Building The Progressive Utopia For Dummies–How To Program A Nation Part 3

Time To Start Digging, Again….

In Part Two of this series, there is a list of conditions necessary to bring about a managed society. Here it is again, for those who need to be reminded:

1. Control of the information stream, from inception to delivery.
2. Societal/cultural pressure to break down existing ethical standards of any kind
3. Weakening the concept of the nuclear family
4. Removing the care of children from parents
5. Weakening any religious foundations, and the ethics that go with them
6. Increasing the size and power of a central government, by any means possible
7. The removal  or weakening of rights
8. The weakening of civil discourse and common courtesy behaviors
9. The strengthening of apparent (or actual) class/race/gender disparities
10. Reduction of and eventual extinction of the common sense data base
11. Reduction of, and eventual extinction of, critical thinking skills
12. Reduction and eventual extinction of long term memory.

We dealt with Number One on the list–so now to number two.

Out With The Old, In With The New–The Post-Modern Society

Prior to the growth of Post Modernism and Cultural Marxism, and feminism (an inevitable offshoot of these poisonous plants), The U.S.A. along with most of the western world, had a fairly rigid ethical and societal structure, centered around principles that included personal responsibility and accountability, financial responsibility and common courtesy –to name a few of the largest factors. We also had a fairly strong and rigid set of sexual mores; nuclear families, marriage, strong societal pressure against premarital sex.

To see how this cultural structure got derailed, we need to go across the pond, to Europe and the early days of communist Russia. Communism is a working construct of the post modernist worldview– a system in which  there can be no individual success–“YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT”. In theory, everyone would provide maximum resources and labor happily, in exchange for having their needs met, because “the people” would own everything in common.

Now this may sound like a wonderful idea–John Lennon certainly seemed thrilled–but in practice, communism/collectivism can only work in very small groups, under very narrow conditions, in part because human beings are the most successful animals on this planet. To a great extent , our success stems from being “efficient”, and efficiency, in the truest form, is getting the most resources with the least effort. So in a communist society–productivity is the first casualty.

After all–if you can receive the same amount of resources from working 10 hours a week as you can from working 20–why would you work 20? And more importantly–if working the extra 10 not only gets you NO recognition, NO “reward”–and instead represents a direct loss, either through excess taxation or through the extra resources being taken from you and given to others–you are essentially being “punished” for being more highly motivated than those around you.

COMMUNISM, PROGRESSIVISM, SOCIALISM, AND COLLECTIVISM PUNISH SUCCESS, AND REWARD FAILURE. THEY CREATE AN INEVITABLE “RACE TO THE BOTTOM”. 

But the great minds who came up with this lunacy to begin with saw a solution to this end result–simply remove all of the ethical restraints and societal mores that had worked for literally thousands of years. Convince people that nuclear families were unnecessary (and possibly unhealthy), sexual morality is bad, personal responsibility and accountability are counterproductive, and leave behind only the most basic elements of humanity. The perfect worker would be one who questioned nothing, had no ambition, no familial or cultural ties, and lived only for himself and his gratification, which would be provided only by service to the state.

In return for his labor, this worker would be given everything free, from cradle to grave, and the state– an emotionless, remote machine of sorts, would replace all other associations. The state would provide the home for you and your partner. The state would test your offspring and decide what they would do for a living. The state provides all, and IS all–but that’s ok, because the state is actually wholly owned by the people. The people, in short, live in a peculiarly toxic dichotomy where they have the illusion of owning that which in fact has totally enslaved them.

In return for surrendering individuality, all types of freedom, and all the natural aspirations that make us human: competition, ambition, the desire to be unique and individual exceptionalism, the worker is assured  that he shall receive all that he needs, and there will be no envy or war or other unpleasant things, because everyone will be “equal” and “one”.

Perhaps the best distillation of the goals of Communism and the rest of the toxic ideologies within it, we need only look at one of John Lennon’s best known works:

Imagine

John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

This is the goal of the progressive, the communist, the socialist. No God/heaven/hell means pure moral relativism–there is no consequence for ANYTHING you do, beyond any that occurs at the time. Live for TODAY–do what you wish, when you wish, to or with whoever you wish. So no personal accountability, and no external moral codes to worry about.

No countries means no collective identity–you’ve already got no PERSONAL identity because in this perfect world, there is nothing to distinguish you from “the other guy”. You own nothing. All you produce is lumped in with everyone else’s production. Your home, your clothes, everything in your environment is meaningless–because IT ISN’T YOURS. YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT. So not only can you leave no mark as an individual to show you ever were here–you are essentially a cipher–there is no group identity either.

The progressive  robs you of your individuality. They have robbed you of the healthy aspects of personality–ambition, the rewards of success, personal exceptionalism, the things that make YOU a unique being. They rob you of the solace and strength that religion and faith can provide–because it isn’t enough to tell you that YOU ARE NOTHING–they also want you to believe that everything around you is just random chance. That there is no meaning to life.

This toxic ideology not only gives you no reason to want to anything other than the bare minimum you must do–if you retain enough personality to try to do more–you are punished actively for doing so. Because in a system where everything is allowed, where you can engage in the most heinous acts if you wish–with consequences only following if you are caught–where there is no outlet for the natural human desire to be regarded as a unique and special person, where there is no acknowledgement of any group exceptionalism either, or even species exceptionalism, ANY expression of ideas that do not conform to those of the progressive state endangers the narrative.

 When You Actually Think About What Lennon Was Saying….

You need to ask yourself–what sort of human being would willingly participate in this ultimate form of slavery–the complete deconstruction of their native personality? If you offered this deal to every generation from the dawn of written history, without the pretty packaging, the vast majority of the people who have ever lived would run screaming in the other direction–or drag you to a court, convict you of whatever crimes they could attach to this philosophy, and execute you.

Yet in the space of less than 100 years, this poisonous ideology and all of the damaging mental illnesses that go with it, has gained a strong foothold in all of the developed nations of the world.

For an ideology that contains so many elements that are absolutely suicidal on both an individual level and a societal/species level to have made the progress it has made required a great deal of effort–and also a level of mass perception management that only became practical around the end of World War 2.

And in part 4 of this series, we’ll go back to the list and examine the final items not covered in this section–HOW the science behind mass perception management and psychographic segmentation has permeated every facet of our society, and WHY it is being accepted so easily.

Building The Progressive Utopia For Dummies–How To Program A Nation Part 2

Can You Create A Reality? You Sure Can…

In part one, I gave you some light background and heavy reading on where the concept of mass perception management came from. As is often the case with really dangerous ideas–it was a military intelligence development.

But What Circumstances need to be in place for this to really work? Orwell gave us the basic outline, so here is where we start:

1. Control of the information stream, from inception to delivery.
2. Societal/cultural pressure to break down existing ethical standards of any kind
3. Weakening the concept of the nuclear family
4. Removing the care of children from parents
5. Weakening any religious foundations, and the ethics that go with them
6. Increasing the size and power of a central government, by any means possible
7. The removal  or weakening of rights
8. The weakening of civil discourse and common courtesy behaviors
9. The strengthening of apparent (or actual) class/race/gender disparities
10. Reduction of and eventual extinction of the common sense data base
11. Reduction of, and eventual extinction of, critical thinking skills
12. Reduction and eventual extinction of long term memory.

 

Well, Then–We’re Safe! That’s A Long List!

