Preface
There is no single insight more useful to the end of understanding human behavior and its motives than the ability to become intimate with a perspective.
Nietzsche was a master at this, and perhaps the most important teacher I could have hoped for as a young man. His unmatched ability to slip into the life of another person—to put on their clothes, breathe the same air, keep company with the same secret ambitions, fears and shortcomings—produced some of the most unique and profound insights in the history of the philosophical and psychological traditions. For him, and for me, any attempt to understand broader sociological or political trends cannot be abstracted from the psychology of the individuals who act out these trends. To divorce the individual’s perspective and incentives runs a very high risk of misinterpreting the nature and meaning of a given pattern. On the other hand, to understand individual perspective very well provides invaluable and otherwise inaccessible information about these patterns.
It’s no secret that I harbor serious concerns about current global trends in respect to policies around the “pandemic,” social media [and other media] censorship and bias on this topic, and the capacity of the general public to think critically on these matters. I’ve expressed these concerns on Instagram at various points, though tentatively. I neither had the space there to detail my skepticism, nor do I think it would have been met well if I had.
But I feel the weight of these insights daily. Each day they stay hidden seems to stain my hands as Lady Macbeth’s; my subconscious rubs its hands together while I sleep. I know I’m not the only one. And I ofter wonder why so few people express these thoughts and hold themselves accountable to them—not through some meme shared second-hand in their IG stories, but in their own words, with some chips in. It doesn’t take balls to re-post a clever cartoon with a one-liner. The subtext of humor, and the fact that it was someone else who said it, always allows a way out. “Oh it’s just a joke, lighten up—but I kinda sorta see the point maybe possibly kindly no offense intended and I get that people are dying and your grandad died and I acknowledge my privilege I’m sorry for being me.” And anyway, it’s not like these memes are supplementing the real, hard-hitting stuff. Go ahead and scour the pages of public figures on these platforms; in 99% of the cases, any actual position contrary to the officially acceptable narrative and original to them is exactly nowhere. And it’s this cowardice in the face of even minor repercussions that has in large part led us to the position we all find ourselves in now.
So for your sake and for the sake of my sleep, I won’t pull any punches here.
I’d like to outline here why my concern is not about policies, but rather people. To unpack my positions on our current circumstance it’s necessary to employ perspectivism from a few angles, as my ideas on policies and what they ‘mean’ are grounded in my understanding of the human individual’s perspective and incentives.
Assessments of Human Behavioral Tendencies from Two Perspectives
I don’t think the human has fundamentally changed its orientation or motives for behavior in a very long time. Only culture has changed—which doesn’t count for nothing, of course. Due to the advent of information technology and its increased prevalence, especially in the last 15 years, culture steams ahead into new territory at previously impossible speeds. So the mediums, the context, the fashion, the implementations change faster. But still the human organism is the same and wants the same things.
1. The Many
For more than 95% of the history of large-scale civilization—from the birth of the first ‘cities,’ to the beginning of the industrial revolution and rise of the middle class—the human population fell into two very distinct categories.
The overwhelming majority has always been pre-occupied with the basic struggle to survive and procreate, against incredible adversity. The living conditions of pre-industrial and pre-modern-medicine civilization were astoundingly inhospitable and unstable, and most people had very few resources at their disposal too cope with this.
Think about what this means, from their perspective. They would have been inclined toward very short-term thinking, emotionally reactive, reluctant to invest time or other resources into anything beyond day-to-day survival for themselves and their progeny, perpetually preoccupied with the mitigation of very present daily suffering, lacking in any kind of education that would help shift their circumstance.
This also made them subject to the whim of popular opinion and its enforcers, as each person relied heavily upon their family and close community for survival. To oppose your household and neighbors, even merely in ideology, would have had potentially life-threatening consequences. All this to say, the behavior of this class of individuals was predictable and thus easy to manipulate. Their interests were for the most part myopic and reactive.
2. The Few
A very small percentage, however, had power. These were the nobles, aristocracy, warlords, and those close to them. By watching the behavior of this class, in contrast, we get to learn what humans tend to do when afforded abundant resources and time to pursue their ambitions. The interests of the relatively wealthy ruling classes included multiplication of wealth, expansion of territory, control of the lower classes for the sake of taxation and preventing uprising, securing their line of inherited power and wealth, and so on.
This wasn’t merely greed, though likely it was partly. Remember: the history of humankind is a history of struggle against tremendous adversity in the form of natural disasters, disease, food scarcity, and the threat of other humans. Not expanding territory likely meant losing it; failing to multiply wealth likely meant poverty was not far from the door; complacency in keeping the masses in check likely meant violent uprising. If you don’t rule and conquer, there is a legitimate threat you might be usurped, conquered, killed, or all three. Sure, this was not every case; ambitious conquest merely for the sake of conquest and legacy was more prominent in some cultures and individuals than others. But in any case, these were the dominant behavioral patterns for almost every civilization, for 95% of our history post-agricultural revolution.
Unaware
The first fundamental insight I’ve learned through psychology, introspective practice, and teaching introspective practice is that all human experience is filtered through a fine, fine mesh of narratives and preconditions for consciousness. This is true regardless of wealth, social status, race, religion, or any other line of divide that could otherwise be drawn. The distinction between ‘narratives’ and ‘preconditions for consciousness’ is not exactly clear. This might be because either 1) one is a subcategory of the other, or 2) they are two ways of referring to the same phenomena.
Fiction Tellers
Narratives can range from overt and conscious as stories we actively choose to believe, to completely covert and unconscious as the very fabric of our moment-to-moment functions. If I actively choose to filter my experience through a story about myself as the hero in a great quest to conquer some metaphorical monster, that narrative is going to fundamentally morph the nature of my experience. Just the same on the other end of the spectrum: I need to make certain assumptions (or believe certain stories) about the way objects and other people are, how I can expect them to behave in the world; who I am and what I can expect of myself in the world. These narratives, though more basic, also fundamentally change my experience and choices when applied.
