In 1966, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote The Social Construction of Reality, which became a seminal work that kicked off a new paradigm. There were of course objections to the more radical versions of this. As the saying goes, ‘no one is a social constructionist at 30,000 feet’ (meaning that when it comes to things that actually need to work, like an airplane, everyone is a realist, not a constructionist).

But the objections mostly miss the point. Social constructionism does not argue that facts and propositions are constructed, but that the lens through which we understand the world is. Both an ant and a human can effectively navigate the ‘facts’ of the world, but each has a completely different experience or understanding of reality; each lives in a completely different ‘world’. In our world that is both material and conceptual, we find ourselves ensconced in what we can call “everyday reality” — this is the world we experience as normal, self-evident, and taken for granted in daily life. As in the Kantian view, we never directly confront the noumena of reality. Whatever base reality is, we live in a constructed layer above it. (Though some argue that it is possible at times to transcend the phenomenal world and encounter base reality — through psychedelics, meditation, spiritual practices, art, music, etc.)

One of the most pivotal examples is language. Language is a social construction, but like many social constructions, it is not just an arbitrary fiction. If a child is not exposed to language before the age of 5 — and certainly if they are not taught a language before the age of 12 — they would be functionally severely intellectually disabled. We live in a socially constructed world. Language, money, government, morals, norms — these are things humanity has ‘produced’ that then become reified, acting back upon us as if they were something objective.

In my 2017 Master’s thesis on The Virtual Construction of Reality, I expanded Berger and Luckmann’s theory of social construction to account for two other integral processes: an underlying mental process, and an overarching virtual process. The mental process involves the world that is biologically, psychologically, and subjectively grounded. The biological brain and the psychological mind filter the world and construct a subjective model of reality. Even without any social interaction, the mind has its own pre-social substrata that may be passed down through collective archetypes or epigenetic inheritance. The mental process that decodes reality for the individual acts upon the social process, as the social process acts back upon the mental process, rewiring and expanding it.

The overarching virtual process goes beyond the interior constructivist process as well as the intersubjective social process to what McLuhan calls the ‘extensions of man’: things that humanity produces that store and convey meaning or sense-making about the world. We are now out of the realm of direct experience within which the social world operates and have entered the virtual world where mediums and media mediate, reframe, augment, and sometimes fully replace reality. This virtual process now does the heavy lifting that used to be the domain of the mental and social spheres.

The second, perhaps bolder assumption is that this construction process is part of a teleological evolution of the world and consciousness. That our world is progressing towards some final cause. — Not just increasing in information and knowledge but undergoing a moral and conceptual evolution as well. We somehow intuitively feel that there is a trajectory to the world, as if our world is evolving in some linear fashion to some final cause, even if we take detours along the way. That the world today is ‘better’ than it was 1,000 years ago. Many of us rightly feel that slavery is bad, that to not have slaves is better than to have slaves. We might even feel that to not eat animals is better than to eat them. What is at the end of this road? What world is at the top of this ladder of moral evolution? How much might this process be consciously controlled? Can we stall it; can we reverse it? Can slavery be good again? Some people say evolution (be it biological or social) does not unfold as linear progress. But even if evolution gives wings and then takes them away, or causes many species to go extinct, we still are left with the conviction that though we are born in the dirt, our destiny is in the stars. Are there multiple equally possible and acceptable futures? Could we choose one from many?

Now why is any of this important? — Because whoever gets their hands on the levers of this construction process, gets some measure of control over the machinery that shapes reality, and by extension, the consciousness evolution of the world. Consensus reality is a co-creation: sometimes like a dance, and other times like a war. We need consensus or else the world falls apart. But we must also remain vigilant, lest the few with nefarious views dominate the many.

At the edges of the marketplace of ideas that we call consensus reality, are multiple and competing worldviews, vying over which will become institutionalized reality. We are engaged in this struggle for reality. One reason to study PR and marketing is to become better informed consumers who are not so easily manipulated by business interests. One reason to study critical thinking is to avoid falling for bad ideas. Understanding this process of reality construction better equips us to defend against reality subversion.

Propaganda used to be about manufacturing facts — controlling the flow of information in order to substitute an official narrative for reality. We find this most clearly in the Nazi and Soviet propaganda systems, though it still exists intact to varying degrees among authoritarian regimes today such as China, Russia, and of course North Korea, where it has found its fullest expression. (The reason China insists on a digital iron curtain is not just to keep foreign influence at bay, but principally to be able to better manufacture its own representation of reality.)