Well–not really. That’s only the beginning. And remember, this began back when we hadn’t even gotten to the moon yet. To accomplish this lofty goal, the “supply list” is surprisingly short, and requires only money and dedication to “the cause”:

1. Acquire and centralize as much of the information stream as possible. This is a simple money game–whenever a media outlet comes up for sale–BUY  IT! This also applies to textbook companies, publishing houses, cable and internet concerns. Once upon a time, well over 30 companies controlled 90%+ of our information stream. Now–thanks to past Congresses removing Sherman Anti-Trust restrictions from our information sector, we are down to 5. YEP–FIVE. And in reality, those 5 all own parts of each other–and over 30% of them is owned, through multi-layered shell companies, by foreign governments and individuals. Because of course you don’t have to buy them lock, stock, and barrel–just enough stock publicly traded to get a majority of board seats.   Here is the depressing picture from 2012–and the pond has gotten smaller since then: THIS IS OUR INFORMATION STREAM  . NOW, FOLLOW THE MONEY ON THOSE COMPANIES. RIGHT INTO THE DNC.

 

And here’s a look at the top 5 publishing houses for trade books. Note that NEWS CORP–Rupert Murdoch and minions–own 2 of them: The Big Five–technically, the Big Three .  And in textbooks/educational testing and materials, we have Three: Pearson–yes, it’s a huffpo link. But even the Loon Platoon can be right occasionally. Mc Graw-Hill Education . Once again, not a normal citation–Wikipedia IS NOT RELIABLE. However, this particular listing gives you a decent list of all the tangles alliances and influences on the largest Textbook/ curriculum group around–and if you take the time to wade through the Byzantine connections past and present, the results are, to say the least, interesting and rather unsettling. And Last (not least)–Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt. Another wiki citation, but a good place to start. Older folk may also remember the Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich imprint. When you are tracking the money and connections in education it is extremely important to follow the money. Notice how many of the textbook firms operate at a LOSS for long periods of time, and who bails them out….

The Big takeaway here is a simple one–the deeper you dig into the information stream, from inception to delivery, the more unsettling the picture becomes, because so many of the players have shady ties (many to data collection firms and psychographic segmentation companies, as well as major hedge funds and shell corporations). If you buy the government’s excuse for allowing communications monopolies–that they are “critical national security infrastructure”–then you need to ask yourself a few questions:

1. Before the government broke up the Bell Telephone monopoly, their excuse for there being a monopoly in phone service in the first place was the same one used to justify media monopolies–critical national security infrastructure. So, why break up Bell? And why, now, allow telephone service to once again become a monopoly?
2. If something is a critical part of our national security, then why allow foreign interests to gain significant financial control of it? This also applies to food and energy, by the way, as the most recent administration allowed CHINA to acquire the majority of our pork product agricultural sector, and has allowed foreign interests to purchase large chunks of our energy infrastructure–not to mention HILLARY CLINTON selling of 20% of our uranium reserves to Russia, and the vast majority of the rare earths used to produce parts for wind plants and other non-green energy came from out of the country–China and parts of Africa. One would think that those parts of the infrastructure that are essential to keep under U.S. control, for national defense and national security reasons, would be wholely owned by American companies, as would the resources needed to maintain them. Yet our last few administrations were more than willing to allow these industry sectors to become foreign property….

Wow. That Looks A Little Bit Scary. But HEY, it’s a LONG List, Right?

In the next section, we’ll dig into the list above…..  So on to Part Three.

Building The Progressive Utopia For Dummies–How To Program A Nation

Since the election, more and more relatively “sane” people are waking up wondering what the hell is wrong with the democrats, and the media, and Congress. Well, it’s fairly simple: in the case of the progressive loons–they are literally insane. Delusional psychopaths with a persecution complex. The victims of a toxic blend of post-modernism, cultural marxism, technology, and decades of 24/7 programming.

In the case of the media–many fall into the above description of progressive loons (the people formerly called Democrats). The others are simply mercenaries–paid mouthpieces for the uniparty/kleptocracy.

Congress hasn’t been two distinct parties for literally over half a century now–the entity known as Congress is a functioning kleptocracy, a single party body ruling through theft. Theft through taxation and regulation has been the norm for far longer than many people realize, and it stands to reason they are not too happy with the concept of ceding power.

But…But…How the Heck Did THIS Happen?

To answer that question, we need to step into the way back machine, and travel back to the years shortly after World War 2, when A writer named Orwell began looking around and realized that communists were infiltrating otherwise healthy countries, as well as the earliest examples of mass perception management. So, he did what any reasonable person would do–he wrote 2 books. Animal Farm, and 1984.

For Those Who Are Curious–Here Is Where You Begin:

Perception Management –Psychology Wiki

While I seldom cite any Wiki as a source, this particular one gives consistently accurate, easy to digest information on the beginning of the military/government use of mass perception management. Not that a law was passed in 1948 forbidding use of such tactics on our own population.

REGAINING THE HIGH GROUND: THE CHALLENGES OF PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT IN NATIONAL STRATEGY AND MILITARY OPERATIONS

This PDF report was written/published around a decade ago, and highlights some of the challenges our government faces employing perception management globally. It is used as a teaching aid in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School. While dry and tough to follow in places, it is essential reading for those who want to understand how commonplace this weapon is in the information warfare arsenal.

The Art of Perception Management in Information Warfare Today

This gem of a PDF is from–India. And it gives quite a few illuminating examples of how the media works hand in hand with military groups to further the spread of the symbology and contextual elements of an operation as well as the actual language involved.

Well, Since There’s a LAW against it, And Only the Military Uses It–it Isn’t Happening…..

YES–IT IS. Once upon a time, the military might have been the main players in this game. But with the advent of Psychographic Segmentation technology and mathematics that worked, and the civilian application of these techniques as marketing tools back some 40 years ago (give or take)–the rules changed.

Remember also that there are more than a few civilian firms that hire out to any government or individual that feels like setting off a regime change, for a fee–and they use the weaponized military approach. Those players were listed in the earliest articles on psychographic segmentation– you can refresh your memory by starting Way back at the beginning–but here are a few of the main players in the civilian aspect of militarized mass perception management:

SCL GROUP– Parent Firm for Cambridge Analytica

The Rendon Group– CIA’s Choice In Iraq

Booz Allen Hamilton– the Government’s Civilian “Home team”

There are many more. At the moment, Booz Allen is being investigated by the DOJ for “billing irregularities”–funny, given that over 95% of their money comes to them courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Also funny, given how very useful they were to the ex-administration during the campaign cycle…

So– What The Heck Happened?

What happened is back in the days when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth and we had just entered Viet Nam, mass perception management started being used on the civilian population–despite the “law” in place forbidding this. At this point, knowing whose brilliant idea this was is NOT necessary (and we may never know, really, who jumped in then). We DO know this:

1. The Russians had embraced social programming very early in the field, and put a lot of research and effort into developing tools that would work in the civilian population of a country at “peace”.
2. That at least one of our alphabets–the CIA–was actively testing drugging and programming models, in violation of a boatload of laws and regulations.
3. That a strong possibility exists that BOTH these parties were testing live operations and projects in the USA during thew Viet Nam War.

And now–it’s time to get to the good part. How you can turn a reasonably healthy civilian population, in a free country, into a large pack of insane, paranoiac, dangerous people in a generation and a half.

Now–Part 2: What Needs To Be In Place To Create A Managed Reality…..

Analyzing Social Perception In Real Time–Part 1

Welcome To A Live Op.

Now that the largest part of the election is over, and we have multiple boycotts along with the typical rioting in the streets and felony behavior on the part of the leftist loons, we can revisit the wonderful world of psychographic segmentation.

Cambridge Analytica Resurfaces With A BOOM!

