2021-06-23
Invading aliens from the Planet Zog?
Unspeakable creatures from the Ocean Depths?
Monstrous insects from unsuspected underground hatcheries, primed to emerge in terrifying numbers at midnight on the next full moon?
What could be more scary?
Well, indulge me for a moment in my flight of fancy, for I propose a more scary story yet ...
Imagine if you will a scenario where we live comfortable lives in a supportive world, a world where we feel safe and competent to carry out our daily routines, cocooned within a familiar community, managed by benevolent authorities, our life plans progressing as expected. More or less. Which is pretty much the story for most of us in the UK for the last half century. (We should perhaps in passing remind ourselves that it was not always thus - in the preceding half century we had fought two world wars, and in that same half century wars have been fought, notably in and around Vietnam, across the Middle East, but also elsewhere).
Suddenly we begin to notice hints that our familiar trusted reference points may occasionally be exposed as perhaps deceptive, even appearing fraudulent; our understanding of the way the world works feels less confident; our supportive authorities are beginning to look as if they may care more for the appearance of support rather than for their actual care for us, indeed we may have noticed them becoming more authoritarian, slowly, very slowly, whittling away at our freedoms here and there; all our life's assumptions and plans beginning to look gradually less certain, more precarious.
Where would this end? Would it go from bad to worse? Where would we turn if it did? How to find trustworthy reference points (if such still existed)? How would we rebuild our lives from the ground up if required; could we survive the possible upheaval as the erstwhile trusting populations (you and I writ globally) begin to take on board some truly dreadful ideas:- that our whole world-view may be a carefully constructed tissue of lies; that we may no longer have a secure place in the plans of the world's elites?
A dystopian nightmare indeed, where we may come to feel unable to distinguish friend from foe, truth from fiction, good from evil, hope from despair, even health from illness, sanity from insanity, medicine from poison, security from latent danger.
How could this be? Too far-fetched? It could never happen?
Is this all not absurd ...?
Perhaps so. Perhaps this is all an exaggeration too far.
In all of previous history, such reactions would have been commonplace.
In fact, at any time before the turn of the last century they may have been well-founded.
But if we should see the evidence slowly taking shape before our eyes ...
And now, we have the internet.
It has blossomed into a vast comprehensive and virtually infinitely connected tool of instantaneous communication. All controlled by a handful of global corporations who have fingers in every technical pie, who control the incomprehensible computer networks that constitute the whole.
Almost everybody economically active is now connected. Instant communication, globally, covering all aspects of life social, financial, educational, recreational, aspirational, charitable, political. Not to mention diverting, scientific, musical, religious, artistic, you name it.
If we are not on-line, we don't exist in this paradigm. We have been swallowed whole by the VWM - the virtual world machine.
Now consider how a cartel of global corporations in league with governments around the world, already well advanced over the years in the generational brainwashing of their adoring public through newspapers, radio and TV channels, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, all relentlessly implanting thoughts morals myths and attitudes; now in cahoots with the social media companies, world academia and educational institutions, the myriad NGOs charitable foundations think tanks and "independent" regulatory bodies (to which we must now add a burgeoning crop of "woke" agitators intent on overturning all the wisdom of the ages) - could these and more now be used to persuade us to accept de facto world governance by the unelected, reshaping the planet to achieve the purposes of a secretive elite?
Could it be possible? Would too many people need to be involved?
Not a bit of it - the richest handful of the super-rich already control almost everything through their control of the global financial institutions - in short, all global assets and money - our savings and pension funds, controlled by the "custodians" of our investments; even governments are now in hoc to their Central Banks.
Our assets are their assets for all practical intents and purposes. Their control is absolute. Any time they want it to be.
It is no longer necessary to travel the world to see what is happening elsewhere. We can be shown today on the internet what "happened" last night in China, Australia, the USA, Russia, wherever. And this opens up a possibility that did not previously exist - the possibility through technology to fake what they wish us to see with great immediacy, to gull us that this is the truth, without us feeling inclined to suspect it, to verify it, or even to have the means to verify it.
Are we feeling uncomfortable yet?
Or still unconvinced?
Maybe a pandemic would help!