In a sense this older model is more effective in that it gives the authoritarian system more complete control over reality, but its flaw is that it is very susceptible to truth. When Boris Yeltsin visited a Texan supermarket, he was blown away by the fully-stocked shelves and the sheer number of options, which revealed in stark contrast the economic failure of communism. (He reportedly said that if Russians were to see this, the revolution might collapse).

The modern version of propaganda, on the other hand, is not about substituting facts, but about shaping the interpretation of shared facts. While the old model seeks to control facts (deleting facts here, manufacturing facts there), the new model simply seeks to frame the facts. In this system, the same fact can have different meanings depending on the framing.

While the modern system gives the individual more direct access to truth, the downside is that in this pluralistic system, unadulterated truth would become increasingly harder to detect the more sophisticated the framing becomes, and would get us locked in an arms race between teaching ourselves critical analysis and the more and more sophisticated methods of marketing and PR. (The question in the age of AI is if we will retain — or recover — our cognitive autonomy or be outpaced by sophistry).

Controlled opposition

If the totalitarian system conceals the truth and replaces it with its own manufactured representation, the pluralistic system multiplies truth; opens the floodgate for any and all truths. In this marketplace of realities, what does such a system do to maintain some semblance of control?

(We tend to think of control as a dirty word, but all systems seek some kind of control: an individual over their life, parents over their children, societies over their members. The question is what kind of control, and to what end? Is the impulse for control a synergistic and symbiotic growing together that seeks the flowering of the lesser consciousness, or is it parasitic, repressive, and devouring?)

One way this is done is through controlled opposition — capturing the extremes of opposing sides in order to fit everyone into a neat dichotomy. (But life is not a neat dichotomy.) The framing is so sophisticated that even with similar agreement on multiple facts, what we seem to be witnessing is the emergence of almost dichotomic realities.

By its liberal barrage of its neighbors with missiles and drones, the Islamic Republic is showing itself to be a regime so intent on holding on to power that it would, if it could, bring the whole world down with it (not to mention the slaughtering of its own citizens). What Iran is facing is not an existential threat to the people or the nation of Iran, but existential only to the ruling party. This is why we see so many Iranian people doing the Trump dance in the face of the attack.

On February 28, Israeli and US forces launched massive strikes against Iran, targeting the Islamic Republic and the IRGC. In the first 24 hours, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and other top officials were reportedly killed. Trump has since rejected any conditions for negotiation and called instead for the unconditional surrender of the IRGC.

Some social and political commentators have been quick to predict that this military campaign could turn into a sustained regional conflict and prove to be disastrous for US interests. Others are more confident in a reasonably swift end to the war and a hopeful beginning of a new era of peace for the Middle East.

War is always logistically and morally dicey. By preemptively striking Iran, the West is wagering it can take advantage of a narrow window of opportunity to dismantle a regional power that has long threatened Western interests and whose anti-American rhetoric and nuclear ambitions have painted it as a looming existential threat.

Why Now?
For the last 47 years, the US (and Israel) has been after the Islamic Republic of Iran for aligning itself against Western interests in the region, funding proxies and terrorist groups, and weaponizing an extremist brand of Islam that has made chanting “death to America” a central pillar of its state ideology.

Adding to the apprehension of the West, in recent years, it has aligned itself with China and Russia — supplying Russia with drones for its war against Ukraine and supplying China with oil in exchange for weaponry. This latter point being of particular concern, given that the Islamic Republic already had the largest ballistic arsenal in the Middle East; with newer, defensive capabilities from China, this would increase the risk of Iran being able to activate their nuclear weapons program without being able to be stopped by conventional means till it had achieved nuclear strike capability — which would be seen as an existential threat both by the US and Israel. (it is possible that Israel had made known to the US its intentions to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran if there was any indication they could achieve nuclear readiness).

Then there is the domestic unrest that has been fomenting since even before the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police and the subsequent protests that had been increasing in intensity.

All these together presented a compelling argument — particularly with a maverick such as Trump in power — for taking out a regional power that threatens US interests, increases in its potential as an existential risk, is a thorn in the side of its neighbors — chief of which Israel, but add to that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states — while at the same time hurting both Russia and China in their attempt to challenge US hegemony (and potentially bringing them back to the table). But best of all, if successful, this allows the US to pull out of the Middle East in a meaningful way and focus on other concerns such as dealing with the balance of power vis-à-vis China.