So, Forbes had an article this past week about how Jared Kushner won the election for Trump using social media, thanks to a crash basic training course in my field–psychographic segmentation and mass perception management. When I’m not writing professionally, I catalog, analyse and archive data. Some for tin foil hatters, some for marketing firms, some for cultural anthropologists…

You may remember (if you don’t read the rest of the articles in this part of the blog) That Robert Mercer, the reclusive mystery man behind Cambridge Analytica was supporting Ted Cruz, the Banker’s Husband. Given that Mercer owes BILLIONS–not millions–to the IRS and Ted wanted to abolish the income tax, this was a good investment. Thankfully, the Banker’s Husband was finally defeated. Cambridge Analytica was also hired for straight marketing work by Dr Ben Carson and literally hundreds of other politicians nationwide–as political candidates are what they market these days.

AND THAT SHOULD REALLY WORRY YOU. READ THE ARCHIVES.

C.A., Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner

I began keeping an eye on Jared the first time he appeared on the campaign trail. I was familiar with some of his history, and was simply curious about what kind of guy Ivanka’s hubbie was.Then, when the Banker’s Husband went down in flames and Mercer got behind TRUMP, I started digging deep and archiving EVERYTHING campaign related.

This was shortly before the tone of the online campaign changes dramatically. So I knew C.A. had a team in place. How? “FINGERPRINTS”. You see, each company in this field uses different algorithms and metrics, and therefore, you can ID everyone playing in a particular exercise. So, C.A. was back–but who was the point man?

The Speech That Exposed The Point Man–AIPAC.

About the same time C.A. came n board, semantic analysis led me to believe that someone was polishing up Trump’s speeches–actually, 2 someones, a male and a female. The female was easy to spot, as Ivanka has a distinctive style. But weeks of analysis had led nowhere in identifying the male in the picture. Then came AIPAC, and the male behind the speech was obvious–Jared Kushner. This has since been verified by the article in Bloomberg.

And if I hadn’t been over thinking–I would have figured it out a lot sooner. After all, who better to be the male voice than Ivanka’s husband? Intelligent, educated, lives with her all the time, family member.

Rule 1: CONSIDER WHAT YOU KNOW.

Rule 2: DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS.

Having broken both rules, I got back to work, and began extrapolating forward.

And Here We Are, In A Live Operation….

I’ll get back to everything between AIPAC and now in later articles. But at the moment, we’re looking at a live operation. And here is what we know:

1. George Soros and the DNC, through a large number of shell “grassroots” groups, are causing mayhem with the riots.
2. The obama administration, far from stepping in to stop this, is encouraging it, while Hillary remains silent, despite claiming in the last debate that anyone not willing to accept the results of the election is a “threat to democracy”.
3. Deliberate assassination of police officers is rising.
4. The MSM is spreading misinformation/disinformation as fast as they can create it.
5. A large number of brand new “fake news” right wing websites are churning out FAKE NEWS–and the MSM is blaming those sites on Russian Federation scam artists making cash from the Adsense ads–true in some cases, blatantly false in others.
6. Trump’s transition team is hard at work, ahead of schedule.

That’s the “short list”, of course. So what are Cambridge Analytica, Booz Allen Hamilton, The Tin Foil Hat analysts, the Trump social media team under Jared, and I, doing?

WE ARE ANALYZING EVERY WORD YOU TYPE. AND EVERY HASHTAG. Despite google and Twitter, and Facebook, there are ways to determine how well and fast a hashtag propagates other than their “trending” features–which are misinformation tools to begin with.

While I have no doubt whatsoever SOME of these people are doing deep analysis–looking for the real radicals on both sides, scraping identity information, and more, most of us are just compiling aggregate data, and mapping the data points.

If you think of each data point as a color coded PIXEL–and you keep adding more data points–you go from a stick figure to a photograph. And that photograph gives the experts a way to foretell the future. It gives the media disinformation/misinformation creation teams the tools they need to tailor the “news”, for maximum acceptance. It gives the Trump Team intel on their base’s sentiments, while they walk the tightrope over the political volcano without falling in and being consumed.

AND IT GIVES THE OPPOSITION TOOLS TO USE AGAINST US. 

So, everyone–watch your words and choice of memes/videos. Because everything we’re doing now online–including my writing this article, that will be tagged to stand out like a lighthouse beacon–is being noted and analysed. AND THIS WILL–NOT CAN, WILL–BE USED AGAINST US. This is more than your average election. This is a very deadly game, behind the scenes. Literally TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in revenue covering dozens of industry sectors is on the line, and people have been killed for far less than that.

I’ll continue this after the turkey.

Elegance, Context, And Bach

Music isn’t typically considered something that requires a context, as much as it is a contextual element. Music, like everything else in the universe, does have a mathematical component. As such, it can easily be incorporated into a contextual framework.

However, there are times when providing a visual context for a piece of music can greatly enhance not only the enjoyment of the piece, but the understanding of the underlying structure. In this post, I’ll be showing you how context can enhance the understanding of musical structure, and in the next, we’ll look at music as a contextual element.

Bach To The Basics.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed music in a time when form, symmetry and structure of a piece was one of the most important components a composer addressed, and it is beautifully illustrated in a short piece he wrote, according to history, in a half an afternoon.

As played here, with minimal context, the piece is simple, but beautiful. Balanced, delicate, and light. A Canon is a piece of music that is highly structured, and as there are multiple elements that can be introduced, the composer could achieve an amazing diversity within the rigid structure of the style. A Crab canon is also called a “retrograde” canon, as the leader is reading the music left to right, while an accompanying musical instrument (or the “other hand” on a piano)  is reading from right to left. Crab canons may also include “inversion”, where one set of notes is rising while another is falling.

The Canon Structure

Canons can range from the simple canon, a “round” like “Row , Row, Row Your Boat”, to complex Baroque pieces employing retrograde, inverse, and several varieties of contrapuntal motion; everything from parallel (the note spaced evenly apart in pitch and rising or falling) and oblique (one note remaining the same while another rises and falls in relation to it), to the “species counterpoint” found in fugues. BTW, a “species counterpoint” is when you start with one simple progression or melody, and add a second, third, and fourth, while still maintaining structure and harmony.

Now that you have heard the Crab Canon with minimal context, let’s watch the Canon in action:

 

The simple addition of animation allows you to “follow” the piece, and better appreciate the structure in a way that the sheet music alone doesn’t, unless of course you can read sheet music :-). Even then, the Moebius effect isn’t evident at first.

Then there is Pachelbel….

In this very familiar piece, you’ll see nearly every possible form of contrapuntal construction; parallel, oblique, inverse, and species are all represented. Note that the more complex animation used, “Synthesia” is actually a teaching tool. If you look around on You Tube, you’ll find literally thousands of complex piano pieces translated into this format, typically in different speeds–this one is 100%, but it is available as slow as 30% of full speed.

The growth of synthesia is part of an overall trend in learning and multi-sensory knowledge integration known as “gamification”, something we’ll be referring to more often as this series progresses. Gamification has been used for everything from teaching piano to collecting data in political campaigns, with Ted Cruz’s Cruz Crew App being the first example of a truly sophisticated data mining program disguised as a game.

Gamification works because it fully engages the subject, creating an immersive, personal experience in a way that is instructive, and in many cases, mildly addictive as well. Combining a zero risk environment, strong audio and visual cues and carefully spaced “rewards”, gamification provides an ideal vehicle for enhancing and delivering a project over time.

Personally, I prefer Pachelbel.

 

Public perception, Reality, And Narratives: The Tabula Rasa

In a long term project, there will be a certain amount of elegance involved simply because of the type of math that governs complex systems. Climate is an example of a complex system–in the short term, it can appear chaotic, or “fragile”–easily influenced by behavior within it. Taken in its proper context, however, in this case the amount of time Earth has been covered with life,  the available data shows that this is a meta-stable complex system, like the rest of the universe, and therefore unlikely to be derailed by the actions of those operating in a small subset or segment of the system.