We could be confined to our homes, forbidden from travelling, prevented from associating with neighbours and swapping notes. Much easier to comply, stay safe, trust the authorities, wear the mask. After all, we could transfer even more of our lives onto the internet, we could live without those neighbourly and familial contacts (especially those non-essential dangerous physical ones!). And if some suffer in their isolation, or in hospital, or even in their own home, well, we can't see them or hear them, or even know of them - they cannot be our problem.
Chaos? Yes, there may be chaos.
Some would not accept such restrictions on our freedoms, especially if we suspected that the pandemic was not all it was cracked up to be – and yet, such an enormous lie would be very hard for most to recognise. Trust in authority would prevail. For most, but not for all.
Families would be divided - world-view against world-view - parents against offspring, brothers against sisters; friendships and all manner of relationships being tested to breaking point. To jab or not to jab? To compel or to let live? To comply or to resist? This battle would be waged country by country, town by town, street by street, family by family, person by person.
Perhaps on reflection, some of my suggestions are beginning to feel a bit too familiar now?
Some simple (but difficult) preconditions would be required to pull this off.
We have to trust what we are told.
We must trust those who are seen to tell us.
We must be discouraged or prevented from checking the truth of the matter for ourselves.
And such a monstrous cartel of globalism must hold its narrative together at enormous scale and complexity, suppressing all others, especially those who seek to use their own weapon - the internet - against them to spread the truth.
Even so, some alert people with the necessary attitude competence ability and connections would see the deceptions, and try to counter them. They would have to be ignored (if possible), bought off, silenced by fair means or foul, or if more convenient eliminated as required. If you are committing the crime of ages, you must be ruthless. If you control the means of communication, you can hide your tracks.
But most of us, honest trusting souls all, would continue to believe and willingly comply. Why? Through habit, inertia, lack of time or inclination to make the effort beyond our normal comfortable routine, and through the sheer difficulty in penetrating the carefully nurtured web of propaganda, to find recognise and corroborate the truth. It would seem all too difficult - where even to start? Impossible!
Besides, we would be labelled as ridiculous conspiracy theorists!
In my misspent experience in the world of IT, one of my responsibilities was to intervene when things went wrong. Often-times it would be through incorrect understanding of how the system was supposed to work. Most IT systems work to implement a model of some aspect of the real world, but as we have learned in the recent past, models devised by man are only as good as the competence of the man who devised them.
As the model is inevitably an imperfect mirror of real life, occasions arise when the two part company.
What I found was that the people who interfaced with the system fell naturally into two types:
One type - let us label them Type A - would be the people who liked to know how the model worked, and were happy to relate the events that occurred in real life to that model. This type of person was usually best able to determine how to handle the curve balls thrown up by real life that did not quite conform to the model.
The other type had no interest in understanding how the model worked - they just wanted to know the rules that governed how they interacted with the system - let us label them Type B. These were the people who were often unable to react appropriately to the curve balls that life would throw their way, for several reasons:
(a) nobody gave them the rules to handle them because nobody thought of all the possible curve balls that life could throw at them
(b) the curve balls didn't arrive very often, so they forgot how to handle them
(c) they were thinking about something else at the time and didn't notice the curve ball at all because they had no good way to recognise them
Surprise! Types A and B don't just exist for IT systems, they exist for the real world too!
Type A tries to understand the world by developing a mental model (however inadequate) of how their world actually works. They thus have a mental framework that enables them to recognise (at least some) curve balls and to intercept them.
Type B on the other hand has no reference model and accepts what they are told by the authorities on the basis they they know best. Curve balls tend to pass them by.
In my estimation (which may be wrong but I think not) the Type B population exceeds the Type A overall.
The upshot is that these two types respond to argument differently. Type A needs to talk about the model, about how it works, about how it is not working; Type B prefers to understand the instruction of authority. Neither responds so well to the other approach.
I bring this up because if we ever should by any fantastical mischance need to carry on such a world-view war street by street, family by family, relationship by relationship, it helps to have some insight into the types of folk that we may encounter, and how they may be likely to respond. It is not unlikely that the Type As would be talking to the Type Bs.
How we approach them could make all the difference in the world.