Preconditions for consciousness fall in the latter category. For example, in order to take conscious action I have to see my ‘self’ as a subject acting upon other objects which are NOT me. And I have to believe and act as if there is empty space separating me from other objects—and that I act act upon those objects through that empty space. If I pick up a glass of water, I have to tell myself certain stories about what the glass is like, how slippery or tacky the surface is, how much it weighs, its distance from me, how much force will be required from my hand and my arm to grip it and lift it up, etc. I also have to act as if I am not the glass—that the glass is an object separate from myself, and that “I” am the one acting upon that object. These are essentially fictions, taken as truth because they have to be.
And I do this with every interaction, from gross and physical to subtle and non-physical. Otherwise I don’t have agency or choice; I cannot act with intention. I’m not really ‘doing’ anything; “I” am being acted upon, without any identity or agency—one with and indistinguishable from a moving soup of contiguous, interdependent actions. The “I” completely dissolves. Subject, object and space no longer have meaning. This is NOT how we perceive the self and our actions in the world as we go about our lives.
Time is another example. I have to see time as a thing which moves forward: the past is behind me, the future is ahead. This ‘story’ about the chronology of events, and the self within that chronology, is one of the foundations of my conscious agency in the world.
Stereotypes are yet another. Imagine there are 40 solid black squares printed on a white piece of paper. The squares are scattered randomly over the page. You’re shown the piece of paper for 5 seconds, then asked to guess how many squares you saw. You might guess correctly; you might miss by a margin. Now imagine you’re shown another piece of paper, also with 40 squares, but this time the squares are arranged in eight identical clusters of five (4 in a box and one in the middle). Again you’re given five seconds to guess the number. I think we can agree that you’d be FAR more likely to guess accurately with the second arrangement.
And not only you; this is true for all of us. When the boxes are arranged in clusters of five, we see one or two clusters and make a judgement: “The other clusters must be the same and so can be counted at the same value.” This is a judgement of utility. It gives us a better chance at accurately assessing the state of things and making better predictions based on those assessments. But make no mistake: accuracy in itself or proximity to ‘truth’ in itself was never the aim. We care about accuracy insofar as we care about the negative consequences of being inaccurate, and the potential profit we might gain from being accurate. In his essay, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, §1, Nietzsche phrased this insight better than I could have hoped to:
“…Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths.”
Nietzsche takes it a step further here, noticing that we actually avoid accuracy or truth when it seems to carry with it some disadvantage. Let’s apply this insight to the black square task.
Imagine this time some of the black squares are slightly different. Maybe one square is not solid and is instead comprised of tiny, densely packed dots. Maybe six of the squares are smaller by 1/36th, or some have a little nick missing from one corner. Perhaps there is a very dark grey triangle shape inside a few of the squares. And let’s also say these differences were more or less imperceptible to the naked eye.
The rules of the game also change slightly. You’re shown only the second paper with squares in eight clusters of five. The paper is still shown for five seconds. But this time you’re told in advance that some of the squares might be different, and that these differences in quality are so subtle that it would only be possible to spot them with some external help from a magnifying glass or other measuring tool. But you won’t be given any such tools. If you correctly guess the number of squares, but don’t include the squares with aberrations, then you will technically be “wrong.” But you’ll win USD$1,000,000. If you guess the number of perfectly identical boxes, you still win the money as long as you stay within the five-second time limit. But you won’t practically be able to do so in the time limit. So you’re free to take the time you need to go get measuring tools, evaluate the squares, and guess the right number of identical boxes. But in doing so you give up any chance at the reward.
Likely you and almost everyone you know would readily forego being technically “right” for the chance at the money. But the more interesting reaction here is to the extra information. Most would think, “Why even include the information about some squares being different? This is useless to me, as it’s not relevant to the game.” They might go further still: “I would rather not have this information, as it just gets in the way.”
Not only are we willing to stereotype the boxes, even in spite of our explicit knowledge of their potential nuances, but that knowledge itself feels like a mere nuisance from which we readily and actively look away.
The objective of the game, as far as we’re concerned, is to guess the number of squares on the page. There might be other benefits of being technically “right,” or guessing the number of identical squares. But those benefits are unknown and undefined for us, and thus don’t factor into our definition of the task. Any potential harm that could come from being technically “wrong” in this case is also unknown. We define the game based on what we can see and expect: guessing the number of black objects will come with a reward of $1,000,000. And to this end we’ll make use of stereotypes and any other biased mechanisms at our disposal.
The truth is nuanced—at times useless, inaccessible, inconvenient or even a danger. Further, it’s costly: it takes time and labor to discern this nuance, especially if we’re not just going to take someone’s word for it. I have to leave the room to get the measuring tools, spend the time to scrutinize the paper, with no guarantee I’ll come out with an accurate answer—and all in faith that doing so is somehow worth it. All the while, the pressures of other priorities push in from the peripheries. And the prize from playing the game waits in crisp stacks on the table.
Immersed in Fictions
That a perception is useful to me is not a measure of that perception’s accuracy. I believe in fictions because they work for me in some way, or because they are even more fundamental preconditions of my conscious agency. The fine fictional mesh through which my experiences are strained is in a way synonymous with even having a perspective and conscious experience at all. You might wonder why this is relevant. This leads me to the second insight.
