Deception
Long ago in the history of our cognitive evolution, mankind -- quite serendipitously -- came upon an unexpectedly handy little mechanism: deception! He found he could use it to appear brave when he was afraid (which was often), and to project positive images of himself and his offspring to the group at a time when inclusion meant survival. As a cognitive prototype, however, it had its imperfections: sweaty palms; shifty eyes; an unconvincing tone and an amateurish inability to conceal the evidence. In any case, more from an honest drive to survive than a malicious desire to deceive (at the time), imperfect as it was, deception was born.
Consensus
Before long, a "shareware" version emerged in which everybody in the group would agree to pretend they all agreed about something when they actually didn't! A little convoluted I grant you-- and yes, it did mess with their heads at first-- but the act of aligning themselves within a unified perceptual framework offered tremendous benefits to the community that ultimately made everybody very happy. Groups enjoyed greater order, constructive collaboration, and strengthened identity in the face of adversity, real or imagined (though back then it was mostly real).
Delegation and Relinquishment of Responsibility
Occasionally it transpired that someone would emerge -- usually someone who was much better at deception and delusion than everybody else -- with an uncanny knack for explaining things in a way people really liked to hear. So much so, in fact, that everybody would forget whatever it was they'd been thinking in the first place and adopt the feel-good version as their own.
It was only a matter of time before these individuals were given the permanent job of defining and interpreting and defining "what was officially what", which was great for them, since they liked making up stories and didn't want to do anything dangerous, and great for everybody else, because not only did it made them feel good about themselves, but it freed them up to go hunting and fishing, which was a lot more fun. (Of course there were the occasional bullies and psychopaths who would claim the job for themselves whether the rest of the group wanted them to or not, but basically, it amounted to the same thing: the legitimized delegation and relinquishment of personal responsibility). Over time delegation became a convenience nobody wanted to give up as thinking was hard, agreement difficult, and the alternatives... well...as I said...thinking was hard.
And so it was that the framing of perceptions became professionalized and the pursuit of truth as a worthwhile activity abandoned (except, of course, when it happened to fit the feel-good version). Rather all too readily -- and with no idea of what it would mean further on down the road -- mankind thus relinquished his right (and eventually his ability) to perceive and interpret things for himself, thereby setting himself up for an existence of delusion and exploitation.
Cognitive Fossilization, Inertia And Opportunism
Fast forward to 2007: 6 billion, 450 million of us sporting the same old ancestral hardwiring and facing a world of inexorable complexity, when all we really want to do is to have a nice day.
By this time, the individuals with the job of telling everybody "what was what" were referred to as "Heads of State", or "World Leaders" (they liked that a lot). With rules about heredity (pretty much) out of the way, anyone with the drive to control, and an ability to tell a good story could get the job.
An exclusive, competitive group, wealthy and untouchably powerful, these "leaders" quickly forgot they were supposed to be serving the people and not the other way around -- but then so had most of the people, so nobody seemed to notice. The notion that it might be a good idea to debate national or international issues, or to monitor what nations' respective leaders were doing and saying in the name of the people and hold them accountable had long passed into oblivion. Besides, the leaders had been in charge of framing perceptions and writing the history books for so long that nobody had the faintest idea what was actually what in any case.
With truth and fact out of equation, and reality reduced to a simple matter of perception (which the Heads of State alone got to define), world leaders were now free to get on with the ultimate fantasy game of all time, unhampered by irritating moral and legal constraints.
They called their game "globalization", and by 2007 it was really hotting up. The object of the exercise was to impose ones own version of reality on everybody else, and thus gain control of all the human, economic, and natural resources on the planet. The leaders upped the stakes and threw everything they had at it, elevating orchestrated mass deception and supreme international delusion to a level hitherto unsurpassed.
6 billion 450 million delusional pawns on a virtual platform: Hm! Now that was a lot of potential votes on a ballot paper… milking cows in the world economy… human cannon balls ready to fire… (depending on whichever leader happened to be thinking about it at the time).
Cognitive Dissonance, and Complicity
By now, people all over the world were beginning to have an uneasy feeling that something was seriously amiss, though they couldn't put their finger on what it was. The only thing they knew for sure was that it was definitely somebody else's fault. They watched their TVs, flicking from news that disturbed them to comforting clips and sound-bites of their illustrious leaders reassuring them that everything was just fine, and that they were, in fact, winning whatever there was to be won. But their mysterious malaise just wouldn't dissipate. They busied themselves with mindless tasks like cutting grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, vacuuming, chatting on cell phones, shopping, watching "reality" and celebrity shows, or immersed themselves in work, sports, drugs and organized religion.
Whatever their mechanism for dealing with the dark energy exuding from bright promises of global co-existence, a distinct dis-ease could felt in every corner of the planet, as a trembling in the hearts of those who still had reason, and a discomfort in the bowels of those who did not.
6 billion 400 million anxious, confused people, just begging for a nice, simplified, old-fashioned, feel-good-blame-the-other-guy version of what might be going wrong -- most of them with no taste for detail or nuance. All they wanted was for their respective leaders to tell them what they needed to hear in the "la-la-la" of their heads: "We're good, they're bad, they're weak, we're strong, we're right, they're dead." Good enough! You're da man!
Such desperate complicity… what a perfect climate for world leaders to abandon all pretense of professional ethics, adherence to international law or ideals of humanity, and start deploying some real measures to "win the battle for hearts and minds".
The Battle for Hearts and Minds
Friends, this is truly the most somber of moments: mankind's last chance to shake himself awake and reclaim his mind, as the all-powerful leaders -- supreme masters of delusion -- unleash their final onslaught on the cognitive tatters of mankind:
They are enlisting teams of behavioral psychologists to harness, exploit their people's every weakness and fear; They are paying media companies and hiring false journalists to pass as news, whatever they want their people to hear; Every speech every retort every interview, every movement, every expression every gesture is surgically crafted by PR spin-doctors, and packaged, marketed as "righteousness"; They are paying lawyers and judges, politicians, interest groups and "experts" galore, to the point where they have transformed the once noble art of communication into a precise, black science, in which no word, no expression, is ever innocent any more; They are setting nation against nation, neighbor against neighbor -- they are setting the very minds of men against their own hearts… until total cognitive chaos reins in us, soulless, truthless, disoriented creatures… the perfect conditions in which the final battle may start.
Mankind's Last Stand
Well that's it! This is where we are right now. Could it be that this is the end for mankind? Condemned to extinction in the murky depths of delusional exploitation? Will our initially innocent and tragic foible… (our happening upon that "unexpectedly handy little mechanism"…) lead to our demise? Or will enlightened souls emerge the world over, and fight to repair themselves just in time, starting at the root of the problem: ourselves, and our own, private, convenient, comforting, supposedly "harmless" little lies?
And in the arduous struggle to reclaim ourselves, will the world fall apart as the tall stories upon which the past was built crumble and fall?
Oh friends! Here's the thing… we'd better succeed in rising to this challenge… for the fact is, there is no place for delusional, self-serving neighbors in the global village of humanity. No place at all.
Relentless... awesome...
