Society is tribal:

-Learns mimetically

-Optimises for consensus

-Has instilled biases in favour of one’s group

-etc

 

But it’s also not a motionless solid, that once wrought a certain way, stays that way

Nor one that is easily shaped and manipulated from outside, while having no volition or behaviour of it’s own

 

What this means in practice is that we see all the time:

-a belief disseminating in a society

-or a behaviour, practice, custom being adopted

and we ask ourselves — WHAT CAUSED IT?

Or even more in a conspiratorial vein — WHO CAUSED IT?

 

Well, what if beliefs and behaviours are just intrinsic attributes of a society?

Ones which emerge organically?

When a dog eats shit — you don’t ask “what caused it”. There are many causes

Holding beliefs, refining them, and replacing them — is just what society does

 

I think we overestimate the degree to which SOCIETY is PLIABLE

IT LOOKS very pliable in retrospect — when the RIGHT MEME, RIGHT SEED, RIGHT BELIEF, RIGHT PRACTICE — disseminates in it

But before it did — it’s NOT REALLY CLEAR at all

Therefore it is pretty fucking hard to install such a meme BEFOREHAND, with premeditation

 

So no:

-“single narrative”

-“political correctness”

-“secret elite”

-“the puppetmaster”

etc,

All of that are cute sounding tales that have more to do with simple cause and effect reality of mundane life,

e.g. you are the mastermind of your own car, in the sense that when you put pedal to the metal — it goes faster and faster

but analogous mastermind controlling the society does not so easily exist — because society is not a simple system like your car — with a simple gas pedal and steering wheel input to make it go in certain direction

 

It does, of course, respond to the INCENTIVES,

But incentives by definition are in an endless state of competition

Incentive is just the reason, the gain, the reward for doing something

It thus always competes with other incentives — the other attractive alternatives

Which, again, in aggregate — are completely decentralised, totally beyond control of any single agent

For different people want different things, and different people have different things to offer

Money, due to it’s universal nature, tends to be the one thing quite successful at incentivising anyone… except it’s demonstrably still nothing close to the key that opens all doors

Sometimes a lot of power centralises within a single institution, platform… — which in turn holds disproportionate sway over incentives adjacent to that structure…

but even then — this only invites, incentivises counter-powers with counter-incentives.

“Counter-“ really is the word, as we see it TIME AND TIME AGAIN IN HISTORY — how anytime a single power emerging is soon met by it’s counter-power, counter-movement, counter-culture, counter-action

So unless you’re the MASTER of incentives — which you can’t be — you really have a hard time of singlehandedly STEERING this society

 

…UNLESS, of course, you SUBDUE IT

As with VIOLENCE

Actual speech control (under threat of violence)

Actual propaganda

Actual control of the markets

That of course exists

And, in case you didn’t notice — indeed tends to involve frequent violence and chaos

Frequent as in every dozen years a major rebellion or upspring

More frequent protests

And more frequent institutionalised violence, to nip those impulses in the bud

…and even still — those very impulses exist — ergo no, society is NOT so easily subdued, even when the price of dissent is highest

Different individuals just want very many different things, and no power under the sun can change that

 

Indeed, this submission business, is of course NOTHING like problems we have in the (modern liberally democratic) west

There’s plenty soft-power involved, no doubt. It’s the very result of those same powers and incentives ever spontaneously emerging and competing, and thus exerting their influence.

And indeed: sometimes this soft-power truly looms over ourselves like an existential threat…

Except it barely ever is one

The very rules of the game, which we quite organically refined here in the west — are such that the power remains as soft as it can, and as decentralised as it can

And that violence is the last resort — necessary to maintain the fundamental rules in that society, and to protect it

In can hardly be argued that violence is the TRUE existential threat, and true equaliser of all other problems

Economic and societal pressures are real — but intrinsically non-violent

 

So when some historically and politically ignorant conspiratorial nut tries to convince you that somehow the deep state, woke or oligarchic or whatever nonsense, has somehow infiltrated and put entire SOCIETY IN THRALL…

…just know that it’s a good story for a dumb Hollywood movie, NOT how real world operates

The point of our open society is that it’s, well, open,

So you get in and out

Incentives get in and out

Outsiders get in and insiders get out

Powers get to the top and get displaced by new powers

It’s open for those disturbances

Which prevent it being easily controlled,

And definitely prevent the elephant in the room from being somehow magically concealed in the dark