.  I ask all the citizens reading: are you choosing the way you are currently being governed?  Are those in power operating within and fulfilling their contract with you according to the boundaries outlined by the Constitution?

I is surely obvious, but I prologued with Culture Jam because if you’re new to Polycogs, you might mistake the next section for something less than American.  I assure you it is not.  Instead I hope to demonstrate some bad behaviors that lead to a known failed state and some bad behaviors we are participating in that seem to be a repeat of a lesson taught.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that we have the gift of choice on how to move forward.

If you’ve already absorbed conceptual frameworks listed above, then check out my favorite Yoda-Human (meant with the utmost respect): Professor Chalmers Johnson. He draws some astonishing parallels between Rome and the United States:

But what about this seeming repetition of history?

I have recently been investing a great deal of energy into researching Terrence McKenna’s work on what he has called Timewave Zero or Novelty Theory.

Why?  Well Terrence offers a unique way of looking at reality and I think there’s definitely some goodness to be extracted there.  He also beat me to the punch on my notion that we’re not necessarily in a Big Bang but instead we’re in a Big Suck, and that time actually works backwards as much as forwards (even though we usually only experience it moving in one forward-like direction).  These two concepts track with the consistent turning of common sense on its head (the earth isn’t flat, the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, and space isn’t separate from time nor is it “empty”).  I’ll expand on these ideas at some point in the future, but for now examine some of Terrence’s thinking on why we seem to be experiencing historical events over again.

Unless you’ve gotten a good dose of the following memetic medicine: Chaos Theory, Fractals, Complexity, Emergence, Neuroscience, Evolution, General Relativity, Special Relativity, Terrence will probably come off looking quite non-sane.  In fact, he’ll be really easy to dismiss otherwise.  Don’t buy into the hype…enter with an open mind.

The most fascinating thing that I’d like to point out from McKenna’s work is the idea that time will allow fractal resonances via historical, present, and future events – meaning that similar events will appear to spiral closer and closer together on the timeline.  History will continue to “repeat” and loop in smaller and smaller cycles.  In chaos theory, this type of temporal patterning is called a strange attractor.  McKenna suggests that the endpoint of this pattern will continue until the year 2012.

Terrance could be speaking literally or metaphorically (I suspect he would say both and neither).  Either way, I think most people will agree, there is something going on with time and it does seem to reflect itself in an odd way. The similarity between Rome and the US are striking.

If you haven’t seen it yet, and are interested in the study of power, I would strongly encourage you to watch a documentary titled The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.  Filmmaker Errol Morris interviews McNamara about his experiences and reflections as one of the most powerful men in the United States government from 1961 to 1968. McNamara also served as head of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. Whatever one thinks about his moral character, I think they would be hard pressed to argue against his brilliance.

In an extremely illuminating segment: “Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy” McNamara contrasts the US’s ability to empathize with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile crisis and the failure to do so during the Vietnam War.

“We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.”

And later…

“In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize with them. There was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed…that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests - which was absolutely absurd! We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War, not what they saw it as; a civil war!”

Here’s the segment for your viewing pleasure (I invite you to take 8 minutes to watch it before moving on):

One of the reasons I found this documentary so enlightening was that you get an interesting insider’s view of what pivot points are available to someone in McNamara’s position – and by extension Rumsfeld, Gates, Cheney, Rice, Bush, etc.  They have many - but they have their own challenges cast by the fog of war.  In this way I think it is important to get inside the skin of the current US Administration, the Administration’s peers, and the intentions of the various players on the global scale - then insert what you know of chaos, complexity, and emergence.

Even with all of the unknowns that might complicate your understanding out there, you can still attempt to obtain the “correct” information to help you leverage critical strengths in your sphere of influence or chinks in the other’s armor; it’s all about seeing and using fulcrums, pressure points, and interference patterns. Recalling McNamara’s discussion on the Soviets and Vietnam as a case study, you can see these fulcrum points in action and inaction respectively. Tommy Thompson the former US Ambassador in Moscow held the Jenga-like support structure that allowed the US an out with the Soviets – thereby letting us watch The Road Warrior instead of living it.  In fact, they were able to create a non-zero situation because of it. For any people who’ve had experience in sales, understanding this non-zero sum element is an easy reach.

Conversely understanding the wrong thing (as in the case of our interpretation of the Vietnamese mindset) can be just as pivotal when examining the countless cost to us in Vietnam in blood and treasure. The direct study of these kinds of special points and feedback mechanisms is called system dynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics). System dynamics is another valuable tool in de-linearizing our normal way of thinking.

In a previously posted blog on conspiracy theories I suggested that to beat a conspiracy you had to quit playing the conspiracy game. I’d like to submit that there’s a lot that one can do to increase the signal-to-noise ratio that conspiracies naturally adversely distort by educating yourself with the appropriate information; empathy is one of these information amplifiers.

Who knows, there might be value in determining how much we’re defeating ourselves in the process of trying to defeat an enemy we don’t understand.

 “In fact, one thing that I have noticed . . . is that all of these conspiracy theories depend on the perpetrators being endlessly clever. I think you’ll find the facts also work if you assume everyone is endlessly stupid.”  -attributed to Brian E. Moore

700 Billion Dollar Bail Out.  WaMu eaten (only the white meat) by JP Morgan.  Lehman Brothers.  AIG.  As US intelligence officers and offices would say there’s currently a lot of dire “chatter” on the US’s financial front.

Just about the time the media and bloggosphere began running around with themselves on fire like a gasoline doused pig, Mike Jones and JoeyB and I had various brief conversations about the possibility of having a global depression resulting from the latest in the series real and potential subtractions in the US Treasury’s checking account.  We pondered what this kind of depression might mean, and what it might look like.