99.9% of people are not even slightly aware of this condition. And I think I’m being generous with this number. For the person you meet on the street or at your gym, your work acquaintances, your family, the person you met in passing at the book store (if those even exist anymore), the probability is very high that there is no separation between the fictional narratives they employ to live in the world, and the truth—no space whatsoever. Their fictions are completely convincing to them, one and the same with their reality, without question or contention. This is an advantage to them insofar as it makes action more decisive and automated. But this condition is also a disadvantage to them and others in their life, because they are helplessly trapped inside a cycle of reaction to whatever fictions they develop.
Those in the other 0.1% who have some understanding of this are likely to forget most of the time and be swept away in the delusion. Some might be aware of this condition in theory, but fail to apply the full impact of this insight in practice. Rarer still, some have a deep and applied understanding of this condition: these are the seekers, seers, and true visionaries of inner development. Yet, even with their talent and experience in introspection, they cannot help but live immersed in their fictions most of the time. Because thought and action are required to live; and fictions are required to think and act consciously.
Reacting to Fear Fictions
From here, things get a bit bleak. Because for the 99.9% mentioned above, there is a particular kind of narrative that dominates their inner landscape of behavioral incentives. These narratives are supposed to prevent the repetition of trauma, and use fear as a means to do so. When a person has an experience of fright, fear, anger, sadness, pain, or some variation thereof, a story is formed about that experience. This story serves as an interpretive template meant to govern future behavior in a way that prevents that experience from recurring. These stories fall into one of three major categories.
I’m bad: a belief in being defective or unworthy in some way.
I’m alone: a belief in being isolated, disconnected, unseen, unloved, unheard, not understood.
I’m not safe: a belief in being in danger emotionally or physically—from environment, others, circumstance, etc.
These are general categories. Each person has their own specific manifestation and combinations of these. These narratives, when refined down to their most basic form in one of these categories, are what I call “seed narratives.” As I mentioned above, seed narratives—along with the subterranean root networks of thought patterns and the outward growth of behavior patterns to which they give rise—are there for a reason. Our expectation is that by treating these stories as objectively and permanently true, we can escape the injury that might come from repeating a trauma.
But the same mechanism that makes them powerful motivators of behavior and strong protectors against potential trauma is also what makes them so apt to be applied universally and unconditionally. Remember, they’re not taken as “stories we use” for convenience; they’re taken as absolute truth itself and applied indiscriminately. As such, wherever left unnoticed and unchecked these narratives are very persuasive and pervasive. In my experience they often dominate the majority of behavioral motives for most people, rich or poor, educated or not, powerful or impotent.
The reactive behaviors that result from these fictional fear-narrative networks can take many forms. They govern behavior covertly, as programs running continuously in the background—muddying communication, utterly wrecking relationships, distorting reason, sabotaging self-image, undermining growth, and polluting any sense of value-oriented purpose. I do understand the mechanism’s purpose, and I don’t want to paint these narrative phenomena as ‘bad’ or unnecessary. But I also can’t stress enough how pernicious they can be. And I’m honestly not sure what to make of the fact that they are SO persuasive and omnipresent. It does disturb me that nearly everyone is living in cycles of perpetual reaction, totally blind to how these seed narratives are influencing their choices and experience of being alive. But regardless of how I feel about it, or any alternative I might prefer, the fact remains. We are fiction tellers, immersed in fictions, reacting to fear fictions.
Very Superstitious
If I look closely, I’ll find myself very inclined to subscribe to beliefs in false causality in all sorts of places. For many “superstition” connotes broken mirrors, black cats, eyelash wishes and lucky trinkets. But the fundamental mechanism that makes a belief superstitious is more fundamental than this, and is not limited to any particular medium.
Say for example I go to a mall on Saturday. I’ve been to this mall before on a weekday, and now it seems busier than usual. I think to myself, “It must be crowded because it’s Saturday and people are off work.” But because I’ve never been on a Saturday before, I wouldn’t know that in fact this particular mall tends to be less busy than average on Saturdays. The increase in shoppers in due to a big sale I don’t know about.
Or let’s say I got in a car accident. Someone hits me from behind as I’m coming to a stop at a traffic light. My car is grey, and I’ve read some statistics that grey cars tend to be less visible on the road. I think to myself, “Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have bought a grey car.” I’m not aware, however, that the driver behind me had in fact dropped his phone on the passenger-side floor and leaned over to pick it up just before the light turned. The color of my car couldn’t have been a factor because the other driver wasn’t even able see the road.
Or maybe I post on Instagram and within an hour or two I notice I’ve gained a bunch of followers. I think to myself, “They must have liked the post,” or “It must have been popular on the explore page.” But in fact, someone in my niche with a significant following happened to mention me in a post at the same time, and people were finding and following my page from that reference.
I think we can agree that these are fairly reasonable mistakes that anyone could make. Most would not think of these as examples of superstitious thinking. But the fundamental fallacy is the same.
If we were to travel back in history together on a time traveling train, and for every stop along the way we went back one century, it wouldn’t be more than seven or eight stops before I could start pointing out the window at entire cultures that sincerely believe the procedural details of animal and child sacrifices have a very strong influence on things like crops, wars, and wealth. As the stations passed, you might think, “How antiquated and barbaric, the poor things; they just don’t know any better.” But the only thing separating us from these cultures is collective information and education. What they’re doing is not so different than what I did at the mall, at the traffic light, or on Instagram.
The sacrifice is carried out properly and perhaps my crop yields improve. The sacrifice is carried out properly and perhaps my household doesn’t fall victim to any grave misfortune that year. Perhaps there’s some error in the sacrificial ritual and my village encounters a drought. Multiply these instances of correlation across many years, reinforce them with cultural norms and rituals, sprinkle in a lack of alternative theories, and correlation suddenly becomes a strong belief in causality. Suddenly you’re the odd one out if you don’t believe there’s something to the old goat sacrifice thing. The contemporary examples above are the same: repeated observation of correlation, mistaken for causation, reinforced through culture, persisting in the absence of alternative explanations.
