The Battle for the Overton Window
The playbook of managing acceptable ideas to manipulate societies has come apart
Originally posted on my Full Spectrum blog.
There is a war raging every day to shift the cultural mean into a given direction and thereby tilt the world of acceptable ideas. Defining this space of ideas, creates opportunity to take actions that are going to be seen as legitimate by a majority of people. And so controlling the world of ideas creates power over the physical world. The cultural meme spectrum (fancy for world of ideas) that is acceptable by the majority of people is called the Overton Window and this post is dedicated to exploring its evolution.
Side note: I will focus a lot of this post on the USA, as most of you will have context on its history and present. Also, as the preeminent superpower of the 20th century, a lot of what happens in the USA influences the wider culture of the world. This makes it a worthwhile subject to study.
MEMETICS > GENETICS
The world of memes has been the dominant force of our evolution as a species for at least the past 50.000 years. Ideas and their technological manifestations have become the primary driver for human progress rather than genetic adaptation. The memetic space dominant during an individuals life time, let’s call this horizontal evolution, is more important than the vertical genetic changes from one generation to the next. Genetic variance still plays a role for the individuals of a generation but by and large has become an insignificant driver for the evolution of civilisation. It’s the ideas and their manifestations that are driving progress — science, law, nation states, corporations, human rights, etc. To quote Alfred North Whitehead “Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
It is fascinating to assume that you could take a baby human from tens of thousands of years ago and raise them in today’s world with them growing up to being a normal participant in society. This is because our genetics haven’t changed and because a lot of our brain wires up after we are born. A two week old human baby is less capable than most 2 week old mammals. But while we can’t fend for ourselves until we are a few years old, we are malleable in the most important way: wiring up our brain mostly after birth, allows us to adapt to the era we live in. Alligators have been doing the same thing for 250 million years (they’re old school like that). As a two year old I played with Legos, now kids at that age effortlessly play with iPads.
The rise of Homo Sapiens and its future is therefore driven by the world of ideas. Our generation’s contributions to this meme space is our real legacy (well that and all the CO2). It hereby becomes clear that the contents of this horizontal meme space are a key determinant of the human condition for every generation. Real power over the fate of civilisation can be derived from controlling what ideas are perceived as acceptable.
THE OVERTON WINDOW
The range of policies acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time is referred to as the Overton Window. It’s named after American policy analyst Joseph Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range. For the purpose of this post we expand the notion of the Overton Window from the realm of politics to all ideas that have an influence over the future of civilisation. As you can see in the illustration below, the Overton Window is depicted on a horizontal scale to express the political left-right. We could add a y-axis to measure some other dimension (i.e. freedom versus dictatorship) and make it a 4 quadrant system but I will keep this simple. The width of the purple rectangle can be increased to broaden the spectrum. (Spoiler alert — that’s what’s been happening post-Internet)
Let’s make this less abstract. The notion of child sacrifice is still around but the majority of people consider it unthinkable. The notion of abortion, on the other hand, is seen by some as radical. Overall most western countries have pro-choice policies (within term limits). In other words, abortion is inside the Overton Window and pro-life isn’t. In the US in particular, the battle over the legitimacy of this idea is very much alive and kicking.
There are different methods for shifting the Window:
-Crisis Mover — 9/11 happens and an all out assault on citizens’ privacy via the Patriot Act becomes normalised. A more sinister version of this, is when crisis are wholesale engineered: the War on Drugs becoming priority number 1 during Reagan’s administration; the fabrication of evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction (which were never found) by the W Bush administration to invade Iraq.
-Gradual Persuasion — gay rights (and most other civil rights progress) are a positive example for this. A negative example has been the systematic dismantling of labour unions in the US.
-Charismatic Salesman — Hitler is the first example that comes to mind (of course post First World War Germany was fertile ground). A more benign example would be Steve Jobs convincing us that on-screen keyboards are better than physical ones far before that was the case (RIP BB Messenger).
In the 20th century the agents that have most effectively shifted the Overton Window have been the media and politicians but what about before then?