Long term projects can be designed with tightly defined goals, broad goals or as an open ended project to be altered over time as it matures. If, for instance, you were in a “Foundation” situation, as laid out by Isaac Assimov, you would design a project that allowed for intervention at certain intervals, or had multiple elegant segments designed to be brought into play if certain combinations of events happened together.

The Foundation Series Overview.

Hari Seldon invented what he called “psychohistory” the branch of math that quantifies the behavior of large groups of people, and uses predictive analysis and scaling to determine “what happens next”. Seldon found that the Empire was dying, and that if intervention didn’t happen, the dark ages would last a long, long time. By carefully analyzing what he had available, he designed a series of elegant segments that could be used at certain points, “Seldon Crises”, that would yield a solution to the conditions at that time and shorten the time frame of the dark ages.

His tapes were stored in a vault at the Foundation facility, where the inhabitants were hard at work compiling a Galactic Encyclopedia. While they didn’t know it, their work was essentially a cover–a useful thing to do that preserved knowledge and encouraged maximum interaction among the planets, without endangering the project going on at the Second Foundation–the home of the math geeks.

This is an open ended project, as the final outcome was never revealed, and Seldon himself might not have seen what the final outcome was in terms of humanity. As such, on the “micro” scale–the individual planets of the empire and others–things seemed pretty disorganized and chaotic at times. But on the macro-scale, this was a meta-stable system, and very elegant given the extreme time frames. It should be noted that when Assimov wasn’t writing amazing science fiction, he was a noted scientist, mathematician and all around genius. So he knew his stuff.

A Long Term Single Focus Project

So, for the fun of it, let’s say you wanted to force a regime change in a country–perhaps because you have nothing better to do. Or maybe your a technocrat, who wants to rule the world and make it better through tech and math. Or maybe you’re a theocrat, with visions of a God centered world. Or a kleptocrat, who really has no interest in what kind of country you live in, as long as the trains are on time, you have power, and you’re making money.

If you made a physical model of your project, it would look like a flexible funnel; a long, slender one. Along the way, if the very large mass of people made choices that were counter narrative, the funnel would stay about the same diameter. However, as more and more people began complying with the narrative, the number of “safe” choices begins to decrease.

Once the project passes a critical point, the endgame is absolutely inevitable. Unless you managed to dispose of every person, company, organization and information source following the narrative, you can’t stop the endgame itself, because you’re in the neck of the funnel. The question then becomes not whether you can stop the endgame, but how you should counter the endgame to create the most desirable outcome, given the circumstances.

The Tabula Rasa–The Ultimate Hard Reboot.

Once a country has entered the neck of the funnel, there will be an endgame. Because when math and “reality” are at odds, math wins. This is where a Tabula Rasa segment is the only viable answer to the equation, the project in play at the time. A Tabula Rasa is a very specialized elegant meme, that is constructed for a specific project, unlike other forms of elegant memes. A Tabula Rasa has some specific characteristics:

• It is as context free as possible. This is why it is called the Tabula Rasa, in this case; it’s a “blank slate”. A long term project that is designed to produce a specific outcome has built in balancing mechanisms–if the group does “A”, “B” will happen, through push back, blow back, or planned reaction. The project is also designed so that the most probable reactions can be seen well in advance, and planned for.
• It can be carried on in isolated instances, randomly, or coordinated to happen in multiple places under set circumstances. This way, anyone, anywhere, who feels a local circumstance calls for this solution, they can use it with near zero instruction, zero experience, and no specialized equipment or preparation.
• Because it has near zero contextual framing, it is easily internalized, rapidly personalized, and carries extreme psychological weighting. Thus, any attempt by the project team or the media to introduce a context will fail.
• Beyond the aspect of contextual framing failing, this segment is also, like a defiance meme or a standard elegant meme, self-propagating.  It is designed to be seen as a low risk expression. And as it is full internalized and personalized, the subject “owns” it, the urge to use it is heightened.

Some Working Examples Of A Tabula Rasa

This type of segment can be written–a phrase like “Who Is John Galt?” would be an example, if placed in a zero context environment, such as block printed in black on a white wall. The human brain is a big fan of context–a lack of context creates subconscious “anxiety”. So the subject who sees this particular example and is not familiar with the reference, will feel a mild curiosity the first time they see it.

If they see it again, on another wall, or a billboard, the compulsion to investigate will grow. Eventually, after the third random sighting, they will begin to ask people what it means, and find their way to the original reference. With the context provided, the anxiety is gone.

Any symbol can serve as a basic Tabula Rasa segment, if it is one that is relatively unknown, and always placed in a different context free setting. The more unusual it is, the better it works. A Peace sign, for example, does NOT work, because everyone recognizes it. But if you were to research old symbols, and find the Egyptian hieroglyph for “peace” and begin scattering that around, and could make it go viral, it would serve a purpose. It would both distract the subjects from the ongoing project and the direct impact it has on them, and it would also allow them to fully identify with the perspective once they find the “answer”.

The act of searching for the answer and being frustrated causes the mind to speculate on what might be at the end of the quest. The quest becomes personal, something that takes on a magnified importance. And when the end is reached, the value of the “secret knowledge” has an exaggerated significance, proportional to the effort required to find it.

 

A Tabula Rasa that is designed for a specific type of event is more challenging, as context can’t be avoided, as a rule. When this is the case, the context still must be kept as close to zero as possible. Anything over 1 element dilutes the effect. So on the rare occasions you see a pure example, with no explanation given, it will typically have only one symbolic element.

Never Explain The Unexplainable!

Many people recognize the visceral impact of a symbol or group of like symbols, with no context. Like this Image by David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net:

While this isn’t a pure Tabula Rasa, this picture of a military cemetery carries high psychological weight none the less. The Perspective is one of organized, regimented death. Because each stone is alike, each soldier, whether related to you or not, is internalized as “someone’s son or daughter, who died for my freedom”. The intent of this design is quite specific.

In a “civilian” cemetery, the symbols of “death” are personal–everything from simple headstones to weeping angels. These are individual people, and the stones and flowers are the personal perceptions of those who ordered them. They can also indicate social status, historical prominence, and other temporal attributes–for examples look at pictures of older cemeteries in the south and in the Northeast, where the Founding Families will often have elaborate crypts, inside fences, and there will frequently be sections–a “Jewish” section, a “pauper’s field”, etc. More than one PhD has been written when it comes to graveyard analysis :-).

In a military cemetery, the message is that all soldiers are of equal value. That death is not only inevitable, it is the great equalizer–the general may be placed next to the private. Here, we see the purest expression of military discipline–everything squared away,  impeccably maintained, ordered, cataloged, and inspection ready. Just as these soldiers stood in life, in formation awaiting the inspection of their commanding officer, they now are in formation in death.

The Perspective is one of order. The perception is personalized, internalized by those who visit the cemetery. For some, a military cemetery is far “creepier” then a private one–because it is so impersonal. Death is a creepy thing to begin with. Death with so little context can lead the mind into some very creepy places. To others, it is beautiful, often in a far more personal way than a private cemetery, precisely because they supply their own perception. And to the majority of people, a military cemetery produces a far more intense effect on the mind than a private one, like this one (Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net ):

Compare those two pictures yourself, and see which has a more powerful effect on you.

A Tabula Rasa with one contextual point is designed to fit very specific circumstances. And choosing the single context point is the hardest part of the design phase. The symbol most be one that is universally identifiable, but can still mean different things to different people depending on context. It has to be a symbol that can be fully internalized, and personalized. and any other context, such as a person holding a symbol, must be as neutral as possible.