The human animal hasn’t changed. It simply exists in a new information and education environment: a collective library of failed hypotheses, more likely hypotheses to put in their stead, ease of access to that library, and systematic methods for interpretation and application of information. But this collectively evolved library is a product of humans, which happens to shape human culture; it is not the human itself. If I were magically transported back to 400BCE at the moment of my birth, I would think and behave as a person born in 400BCE.
My claim isn’t that we all do nothing but make false assumptions of causality all day long, or that we can’t arrive at a roughly accurate assessment of causality. I mean to emphasize how tremendously easy and common it is to fall into errors of reasoning like this. Our current “pandemic” is a perfect example. Nobody can seem to agree on what action or policy causes what outcome. And the standard of reasoning most find adequate to reach their conclusions in this regard is shockingly poor. Although the collective information project has done incredible things for us, I think most fail to see that the project is full of enormous cracks. Through these cracks it’s plain to see: we are the same animals that would ritually sacrifice a child to tip the outcome of a conflict over territory in our favor.
The Writing on the Wall
Some of you might have seen the viral clip of the two garage band kids—one on the drums and the other on the mic. The kid on the mic calls the kid on the drums weird and stupid, then immediately slips and falls violently on his face. The drummer kid then ads a quick *dadum tshh* as a punchline. The irony and timing is actually pretty funny.
Then other day I saw this video made into a meme on Instagram: “when they kept calling you sheeple then caught COVID later that week.” For those out of the loop, “sheeple” refers to people who herd together as sheep do, flocking to a behavior or opinion merely on the grounds that it’s popularly accepted. The behavior in this context is agreement and compliance with COVID policies. I just want to take a second to break down this joke’s subtext.
It goes like this: “I’m glad you got ill because you said I was stupid for taking precautions against the spread of an illness.” The basic comedic mechanism is still irony. But there’s more to this joke. It only works because people relate to feeling resentful toward those who criticize them. Further they relate to feeling joy, or at least satisfaction, when their critics incur some damage. They feel this will teach the critic a lesson about how wrong they were, and serve as retribution for the hurt felt from being seen as stupid. Why go out of my way to ruin a perfectly good joke? Because humor can tell us something about universal human motives.
We have a strong impulse to be “right,” for example, and really don’t like to be seen as wrong. When it seems like we’re seen as bad in some way (stupid, for example) it makes us feel better when those who see us this way suffer some harm—perhaps in the form of being shown to be wrong about us, but really any harm will do. We feel better when those who harm us in some way are harmed in return. The common sense of “justice” is inseparable from this sense of reciprocal harm. When something has been taken, it’s not enough to receive a credit as compensation. Satisfaction comes only when something is taken from the taker also. If we happen to receive a credit from this, this is a happy coincidence but not central to the conditions for justice. It’s enough to see the taker lose. Belshazzar must pay for his feast.
As Daniel reads God’s message on the wall to Belshezzar, the reader is meant to think, “Yes, it’s only right that his days should be numbered. Someone who drinks brazenly from the looted vessels of the First Temple should pay for his arrogance. He should have learned from his father’s mistakes and likewise humbled himself before the God of Israel.”
Now because he has mocked God, Belshazzar must pay the price. And it’s not enough that Daniel is rewarded, or that the Chaldean land is reappropriated. Belshazzar has to lose. He’ll lose his kingdom and his life, and it should be understood that this is payment for his irreverence. The justice of Yahweh is one of reciprocal harm, of vengeance against those who have done violence against His chosen people, particularly against those who would mock their claim to legitimacy and power.
But it must be understood that such justice is not seen as expressing the private ambitions of the self-interested, nearsighted human. The feeling about this reciprocal harm is that it’s somehow objectively right, divorced from private interests and ambitions. If it were defined by an all-too-human sense of satisfaction, then what would distinguish the “just” from their offenders? They might find the incentives behind their vengeance are not so different from those of the ones they demonize, and this cannot stand.
It has to be that the name-calling kid got “what was coming to him.” It couldn’t be that he got what we wanted him to get—that our satisfaction in his slipping to a broken nose is grounded in a merely selfish, merely subjective desire for reciprocal harm. It can't be that our sense of dessert begins and ends with what is merely human.
The desire for revenge is projected into the divine realm, into this God of the Torah, into an ‘objective’ morality. It couldn’t be that the chosen people would rely on the same means as their oppressors to acquire an inversion of established power and exact their revenge—that is, through self-interested acquisition of land by means of violence, genocide, and political maneuvering. It couldn’t be that the desired outcome is merely desired by them. It must be that God desires it, that it’s objectively right. Justice as desired by the individual is sublimated into the abstract, into the objective. In this way moralism successfully cloaks the thoroughly human incentives of those seeking vengeance and inversion of power. In this way the secretly vengeful escape meeting their own gaze.
Emulsification Infatuation
All of you reading this have no doubt purchased supplement powders or other processed and packaged foods in some form. On nearly all of these ingredient labels you’ll find what’s called “emulsifiers.” One use of emulsifiers is to prevent the separation and clumping of ingredients in emulsions or mixtures. The most common examples are carrageenan, soy and sunflower lecithin, xanthan gum, and guar gum. These emulsifiers also happen to double as thickeners. If you’ve ever cooked with corn flour, it has a similar effect: stir it into a sauce that’s too watery, and it will thicken. When you add these kinds of substances to drinks or powdered drink mixes, the drink seems to have more substance. It feels thicker with a smoother texture.
But it does not have more substance. There aren't any more almonds in your almond milk; there’s no extra protein in your shake. It’s an illusion. And it’s an illusion that comes at a very low cost to manufacturers: these agents are inexpensive to source and produce, and just a little of them goes a long way. The food appears to have more substance, to be richer and more abundant than it actually is, and is thus more marketable without actually providing more value. And as long as the substance isn’t too heavily regulated there’s almost no deterrent for food companies who use these practices.
