California’s Cognitive Dissonance is Heard Around the World

In California last September, residents were told two things within the space of a few days – first, in a few years they will only be able to buy electric vehicles and then they were told not to charge the ones they already owned because it could crash the power grid.

The cognitive dissonance was heard around the world.

This particular event can be dismissed as yet another typically loopy California example of the government – in the name of equity or justice or sustainability or change or climate or some other personal pathology of a politician suddenly transformed into public policy –  ordering people to fly to the moon and handing them a Ziploc bag of air and a Jolly Jumper to do so.

But this governmental detachment from reality is not limited to California, nor is it always quite so obvious. Detaching the public from reality is now a science, a common practice, an intentional effort to stupefy, homogenize, and infantilize the population in order to better control the citizenry.

Be it “nudge” theory, censorship of all stripes, spin, purposefully deceitful governmental conduct knowing they will never be called on it because the media that is supposed to do that engages in the exact same practice, willful obfuscation of things once considered fact, and straight up using the police powers of the state to force immediate behavioral changes, every level of society is both subjected to and participating in the altering of the very concept of reality to better serve political ends.

This is all done for our own good, of course; it just happens to align quite nicely with the socio-economic goals of a certain group of people.  It is done to make us better people, living in better communities.  It is done to smooth rough edges, to share in a collective.  It is done to reduce the risk of negative outcomes.  Most vociferously, it is done in the name of health and safety because that is the easiest path of entrancement; simply promise long life, no pain, no hitches, no worries, no anything save mere existence, and everything else is just fine for a distressingly large number of things that call themselves humans.

And it is a process that is meant to be eternal and forever changing, either slightly or radically, things people have thought were proper and correct on the turn of a political whim.

Five years ago, natural gas was to be the savior of the climate – now it is evil.  Five years ago, the climate pitch throughline was about transitioning to “green” energy so we could both prosper and save the planet – now it’s about accepting that everyone will have to do with far less as we will have to, for the first time in human history, “de-grow” as a species for the good of the planet.

These are just two of the fruits of the labor of the never-ending shift being perpetrated by those who will most certainly never have to personally feel the impacts of their desires.

How did we get to this point at which freedom is secondary, individual rights are anathema, the collective will (as determined not by the actual collective but by those who currently own it) is paramount, risk is evil, and everything, literally everything, can be sacrificed in the name of safety?

In a nutshell(ish), this particular line can be traced at least back to Marxist Antoni Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony which posits that, yes, economic and police control are important but controlling cultural institutions is quite possibly more important.  

Then, in the late 1960s, German revolutionary Rudi Dutschke coined (probably) the term “the long march through the institutions” to describe the idea of an incremental revolt from within.  Herbert Marcuse – pretty much a self-parody of the self-important politically active Euro-philosopher and outspoken proponent of the repressive censorship of ideas he did not like:

…withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. 

– collaborated with Dutschke and had this to say about his idea:

“The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counterinstitutions. They have long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important for the development of radical, “free” media. The fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation.”

Mix in the selfishness of the 1970s, the intensity of the guilt of the prosperous left of the 1980s, the self-esteem based helicopter parenting and political coarsening of the 1990s, the empowering of the Securitate of the 2000s, the explosion of the internet and its consequences and debate-free culture of the 2010s , and the final, total, complete, and irreversible abdication and collaboration of a media that once at least kinda sorta kept a check on some of these things, and throw in a lot of self-domesticated people who would usually be harmlessly in graduate school but are now infesting government and corporate hallways and that is the recipe for today.

And then came the nudge.

Nudge theory – which took over in about 2008 – is basically this: that by applying measured, consistent pressures, rewards, and restrictions to individual and societal behaviors you can get people and entire populations to eventually buy, think, praise, and vilify what you want them to.  Oh, and also will get people to act the way you find most acceptable and convenient.

It is not meant to be a violent process and most often relies on a reward/chastisement dyad and very specifically is meant to make the person – or society – targeted think they have options and are simply making choices of their own free will based upon new and better information. Essentially, the process assumes the toddler-like malleability of the public and goes from “please?” to “please and I’ll give you a cookie!” to “you really should” to “everyone around you is getting very uncomfortable with your behavior” to “that’s it – go stand in the corner” to “enough already – you’re grounded!” to “now you’ve done it! Here comes the belt.”

Government agencies around the world are using your tax money to nudge you right now, by the way.

The UK’s “behavioral insights team,” the World Bank’s “Mind, Behavior and Development Unit (eMBeD for short),” the California Policy Lab, the UN’s “behavioral science group,” the NIH, the US’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency –CISA – (and a whooooole bunch of other agencies and sub-units and such) , The People Lab (nothing skin-crawly about that name) erstwhile of Berkeley now happily housed at Harvard, are just a tiny smidgen of the groups engaging in this insidious practice.

By the way, if you’re interested, the World Bank offers this little, a bit out of date, nudge unit primer itself.

Also, The People Lab works/has worked over the past few years with a number of California government agencies – the cities of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the LAPD, the state Franchise Tax Board, and the California Department of Social Services to name a few.  

And we all know how much better the state is now.