Best Case Scenario
From a Western perspective at least (but also a perspective shared by many of the Iranian people), the best way this ends is with the surrender of the IRGC in a couple weeks, with minimal regional disruption and destruction, and the installation of a Western-friendly government with the support of the Iranian people.

There is reason to hope for this outcome, given the swiftness with which the Islamic Republic was decapitated, the degrading of the IRGC military capability (seen by the decreasing number of retaliatory strikes), and the rising up of local, armed opposition.

(If Trump manages to end the conflict and ensure a regime change in Iran in under 2 months, this will be an immense boost to his popularity.)

Quagmire Scenario
Like previous US incursions in the Middle East, there is always the risk that military campaigns will get bogged down in a prolonged ground war, leading to a significant loss of life, regional disruption, and economic disaster. If this were to happen here, Trump’s popularity would plummet.

Worse still, if other powers see this as US entanglement, they might seek to take advantage by moving to settle their own scores — China blockading Taiwan, for instance, or sparking other sectarian conflicts among Islamic countries, or inspiring terrorist cells on US soil.

The limited evidence for this is — as those who are most critical of the war will argue — that the US (and Israeli) defensive stockpile is being depleted; it is extremely difficult to eradicate a regime by airstrikes alone; and even if there were a regime change, the next one might be worse.

Worst Case Scenario or the Holocaust Option
Those who play the devil’s advocate tend to more readily believe that the IRGC has something big up its sleeve (rather than the US which has already displayed some unique capacity in Venezuela). Nevertheless, there is always the threat of the unknown and unpredictable, no matter how unlikely it is. What might some desperate regime with visions of eschatological apocalypse rain down? A sympathetic general in Pakistan with access to nuclear devices, terror cells in the US or elsewhere, or even an Israeli preemptive nuclear strike against Iran. And surrounding all these, the specter of full-blown World War III looms.

What This Means For Taiwan
On one hand, the military campaign against the IRGC shows China that the US is both capable and willing to strike out where it feels its interests are threatened. Xi would not be safe even in a bunker. On the other hand, for the time being, this stretches the US thin and takes its focus off the South China Sea. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that China will use this as an excuse to mobilize against Taiwan. In all likelihood, when Trump and Xi meet in China at the end of the month as is planned, they could walk away with some inkling of a deal regarding China’s regional and global ambitions and the role of Taiwan. We might be headed towards a one world, two systems model.

War is Always Bad was originally published in The Geopolitical Economist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are standing on the precipice of a new world. The dawn is breaking over the horizon; “Love like the light silently wrapping all”. And in our frail and shivering hands, the keys of this new reality.

But before we can join them, a final choice. A final struggle. Will we awaken to our birthright as co-creators in a participatory universe, or will we fall back into the womb of dreams?

Reality itself is evolving. We are shaping the future of being and existence. We are in a struggle over the future of the real.

There are forces that want to separate and isolate, and those that want to merge all into an undifferentiated oneness. Be like Goldilocks and choose the middle way.

There are forces that want to erase the human in a technological singularity, and those that see the human only as animal; don’t give up who you are before you even have a chance to remember.

Throughout the ages humanity has echoed this hope of the immortal, transcendent, human; and of a new world where “there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.” Don’t settle for anything less.

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another.” — Job 19:25–26

“not the absolute of reason but the fullness of life … the immortality of the entire man, clothed in his living body, not the abstract immortality of the species become Spirit”. — Camus, The Rebel

Depending on who you listen to, the Epstein files are said to be evidence of anything from a satanic cult that rapes, tortures, and eats children; to a honeypot intelligence operation; to a party island that catered to eccentric billionaires with a predilection for young models.

Human sacrifice (and cannibalism) as an organized religious system ended with the fall of the Aztec Empire. Even so, ritualized killing among certain communities continued around the world. For example, the Atayal tribe in Taiwan practiced headhunting up until 1930. In Philippines, the Bugkalot carried out their headhunting practices up until 1974. While these are cases of ritual killing, usually of enemies, in India (along with Myanmar, South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria), we have what could properly be called occult human sacrifice that has continued in isolated cases among shamanic and witchcraft practitioners. A number of cases in India in recent years involved young women or girls being brutally abused and murdered, in accordance with black magic belief, in order to achieve wealth, remove curses, and in one case at least, to bring academic success.