Another example of this same strategy is the use of inexpensive “fillers” and packaging techniques to make food seem larger. Glutamine powder is a popular one, added to many supplement mixes to increase their volume. Wheat flour, soy products, and other mass-produced powders low in nutrients are added to foods like beef patties, sausages, sauces, and other fillings. Oh you thought it was just beef in your burger?
It’s also common practice for food companies to cut corners regarding health and safety for the sake of profit. In China many bakeries and street venders use aluminum powder as a cheaper replacement for yeast in their bread dough. They re-use cheap seed oils again and again at high temperatures for cost efficiency. I’m sure you’ve heard of the gutter oil phenomenon.
“That stuff doesn’t happen in places like the U.S., though, where restrictions from the FDA enforce stricter standards.” Oh it doesn’t? For more than a decade, Starbucks in the U.S. used a powered chemical compound called azodicarbonamide in their breads and pastries. Azodicarbonamide is most commonly used in foamed plastics and rubbers, like yoga mats and car tires. When introduced into a mixture and heated, it facilitates the creation of very even bubbles or air pockets. In both tires and bread dough this results in more consistent texture and more volume of the product. The only problem is, it’s not food and it’s highly toxic.
The case of azostarbuckbreadamide is only one among countless. And this point is not limited to food. Consider construction and building codes. Like with food, building materials can be manipulated, health and safety measures ignored, and presentation used to mask poor quality. I’ve been living in Asia now for nearly seven years—first based in China for five years, then Indonesia for two. I spent time in almost in every region in China, except the west near Tibet. I’ve stayed in most first-tier cities and many second tier cities. I visited and lived in rural and urban areas alike in both counties. I’ve seen up close what manufacturing and building practices look like when the incentive to cut costs and improve appearances are not kept in check. Electrical wiring, waterproofing, plumbing, insulation, use of flimsy and/or toxic materials: it’s all a nightmare. And both the contractors and workers have to be babysat round the clock, or they’ll cut these corners whenever they get the chance if it saves them a bit of time, work, or expense. Shit’s always falling apart.
Even in ‘developed western countries’ like the U.S. this still happens. My father was in residential construction from before I was born, and still is. His father worked as an engineer and planner for industrial facilities and other infrastructure. Concrete gets watered down, cheap materials are used, building inspectors get paid off to overlook issues with fire codes, electrical, and plumbing, etc. It’s common practice to hire illegal immigrant workers (particularly from Mexico) to cut labor costs. The only thing that holds it all together is that most of the building code inspectors are quite strict and thorough, as their incentives for doing their job with integrity are typically higher than any other competing inceptives to overlook violations of code. And the standards they enforce are reasonably high.
It’s no different with products. My father had the same skiing clothes and equipment from the time I was five years old until I left for university. I had the same hand-made leather wallet for eight years—until I gave it to a good friend who still uses it today. Buy a backpack in China and the zippers start to fall off in under two months. It survives the 30-day warranty, but only just. And the Chinese know and accept this reality. If I shake my fist in the air, nobody will care; they’ll stare blankly, blink, and think, “What were you expecting? Just get another one.” That’s where we’re headed. As manufacturing processes become larger in scale and more abstracted from the real value-exchange relationships between supplier and consumer, the incentive of bottom-line profit becomes judge and jury. No one even notices because the standard has degraded across the board; there are no points of contrast. And the voices of those who would remember a different time are drown out by the noise of advertisers who have better and better information about what compels us to buy. The whole world is accelerating in this direction, with a rod wedged between the driver’s seat and the gas pedal.
One last example and I’ll rest my case on this point. I fear many will think my protest here is against food, building, or consumer product practices. It’s not. I’m pointing to the general tendency to create appearance in the absence of substance, to seek shortcuts and profit at the expense of others—and how integral and commonplace these behaviors truly are. They’re even part of the way we present ourselves to others.
As many of you know, one medium I use for teaching is physical movement. As such I’ve had my hand in all sorts of cultures from competitive sport, to yoga, to generalist movement practice. And there’s one behavioral incentive across all of these disciplines and practices that is perhaps more notable than any other. Most people, most of the time, are preoccupied with appearance and bottom line result over integrity and substance. When faced with the choice between appearing strong but being weak, or appearing weak but being strong, most choose the former. When faced with the choice between having the result they want in a three months but not being able to sustain progress beyond that, or having the result they want in three years but being able to sustain their progress, most choose the former. Maybe they can be coached to choose otherwise, often with great effort and repeated warnings, but this is not the default. When faced with the choice between winning at the expense of technical integrity, or losing but with perfect technical integrity, most choose the former. Not everyone, but most. And maybe not in their movie personas, but in real life.
Let’s say you can choose between working for five to ten years to become competent in a field before you start marketing yourself as a professional, or taking a one week intensive course in this field. And let’s also say nobody would notice the difference in your expertise, you would make the same amount of money in the end, and in fact many others are also opting to take the one week course. Most would choose to start marketing themselves as a professional and making money in said field after taking the one week course. And it’s not even that they “would.” They are doing this. We’re now witnessing a miraculous and unprecedented birthrate of professionals and experts—squeezed out from between the legs of youtube videos and Elephant Journal articles. Teachers emerge boldly after 30 days of training with teachers who also got their qualifications in 30 days.
I’m not making a show of hanging the local toad oil salesman in the town square. These are not rare cases and outliers. I’m holding up the the huckster in all of us, the faker in the foreground of every scene. The exploding online market is bringing these tendencies into such clear focus. Most people most of the time are convinced and contented by mere appearance, and will reliably employ appearance over substance.