Always willing to entertain a conspiracy, we considered if it was intentional.  Another step in the NWO/ Illuminati/Free Mason plan, perhaps?  Was it a way to further debase the currency and citizen confidence to implement the dreaded Amero?

What I like about entertaining conspiracy theories is that doing so opens the door to a form of critical thinking that can be exceptionally useful to cerebral development as well as increasing one’s odds of survival.  In a way, they exercise that part of our brain that we are often content to allow to wither and atrophy into a flaccid mental appendage – an appendage whose only heavy lifting consists of gaping wide to consume what others are motivated to feed us.  It’s a disturbing notion for one to envision if they have a vivid imagination and they extend the imagery to its metaphorical ends.

On the other hand, the consumption of conspiracy theories can contribute to mental impotence just as easily as it encourages intellectual vitality.  Balancing between the two seems to require high degrees of vigilance and discipline.

“Regard it as a Conspiracy only if you enjoy living in a script where you are one of the underdogs or victims.” –Robert Anton Wilson

I invite you to jump up a dimension and look at this subject from a meta perspective for a moment.

As an evolutionary device we developed memory and time perception to help us make effective use of understanding cause and effect.  This understanding is plugged into a feedback loop that enforces a perception of linear time.  From social skills emerges society and culture (both of which reinforce each other) which helped with, among other things, tribal coherence.  Over the last ~50,000 years, as we moved from a tribal existence to globalization, extending the social group has complexified matters for us with additional inputs and abstractions, but the underlying scaffolding on how we interact with our environment is still being used.

In the West, this evolving tribal coherence has gifted us with a culture steeped in Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam); it is embedded in our individual and cultural psyche.  If you were brought up from the age of 0 to 7 in the West, even if you’re not a Jew, Christian, or Muslim, Western culture marinates you in conspiracy mythology thanks to the Abrahamic roots we share here in the United States.

Right there in black and white it is all about good versus evil, chaos versus order, sin versus salvation…Satan versus God.  Satan, if you’ll remember, is the ultimate conspirator who’s always doing things to undermine God’s will.  This archetypal myth extends itself in very real ways as soon as we begin identifying with our family at the core and country at the edge.  Indeed, I use the term “myth” advisedly – in the spirit of Joseph Campbell and Carl G. Jung.  In the US, conspiracy is a part of our cultural programming and heritage.

Whenever “someone” is out to get us (the liberals, subversives, the government, aliens, the aliens who control the subversive liberal government corporations) the victim/underdog template gets fired up, applied, and then the game plays out.  And it is a game - a game in the sense of game theory.

“If you don’t contradict yourself, your position isn’t complex enough.” –Terrence McKenna

Nevertheless, all that said, I do believe there are forces out there resulting from the intention to control, subjugate, and or manipulate in the quest for power.  My opinion is that reality is much more complex than we can comprehend and that conspiracy theories don’t go broad, far, and/or deep enough.

So let’s assume that your conspiracy of choice is in fact a “real” and clear and present danger.  You are up against an opponent who has more knowledge, resources, and power.

So what to do?  I’d like to submit the first step to confounding conspirators is to stop playing the game.  Once you get out of power dynamics (top v bottom) you’re free to move laterally and even three-dimensionally.  Break the script and the old rules stop applying.  James Carse wrote required reading and rereading for all adults over the age of 7 called Finite and Infinite Games.  His book is the bible for monkey-working conspiracies and really does a fantastic job of synthesizing fluid Eastern thinking into an easily digestible form for linear/binary Western minds .  Through reading Dr. Carse’s book, you’ll discover that breaking a conspiracy isn’t really the correct way to think about it.  Instead, it is more like allowing the conspiracy to defeat itself.  Let Chaos be your ally (more on this in a later blog).

A short excerpt with conspiracy “defense” in mind (the full excerpt here) :

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.  There is no game, finite or infinite, unless the players freely agree to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. This is an invariable principle of all play. Whoever must play, cannot play. If a finite game is to be won by someone, it must come to a definitive end. It will come to an end when someone has won. Winning is determined by agreement of the players.

Other than the principle of voluntarism, infinite games are the opposite of finite games in every way. Infinite games have no spatial, temporal, or numerical boundaries, and no winners or rankings. Finite games are externally defined; infinite games are internally defined. The time of an infinite game is determined in the game itself.

The rules of a finite game are predetermined and fixed. The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play, to avoid a finite outcome. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning and to bring as many persons as possible into the play.

To be playful is not to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. When we are playful with each other we relate as free persons; everything that happens is of consequence. In fact, it is being serious that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is the dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion; to be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself

Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past. Since infinite players do not regard the past as determining the present/future, they have no way of knowing what has begun in the past. With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning. Inasmuch as the present/future is always surprising, the past is always changing.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees that is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished. Education leads to a continuing self-discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition. Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.

My Favorite part:

Rather than assessing the power or weakness of earlier play, infinite players look forward toward ongoing play in which the past will require constant reinterpretation. Infinite players do not oppose the actions of others but initiate actions of their own in such a way that others will respond by initiating their own. Where the finite player plays to be powerful, the infinite player plays with strength.2 A powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome, settling all its unresolved issues. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future, showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution. Power is concerned with what has already happened, strength with what has yet to happen.

Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.

I contend that by understanding the nature of play in this context, we avoid the trap of the victim script.  Once that albatross is shed, a wide spectrum of options and world views become available to us.

A note on the word culture.  Carse and I use the term culture a bit differently.  He views society as a species of culture that is finite.  I use the term culture to represent the artifacts that are created by a society.  I think my use needs revising - but I figured I’d note it in case you picked up the book and noticed discrepancies between our uses.

For further inoculation here’s a video of Carse in action: