Steve KelseySome years ago I met a Chaplain from the Chicago Police Department. The Chaplain’s job was just as tough as you might imagine. He worked in the 1980’s in the 4th District, the south side of Chicago, which is not a gentle part of town. He wore a uniform, and he carried a badge but no firearm. His job was to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong. It was his job to tell police families someone would not come home that night. It was his job comfort the families of murder victims. It was his job to hold the hand of the officers who were not going to make it. He was in London to share his experiences with a group of company directors
He said two powerful things that night to a room full of silent people. Character is everything. If you need to rely on someone to do a hard job the only thing that counts is character. And, character is unchangeable. In his own words
“If you want to change someone’s character, get them on a plane to New York. They have the finest brain surgeons in New York.”
His experience had convinced him that no amount of training or education could change a persons deep rooted character or beliefs. Which is a problem, because it is increasingly clear we are a bipolar race.
Neuropolitics is an emerging science exploring this problem. One part of our race is hard wired to be conservative, the other half progressive. These belief profiles are not a matter of choice nor the product of education, they are hard wired neurological differences that have been tested repeatedly.
There is part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. This part of the brain is involved in several complex cognitive functions most notably empathy, impulse control, emotion and decision-making. This part of the brain is larger in progressive brains than conservative brains. Conversely conservative brains have a larger amygdala, the region of the brain responsible for associating memory with emotion, the fight or flight reflex and fear responses.
Multiple studies have shown that self identifying conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles and value order, hierarchy and authority. Self identifying progressives are open to novelty, embrace complexity and value empathy and creativity more than conservatives. Conservatives fear change while progressives embrace it.
This is wonderful news for anyone intent in dismantling civilisation. Not only are these beliefs in conflict they are unchangeable. It does not matter how much evidence you provide to argue for your progressive or your conservative perspective, the alien thinker on the other side will never believe you. As the Chicago Police Chaplain understood, you cannot change character, political or otherwise.
For the kleptocrat funded anarchist you could not hope for a more powerful or user-friendly weapon. All you have to do is publish meme’s that press the buttons of each camp. The memes will replicate virally and spread widely, deepening the sense of alienness one group feels for the other. To be effective the memes need to be short and repeated continuously, or as one propagandist from the 1930’s instructed…
“ …Effective propaganda must limit its points of view and these points must be repeated until even the last member of the audience understands what is meant by them.”
… “It must limit itself to a few themes and repeat them incessantly.””
Adolf Hitler- Mein Kampf – Chapter 6 ‘War Propaganda’
Social media provides an ideal global scale culture medium for these memes. The Nazi’s had to work much harder in their day pounding the streets with pamphlets and posters. Today, after the insertion of carefully tailored, neuropolitically informed messages via Facebook or Parler or Twitter, you can sit back and watch civilisation separating into its neurologically determined tribes. Why does Farage go down so well in America? Why do Brits or Poles or Hungarians support Trump with energy and passion? It’s because they are no longer American or European, they are now part of a greater whole.
As the two tribes go to war the anarchy can be exploited further by removing authority from the checks and balances that a civilisation has evolved over time. Truth is the first to go and it is the most fundamental. Civilisation is based on the cooperation of millions of people. That cooperation is based on trust. We all trust millions of people to do their jobs, to obey the law, to be honest actors. And trust is based on truth. Erase the concept of objective fact by suggesting there are alternative facts, remove the foundational role of truth, and civilisation fails.
It doesn’t happen quickly. Both the assault on civilisation and its collapse may take decades, but kleptocrats and oligarchs are patient, experienced, skilled people with huge resources at their fingertips. They can afford to play the long game because the ultimate prize, the end of civilisation, will give them a reward beyond measure, the reset of the world’s economy to service them.
Dismantling a civilisation was never so easy.
References.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropolitics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211002892
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/prop27.htm
https://www.sciencealert.com/11-psychological-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589