Ambitions of the Powerful
Let’s shift the perspective for a moment away from widespread and commonplace behavioral traits, toward the rare and exceptional: those with enough wealth, education, and strategic composure to exercise control over the many and profit from this control. If I wanted to profit from the predictable, fear-oriented behavior of the general public without using violence—and had access to a superabundance of resources and influence to do so—here are some strategies I would use.
Discern people’s most common insecurities, what they fear.
Find out what commodities people typically seek to quell these fears, then convince them that they need these things.
Discern what people truly need on a basic level.
Create [the appearance of] scarcity of things belonging to categories 1 and 3.
Put myself and others who share my agenda in positions to control public access to 1 and 3.
Lay out conditions and prerequisites for getting access to 1 and 3 that benefit me.
Make one of the conditions of access disclosing personal information that allows me easily to track, tax, and punish individuals who will not participate in my paradigm.
Create propaganda campaigns that persuade the public that participation in my system is in the interest of their health and safety. The inverse implication being that non participation indicates a lack of compassion and empathy (basically, anti-social traits).
Using straw man effigies to misrepresent opposing approaches, create the appearance that all alternatives to my system are objectively immoral and/or false.
Make participation in my paradigm so easy, so integrated into the most mundane behaviors of daily life, so ubiquitous, that people have to take extraordinary measures to dislocate themselves from these behaviors.
Implement a rewards structure for those who back and participate in my paradigm.
Incentivize the public to police each other to enforce my paradigm.
Keep the public in a state of normalized uncertainty, always guessing, off balance, knowing that I could change the terms at any time.
Incentivize other relevant parties (private industry, local government, wealthy and influential individuals and organizations) to, knowingly or unknowingly, let me use their information and leverage to help me implement 1-13.
These measures keep the public occupied in a cycle of seeking false solutions to get their basic needs met. Their participation is so commonplace, such a normal part of daily life and culture, that not participating is seen as abnormal—even antisocial or crazy. They disclose their information and give me their resources perforce, simply by participating. But my system is not designed to meet their deep needs or help them understand what those needs are. So then, after not getting their needs met, they pour more time and resources into seeking the solutions I laid out for them. And the cycle continues.
Meanwhile the morality established through my propaganda, and the pressure of their peers who gladly police divergent behavior, weighs heavily on their sense of shame. Together with their lack of free time to do anything outside this cycle, this keeps them from spotting my plot and rising up against me.
The above caricature should be familiar to you, but I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’ve been intentionally vague, as I don’t want this to seem like a claim about the actual incentives of all parties making and enforcing policies around COVID. It’s not my position that the corona virus is a plot cooked up by maniacal megalomaniacs scheming in secret speakeasies in collusion with the Chinese. This is rather a suggestion about the possible human incentives effecting political policy and direction. And as I mentioned near the beginning: the people in the highest positions of power over the many have, historically speaking, reliably aimed at the same things.
I hope I haven’t given the impression that humans are entirely incapable of compassionate action, careful strategy motivated by an authentic concern for well-being, quality critical analysis, self-awareness, clear and open communication in good faith about crucial issues, and other behaviors that form the cornerstones of successful civic cooperation. I have seen people are capable also of these, though not as commonly.
So far I’ve tried to paint, from a number of different angles, a robust portrait of the more subtle, surreptitious side of human behavioral inclinations and incentives.
People, Not Policies
Since all of this began more than a year ago now—when the lockdowns, travel, restrictions, business closures and mask mandates began—my position has been the same. And since the beginning, my position has also been misconstrued. People think my cynicism is due to objections about the policies themselves, when my concerns have always been rather about the inclinations and incentives of the human animal, and the role these play in how policies play out.
What I see from most others is the reverse: quibbling over whether the polices in-themselves are justified based on whether their outcome will be good or bad, and pontificating about the objective moral meaning of actions. But ironically, even in these evaluations they can do almost nothing but equivocate, make false assumptions of causality, deceive and cut corners in the name of profit, and interpret events through their own biased fear-narrative frameworks. In so doing they pass over the centrality of behavioral inclination and incentive. I’ll review some covered here.
Those in actual or perceived positions of scarcity tend to be governed by nearsightedness, reactivity, and resentment.
An instinctual fear of losing land, love, and legacy—together with the rare case of greed and megalomania—leads those with abundant power and resources to seek conquest and control over the many.
Our peculiar fondness of reciprocal harm leads us to seek vengeance in gross and subtle form. And the desire to be seen as good and right in front of our own conscience and others leads us to cloak our vengefulness in the name “justice” and thus sublimate it into the objective moral realm.
Certain preconditions for consciousness and action, together with the use of other narrative templates, dictate that the human organism squirms and twitches in a thick soup of fantasy and bias. This animal is almost synonymous with its own interpretive mechanisms. The utility of its interpretations far supersedes its value of truth. In fact, truth is a mere trope in service of utility.
Our clear preference for appearance over substance, of utility over truth, makes us even further inclined to both deceive and be deceived. We don’t seem to prefer being deceived, though. So in the interest of avoiding this, one might think to take note of our satisfaction with mere presentation—and expect this to invoke a grave mistrust of appearances. And yet, scrutiny seems happily absent in most matters of judgment.
These inclinations are not, as has been suggested by moralists throughout history, “the darker side of our nature.” First, it would be naive to think they are objectively “bad” in this moralistic sense. Like most traits, these were likely selected for and preserved because they served some use for our survival and procreation. Second, there is no fair competition between these and the better angels of our virtues. They are not anomalies or mistakes in moments of weakness. Outlined above are decisively the dominant mechanisms of most behavior. Like vines they wrap around even virtue and twist it. They weave through the plot of every act, and occupy the foreground of nearly every scene. But given our position in the center of our own stage, and preoccupation with our own lines, they often go unnoticed.
The Problem with Precedent
In Bali, where I’m now based, there is a holiday called Nyepi. On this day, once per year, the island shuts down. For 24 hours, (6am that day, to 6am the next day) everyone must stay inside. No one is allowed out on the street, except the Pecalang who patrol to make sure nobody goes outside. Lights must stay off and no loud noise can be made. Some also practice fasting and refrain from speech on this day. It is meant to be a day of introspection, purification, and temperance. It’s a day when the evil spirits are cleansed, and attention is brought to inward reflection and self control. There is more religious context, additional holidays and rituals surrounding this day, but for my purposes here this description will suffice.
To be clear, I think having a day dedicated to fasting, silence, and disconnecting from technology and electricity to focus on inner listening and constructive intentions for the future is brilliant. It would be of tremendous benefit to have one day every month, or even every week, dedicated to these intentions. But to implement this into the culture ubiquitously, and ensure everyone adheres to these practices, enforcement is needed. Some people might not understand the tradition, not feel like abiding by some of the rules, or simply disagree with the practice altogether. So here in Bali, they patrol the streets. The Pecalang look to see that every house has the lights off and there are no loud noises. If you leave the lights on or make too much noise, they flash a warning into your window. They will make anyone found out on the street return inside immediately. They have the right to come into your house, and to arrest anyone found in willful noncompliance with these policies.
Last year, early in the COVID “outbreak,” there was no lockdown. Instead, officials decided it would be best to “extend” Nyepi. This was accepted almost without resistance or argument, as the precent had already been set. During Nyepi it’s already standard practice to force people to stay inside, and even tell them what they are allowed to do inside their houses. People were already well primed for this, and it made compliance with what was essentially a lockdown nearly seamless. Since then, there have been multiple instances and threats of these pseudo-lockdowns. And each time officials are sure to refer to these as a kind of “Nyepi”—and not, as they are, forced confinement and severe restrictions of liberty.
My point is that even policies with the most innocuous intentions, like a day of meditation and inward reflection, can set a precedent for loss of civil liberties. Can anyone reading this deny that after the first lockdowns and business closures, the second and third implementations of these policies were accepted far more readily? People recognized the format, knew that had been through it before and came out the other side, and reckoned they could do it again. Similar to the premise of Nyepi, the premise of the lockdowns and other restrictions seems fundamentally positive: the preservation of health and safety. But also like Nyepi, when one allows these polices to be enforced through retraction of liberties, one must also accept that a precedent has been set for this to be done again in the future—more easily, on more occasions, and under other premises.
It’s popular to use the example of masks to defend such policies. Perhaps this is in part because mask mandates are the most convenient, seemingly innocent example of policies intended to protect public health and safety. But this is also what makes mask mandates the perfect example to make my case. And if I can do what I’m about to do with mask mandates, then I won’t have to bother going to great lengths to unpack other policies which place more obvious and egregious restrictions on civil liberties. The hardest work will have been done.
If we knew that public health and safety were the only possible incentives for mandating and enforcing the behavior of mask wearing, then I would have no case to make at all. But the moment we acknowledge there are other possible incentives is the same moment I have a question: what are those incentives and to what extent do they effect the outcome of the circumstance?
Mask Max and Sarah Sunshine Go Grocery Shopping
Let’s open with a scenario. Max is shopping in a grocery store while wearing a mask made with a print to look like a face. So at a glance it looks like he’s not wearing a mask. Another shopper, Sarah, spots Max and thinks he’s not wearing a mask. Sarah begins filming Max and telling her boyfriend how wrong Max is. The following conversation ensues.
Sarah: Approaching Max, still filming on her phone, “Please wear a mask; this situation is effecting everyone.”
Max: “I am wearing a mask,” pulling down his mask to demonstrate.
Sarah: Still visibly upset, “What’s your problem, how are people supposed to know you’re wearing a mask? Asshole.”
We can treat this as a thought experiment. It doesn’t matter if this scenario is real or not. Because it’s sufficient here to talk about potential incentives and inclinations. And this is an interesting scenario because it shows a number of these possibilities. And let’s assume I know what Sarah is thinking, because she’s my character; I made her up.
If Sarah only cared about public health and safety, she would have been relieved to see Max was actually wearing a mask. Instead she was upset when she found out he was wearing one—because, as she said herself, what she cared more about was whether “people could know” he’s wearing a mask. What her behavior tells us is that subconsciously it’s more important to her that people appear to be wearing a mask, than to actually be wearing one. Sarah is a highly agreeable and polite person and it makes her very uncomfortable when she or the people around her don’t follow rules and norms.
Her second concern is now that she has been made a fool. She seeks retribution by first implying that Max has a “problem” then calling him an asshole. This is her small way of exacting revenge for the hurt and shame she feels from being wrong. It feels better for her if Max is an asshole with a social problem.
Third concern: being right. Speaking to her boyfriend, she wants to confirm that her opinion is right and seeks his agreement as evidence. It feels better to her if other people agree with her opinion, because in her mind if more people agree with her she’s more likely to be correct.
Fourth concern: being seen publicly as a good, brave person with a correct opinion. She starts filming Max before she confronts him. This demonstrates a premeditated intention to show this video publicly. Let’s face it, she’s not filming to rewatch the video on the toilet by herself. She plans to garner public disapproval of Max’s behavior and idealogical position, and approval of her own. This, again, makes her feel better because more people agree with her position and behavior. Further, she stands to gain attention from the video. And attention, as we social media veterans know, can be used as leverage in many ways.
Sarah is not particularly well educated in virology, history, psychology, economics, immunology, statistics relating to COVID, or really any other subject that would qualify her to have a position on COVID policies. Yet she asserts her position as if she has moral authority on the matter.