Ritualized killings connected to warrior tribes tend to involve the consumption of the victim’s heart. For the modern-day occult killings, on the other hand, cannibalism is rare, but body parts and the blood are often utilized and sometimes the blood is ingested. But what makes the occult variant vastly more unpalatable — besides it being carried out against innocent victims — is the corresponding belief in the necessity of the prolonged suffering of the victim. For the Aztecs, child sacrifices to the rain god were directly connected with the suffering of the child (the more tears, the greater the coming rainfall). For the modern-day Indian and African variants, blood obtained during prolonged torture is seen as more effective.

We know that this existed in history, and we know that these ideas have survived at least among fringe black magic practitioners, so while it is not completely beyond the bounds of credulity, it would nonetheless be unlikely that such a death cult would be existing in any operational capacity embedded in the elite power structure (even if certain powerful individuals pursued it as a twisted hobby). More likely, the satanic cult motif would be something that would be used as a smokescreen — either as a red herring to distract the populace, or as initiation or bonding mechanisms for a society that has other secrets to guard. What might they be guarding? — Secret societies that run the world? Secret government programs and intelligence operations? Secret interfacing with occult, alien, or technological intelligences?

A more mundane reading of the files paints a picture of a cult of personality centered around a ‘pleasure island’ targeting powerful, wealthy, or prominent individuals — some of whom with pedophilic or sadistic tendencies — for quid pro quo relationships or honeypot operations, on behalf of powerful families, government agencies, and simple self-aggrandizement.

What we can say at least with an amount of certainty is that Epstein understood the system, knew how to play outside its rules, and could carry on playing for so long by providing benefit to powerful parties, even if he ultimately became a liability that had to be shut down.

But even focusing on him (or Maxwell) might be a distraction from the bigger picture. Some things don’t need a traditional conspiracy; some patterns are just a consequence of money, power, and influence. Power is its own conspiracy. But other things, on the other hand, do need an intelligence that communicates in the shadows.

What is this system protecting? If the extent of the mystery behind the curtain is a handful of sadistic pedophiles, we got off easy.

There is a gnostic idea of the world as a kind of human farm or prison planet, where souls are kept trapped by the Archons who feed off our emotions — our connection to divinity kept hidden from us lest we break out of the system. This idea was captured in The Matrix, where humans are farmed by the machines for energy. Whether or not one considers that a literal possibility, it certainly works as a metaphor for power. There is a parable in the Bible of the bad steward who is entrusted with managing a household, but when seeing the master is delayed in returning, begins to beat the servants and eat and get drunk. Is that what lies behind the curtain? Power, drunk on its own excess, at the expense of those who suffer under its tyrannical abuse? Or is it something worse? Is this power conspiring for even more control; interfacing with secret government programs, with alien, occult, or artificial intelligences; and all for the purpose of acting in opposition to our interests?

There is a tendency to feel overwhelmed or paralyzed by revelations that open up cracks in the world we thought we inhabited. There is also a tendency to react just to feel like something is being done. And while there is certainly a place for political and social action, if we really want real change, we have to go deeper; we have to change the system, not by destroying the old, but by becoming the new. The world does not need a revolution, it needs an evolution.

How do we evolve the system? By letting go of these structures of shame and guilt that have kept us trapped in neurotic hypocrisy, and replacing it with radical accountability. By letting go of the intoxicating desire for judgment, punishment, and revenge, and replacing it with transformative justice. By realizing that evil does not just reside in those ‘bad’ people, but life itself bathes in blood, and we ourselves carry this bloodthirst in us. The trick is to be able to face this, without letting it tear us apart, without letting it corrupt our innocence.

We evolve the system by cultivating our mental autonomy; not leaving the future up to others, but declaring the kind of world we want. We want a world that is open but not tyrannically surveilled; we want power given to the people but not mob rule. We want transparency and truth, not just controlled disclosure that sells us another system of control. We want a world without war, crime, or prisons, but not one that strips us of our freedom. We want to conquer sickness and death, but without giving up what it means to be human.

We used to do child sacrifices, we used to have slaves; we stopped doing that, we found better ways. Humanity can still make it yet.

The truth often blinds you, before it sets you free.

There are monsters in the world. But the greatest monster of all is life herself. The unmatched serial-killer — she tortures and mutilates with impunity. She paints visions of spring and beauty, and barely a moment before she brings withering and decay. She waits for you to fall in love with her, and then strips everything from you and grinds it all into the dirt.
But this life, she wears no face — there’s no one there for us to blame. So when given the chance, we latch on to the monsters we can see and comprehend, they become the scapegoats for all of our rage.
Some see the world as a landscape of predators and prey, and the Great Men, the ones who rise up, shed the fear of life, and impose their will on the masses — Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler.

But one does not have to choose between perpetrator and victim. One can play a totally different game.

There is a Buddhist tale of a ruthless general who conquered many lands, inspiring fear wherever he went. When attacking a certain village, he is told that there is one monk who has not fled and remains calmly meditating in his field. Sword drawn, the general confronts the monk, who remains unmoved. Flying into a rage, he declares: “don’t you know that I am such a man who could run you through without blinking an eye?”. The monk replies calmly, “don’t you know that I am such a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?” The general is astonished; instead of killing the monk, he sheaths his sword, bows, and withdraws.

In another, modern story, that The Matrix, when Neo comes face-to-face with the Architect, he is finally shown the truth: this will be the 6th time the One has played the simulation, and like all the others, is presented with the same choice: sacrifice the present, save a remnant of Zion, and allow the cycle of struggle to restart; or return to Trinity, which will result in the destruction of the Matrix and with it, the whole of the human race. Neo does what the others could not do. He chooses Trinity; he chooses love, not survival. He makes the irrational choice. But it is precisely this irrationality that breaks the system open by introducing something the Matrix cannot compute: self-giving love that is not reducible to utility or control.

Neo’s death intentionally parallels Christ on the cross. Rather than overthrowing Rome — which is what the Messiah was expected to do — Jesus accepts the failure of death, but by so doing, overcomes the world in a way that conquering Rome never could.

This is the mystery of weakness that Nietzsche did not understand, and which he misread as slave morality.

There is a darkness in the world, to which it seems we are defenseless against. But there is something stronger in us than all the ills that life can throw at you. Many misunderstand what love is. It is not an acquiescing; it is a stubborn refusal to believe that all there is to life is this; that this monster of life is irredeemable. But this stubborn love has the power to reshape reality.

We are engaged in a particular struggle over the future of reality, over what it means to be human, what it means to exist. We are so close to finding out who we really are, but there are forces that would seek to keep us from our birthright.

Though in the end, good always wins, and there is therefore nothing to fear, life has a way of stirring up some drama. Sometimes before it reveals paradise, it makes you fight for it.

So we are left juggling these two seemingly opposing orientations: the meek inherit the earth, and the strong take it by force. There is a reason though the earth is inherited by the meek: you cannot destroy violence with violence. But sometimes violence has to first burn itself out.

20 years ago I had a dream (which I wrote down). It was some kind of dystopian future and I belonged to some underground, antigovernmental movement. We had a network of cells around the world, and I was monitoring them on a digital map — little red dots indicating where we were active. Suddenly, the dots started disappearing one-by-one and we knew ‘they’ were on to us. We had moments to destroy the hard-drives and leave our base, and as I was packing up to leave, they came in. Not military, not with weapons; the guys in the back had some kind of nets like they were going to catch an animal, and they were led by a female doctor-psychologist type. I was crouching down, up on a loft, watching them. They were not confrontational; they said they were there to save us, to change us. A wave rushed over me, and I could feel they were looking at us as some kind of sub-species, like insects. And a part of me almost wanted to believe them, to go with them and let them ‘fix’ me. But then another wave came and I realized — they weren’t there to save us; they were there to exterminate us. A certain rage filled me, made all the worse by their sanitized deception, and the dream ended right before I was about to pounce and tear into them (and in a way becoming the animal they saw me as and worthy of their extermination)

For those who grew up on the underground web, among all the benign pirating there was an exchange of certain esoteric and conspiratorial ideas — secret societies, the Illuminati, MKUltra; figures such as David Icke, and later on, Alex Jones; testimonies from those who claimed to be sex trafficked for Satanic cults or experimented on by the CIA. Not unlike their predecessors, newer conspiratorial movements caught on, such as those centering around Adrenochrome, Pizzagate, QAnon, and others. With the release of the Epstein files, these ideas no longer seem all that dramatically outlandish.