A well designed segment of this type offers a strong symbol, with no contextual clues provided. As an example–the black monolith from the movie 2001:

What did it mean? More importantly–what did it mean to YOU? This was a very unique use of a Tabula Rasa, just as the ending sequence of the movie was. Beginning and ending a movie with something that is absolutely unexplained was a stroke of genius. If you asked 10000 people what they remembered the most from the movie, “the monolith”, and “the baby reaching out for Earth” or “the very end” would be the most common answers.

And every one of those people would likely offer you a different interpretation of them, also. Put a group of people together and ask them as a group what this means, and at the very least you’ll have an interesting dialogue. But the more likely result would be a rather heated discussion, with everyone defending their perception vigorously. And when the talking heads produce a documentary, with experts in symbology to tell you what the monolith and the baby mean, the result will inevitably be abysmal failure, simply because the odds of more than a small number of people agreeing on the meaning are vanishingly small.

In this case, Arthur Clarke himself said he had no idea what Stanley Kubrick was trying to say. And when Kubrick related what he had been trying to say, everyone disagreed with him. So, his personal project was an abject failure, but the Tabula Rasa he inadvertently created was a raving success.

When The Tabula Rasa Is Deployed:

It will just appear, from nowhere, with no explanation. As an example, a lone person, wearing only dark blue clothing, walks to the center of a grassy area in front of a public building and stands there. A few minutes later, he’s joined by someone else in dark blue, who stands an arm’s length away. Then a third. And a fourth.

By the time you get to six people in a row, passers by are stopping and watching.

When you get to a 6×6 square, people are taking video on smart phones, and tweeting. And in relatively short order, there is a news crew. When your display grows to 10×10, people begin moving into the display, trying to provoke reactions. Media are asking passers by for reactions, and trying to ask participants arriving what it is about.

When another display of the same type begins to form a distance away, the response time will be shorter, and the attempt to engage will be higher. And if displays of the same type begin appearing in other cities, the awareness and impact will be exponentially higher.

The debates will begin among the direct witnesses, and on twitter, and Facebook, and Reddit, but the odds are extremely small that the media will be able to successfully frame any narrative that is accepted by all, and disseminate it before it becomes invalid–because this segment  forces a rapid internalization by each subject, that then is personalized, and shared with others, creating massive discourse without consensus.

And when the right symbol is added to counter the project, the narrative is destroyed.

This is the essence of a successful Tabula Rasa segment–it derails the endgame for its target project because, from a very basic point of view, it takes two people to have an argument. And a project, at its deepest level, is an argument on one side of the equal sign, and a solution on the other. In this case, the base argument, the model, instead of being countered by a solution (like a demonstration, torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers, with arrests and other inevitable consequences) is countered by a cloud of infinite possibilities.

And as each person creates their own solution, the odds of the solution originally intended being accepted gets smaller–as do the odds that the project team’s planned counters for the planned actions of the people will be deployed at all.

 

 

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives: Basic Elegant Segment Types

In the last section, we discussed the elegant segment. Elegant segments are the ones most typically used in short term projects, for testing the progress of a project, and for “one time” or spontaneous projects, because they are elegant, and anyone can use them.

A “talking point”, for instance, is an elegant segment. Once a “talking point” or “label” has taken hold in the public perception, it becomes an elegant segment, in that it can’t be countered for all intents and purposes. Examples currently being used would include the typical “racist”, “islamophobe”, “white privilege”, “gender is not dependent on sex”, etc.

Hey–Those Aren’t Elegant, I Counter Them All The Time!

No, you don’t.

You can counter these on a personal level, in a small group of people, in a non-charged, neutral or nearly neutral environment. But at a highly charged political rally being held by a controversial figure, when you are confronting a paid protester who calls you “racist”, if you make the news, you own the label. True, you own the label in the eyes of millions of people you’ll never meet, but you still own it. Not only that, everyone else in the building owns it, because they are cheering you on and chanting….And everyone ELSE who tries to counter after the fact runs a high risk of owning the label as well, and further solidifying the public perception.

And in the case of this particular example, How did you answer the protester??

To answer them AT ALL is to claim ownership of the label, because that is how the project was designed to work. The project in play right now is an either/or option halving project, with the simplest of decision trees. When facing this type of segment, the only viable option is ignore, and shut up.

Fortunately, over use of this type of segment by the untrained leads to a certain level of desensitization and eventually, the talking point can be automatically dismissed by enough people that it loses the ability to shame subjects into remaining on narrative.

Handling Aggressive Deflection Segments: A Practical Example.

You go to a TV station to be interviewed about something. The interviewer constantly interrupts, deflects, distracts, misquotes, and does all they can to trip you up. This is an example of an aggressive deflection segment. It’s designed to make the subject appear incompetent, or trigger an aggressive reaction to further a negative mass perception of the subject.The best response to this type of segment is:

• Stop talking. Cross one leg over the other, your ankle on the opposite knee, and lace your hands around the bent knee. Tilt your head slightly, and look at your interviewer as though they are slowly growing huge pimples all over their face. Aim for a half quizzical, half incredulous expression. Body language and facial expression are crucial here, to further the contextual framework you are trying to build.
• Once they stop talking, answer their question. 
• As soon as they interrupt your answer, repeat the process.

What you are doing here is constructing, on the fly, a real time opposing contextual framework. This person asked you to come to an interview, ostensibly to get your opinion or have you share your knowledge. You arrived in good faith, more than willing to educate and inform. So why is this strange person talking to themselves??? Inquiring minds want to know…

• The third time you do this–not 4th, not 2nd, but THIRD (it takes 3 impressions to create a context) BEFORE you answer the question, you say “If you’re done talking to yourself, I’d like to get on with the interview without further interruption.”
• DON’T wait for their answer–Immediately restate the question ” I believe you asked if I am in favor of cap and trade to reduce CO2 emissions, is that correct?”
• If they try to go off again, hold up your hand and say “Excuse me. I asked you if that was your question. Is it?”
• Once you get an affirmative, give a short, definitive answer with no digressions at all: “I am not in favor of cap and trade. As we have seen in the EU, cap and trade is just a means to sell the right to pollute to people. Also, the real problem isn’t CO2, it’s methane, which is far more persistent and far worse for the environment, and the major source of methane is bovine flatulence. Now if you can come up with a practical way to tax cows for farting, I would be willing to entertain it, of course, but at the moment that makes as much sense as cap and trade.”
• Then sit back and wait for the next question.

This particular segment works very effectively in any hostile interview/debate scenario, from jobs to deal making. By using the right body language and the right “talking points”, you show the disinterested observer an opposing narrative powerful enough to create a WTF?? moment, and you show the interested observer that your are in command, and the interviewer is clearly trying to further a narrative.

The Aggressive Deflection Segment in An Event Context.

The aggressive deflection segment when used in highly charged atmospheres, like political rallies and concerts, is an enhancement device/trigger and a test segment as well. It furthers a narrative, creates a self fulfilling narrative, and also propagates. In this case, political rallies, after the third rally with protesters the narrative and contextual framing has been set:

• The candidate is having a rally. Because the last rallies have had protesters, this one will also have protesters. The MSM furthers this narrative by speculating in advance of the rally whether violence will occur “again”. They will also film any protesters outside before they film rally goers.
• Once the rally begins, the cameras will be positioned to downplay the supporters’ numbers, and as soon as a disturbance starts, the cameras will record the disturbance in close up mode, to create the maximum contextual reference framing.
• By use of language in subsequent reports, written and video, the MSM will discuss in depth Why these protests only happen with one candidate, what the motivations are, and use the analysis opportunity to introduce reasons people might want to protest in the future. This is done to further propagation–someone who might not be inclined to go and protest for reason A, might be willing to go and protest when reason B is presented. So you get more protesters, and the implication that there is more “wrong” with this candidate than people initially thought.
• And each subsequent negative event further cements in the public perception the negative image of the candidate, and by extension their supporters. Once a certain saturation level is reached, the narrative is no longer needed–a large segment of the voting population is firmly convinced, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary, that the candidate and their followers are (insert talking point of choice here).

