How Your Fears are Weaponized Against You

Okay, by now you should have read the post about how the Datasphere makes you love to hate rich people, and the one about how it can cause you to stay broke.  The Datasphere has accelerated the process of spreading memes to a speed and efficiency never seen before in human history.   You can certainly be forgiven if you are waging a war between the dreams, goals, and desires you have in your conscious mind, versus the limiting beliefs, fears, and self-sabotage programming in your subconscious mind.  Now you have self-awareness of that inner war, which greatly tilts the war in your favor.  But it’s no time to let up…

Because there are forces who knowingly and deliberately are using the Datasphere to weaponize your fears, doubts, and insecurities against you. 

This other dimension of the war for your subconscious mind is not conducted randomly or by happenstance.  It’s not a case of entities who are brainwashed and parasitized, unwittingly sending out memes to you.  These forces know exactly what they’re doing and why. These dangerous forces are bent on taking all of the fears, doubts, and insecurities you adopted as a child – and adapt them as weapons against you as an adult.

Because you now have potential influence, power, and disposable income.  You have become a high-value target. 

To see how this works, we must revisit a couple of our original guilty parties: government and organized religion.  (Keep in mind that in some cases they are united, as in theocracies, which makes them exponentially more dangerous.)  Obviously the Datasphere allows them greater means of propaganda, misinformation, and manipulation.  However, it also presents a new threat: one party using the memes of the other one.

As an example, governments have now realized they can harness the Datasphere to use religious memes to manipulate you better.  One of the common religious memes is about being the chosen one or chosen people.  (Ex: when Islam suggests that other religions and non-believers are infidels, the Mormons believe their magic underwear will protect them from evil, or Christianity telling you the only ticket to heaven comes through Jesus.)

The governments in Islamic countries had traditionally had much more religious influence on them, so they have frequently used fear of other religions to control keep their people. The Datasphere gives them ways to do this more effectively than they could in the past.  And now even secular governments can exploit your fears.

An example is the politicians in the U.S. and U.K. fueling anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attacks.  In 1963 when Governor George Wallace sought to bar segregation in schools, he was engaging in a futile objective.  In 2019 when President Donald Trump sends out tweets to almost 70 million followers, slurring Mexicans and suggesting that Muslim congresswomen should go back to where they came from – he is weaponizing hate and fear on a scale the governor couldn’t dream of.

It pisses people off when I say this, but you have cognitive bias in everything.  You are physiologically predisposed to believe and be influenced by false information.  And the technology that fuels the Datasphere makes this more likely than any time in history. 

Forty years ago, if you were a white supremacist, anti-Semite, or a member of another hate group, you might convene a gathering of 11 people in a basement somewhere, or maybe 300 in a Ramada Inn.  But today, you can instantly reach tens of thousands of other people with the same prejudices, in a subreddit or 8kun message boards.  There are cable TV pundits, bloggers, and YouTubers who can spread misinformation or manipulative messages to millions of people in a matter of minutes.

Part of this is voluntary:  You choose to infect yourself with part of this indoctrination of false or harmful information, by sources you select to be informed from.  But now governments are employing this weapon.  Every major government in the world today, has thousands of people in both the military and civil sectors working on media manipulation, misinformation, propaganda, and election interference.  They have efforts dedicated against the populations in enemy countries, their allies, and their own country.  Really.

All organisms need certain environmental conditions in place in order to propagate.  In a similar sense, both religion and government require a nurturing environment: they need you to need them.

Happy, healthy, financially secure people can’t be enslaved by government, and they’re not as likely to be persuaded by sky god superstitions from the Stone Age.  If you’re feeling lost or alone, weak or sick, broke and desperate – you’re the perfect target for their control.  And they will use the Datasphere in order to obtain it.

Unfortunately, there is another army of soldiers working to manipulate, influence, and control you – and they know how to unleash the awesome power of the Datasphere better even than the governments do…

They’re called marketers. 

And that’s the topic we will breakdown next.  Until then, would love to see your thoughts below.

Peace,

- RG