Manipulation Strategies

Most of this text is not mine: it is quotes by Noam Chomsky. And frankly I am surprised how come he is still alive and well...
I could NOT find the text in English, the quotes below are "translated" from a Brazilian version of the text. I made a small effort to make the text have some meaning

1. THE STRATEGY OF DISTRACTION OF ATTENTION
The fundamental element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which is to divert public attention from the important issues that are determined by economic elites and political changes through the technique of successive flooding of diversion and insignificant information. The strategy of distraction is also necessary not to allow the public to be interested in knowledge in science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and government.
"Keep the public's attention detached from the real social problems, captive threads that have no meaning. Keep the public busy, so far as to have no time to think - back to the farm, like the other animals "(excerpt from the text: silent weapons for quiet wars).

2. CREATING PROBLEMS AND THEN OFFERING SOLUTIONS
This method is also called "problem-reaction-solution". This creates a problem, a planned "state" to be offered a certain reaction from the world, to define the steps that the authority wants to make him accept it.
For example: Allow urban violence or organized deadly attacks to unfold and intensify, designed to make people require safety laws and policies at the expense of liberty.
Or even: Create a crisis in order for the decline of social rights and the dismantling of public services to be accepted as a necessary evil,.

3. STRATEGY OF IMPLEMENTATION IN PHASES
For the unacceptable to be acceptable, it is sufficient to gradually implement them in a number of steps, little by little, over successive years. In this way it was imposed in the 80's and 90's the new socioeconomic conditions like neoliberalism, nonexistent state, privatization, uncertainty, flexibility, massive unemployment, wages do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes that would have sparked a revolution if were applied overnight.

4. STRATEGY OF POSTPONEMENT
Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as "painful but necessary", securing the consent of the people at that time and applying it in the future.
It is easier to accept a future sacrifice over one immediate.
Firstly because the effort is not paid directly, and secondly because the public, the mass always tends to naively hope that "things will be better in the future" and that the necessary sacrifices could be avoided.
This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and to accept it when the time comes

5. ADDRESS THE PUBLIC AS IT IS IN CHILDHOOD
The majority of advertising aimed at using public reason, arguments, personalities and tone of voice, all as if the viewer is a small child or mentally retarded.
The more they want to deceive the viewer the more they adopt a baby tone.
Why not? "If someone speaks to a person like it is 12 years or less, the subject is likely to slide into a reaction stripped of any critical thinking, like it is a young child (see Quiet Arms for quiet wars).

6. USE EMOTION MORE THAN LOGIC
The use of emotion is a classic technique in order to short-circuit logic analysis and critical thinking in individuals. On the other hand, the use of emotion opens the door to access the unconscious and implant ideas, desires, fear, coercion or encouragement of certain behaviors.

7. KEEP THE AUDIENCE IN IGNORANCE AND MEDIOCRITY
Make the public is unable to understand the methods and technologies used to control and enslave it... "The quality of education given in the lower social classes should be the poorest and most moderate possible so that the gap of ignorance between the lower and upper social class is and remains impossible to bridge (see Quiet weapons for quiet wars).

8. ENCOURAGE AUDIENCES TO BE SATISFIED WITH MEDIOCRITY
Promote to the public the idea that it is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and uneducated ...

9. STRENGTHEN SELF GUILT
Make people believe that they alone are guilty of misfortune because of their lack of intelligence, skills or efforts. So people instead of rebelling against the economic system, devalue themselves and feel guilty, which creates a general state of depression... And without action, there is no revolution.

10. THE SYSTEM KNOWS PEOPLE BETTER THAN THEY KNOW THEMSELVES
Over the past 50 years, the rapid progress of science has created a growing gap between public understanding of those who own and operate the ruling elite. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the system has reached an advanced understanding of people, both physically and psychologically. The system is able to better know the "average person" than what he knows himself. This means that in most cases, the system has more control and great power over people, greater than that which they carry themselves.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis.

Art is long and life is short.

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult. Art is there for the duration, is immortal, but life of the flesh is short. You will die before your artwork.
Hippocrates said so, and he was of course, right!

On the following pages I will display my art.

Ha!

I haven't created any of this "art" yet, but I am still advertising it.

I may SELL my art before I create any...

the truth is that I discovered long ago that I may be great at imitating, copying or even improving on other peoples work, i really lack on the creative side. It is almost impossible to create something new and interesting.

why bother?

because I found the answer: what is the ultimate copying tool? A photographic camera! YES!!!

I can now hide the lack of any creativity on my side, I can copy shamelessly anything I see and I can still say I am making art

so stay tuned, once I have created something I will upload it for the world to see.

I have a dream... I have a dream of being very famous (or infamous) until 2012 and then... get into politics.

This is primarily for me: I am trying to discover where I stand in a world of rapid changes, where people try to define their world view through philosophies that are at least 100 years old and, as we can see, don't apply anymore to this world. We came a long way from the times that political philosophy was intertwined with religion.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is, in my worldview, the father of them all and if we could refer to his point of view on a contemporary society (e.g. if he lived today) we would have a clear enough stepping stone to live buy. But he is terribly outdated, as everybody else.

Most modern (mid 20th century and later) philosophy is focusing on studying navel lint. We urgently need some kind of -ism to guide our collective of this interconnected globalized village we live in.

Let Me Hear you
Make decisions
Without Your Television
Let Me hear you speaking
just for me.

Depeche Mode (Stripped-1986)

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach...

I was born!

and then something strange happened...

I was ALIVE!

(no, I don't think this is gonna work... OK, let's go for another try...)

I was born in Aachen. This is in GERMANY (or Bundesrepublic Deutschland). In a very tender age I was relocated to Greece, first in Thessaloniki and right after to Athens. Five years after that we moved again, this time to a small multi-culti city located in northern Greece called Komotini, where I finished school. But we never stopped moving around, even then.
I returned to Athens as a student and started working. Returned briefly to Komotini for two years and after that settled to Athens.

(your text is VERY BORING my friend... who cares about all this???)

OK, OK... let's give it another try... third time is the charm...

You know... working is fun! (yeah, right!)

I started working as a DJ, back when I was just 16. In parallel, I also worked in a record store. It was 1981, in the middle of a "revolution" that people called the new wave right after. It is what they call now "the 80's".

finished school, had to study, left home...

Moved to another city, worked briefly at the biggest record store in Athens. Moved again on spinning records and then, it fell from the sky: I was to TEACH in a private highschool for the overprivilleged!
This is one of those things that can only happen in Greece (or any other 3rd world country, now that I can laugh about it...)
I was just 20, just a student (a damn good one, but who cares...) and I was already teaching, and I did it for 2 whole years!

In 1989 I moved on to greener pastures, to work full time in a up and coming software house. If I only knew that this one would be the ONLY one remaining after 20 years, I would NEVER quit.

Anyway, way back then, I first connected to the internet (back then, no WEB, only chat forums).

In Greece one HAS to go to the Army, so I did this too. And at the same time, I kept working as a teacher AND as a DJ.
Army was over sooner that I expected. I learned there to trust myself and my feelings and I understood why Greece will allways be a backward country. This is something you learn in the Army: don't do anything, keep down, avoid work at any cost.
Not for me, thanx

The next 2 years where the most productive of my life: In the morning worked in a computer shop, doing everything from selling to coding to supporting. In the evening I kept my teaching hat on and in the night I had my own late night radio show.
...and on my own time I teached myself 3D animation and computer graphics. I also had time to mountain bike.

Two years of this and I had enough. I couldnt bear anymore the life in the small town, so I moved back to Athens and made a clean start. I started working in a television post production company as a 3D artist but I found out that I am really not as good as I thought. Moved promptly to a computer support company.
Made my first WEB page in 1995 and got into the Greek internet community with heavy strides. Got some awards too...
In all that time I was searching for better things. I applied to almost every big advertising company in Athens as a web designer, had an interview with almost everyone of them, but there just wasn't a market for it yet.

For a brief period of 3 to 5 years I had a famous webplace called "XtremeF1". Back then, it was more popular than a magazine. Suddenly, it was occupying most of my time. Was fun, but had to let it go.

In parallel, I got into web design. This was a horrible time. People didn't pay nearly enough to have a webspace designed and Greek internet was bandwidth plagued.

So what can someone do? I changed...

A couple of years later I got my big break: another post production firm offered me a "cloudy" job that involved anything I could do, from supporting their computers to making simple CG work to produce part of a show.
Best part of that period was that I got to know many famous people and really be a part of "show biz" as it is defined in Greece
I also became one of the few DVD experts in Greece, when the firm opened a DVD replication facility.
Unfortunately, the firm closed in 2000.

I moved back to my computer support work, setting up networks and "stuff". Here I did most of my webdesign work, mostly cheap stuff. Happy as a fly on a shitpile! No worries! Until 2004, when the company split up and I was (once again) forced to make a new start.