The Defiance Meme As A Means To Counter or Further Narratives.

Another example of an elegant segment is the defiance meme. This segment is typically a test segment used by opposing players, to determine how far along the running project is, and also to measure whether a useful level of push back to the running project is present.

As an example, during the recent government shutdown, the president chose to close national parks and monuments. There was an outcry, because there had been shutdowns in the past and those places had remained open. As a further trigger, the government effectively imprisoned  tourists in Montana near Yosemite and employees in the Grand Canyon National Park, something the MSM was very careful to mention as little as possible. This action was another example of the plug and play elegant trigger test used in the Land Grab narrative and other events, to determine how the public would view the government essentially holding both American citizens and foreign nationals without due process. 

There was enough push back to the Grand Canyon to force the governor to open the park, after negotiating a deal with the federal government. But there was another push back that caught on as a grass roots uprising–the defiance memes. When the parks closed, a group of 30 specialists saw a chance to run a defiance meme, and did so.

Selfies started appearing of people in National parks and other closed monuments, next to the closure signs. Many of them were holding signs with phases like “tear down the Barack-cades” (a play on obama’s first name, obviously). Within a matter of a day or two, the number had risen to over 500. By day three, it was over 1000 separate memes, and shares were increasing exponentially. Sadly, the congress caved and the shutdown ended.

Why sadly? Because defiance memes serve a valuable purpose in countering a narrative. A well designed defiance meme has several defining characteristics:

• It addresses a controversial or populist topic–in the mentioned case, the resentment engendered by park closures when it was n’t necessary.
• It involves little or no risk of serious consequences–it will be either anonymous, like the current #The Chalkening defiance meme that allows secret Trump supporters to emotionally invest in the campaign, or very little consequence, as in the case of the National Parks meme, as there were no law enforcement agencies saying they would issue fines/tickets, and if they did, it was a civil infraction.
• It allows people to “make a stand” in a non-threatening way.
• And it opens the door psychologically in the subject. Engaging in defiance meme projects like #TheChalkening, the legal tax revolt, and other safe acts of civil disobedience shifts the subject’s thinking, so they can more easily accept larger displays of defiance of the narrative. It also allows people to vent frustration in a non-violent way, defusing some of the psychological pressure that long term exposure to major projects creates.

The current defiance meme, #The Chalkening, is one that as many people as possible should further and participate in, for the reasons above. And the meme shouldn’t be limited to pro-Trump memes, Anti-Cruz memes/anti-Hillary memes are excellent additions to this display.

The Next part discusses the Tabula Rasa Segment

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives: Elegant Segments

In part 3 of this series, we laid out the basic checklist used to design and test the segments of a project. Once the individual segments have been tested, the project design team will construct as elegant a model of the system as possible. Elegance, in this case is a scientific/mathematical principle–it means for those who may not use the term in this context, the simplest path from point A to point B.

Elegance is a necessary attribute in any project dealing with more than a handful of known people, or any project that has an extended time frame, unless you have nearly unlimited resources. There are a few reasons for this:

• An elegant solution involves the least amount of tweaking, and provides the widest range of acceptable outcomes. it’s a nearly one size fits all model.
• When unexpected events impact the project, or unexpected variables appear, they are quickly spotted and can be dealt with before they become a big problem. When you’re working in a technologically advanced society where information propagation is orders of magnitude faster than word of mouth, a small issue can become a project wrecking problem in a matter of days or even hours.
• An elegant solution also has few or no viable counter solutions. If you’ve seen the Karate Kid, you might remember the “Crane” move–it had no defense, no counter.

How elegant a project has to be is dependent on a large number of variables. For instance, if you’re running a psy-op in a primitive country, in a hostile situation, you won’t be focusing on elegance, you’ll be working for brute force and heavy impact.

If you’re running a longer term project in an advanced society that has a specific goal, and you don’t particularly care what happens on the way to that goal (or you have high resource limits), elegance becomes something of an issue, but typically only from the perspective of carefully designed segments that are meant to serve as inflection points, stressors, or analysis triggers.

The Effective Use of Elegant Segments

On a long term project, there will be times when you want to set off a specific event, or a series of events, or use an event to test how the project is proceeding. In these cases, you use the most elegant segment you have on hand. So if you wanted to test the resistance factor to militarized police, for instance, you would introduce a narrative through mainstream media, where cases that involved militarized police would be sensationalized or kept in the news cycle longer than they would have been in the past. You would them monitor social media for public reaction, along with the news, to see what (if anything) people would do.

Or if a part of your project was to effectively label a particular segment of the population in a particular way–for example, the “domestic terrorist” narrative, then when specific news stories surfaced that involved specific elements, you would use those to further your narrative, and analyse the public perception.

Enter The Western “Land Grab”/Domestic Terrorist Narrative

This narrative is a good example of an elegant segment, for quite a few reasons:

• It involves issues that only impact a a very small part of the population–people who lease land from the government. This gives you a very large pool of uninformed/disinterested observers to study, and involves minimal active players.
• The government has spent decades implanting a very specific perception of BLM land, and leases, into the national perception; that these are public lands that belong to all, that the government manages for the benefit of the people. And the government leases these lands at rock bottom prices as well, to benefit lease holders, specifically–this created over time a visceral, subconscious resentment of those who lease the land. Ask the next 10,000 people you meet “what do you think of people who lease BLM land, like ranchers and logging companies?”
• The government has also suppressed information regarding how those lands were acquired by BLM in the first place, and the fact that the government  is not authorized to hold those lands to begin with.
• The government and the media have also furthered the narrative for years that those who lease such land are, for the most part, people who try to cheat on their leases. This has been done by making sure the public remains ignorant of how the leasing system works, and how many conflicting regulations are in place that can’t be met without violating others.
• The public in general has little to no understanding of the details of land leases from the government, or the Homestead Act, or grandfather clauses. Frankly, land deals just aren’t interesting news–until a standoff happens. And because so little is brought to the public’s attention, the media is able to leave out a lot of pertinent facts that would impact the desired narrative.
• The government also chooses its “victims” carefully. If you think they don’t have a good idea which lease holders are most likely to further the “domestic terrorist” narrative–THINK AGAIN. Just as the IRS chooses the people they will lean on carefully, using the services of the home team, Booz Allen.

Enter The Elegant Segment…

When the project designers need to check on the progress of a particular narrative and project, whatever that project may be, they throw in this all purpose segment. In the case of the “Land Grab”, the government had been involved in adversarial conflicts with families in two states that fit the profile of subjects who were likely to react in a manner that would satisfy the project outcomes, and provide a very good measurement of a wide range of public perception points.

In other words, these people were a good fit for the “domestic terrorist” perception model the government had been creating as part of other ongoing projects. So, the government plugged in the elegant segment, and dropped the regulatory hammer on the first case.

Then, the project team analysed the results (and is still monitoring the persistence of the first test trigger, BTW). And not too long after, encouraged by the results of trigger one, they dropped another hammer, a trigger two, on a second family in a second state, and analysed the results.

The Results…

Because this was a quite elegant segment, the optimal counters to it were limited, but there were still at minimum 24 counters that would have at least diffused the narrative and a handful of those would have caused significant issues for the design team and the project.