CENSORSHIP & THE PRINTING PRESS
Through human history the Overton Window has been determined by very few actors. Why? Firstly, for most of our existence we merely had to fight for survival. Such life circumstances don’t leave much spare capacity to wax poetically. Whatever the tribe’s leader said, was good enough until it wasn’t and his successor’s opinion determined our reality. Secondly, to distribute knowledge there needs to be a medium. For most of history that medium has been word of mouth. While this has proven somewhat effective, it can also be immediately punished and easily suppressed. Thirdly, the idea of free speech is a relatively recent one.
For a long time, religious organisations and monarchs have had a very strong grip on the acceptable idea space. They censored anything that would be counter to the world view that was useful to them. The exploits of the Catholic Inquisition are well documented. Followers of other religions, scientific discoveries and “unhelpful” people with “controversial ideas” were cancelled (quite similar to some of what happens today, minus literal torture and executions). Enter the printing press. Good old Gutenberg, who died penniless, invented the printing press in 1432 to pay off the debts relating to his gold smithing business. The impact of his invention (others claim to have come up with movable type but none of them were successful at scale) had a similar effect on his world as the Internet has had on our age. Before the printing press, censorship was easy. All it required was killing the “heretic” and burning his or her handful of notebooks. But after the printing press, it became nearly impossible to destroy all copies of a dangerous idea. And the more dangerous a book was claimed to be, the more the people wanted to read it. Every time the Church published a list of banned books, the booksellers knew exactly what they should print next.
The Renaissance had kicked off about 100 years before Gutenberg, but print supercharged it. The recovered works of Plato and Aristotle reached out from the past to impact the idea space of a world 2000 years after their deaths. For the first time, the word of God could be owned and interpreted without having the clergy as intermediaries. Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible became the first bestseller and kicked off the Protestant movement. Scientific theories could spread much more efficiently. Now, what was previously handwritten notes to inform people of current affairs could become proper newspapers. The modern press was born. The Overton Window was expanding, because the transmission of ideas had become more seamless. Books, pamphlets, and newspapers were now easy to produce and distribute in high volume. The virality of ideas gained a force multiplier.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
The next force multiplier was delivered by the freedom of speech. While the ancient Greeks already established the idea in the 5th century BC, it didn’t formally emerge as a protected right until much later in history. A limited form of protected speech was established in England’s Bill of Rights 1689. This legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament. One of the world’s first freedom of the press acts was introduced in Sweden in 1766 under the leadership of the Anders Chydenius. This act effectively stopped censorship of the press (apart from the fun topics of defamation of the King and the Swedish Church).
During the French Revolution in 1789, the Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) was established. This specifically affirmed freedom of speech as an inalienable right (merci beaucoup). It was adopted in 1791 in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The French Declaration states: “The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.” Of course this was just an ideal and reality often failed to live up to it but with this human right enshrined, ideas could flourish like never before.
With freedom of speech in the USA established, the golden era for newspapers began. Thousands of local, state and national newspapers were created throughout the course of the 19th century. They took many different shapes from prosaic to informative to gossipy. Ideas about markets, finance, business, politics, science, medicine, crime, romance, products, etc started spreading at accelerated pace supported by technologies like steam ships (news from Europe) and telegraphs (news across the country). Benjamin Franklin saw the printing press as a device to instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. However, in reality the majority of newspapers ended up becoming mouthpieces of the Federalists or Republicans to assert their political opinions to shift the Overton Window in their favour. There were notable exceptions of publications run by legendary editors, who pursued the ideal of an objective press, but by and large the purpose of newspapers was influencing opinion for political or financial gain.
Regardless of the subjectivity in reporting, the world of ideas had become more sophisticated and broad thanks to the diverse media landscape, which was birthed by the freedom of speech. While the control of distributing ideas at scale rested in the hands of few politicians and editors, it was a huge step forward for the evolution of the idea space. Unfortunately, the number of voices would contract in the 20th century due to media market consolidation.
MANIPULATING THE MEDIA
Around the turn of the century a battle was waged in pursuit of higher circulation between Pulitzer (yep, the prize dude) and Hearst. Both men hijacked the journalistic ideal to create Yellow Journalism. Yellow Journalism featured scandal-mongering, sensationalism, jingoism or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organisations or individual journalists to juice their distribution (the equivalent of social media recommendation algorithms’ amygdala hacking).
Hearst, who’s family made their money in mining, ended up becoming one of the most powerful men in media as the owner and founder of newspapers across the country. By the mid-1920s he had a nationwide string of 28 newspapers, among them the Los Angeles Examiner, the Boston American, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Washington Times, Washington Herald and his flagship the San Francisco Examiner. Hearst became one of the first true media barons. He championed the Spanish-American War and other affairs in order to protect his financial stakes in various companies. “War makes for great circulation,” said Hearst. And so media manipulation became part of the playbook to shift the Overton Window.
To enter the First World War President Wilson used the media to manufacture consent. During the Second World War the media (now including radio and television) was tightly controlled to galvanise the population against the Axis forces. The McCarthy era under Truman was a dark chapter of drastic repression of free speech under the guise of protection against Communism. In reality its goal became suppressing civil rights, women’s rights, labour unions and socialist ideas.
Throughout the rest of the 20th century the government either aligned with or discredited the press. The Overton Window was either tightly managed or expanded slightly. The concentration of media ownership made things worse despite the addition of radio and television networks. In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies. In 2011 this had changed to just 6 media companies. The political, business and media elites used their power over the Overton Window to manipulate the population more or less effectively to play along with their agendas.
FOX NEWS INTENSIFIES THE WAR
Fox Networks launched in 1996. Prior to its existence the networks ABC, NBC, and CBS were considered conservative and PBS was seen as liberal. After its existence everything seemed liberal. What Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes (the founding CEO) did, was bringing Yellow Journalism into the 21st Century. Ailes wanted Fox’s female on air talent to be younger, attractive, dressed enticingly and to display everything teasingly. The stories take a sensationalist point of view. The commentators consistently position events to make viewers feel oppressed by “those people” (liberals, immigrants, minorities, etc). Tapping into the rage machine worked and lead to the biggest legacy media success story of recent times. Fox went from zero to top-rated network in the country within 20 years and broadened the Overton Window considerably (by for one, legitimising the Tea Party movement).
Of course, Fox tapped into an existing sentiment. Globalisation had created discontent with its unequal distribution of the bounties of a newly interconnected world. Prior to Fox most national cable networks and Hollywood were perceived by Republicans as Democratic leaning and not representative of their values. Fox News originally used the slogan “Fair and Balanced”, which was coined by Roger Ailes. The New York Times described the slogan as being a “blunt signal that Fox News planned to counteract what Mr. Ailes and many others viewed as a liberal bias ingrained in television coverage by establishment news networks”. That said Fox News was conducting overtly biased reporting that created heat. Fox under Ailes was ruthlessly data driven. They understood more than any other network how to trigger viewers to maximise engagement metrics. The Fox effect became a real notion of how the Overton Window was shifting both in terms of acceptable ideas (immigration, crime, gun rights, global institutions, anti-establishment, etc) and in terms of discourse quality (amygdala triggered, max individualism, anti “oppression”, “my truth”, etc).
THE INTERNET & MEDIA FRAGMENTATION
Enter the Internet. Another force multiplier arrives and democratises the ability to distribute ideas instantly at scale. At the same time, the means of content production (text, audio, video) become affordable for pretty much everyone on the planet (the price of buying a phone). This has a profound impact on the Overton Window and on those who previously “managed” it.
To illustrate this shift, let’s play through the perspective of someone with an extreme opinion. Donald lives in a small town. He believes that the Earth is flat. Every time he brings this up in the local bar, people make fun of him. He feels ashamed about this belief, but doesn’t want to give it up. On Fox News he hears over and over how elected officials and institutions are wrong. He discovers the internet. Now he searches for flat Earth websites and finds many others with the same belief. He is no longer a lonesome loser and he’s going to show those people in his bar for dismissing him all these year. He meets up with others in the flat Earth community at get togethers. He becomes more steadfast in his beliefs, because they provide him with more arguments in favour of their theory. Social media arrives! Donald opens Facebook 10 times a day and every time he does, he has some more juicy flat Earth content in his feed. How could those stupid people at Fox News and in his local bar not get it? His feed is full of flat Earth content. How are others missing this? It’s everywhere and obvious. Now a genuine scandal happens. It becomes clear how establishment politicians mislead the media and voters (by manipulating the Overton Window). Donald feels vindicated. If they are manipulating the media then they are surely also suppressing the truth about a flat Earth.
This is somewhat hyperbolic, but you can imagine it not being too far from someone’s real experience. The flip side of this is also happening, which is of course why the Internet is also a force for good. In other words, some people realise they are in bubbles that they break out of because of access to a wider world of ideas. But somehow it feels like there are more and more Donalds (left and right). Why?
INTRODUCING OVERTON MIRRORS
Looking at Donald’s example, there are many factors at play. There is simmering discontent caused by increasing inequality. There is increasing awareness about unsubtle management of the Overton window by elites. There is technology that makes it easier to construct our own reality. But there is more. The reason people are getting radicalised more than before, is due to what I call Overton Mirrors. An Overton Mirror is the construction of ones information reality and social network to reaffirm ones own bias continuously. You may call this a filter bubble but I find the Overton Mirror concept more useful.
As we know by now, prior to the Internet most of the management of the Overton Window was centralised. There were moments when the Window was purposefully pushed left/right. Sometimes bottom up movements like the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s emerged to organically broaden the Window. But by and large the Overton Window wasn’t very wide and most people were within it. Societal cohesion was easier, as most people were reading, watching and listening to mainstream media. Having the same ground truth allowed for less deviation from the centre and a sense that my neighbour, even though they may hold a different political opinion, still largely inhabits the same meme space as I do. There were some groups that were clearly outside the Overton Window and we would call them cults (i.e. Scientology). Radical people felt lonely and there was a lot of friction for them to find like-minded people, as per capita their ideas weren’t well distributed geographically. Either, if practical, they joined in person communities, or tested the acceptability of their opinion through trial and error. The more cooky their opinion, the more often an immediate reputational and emotional cost was being paid by them for exercising their free speech. This feedback loop would sometimes lead to more radicalisation but more often to a correction to the mean, especially with younger people (I gave up my teenage belief in the Illuminati).
Enter the Internet. People can now stop reading and watching the mainstream stuff and can construct their reality on their home screen, thereby continuously surrounding themselves with content that feels good and doesn’t require a lot of mental energy expenditure. Enter social media. People can now more effectively construct their social network. The friction to find other like-minded individuals disappears. Rather than faceless blogs information now comes from other people and the armies of others who are commenting. Those feeds serve up a lot of the content they love to see without having to do a lot of work searching for it anymore. The feeling of being vindicated after having to suffer defeat at the hands of “normies” is exhilarating. Creating content is so easy now everyone posts. To maximise their social relevance with their virtual network, people try to find the juiciest stuff out there. The more enraging the better, because that’s the stuff that gets the most likes.
This is the life in an Overton Mirror. Self-reinforcing information reality construction that continuously draws from discontent and a sense of oppression by out of touch elites. The virtual and continuous connection with other like-minded individuals is energising and creates confidence in the belief that ones Overton Mirror is indeed within the Window. There is little trust in institutions and with the support of what feels like millions of supporters, it is hard to have self-doubt. Given the virtual support network, deriving affirmation from people in the proximate community becomes less important. Now when in the local bar, there is no need to back down anymore. And so our society becomes more splintered and extreme.
