3 December 2010

The Spirit of Perception Management


I REALLY like the term: “Perception Management”.
Its got a really nice white collar middle management kind of feel to it. You can imagine it being deployed in a customer services training session at a coffee shop chain or in advertising briefings. Well that’s because it is. But the term’s insidious roots lie in government departments who’s role is to “up the threat” of things in order to get populations to support their government and be fearful of things. After all, a population in fear requires a strong government to make them feel safer.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the uncompromising victory of Democratic Capitalism and the rise of the internet perception management by governments doesn’t seem to work so well. Mr Blair tried to tell us Sadam had WMDs and we should go to war. We didn’t believe him and we didn’t want to go to war (we still did though, but the point is we didn’t believe the perception that was being pushed on us). This is down to a plethora of reasons including independent news, governments own strategies to individualise their populations and the free and limitless access to information online and so on. The point however is that these big scare mongering tactics of governments aren’t so effective these days, we don’t believe what our governments tell us. Even this whole terrorism lark; we just do it buy it in the way previous generations feared what was behind the Iron Curtain.

So today whilst researching for an Essay on Truth I cam across a fantastic little blog on the “real truth” (which in itself is an amazing term). Here’s what its author, Mr J Adams has to say about himself on his blog: the spirit of truth

 “In 1991, during the first Gulf War, I had a prophetic vision of a future Mideast war and global nuclear Apocalypse in connection with my studies of long-wave patterns of history. This vision led me to uncover how Russia is underhandedly plotting to conquer the world via a surprise nuclear war against the West that will be started in such a manner that the misled world will blame 'The Jews' and America for causing the global holocaust of mass destruction. In reality, however, the Kremlin is guilty for this ultimate act of premeditated mass murder. I believe I'm here to prosecute the evildoers accordingly.”

This “straight-out-of-the-80s-bollocks” is like a super aggressive in your face perception management, or perhaps more accurately perception management. It reads like a man who is scared, scared of the lack of an enemy, a man who has to invent an enemy to allow himself to exist in the modern era; unable to cope with the fall of the war an a new analogue relationship to truth.

Despite being a right pillock, he has brought together some amazing Youtubes for his conspiracy theory. This is a great one. Presented as if the end of the world, this incredibly mediocre news story demonstrates a very interesting relationship between governments and truth.




I’ll be following this blog closely over the next few months.

2 comments:

  1. you should read a book I've got. 'Risk' by Dan Gardner. In truth, I've only read bits here and there of it myself, but it's about fear and paranoia and the whole creating of things to be scared of. There's a good chapter I read about the really very minute risk terrorism poses to us as individuals, and yet it is perceived to be a constant public concern. By the way, it's Mr CJ Delamere here. Where's all the light hearted banter, knob jokes and nerdy bike shit? Liking your ruminations thus far anyhow.

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  2. That guy has made an awesome series of GIFs. Great find.

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