Staying unemployed for a whole year had me going in a panic mode. I was searching for a job in the morning and worked as a moonlighting computer expert the nights. Made some good money too, but it was too much work and really too much stress

Hey, I was getting too old for all this! For the first time in my life I had to pull strings and call in favors to get my current job, that I will not disclose, so I can have plausible deniability when they come to break down my door...

Whatever... I moved to a better neighborhood (now that I can afford the rent), got married, got divorced...

And in life, as the rainmakers say, we "move in small circles".
I came full circle once again, once again at the same point in life as I was 10 years ago

Difficult to see the future is... everything is clouded.

War as a method to dispose excess wealth

We all live in a system that needs to grow to survive.
A big company motto is "go big or go home". Another similar motto is "Get big or die trying".
We all "need" the bigger, better, newer thing. We buy a new car, we buy a new computer, a new cellphone.
We buy new clothes and shoes, not because the old ones have holes in them but because "fashion" changes every season.
And all this is OK. We live within a consumer driven economy, so we play by its rules. We need to consume so that the economy grows and we can keep living in "our way of life".
But what happens when the economy cannot grow anymore, cannot find new markets or there just isn't enough money to go around?
What happens when everyone already has one, two or three cars, computers, cellphones?
What happens when for political or philosophical or moral or whatever reasons we as a society decide to consume less?
Disaster! Growth stops. Company earnings diminish. Stock value falls. The economy "cools down". Companies bankrupt. Factories close down, people get fired. The number of unemployed grows.
Now, less people can afford to buy and sustain the economy. More companies, smaller ones, close. We enter a financial crisis.

Do you know what we do if we have a production of a bunch of stuff that nobody wants?
Do we give it up for free? no, because this would drive the prices down.
Do we store the stuff in a box and get it out whenever someone will want it? no, because of the cost of storing and because when people will need it, it may be spoiled, broken or outdated.
What we do with such stuff is DESTROY IT. If it is perishable, we bury it, if not we burn it. If we can "recycle" it then we scrap it.

And now, after reading all this... maybe you have an idea of how to destroy huge quantities of stuff... burn whole cities of stuff, demolish whole infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, airports, factories etc) of a country, so we can build it again. Not yet?

OK... another idea. What if we create a whole new category of stuff and label it "this is stuff to destroy". Build factories to make stuff for it to be destroyed, make big companies that sell this stuff. Make this stuff REALLY EXPENSIVE, so that this kind of companies keep growing.
And make this stuff easy to destroy. Build huge piles of this stuff and then press a button and BANG! it is gone!

Well, this industry exists. It is called DEFENSE industry. And the self-destructing stuff is called WEAPONS. And the method of destroying cities and infrastructure is called WAR.

So, as you see, we are already using all this, as a method to keep the economy growing without ever stopping.

Crisis by design

this "crisis" we are facing is a crisis by design.
It was designed in a higher level and was implemented by mechanisms designed to do just that.
Did the crisis came out of control? no, of course not.
Is the crisis achieving whatever it was designed for? not yet!
What can we do about it? nothing really, as long as we play within the rules of the current economy. The players are too strong.
But lets take it all step by step, so we can understand it. I will not go deep in this post but I will provide ideas throughout this blog and as long as I can keep posting.
Carl Marx wrote in "Das Kapital" (Volume III, Chapter 15) about crisis and how it is really a part of the capitalist system. Although I don't really agree, I know that the people in charge of the global economy have studied Marx and most of them believe that it is so. A crisis is a time for great profits and also it is a time to "correct" errors that accumulate in the system and it works like a system restart for the economy. While this may be true, the impact of a "system restart" on the lives of the people who live in the economy is huge.
We really don't care if some company in another country closes down and some rich people lose some money on worthless stock, but we care if there is no food available in the stores or if we lose rights we thought that we had granted (schools, public transportation, pensions, healthcare etc)
During my lifetime I see a crisis hitting every decade more or less, and before its impact is through, the next crisis comes. I still remember in the early 70's the dark cities that had to shut down public lights because of the "oil crisis". I remember the hordes of unemployed people in Thatcherite England, Punk music and Hooligans. I remember Wall Street meltdown and "Black Monday". I even remember the local (Greek) stock market breakdown. So, crisis is nothing new.

The new thing about "this" crisis is that it is Global. Why? because the economy is global.