Granted, a more generous reading of the files paints a picture of an information and intelligence broker providing his ‘friends’ with connections and information on one hand, and models and prostitutes on the other (some of whom may have been underage), while also running a honeypot scheme — possibly in cohort with certain intelligence agencies. (Based on Epstein’s 2008 conviction we can say that he himself at least trafficked underage girls — officially as young as 14, though some reports mention 13 and even 11 — but so far, the files do not confirm to what extent his ‘friends’ participated, though there is a suspicious amount of code-word usage and many videos that haven’t been released). A darker reading suggests that the ‘entertainment’ part of Epstein’s operation catered also to those with hebephilic as well as violent tendencies, and may have included ‘accidental’ deaths (through overdose or rough sex) that they subsequently covered up. The darkest reading hints at a pedophilic and infantophilic cult centered on the sexual abuse, torture, and murder of children.

As we wait for the dust to settle, we might speculate as to what is likely to be the case and what else might be brought to light. What we did know already though is that the world is pretty messed up and people in positions of power often take advantage of it. Just taking one stat, the number of people around the world estimated to be in sexual slavery is over 6 million, with 1.6 million of those being children. Specifically relating to Epstein’s connection with modeling agencies that served as a central part of his operation, this industry has long had a shady underbelly. It is not uncommon for models as young as 14 to be signed and sent to other countries with not much oversight; and while there taken to clubs or parties. Often it is consensual. Other times clearly not. I have a friend — a gentle and beautiful soul — who, when she was in her late teens, traveled to a foreign country to work as a dancer. When she got there, they took her passport for ‘safekeeping’. One day a man came in and saw her dance, and then made a deal with the club to ‘buy’ her. She was drugged and taken to his mansion with other girls. She was not cooperative and so ended up locked in a room without light for days on end. Finally, due to her father traveling to the country and getting on the news, she was released and dropped off in the middle of the road. She does not know what happened to the other girls, as the police were unhelpful in even wanting to investigate her story. There are many other stories in the news, for instance that model in Dubai who was thrown from a rooftop party.

But there is something else about how the Epstein saga is playing out in popular culture that is worth addressing. There tends to be two types of responses: those who want heads to roll, and those who want to burn it all down. But if we paid attention to those existential thinkers — and as those who know me can probably guess where I’m going with this — we ought also to have a third response: accountability.

There is a certain psychological appeal to conspiracies. There is a part of us that kind of wants the baby-eating, blood-drinking, shadowy-elite conspiracy to be true. Some of us because we want a simplified explanation for the evil in the world. Some of us because we want a reason to burn it all down. Some of us because we want the intoxication of ‘justified’ wrath. — Someone bad enough to really sink our teeth into. Oh, not someone like us, of course. We could never. But what do we really know of the corrupting nature of power? Perhaps we crave monstrous elites because better that than no one in control; better that than confronting our shared human frailty.

Evil does not only lurk in some corner of the population; it is there inside all of us. And the age of disclosure is coming; it is going to reveal everything that hides inside. Don’t fear the disclosure; it does not come to destroy but to enlighten the darkness. What we are in the light is something beautiful.

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Man has done these things; I am a man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time.” — Carl Jung

“So let mercy come and wash away what I’ve done” — Lyrics by Chester Bennington, Linkin Park lead singer

Long ago, Chomsky wrote of manufacturing consent: how the media act — not as an independent watchdog — but as a system to manufacture public consent for elite interests. Times have changed. The new game being played is less about manufacturing consent and more about manufacturing outrage.

It is easier to motivate people through fear and outrage than by logic. It is easier to move unnoticed in chaos than in clarity.
If you find yourself up in arms — and in lockstep with many others of your social disposition — over something that objectively is not much different than when you were not previously outraged, this might be the manufacturing game afoot. We can call these kinds of manufacturing games, PsyOps.

Domestic PsyOps are not always government sponsored; they can be foreign-run; they can be triggered by special interest groups; even individuals can become influential enough to run this algorithm. — A cult is basically a kind of psychological operation. And some are accidental or truly spontaneous, resulting in a kind of mass hysteria to put it negatively, or mass social cohesion to put it positively. The witch trials in Massachusetts, for instance, is often touted as an example of mass hysteria fanned by special interests that moved into the power vacuum created by chaos — resulting in a kind of insanity that no one in their right mind was actually on board with.