Sadly, because the people involved were not familiar with how mass perception management works or were too emotionally involved to care, both triggers were highly successful from the project point of view, when they could have seriously damaged the project instead. In both of these cases, had someone with experience in the field been on hand, and the people involved had been willing to follow counter project guidelines, there would have been a serious interruption in the ongoing project.

In the next part, we’ll look at some common elegant segments and their uses

Public Perception, Reality, And Narrative Part 3

In the last post, we showed a very simple project, that was designed to gauge employee attitudes towards a rule change in a work environment and also target potential thieves. A lot can be done with a single symbol, even in a simple project.

Constructing A Project 101:

In the field of mass perception management, projects are constructed with the specific goal of bringing about a particular perception of a group or event, within a given perspective. as an example of a complex project, let’s look at how to create a race war in your spare time for fun and profit.

• Define the PERSPECTIVE SET. A given project might address anywhere from one to several perspectives, though the total number of perspectives should ideally be limited to 3; the two subject groups involved, and a disinterested observer. In the case of America, lets take one of the two major projects right now–BLM/White Privilege.
• Define the PERCEPTION GOALS. You have decided on the perspectives you wish to change or manipulate, so now the question becomes defining what internal perceptions you want to create in the subjects. In the case of BLM/White Privilege, you want to create a pervasive resentment/ oppression in both subject sets, as well as the perception in each case that the “other guys” are: protected/privileged/manipulative/controlling/exploitative/dangerous/ a threat to a highly personal belief. The objective/ endgame is to create first isolated uprisings, then an eventual widespread conflict.
• Examine the DISINTERESTED OBSERVER/NON-PARTICIPANT VIEW. In this case, the disinterested observer/non-participant would be framed as How does the rest of the world view the issue? In the context of the BLM/White Privilege project, it might surprise you to know this perspective was left “open”, in that there is nothing in the project construction to push either side of the project. Why is this the case? Because there are other project ongoing elsewhere, and by leaving this perspective open, the other projects can leverage these projects to further their own narrative. This is the most mathematically elegant way to handle a large scale project, and one of the reasons that conflicts on one area of the world can propagate so rapidly in others for no apparent reason. There’s that word, propagate…Arab Spring, anyone?
• Model Design Phase 1 Begins: Once you have decided on the project parameters above, you get to the fun part. Teams of people with strong backgrounds in semiotics, symbology, memeology, and/or contextual framing begin combing through the immense databases and data point sets owned by the project designers, searching this data using a wide variety of classification codes and filters. Once they have a large enough data base for segment design to begin, the information is passed on to segment design teams.
• Segment design teams then meet either in person or virtually, and use the design and outcome parameters to construct the full basic model framework, as an equation, and determine using  complicated software, Mighty Magic 8 Balls and fortunes from fortune cookies to find the smallest number of segments that will produce the widest number of combinations with the same outcome range.
• Segment designers grab a pile of segments, and begin designing them.Some of these designers will only be working with text–creating social media posts, for example. Some design memes, others write the clickbait headlines, some produce the You Tube videos. The vast majority of segment designers work alone or with only one or two other people, and frequently have no idea if their work is going to be used at all, or what the end project is. And in many cases, a segment might seem to be entirely unrelated to the main project–a meme featuring a Trumpcat, for example, could be used in the BLM/White Privilege project easily (they have been), but the memer doesn’t know that. They only know they’re getting paid to make memes on different people or objects.
• The Isolated Segment Testing Phase: In this phase, the individual segments of the model are carefully tested on a small scale, to observe any visible impact on the subject group.

As an example, a segment design team might take a story about a crime that was in the news in East Podunk, that was basically a non-issue; when you remove the contextual framing that is inherent in any event, the facts show that what happened is absolutely expected.

The Segment Test  Model: Car stalls out on train tracks. Silly driver panics and is so concerned about saving their property they stay in the car. Train splats car and driver. End of story. Before the advent of wide scale mass perception management, a story like this would literally be a small paragraph buried in the Podunk Picayune, and the locals would have said “well, that’s what thought gets you…” if the incident happened at all.

And if you read historic newspapers, you discover these deaths were almost unheard of, because people abandoned the car and saved their lives. When they did occur, they were big news.

However, lets say that in East Podunk, this has happened more than once at this crossing, because there is no crossing signal (and citizens in East Podunk have skewed priorities, created by cultural conditioning). Add in the natural desire of the community to prevent more people from being splatted by trains. Now add the state’s desire to get more federal funding, and that it’s an election year for an unpopular state Senator. The result is a news story that could be presented in a contextual framework like this:

“Amy FluffBunny here, reporting live from the Podunk Avenue rail crossing, where once again an innocent life was lost today…..yack yack human interest trigger: Candy Pureheart, young mother and beloved kindergarten teacher‘s car stalled while crossing the tracks, and she was unable to start her vehicle again before the approaching train hit her. She leaves behind three year old twins….

yack yack, statistics of other fatalities, insert grieving husband human interest trigger and call to action: We’re now at the home of Candy and Pierce Pureheart, where family and friends have gathered to offer emotional support to the grieving husband and father. Pierce, I’m sure I speak for all our viewers when I say my heart goes out to you tonight.

Thank you, Amy. This is such a terrible blow to our family…

Pierce, as you know, Candy’s tragic death is the latest in a long stream of deaths at the Podunk Avenue crossing. How does that make you feel?

Amy, before this happened to me, I was already trying to get a crossing signal installed there. I even spoke to the Podunk Board about it, and nobody listened. Now, I just want to tear this crazy system down. Too many people have died….

And there you have it, citizens of Podunk. Too many people have died, and the Podunk Board is silent.

Yack yack, story repeated every hour on the local feed of the most popular fair and balanced cable news network around, and discussed on talk radio. Yack Yack UPDATE:

This is Amy FluffBunny, reporting live from the state capitol where angry citizens are confronting a beleaguered state legislature regarding the tragic death of Candy Pureheart last week in East Podunk. I’m here with Jake Snakely the state Transportation director, to get his side of the story. Mr. Snakely, can you explain to our viewers why there is no crossing signal in East Podunk, despite the long string of tragic deaths ?

Well Amy, that is an excellent question. First i’d like to extend my condolences to Ms. Pureheart’s friends, coworkers and family in their time of grief. As the Director of Transportation, I feel a personal responsibility to all of the victims of senseless tragedies like this…yack, yack, 1 minute 30 second more of political talking points (It’s his election year as well). I would love to put a signal there, Amy.

However, the railroad crossing is under the federal jurisdiction, so my hands are tied. I have once again sent a letter to the federal DOT requesting action on this dangerous crossing, and I would also like to see our Senator personally use his influence to get action on this issue…yack, yack, (Transportation Director throws Senator under the political bus)….And Amy, the Governor has also asked our Senator to determine (doubling down on throwing Senator under the political bus) whether or not our request for more federal funding for road upkeep and a crossing signal, and the permits to install one, ( the Senator being told how much pork is expected to save his job) is being acted on…yack, yack…

The Segment Test Begins:

At this point, the story would be given a “click bait” headline on news sites–City officials silent in the face of tragic death…And one designed for Facebook– OMG, look what happened to this mother of twins (graphic content)…And for Twitter– WHERE ARE THE AUTHORITIES? CORRUPTION–R/T . Several different versions of the story from different news outlets would be posted on social media, from as wide a range of news sources as possible, and ideally would include at least one AP direct story (closet thing to just the facts) one left leaning, one right leaning, and one conspiracy/apocryphal site, each with different click bait headlines.

• Monitoring teams then run semantic analysis on all of the comments in the various places this story surfaces, propagation analysis tracks how far and fast the story spreads, perception specialists monitor the change of headlines as subjects insert their own headlines on Facebook posts, and content/context analysts measure how fast the facts become distorted, while the perception specialists use predictive models to try and guess what facts will be distorted, and how.