This is how Overton Mirrors are more sinister than a mere filter bubble. They create a remote enraged support network that is fuelled by its constant run ins with people in the real world, who are outside of the Mirror. It reinforces itself with continuous media streams to confirm its bias. And because of the perceived strength in numbers the Mirror seems like a real legitimate Window. Incompetent politicians and media make the problem worse.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
A lot of debate rages currently about freedom of speech and the faults of traditional media (I’m referring to the pre-Internet institutions). Yes, many of them were entitled. They often weren’t experts but pretended to be. But the benefits of those organisations were that they had reputations to uphold and layers of approval to run through before content was published. Despite the fact that they were selling a self-serving version of the truth to us, they at least created guardrails against strong deviations from the Overton Window mean. A lot of that has been lost now. Trad media has been shifting further in the direction they were previously leaning. Fox is more sensationalist and racist than ever before. NYT is more elitist and woke than ever before. The Overton Window has become very wide as people have managed to construct Mirrors to get power in numbers. This allows them to get their “out there” ideas included in the Overton Window and some unthinkable ideas within the reach of the borders.
It is not fair to blame social media for all this. It is clear that the Overton Window managing elites played their part in our predicament. Increasing inequality, bad regulation of business, greedy politicians, lazy journalists, overreaching special interests, etc. created a potent feeling of injustice. Pair this with obsessive individualism, marketing created dissatisfaction to drive consumption, a loneliness epidemic, bad nutrition, rage inducing algorithms, and Overton Mirrors to get an explosive mix that leads to radicalisation.
The solution to this is not a return to a tightly managed Overton Window by elites. While there are plenty of countries running this model more or less successfully and competently (from North Korea to China to the Saudi Arabia), it feels like a step backwards. The Hegelian idea of a Dialectic that leads to a more perfect society when thesis meets antithesis to form a synthesis, is how humanity has made progress. For such progress, a wide open Overton Window is a good thing. However, three more ingredients are needed: a more prevalent propensity for critical thinking, acceptance for concessions in service of societal cohesion, the maturity to not identify with ideas.
Critical thinking and the scientific method have gotten us pretty far as a species. However, nowadays the notion of critical thinking has degraded to “in opposition to the mainstream opinion”. This is the result of a continued assault on the legitimacy of previous Overton Window managers. Most of this is self-inflicted, given their brazen attempts at manipulating our thought for gain. But, a lot of it is also a concerted effort by new managers-in-waiting to grasp the reigns, all under the guise of “draining the swap” or freedom of speech. In today’s fast-paced, media-saturated world, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Overstimulation, mental fatigue and victimhood mentality make us susceptible to accepting simplistic, biased, or incomplete information without question. The new Overton Window managers manipulate us neuroscientifically by tapping into the “short attention span bitesized content nugget simple truth controversial statement virality hacking rage machine”. In such a world, it is more important than ever to cultivate a critical mindset and to approach information with a healthy dose of skepticism and intellectual humility. Especially, (as Hume would say) if whatever is being served up makes us feel good.
It has become clear that obsessive individualism in the West has lead us to a place where most of us don’t believe in the notion that service to society is virtuous. Oppression narratives, distrust in institutions as well as the incompetence and moral bankruptcy of elected leaders have added fuel to the fire. However hard, we need to find our way back to solidarity. It is only ignorance that dismisses the other as non-vital to the functioning of our complex societies. We need to compromise with everyone else just as we do with our friends and family. While Utilitarianism has its flaws, a return to Mills’ notion that service to society is not only a moral duty, but also a source of personal fulfilment and happiness, would be a welcome antithesis to our current mentality. Being compassionate and empathetic is hard work, especially as we are exposed to rage amplification algorithms but nobody said that building an interplanetary civilisation was easy (otherwise Where is Everybody?).
Finally, we need to stop using ideas to prop up our identity. I discussed Kegan’s adult development framework in my post Validation Seeking Traps. The core idea is that as long as we identify with ideas, we will not be able to argue about them without becoming emotional. When I believe in democratic values, rather than being a Democrat, then a critical discussion of said values won’t trigger an identity crisis for me. The knee-jerk reaction to someone questioning ones identity, is a fight or flight response, which is never a great basis to discover a more perfect truth. It is baffling that this is not taught more widely in schools. Intellectual humility as well as respect for the diversity of thought without an emotional attachment to ideas is a more constructive approach to discourse.
We live in unprecedented times. Never has the world of ideas been so wide, diverse and sophisticated. This is an opportunity and not a problem. Humans are not the fastest or strongest of mammals. Our superpower has always been collaboration. If we zoom out, we realise that in the end we mostly want the same things. Somehow bickering about the details has become more important than reminding ourselves that we are in this all together. We need to reset our individualistic narratives and return to a collective vision for a better future of mankind. Let’s break all the Mirrors. I promise it won’t bring bad luck!
ADDENDUM — The New Manipulators
The real Donald had already lived in a Mirror prior to running for president. Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Breitbart, etc were on Donald’s home screen. He was fast to recognise that the Mirrors, which seemed outside of the Overton Window, were very big. He knew that by using the ideas in the most out-there Mirrors and by appealing to the pervasive sense of disenfranchisement, he could shift the Overton Window radically. And so he did. His run for the presidency started with “grab them by the pussy” and “Mexican rapists”. After that, casually misogynous and racist remarks by every day folks we’re fair game. Days when he didn’t try to pull the Overton Window even further to the absurd fringes and stayed within its shifted confines, made him look presidential.
Elon lives in a libertarian Mirror. He didn’t like the left leaning mainstream media and identified (sometimes rightfully) a lot of their bias. He decides to buy Twitter to shift the Window back to what he perceives to be the centre. Some out there people are being re-platformed. Some Elon critical journalists get de-platformed (briefly). He keeps retweeting and commenting on things that reaffirm his world view and one tweet at a time shifts the perception of his hundred million of followers. Saying incendiary things on Twitter gets trad journalists writing about the platform daily and so more people sign up for Twitter. He gives access to journalists to show how biased the old Twitter was (Twitter Files) and how little trust people should have in institutions. This makes current Twitter, under him, seemingly more legitimate.
ADDENDUM — Lab Leak Theory
This theory suggests that the virus was accidentally released from the the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either through a lab leak or through an infected lab worker, who then spread the virus to others. The theory gained traction after reports emerged that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms in late 2019.
When I first heard this theory, I immediately dismissed it. It came from the cooky Republican dominated corners of the Internet and was at some point embraced by Donald. The topic was immediately politicised and the “liberal” media came out in unified opposition against it. If you have been following more recent news, you will know that now the US Department of Energy and the FBI now endorse a Covid lab leak theory.
What’s going on? When we look at some of the facts things start to become murky. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has actually been working on Corona Virus Gain of Function research funded by an organisation with the name Eco Health Alliance, which is financed among others by the CDC. Gain of Function research is an attempt to take existing viruses and insert DNA that makes them more dangerous to humans. By doing so, one can be ahead of nature and already develop a vaccine proactively for a potential future natural mutation. There are official papers that prove that Anthony Fauci and others were aware of this research conducted in Wuhan through the Eco Health Alliance and supported it.
There is no unequivocal proof that the virus escaped from the lab, however, what are the chances that a global pandemic starts in a city with a lab that is experimenting on creating more potent strains of Corona Viruses. With SARS scientists were quick to find the smoking gun: the virus likely originated from bats and was transmitted to humans through an intermediate host, most likely civet cats, that were sold at the wet market in Guangdong Province. Researchers used a technique called reverse genetics to recreate the SARS virus from its genetic sequence, which allowed them to study the virus in a laboratory setting. All attempts to do this with the SARS-CoV-2 strain have been in vain. In addition, some important features of the spike protein on SARS-COV-2 have also raised suspicions on whether the virus is man-made. This is because both S1 and S2 sites of the spike protein demonstrated optimal portions, which facilitates the penetration of the virus’ RNA into the living cell that could weaken the host defense against the virus.
I’m not a virologist so I need to refer to expert’s opinions here. However, it becomes clear that an outright dismissal of this theory as stupid was clearly ignorant of me. I went along with the left leaning Overton Window manager’s quick dismissal of the theory. While there is no clear evidence for the lab leak, there are definitively some good arguments in favour of it. Shame on me for blindly dismissing them initially.
