Why The Endless Binary Choices?

Recently, as Jordan Peterson announced his alternative WEF, the journalist Keean Bexte, contrasted Peterson with WEF gobshite Klaus Schwab, and posed the question:

Which of these two men would you trust with the future of humanity?

There is, of course, no reason to trust either of them. We are all equally responsible for the “future of humanity” and trusting anyone to discharge, what can only be, our individual responsibility, empowers only those to whom we give our “trust.” In doing so we rob ourselves of our agency and individual sovereignty as we give our rights and our freedoms away. In exchange, we are ruled and suffer the consequences. Will we ever evolve?

As pointed out by an astute commentator, these types of binary choices are perfect for the AI bots and algorithms deployed by online hybrid information warfare units like the British Army’s 77th brigade. The yes/no - 1/0 response can be “funnelled” to build a comprehensive and surprisingly detailed picture of our opinions, beliefs and positions. We are quickly categorised, allowing the hybrid warriors to tailor their propaganda and control us, on an individual basis, with much greater ease.

This is a tried and tested online marketing strategy as, perhaps unwittingly, people are channelled into sales funnels. It is an intrinsic part of social media marketing and has been for many years. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Although we might ask who invented the wheel.

Each consecutive binary choice, increasingly defines us. People are amazed when they are talking to someone offline about, for example, going on holiday, only to later go online to find their social media feeds littered with adds from travel agents. It is easy to imagine that our listening devices (phones, tablets, etc.) are actively spying on us. This may be the case if our conversation is “flagged,” but it isn’t necessary. The binary choices you made yesterday are all that’s required.

Did you click on your “favourite” image showing a sunlit tropical beach? The tracking pixel will match this to your profile and IP address. Did you like and not dislike a post about an airport lost luggage disaster? Your profile data will be shared with the “third party” partners. Did you go on Amazon and look at suitcases, spending longer looking at one in particular but not necessarily buying any, then your browser activity will be recorded on Amazon servers.

All this data can easily be scraped and harvested by anyone who’s interested. You are seriously contemplating a holiday, it’s clear. There’s no need to listen to your conversation to know what you want. The marketing companies already know.

Government’s abilities, legal or not, far exceed those of the marketing companies, though they often share data and work in partnership. We assist them to spy on us and coerce us whenever and wherever we can. We buy dedicated listening devices that are obviously listening to our conversations all the time. Otherwise they couldn’t apparently “wake up” when we call out their names.

But, if spying upon us is important to interested parties, we don’t need to be stupid enough to willingly bug our own homes. The mics on our phones and laptops can be accessed remotely to illegally record us at any time. As can our browser activity and any communications we make on un-encrypted digital networks, emails, etc.

Governments around the world our now trying to legalise their long-standing surveillance capabilities with forthcoming “online harms” legislation and other “online regulations.” This will better enable governments and their “partners” to persecute dissenting voices in their courts. They wish to add further control and limit free speech, as the last vestiges of anything approaching democratic principles die in the darkness of our apathy and ignorance.

The categorisation and organisation of us through our choices, like the herding of livestock into pens, extends way beyond corporate and state control. So accustomed have we become to fitting ourselves into pigeon holes that we automatically do the same to each other.

We are functioning transistors in the binary logic of a circuit board that we neither own nor design. This apparent inability to step outside the fake binary erodes our ability to communicate ideas, stifles debate, shuts down the exploration of more complex issues and ultimately makes us all the more easy to manipulate.

Vote red or Vote blue! Support your country and hate the enemy! Listen to the science or deny it! It is the oldest system of control devised and yet, despite, or perhaps because of, thousands of years of divide and conquer we still seem unable to even recognise when we have fallen for it.

To question sustainable development means that you don’t care about the environment; to criticise the policies and the actions of the Israeli government is to be “antisemitic;” to point out the inconsistencies of the pseudopandemic or question the jabs is to be “anti-science;” to critique the Russian government and its policy agenda is to be a “shill for the WEF and/or NATO.”

All of these false dichotomies, and many more, are constantly deployed, not just by the state and its corporate partners, but by each of us, as we seek to reaffirm our own beliefs by labelling and objectifying those who question them. We are well trained indeed.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can step outside of binary logic, leave the circuit board behind us and design the future ourselves.

We don’t have to lay down and simply allow the parasite class to rule us by pitting us against each other while they get on with business. We don’t need to blame each other, we simply need to look in the mirror and take personal responsibility.

Only when we understand that it is our duty as human beings to think critically and question everything will we be ready to truly cooperate. Our disagreements will not be born from blind faith in some puppet leader or mired in the ludicrous ideas we have been brainwashed to accept, but from an honest perspective founded upon the evidence we are each aware of.

Disagreement will, once again, be an opportunity for dialectical reasoning that will deepen knowledge and broaden our understanding as a species. Cooperation will not stem from our collective obedience to commands, but from our agreement on how to address our real priorities.

When we finally grasp that “the other” is our “partner,” then the petty tyrants who have used the endless binary choices to divide and rule us will be defeated.