In  this case, because the segment test is for a particular project, social media perception manipulators (TROLLS/paid posters) would insert carefully worded comments everywhere the story appeared, based on verifiable/ cited facts. For instance — “Well, railroad crossing signals were supposed to be part of OBUMMER’S SHOVEL READY JOBS…”. Or, “If the Podunk Avenue crossing was in the “right part of town”, there would have been a signal already. RIP Candy, prayers for the family..”

If the segment in question was a targeted segment for one side of the main project or the other, the actual news event would be chosen to reflect that, as would the semantic content and weighting of the comments seeded into the narrative on social media and news sites. This is where the TROLLS come into play, as opposed to paid posters. We’ll get into the main  differences in a later topic.

• Segment testing ends and the results are analysed, coded, and verified. In a typical segment test, the tracking begins as soon as the data is seeded, and ends when there has been 48 hours of activity below the set “floor” for the segment. As an example, a segment that the designers are hoping will go viral might specify a “floor” of less than 5000 interactions in 12 hours. So when the segment goes below that floor, monitoring will continue until there has been no significant engagement for 48 hours, but the data set that will be analysed immediately will only cover the time it took for the story to begin propagating to the time it hit the floor.
• The Segment Team Cost/Return Analysis Phase.The math geeks have equations that can determine from the initial size of the seed and the time it takes to hit the floor whether or not this story can be used in a model requiring a viral result, and if it can, how big the seed should be and how much it will cost to use this segment for that purpose. They can also game, using proven algorithms, whether organic propagation will work, and the time frame. They can determine whether the segment has a persistence value–meaning it’s one of those stories people will use later, even years later, in the context of a debate or argument. And whether that segment has contextual value–how useful would it be as a clip in another news story later, in places other than East Podunk?
• Final Segment Analysis. The results of the above process are sent to/given to the project team leads. 

And even if the segment is considered not useful in this project–it’s still kept if it offers a unique equation, because you never throw away jig saw puzzle pieces. They may not fit this puzzle, but that doesn’t mean they won’t fit a future puzzle.

An interesting tidbit: some people really DO use Mighty Magic 8 Balls, fortunes from fortune cookies, the totals from fast food receipts, or other random variables to introduce organic chance components into a segment.

Next up: The Value of The Tabula Rasa Project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives Part 2.

 

Part 1: Perception, Reality And Narratives

In the first lesson on Symbology and Semantic analysis, we looked at the opening minute of one of the last  pure “propaganda”  films produced by the government. Before we move on, consider what I just wrote.

Do words like “propaganda” make you uncomfortable?

Why? Because this is a weighted word. We have been taught that “propaganda” has a negative connotation. Here in America, the contextual frame for that word includes “communist”, “dictators”, “false”, “oppression”, and more.

But take a look at the ORIGINAL DEFINITION, ACCORDING TO OXFORD. It comes from the Latin, and simply means propagation/propagate in the verb form. You might chuckle when you see the original common usage :-).

To Spread Or Disseminate. To Breed. To Transmit Through a Medium. And in this case, the word is in quotations to inform you that it is a weighted term being used as a descriptor–so should either be taken in its original meaning (typically from the Latin), or disregarded when analyzing. *Observation*, must come from as neutral a perspective as possible. Just as any scientist must view their experiment objectively, and not allow their personal bias to color the interpretation of the result, someone analyzing a project must do the same.

But on to this first look at how powerful contextual framing can be. Here is a picture, Image courtesy of Goldy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net:

The only context we have is a raised right index finger, apparently male, light blue button down shirt, black background. If you asked 1000 random people to write a caption for this picture, you could, conceivably, end up with 1000 entirely different perspectives, and hundreds of different perception frames.

A *Perspective* would be what the picture means. What is this saying?  A Perception frame gives you clues as to how the subject internalized it. How did the subject “own” this? What does it say about their psychological viewpoint? So in this case, one person might caption this:

“Hey! Coffee Lady! The Usual!”  This gives us a Perspective of ordering something or asking, a “signal”. It gives us little Perception about the subject, other than the fact they are a probable coffee drinker and a creature of habit.

IF we include the finger as a quantity, we can also assume that this subject has in the past ordered “the usual” for more than one person–though this probability would be regarded as highly questionable, unless we had other information on the subject to support it.

Another Caption might be ” Teacher, I really need to gooo…” This gives us a Perspective of a notification coupled to a fairly urgent request–that is passive/agressive. The Perception in this case is very interesting. This person would likely be a male subordinate, in a highly controlled environment, that is expressing a level of irritation/resentment and likely feels unappreciated, if they are an American.

This particular perception is based on the standard cultural profile for America, as in most adult  work environments where a shirt like this would be worn, the subject would just get up and quietly leave without asking permission. Even in highly regulated work environments like call centers, you wouldn’t see this type of rigidity when informing a floor manager, for instance, that you needed to get up. You wouldn’t typically see a caption using this “childish” semantic structure, either.

Given the choice of words,  we have to take the infamous finger into account, also.

The finger, when coupled with the deliberate language choice, shows the subject is  expressing his resentment in a passive/aggressive fashion, as in elementary schools in certain regions of the country some decades ago, the student would signal the need to go to the bathroom by holding up either a #1, or a #2, so the teacher would know how long they would be gone.

If we were deconstructing a group of captions submitted by a large company for analysis, and had been asked to scale the captions to find potential thieves or saboteurs, this subject would get tagged.

He is probably a cubicle inhabitant who is feeling  resentful. He/she (though the odds this is a woman are quite small, as women don’t typically express their resentment in “potty terms”) has probably been written up more than once for things that are against policy that they consider to be “stupid”. The odds are high this subject’s write-ups were break related, and the latest one would have warned of possible suspension or other wage related punitive measures.

And yep–this is the guy who stole the stapler ;-).

Context is everything. A context free picture for captioning would be the simple outline of the hand in this picture, on a white background. This would allow for the best analysis of the captions, as the subject would be providing ALL of the context. This particular project was aimed at a particular subject group–employees in a service business.

The Back Story Behind This Example…

Some time ago in a telephone survey company in middle America, HR felt that too many employees were just logging off their phones to take bathroom breaks, and decided  to require employees to raise their hand when they needed a 3 minute break. They assumed this would cut down on people taking unnecessary breaks, as the employee would be publicly telling everyone they had to go to the bathroom. The time they chose was based on the size of the call center floor, locations of restrooms, and the average time employees were logging off. They were also experiencing an uptick in petty theft of supplies.

So, they ordered a project that would do two things–get the employees’ perceptions of the new rule, and also reveal the likely supply thieves. They then posted the project in the break rooms, in the company newsletter, and on their internal email/social network system, in the form of a “fun contest”, with minor prizes to be awarded for the “best” captions.

The context of the project was designed to encourage maximum engagement from the employees, but beyond that, the number of captions submitted by each employee can be used as an indicator of employee dissatisfaction. A happy, engaged employee might submit more than one caption, but when all the captions that employee submits are considered as a group, we can determine they are just an enthusiastic team player. And UNHAPPY employee on the other hand, might also submit more than one caption–but they would as a group show the employee was unhappy.

The resulting analysis indicated that they had far more disgruntled employees than they thought, that the new rule was actually causing a measurable backlash effect that increased the loss of work time to bathroom breaks, and correctly identified over a dozen thieves.

They ditched the rule–and the thieves.

Next, We’ll look at how the objective of a project determines the level of context and type of context included, and the importance of framing a project that allows for high internalization when dealing with mass perception management.

 

PART THREE–