PsyOps — under this definition of social manufacturing operation — are not necessarily good or bad, many are done with great intentions, and many have constructive outputs. The education system itself, for instance, is a kind of psychological operation. But the kind we ought to be on the lookout for, are the ones that are designed to be manipulative, to get us to act against our own interests.

But not all manipulative PsyOps are obvious bluffs, some, the best ones, are double-bluffed. In a recent Korean TV show, a character who plays the Senior Secretary of the new government reveals how they are attempting to play both sides: “So that means our goal is to create a world where two opposing ideologies — ones we’re able to regulate — keep butting heads in perpetuity. We want a world we can control … you know, a world with order.” This of course was also described in Orwell’s 1984: the Party controls the Brotherhood. Controlled dissent is the name of the game.

But the time for real change is here. The age of disclosure is upon us.

How To Know You Are In A PsyOp was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is a concept in international relations of the security dilemma: the anarchic system forces states to arm for defense, which inadvertently threatens others, who then arm themselves in retaliation. — Tragically so, because this can happen even between states with benign intentions, with the result being that everyone ends up less secure, despite their efforts to be safer.

If left unchecked, this can escalate into a security trap: a spiraling cycle of distrust, fear, paranoia, and offensive maneuvering to counter perceived risks. The world came very close to nuclear holocaust due to the security trap triggered when Russia put nukes in Cuba. The Americans, fearing that the Russians might be intending a first strike against the US, contemplated a first strike against the USSR, even though neither side was intending a nuclear attack.

This same spiraling effect of the security trap has taken hold in the US when it comes to law enforcement.

Among developed nations, the US consistently ranks one of the worst when it comes to the number of people killed by police. (And, despite what Leftist pundits claim, the stats do not support an anti-Black racial bias: Asians fare the best in police encounters; Whites fare even worse than Blacks per encounter; those that actually suffer the brunt of unjustified police killings are those with mental health issues). In 2025, US police killed 98 unarmed people (while the total number of people killed by police was 1,201). Comparing proportionally with Canada, the total number of people killed by Canadian police was 1/3 the rate of the US. –While in Japan that number was 0.

But before pointing our fingers at the police, we must take into account that among developed nations, the people encountered by US police are much more heavily armed. In addition, cops in the US are far more likely to get killed by those they encounter. In 2025, 53 police officers were ‘feloniously killed’, (with a total of 347 shot), which is 5–7 times higher than for Canadian police, and again in Japan where no police were killed.

Even for the best-trained police, an environment of distrust, fear, and paranoia leads to a lower threshold for violence, a hypervigilant, strike-first mentality, and a tendency to misconstrue non-compliance as a threat. Someone reaching for their wallet? It could be a gun. You have a split second to decide.

What makes the situation even more precarious is that the political parties have taken a hold of the crime and policing dilemma and intentionally chosen the extreme ends: the Left bands together under anti-police rhetoric, and the Right bands together under supporting law enforcement no matter what. The vast majority of people in the middle just want police to protect them from criminals and also don’t want a police state.

Trump’s domestic law enforcement policy is his weakest link, and his opposition knows that. But the US has long had a policing problem, long before ICE got in the news. ICE in fact even deported more people under Obama in 2013 than under Trump in 2025, so it’s not really about the results either. It’s more about the optics and the perceived heavy-handedness on one hand and the perceived lawlessness on the other. The rhetoric on the Right tends to callousness and blind defense of authority, but the anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric on the Left carries more responsibility for stoking the intensity.

This spiraling is further fueled by the nihilism of those who secretly or openly cheer on a complete social breakdown — the intellectual offspring of who would go on TV telling people to cut family members out of their life for having different political views.

De-escalation, especially once entering this self-fulfilling trap, is incredibly difficult, but leaving it to its conclusion would simply be a lose-lose for everyone. While actual policies would need to be discussed and put in place, at its most basic level, a security trap is constructivist, in that it is driven by psychological states. The injunction in the Bible to get out of this cycle of violence — and thus usher in the kingdom of Heaven — is to love your enemy. But nothing pumps adrenaline in your veins quite like hating your neighbor. And anyways, who among us is brave enough to be the first?

The Self-Fulfilling Security Trap was originally published in Curious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.