Looking a bit more closely at a few work examples, the World Bank’s unit, for some inexplicable reason, took a very special interest in getting people vaccinated, even producing a report on how to nudge people and, incredibly ominously, how to prepare for the next one.  Here’s a very detailed PDF from last June outlining a very specific nudge strategy details.

At CISA, they use the term “cognitive infrastructure” to describe any and all thinking and delve into whatever they think they can get away with, which these days is pretty much anything.  A statement from the CISA chief about elections (why a federal bureaucrat is allowed to talk about influencing them at all is another story):

“The core of CISA’s mission is to safeguard America’s critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, the nation has seen the corrosive effects of mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM) across a host of critical infrastructures in recent years impacting our election systems, telecommunications infrastructure, and our public health infrastructure. This subcommittee will evaluate and provide recommendations on CISA’s role in this space and ensure that the agency is providing value that fits within its unique capabilities and mission.”

And the future of nudge is bright.  A report from one of woke nanny Michael Bloomberg’s many foundations calls for focusing on “Encouraging climate-friendly behaviors. Sometimes, a little peer pressure can be a good thing,” and “Supporting city hall’s workforce.” In a time when local governments are struggling to retain workers in key positions, nudging could help,” and “Destigmatizing services… (a) test showed that social stigma around taking government help is a big barrier” to getting more people to get more government stuff. Here’s the paper.

And for context, as they say, here are some of the funders of these efforts.  Of course, the usual suspects show up in spades: https://www.bi.team/about-us-2/partners/ and their corporatists charity overlords https://www.nesta.org.uk/ each – like nearly every other nudge/censorship charity – receives massive amount of tax and social economy foundation money.

And for some real context, here’s the WEF and a very tiny part of its foray into the topic.  The WEF defines and extols the “behavioral sciences” as:

“(A) powerful tool that can be wielded to engender responsible decision-making and improve the quality of life. Whether by helping people improve their eating habits or boost their retirement savings, helping a company engender better team spirit, or helping governments encourage the payment of taxes, the behavioral sciences have a significant role to play in smoothing society’s path amid the dramatic changes accompanying the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

And here is what the breadth of the movement encompasses:

Even though one of the tenets of nudge theory is that we’re not supposed to know about it, the intent doesn’t get much clearer than that.

In everyday life, the impacts of these efforts are nearly too numerous to list but there are clear and compelling examples of the ubiquity and intentionality of the effort.

It is common to refer to these tactics as “gaslighting” – i.e. intentionally driving a person to the edge of sanity to make them question their beliefs, their grasp of reality, their very definition of self.  Much of what is referred to such is not exactly that, and the term has been overused to describe egregious PR spin, simply lying, and other, sadly, typically mundane political tactics.

But at some point, the totality of the tonality becomes hard to miss and the distinct feeling that purposeful – if not entirely coordinated, psychological vandalism is taking place, a sense that something backstage of life has permanently shifted, a fear that their contempt has bred attempt.

This only makes the nudge – and then some – process easier as a society that is perpetually unsteady, unsure, unmoored is far easier to control with the promise of a safe, sheltered, harbor to come home to, the promise of an end to the uncertainty, a promise to just to be left alone if you don’t make any waves.

Each of these sudden-onset societal traumas serve to de-couple people from themselves and their existing community and belief systems:

• The Pandemic response – an overwhelming and unnecessary disaster that has fundamentally altered world society and handed those that have the will to power more than they could ever dream of.
• Censorship – the loss of the ability to discuss ideas and think freely without ending up on a government list, immediately ostracized, or worse cuts to very core of the nation and its idea and practice of freedom and self-determination.
• Systemisism – being repeatedly told that not only is everything about everything wrong, but it always has been and must be radically altered now.
• Patent falsehood – from “fiery, but peaceful” to the claims that homelessness would go away if the government had more money even though it has more money than ever and still literally lets people die in the streets – every four hours in Los Angeles, in fact – to being told that looting and violence have not become major urban problems, these repeated moments of “believe what we tell you, not what you see” are now commonplace.
• Language modification – pronouns, self-declaring genders that can change on a whim but others must somehow immediately know and respect, using familiar words as “Trojan horses” for political purposes to simply flat out altering meanings – all of which unhitch communications from reality.
• Hypocrisy worship – I can fly a plane to a climate conference, you cannot own a car, I can live anywhere I want, you must live near public transit, I can own everything, you will not own anything and you will like it, I have a private chef, you must consider insects as a viable source of protein, I am the avatar of the perfect tomorrow, you are the remnants of the past and for all of that you must find me better and virtuous and noble.

The role of the media in this process cannot be overstated but, oddly, may be merely vestigial as they have become nothing more than a bullhorn of propaganda for nudgers.  Their reach is, however, critically important for the success of the coup of the soul now occurring.

To use the gas stove debate as an example of the power it still wields, here is a graphic representation of the use of the term “gas stove ban” courtesy of Google trends:

Many cultures ago, Monty Python did a sketch called “Nudge, nudge.”  It was just a silly bit of naughty fun:  

But the current “nudge, nudge, say no more” is not in any way as innocent as that.

It is now nudge, NUDGE and you will forever say no more.

And you will like it.