She herself doesn’t like wearing a mask, and has lately been questioning whether they really do anything. Though, early in the pandemic situation she was very public and vocal about how important masks are. So she would feel like a hypocrite and embarrassed to change her stance now, after morally condemning so many people for not wanting to wear them.
Her grandfather was recently was diagnosed with COVID and died a few months after. She feels anger toward those who don’t wear masks, because she feels like it’s a small gesture that could save people. In her mind, anyone who doesn’t wear a mask must be selfish and uneducated on the dangers of the virus.
Sarah does relationship management for a company that makes plastic storage bins. She’s been forced to work from home for the last 10 months, and her pay has been cut by 1/4. On the side she used to do work online for a travel agency which hosts retreats in various tropical locations. But this stopped when travel restrictions went into effect almost a year ago. She lives alone, as she hasn’t yet been able to move in with her boyfriend due to the corona situation. Making a lot less than she used to, and feeling the pressure of rent and other bills—which unlike her side job, haven’t disappeared—her stress has been building. And because she’s not getting outside and exercising as much as she used to due to lockdowns and gym closures, her sleep, mood, and health haven’t been great either. Remember, Sarah is high in agreeableness. So normally she doesn’t seek out conflict. But the financial stress, poor sleep, not enough exercise, and the situation with her boyfriend being on hold, all added up to tip her over the edge and into a confrontation with Max.
We all know this scenario is not outlandish; it’s perfectly realistic. All of Sarah’s incentives are commonplace in so many ways. It’s also worth noting that she could have, if Max really weren’t wearing a mask, reported him to the store and had him either made to wear a mask or leave. Let’s take a moment to go over Sarah’s behavior and motives for supporting and aiding the enforcement of mask mandates.
Feels uncomfortable when people don’t follow rules, wants an outward gesture of Max’s willingness to comply with authority so she feels better.
Seeks vengeance for her humiliation.
Wants to be right and thinks her opinion is more likely to be right if people agree with her.
Seeks potential leverage in the form of public outrage in agreement with her position.
Not qualified in any relevant field, but pushes her position confidently.
Cannot change her position, despite doubts and counter-evidence, due to cognitive dissonance—and so doubles down.
Mistakes anecdotal experience and personal trauma as valid evidence for the validity of her position.
Constructs a false effigy of those who hold a different view.
Motivated to action by stress and poor health condition.
It should be highlighted here that not only are Sarah’s motives questionable, but that they are also hidden. She is pretending to care about one thing, but actually cares about another. This is not trivial, because a difference in motives equates to a different potential outcome in behavior. If there are two sets of behaviors that appear the same, but there are different motives between these sets of behavior, then it’s only a matter of how much time elapses and how much pressure is applied before you start to see the sets diverge in action. On the surface it looks like Sarah is doing one thing, but actually she is really aiming at another. And perhaps just as notable: not only are her motives circuitous and hidden from outside observation, but they are also hidden from her. Imagine if she were to admit explicitly to the fallacious reasoning and “morally” questionable motives listed in 1-9. Here’s what this would sound like in the first person.
“Hey, put on a mask because I feel uncomfortable when people around me don’t abide by rules, and I need you to make an outward gesture of your compliance; I feel sad because my grandfather died; I need to cling to my view on masks because otherwise I couldn’t face my hypocrisy; I’m not qualified in any relevant field to have an opinion on this matter, but you should do what I say anyway because I’m right. I’ve created a false effigy of your motives in my head because it’s convenient for me, and my cognitive dissonance prevents me from empathizing with your perspective. I was talking to my boyfriend about you just now and am filming you because I hope to get social leverage from this encounter and I feel my opinion is more likely to be right if other people agree with me. I really only approached you because I’m emotionally and physically stressed. Oh, I see, you are wearing a mask. Well you’re an an asshole with a social problem because I can’t imagine any other motive for your behavior, and accusing you of being defective helps me feel like I’ve hurt you like you hurt me. This selfish sense of vengeance is inseparable from my sense of fairness and justice.”
This would never happen. Someone like Sarah would not say this. And yet, these motives exist in the world. These behavioral incentives and inclinations survive and persist because they are subterranean. If we had to look at them directly, it’s hard to imagine we could stand the sight of such a grotesque reflection. So more accurate than saying Sarah would not say this, is that she could not say this.
I’m very aware the Sarah case might seem inconsequential. But I chose this in part because it’s mundane. I want to show how these incentives can effect behavior and outcomes at every level of human intercourse. I also want to make it clear that I could run this thought experiment with any person, in any position, in any interaction, simply applying the potential behavioral incentives and inclinations I’ve outlined at length in this essay. It’s not about masks; it’s not about Sarah; it’s not about lockdowns, travel restrictions or business closures. It’s about how people, with all of their very fallible incentives, use these policies to other ends—how they are already being used to other ends. And it’s about what precedent is set by these polices for these incentives to play out—in ways that degrade our civil liberties, free speech and artistic expression, freedom of movement, to gather and organize in groups, and on and on.
I urge anyone who cares at all about the future of these liberties to consider the implications of the policies we allow through. We’ve arguably already passed a point of no return, or at least very unlikely return, in some cases. I don’t suspect this will improve without drastic action and resistance, and I’m not seeing that happening. For the level of restrictive measures that have been taken, and continue to be taken, to be warranted, I would have to see a level of threat far, far greater than anything COVID has proven to be. Because to trust a policy we must trust the average case of those who would implement it. Despite the surprise of Shakespeare’s Caesar, the real Caesar never trusted Brutus. He should have expected it. Brutus was a typical case in so many ways, not the exception. And yet Ceasar was not, after all, knifed by a policy.