Yep. These were early day warning signs but if you tried to say anything you were often called a Conspiracy Theorists, told that the Slippery Sloop argument is a fallacy.
IN the second graph there isn't a big range in the STRONGLY SUPORT group across all age groups. It is in the STRONGLY OPPOSE followed by SOMEWHAT SUPPORT that we see the largest difference in Age. So where as STRONGLY AGAINST goes up as Age increases STRONGLY SUPPORT does not equal increase as Age goes down.
How depressing! Although I suspect this is an American thing as here in the UK the youth appear to have mostly stopped masking. My American niece (18 years old) recently told her grandmother that she is scared all the time of everything. The wearing of a mask would fit into that fear. The damage that has been done to young people will never be fixed - they are damaged for life now. Even the UK youth who have discarded their masks are nervous of life and would undoubtedly put them back on if they were told to. The future looks bleak.
I'm from both countries. It's a decidedly middle-class thing. In the US working-class or "blue collar" people, by and large, don't wear these face nappies.
It depends largely (in the US) on location (ie State) and family back ground. Those who homeschool despite location are less likely to support mandates for masks or vaccine. The same for those in Southern states who are not in a major city. If however you are in a major city or reside up North and do not home school then you likely support or at the very least tolerate both mandates.
Brilliant legal and philosophical minds foresaw the collective mind of the young today as a result of the societal trends towards accepting, desiring authoritarianism. And analysts understanding mindsets prevalent in other cultures, collectivist cultures describe the same child-like understanding of the world that enables authoritarianism.
From obituary for Dr. Walter Berns in the Washington Post, January, 2015:
"Much of his work, the legal scholar Jeremy A. Rabkin wrote in an overview of Dr. Berns’s career, “reflects the classical view that democracy depends on the character of the citizens, so their opinions and beliefs, their personal habits and degree of self-discipline — in a word, their virtues — will matter to the prospects of democratic government.”
Dr. Berns argued against unbounded individual rights and for restrictions on pornography, which he believed eroded self-restraint.
“Those who are without shame,” he remarked, “will be unruly and unrulable; having lost the ability to restrain themselves by obeying the rules they collectively give themselves, they will have to be ruled by others.”
From recent ZeroHedge column on the Shanghai Lockdowns, analysis of the Chinese child-like Mind:
There is something that most foreign analyst do not grasp: the Chinese Mind (the "collective subconscious" if you wish.)
The Chinese Mind likes to be seen in the Struggle doing things to fight in the Struggle (no matter what the Struggle is, whether those actions give tangible results or not, at least they make great photo ops for the media.)
The Chinese Mind is hive-like, it's blindly obedient, and it lashes out at the "Enemy" (whether real or imaginary)
The Chinese Mind is a bit childish, it is for sure stubborn, and non-rational/logical (non-Cartesian)
The Chinese Mind is constantly under ideological propaganda, everywhere, every time, from childhood til death, from home to the workspace...
The Chinese Mind is never guilty, it always blames the Other (and the object of the blame is constantly shifting)
The Chinese Mind hates losing face (what face, nobody knows) and hates being criticized (just shut up and put it under the carpet)
Remember the famines? One day they wake up and decide to kill all the birds (that were eating bugs that were eating crops...)"
It's how you prepare the battlespace for the war of ideas, ideas of the type of governance humanity will live under in the (near) future. Today, here, now. Yesterday, in fact. Not futuristic sci-fi.
“As such, 21st-century warfare seeks to virtually impose perceptions as opposed to the physically imposed will of the past. Victory is no longer achievable in decisive, physical conflict. Unseen victory, achieved in the human domain, is the new victory. This paradigm shift in warfare is a novel implementation of Sun Tzu’s principle where the acme of skill is to defeat the adversary without ever physically fighting. This is the future of war: the imposition of perceptions to achieve unseen victory.”
“US Air Force Information Operations Officers (IO’s) have the requisite background and training to contest the cognitive space and compel desired behaviors. All officers must have a psychology-related undergraduate or master’s degrees for career field consideration. The initial IO corps trained at the US Army Psychological Operations Qualification Course and completed several other related trainings such as operations security, signature management, and operational military deception. The integral trainings piece together the requisite understanding of how to operate within the human domain. Each course strives to affect perceived information and ultimately affect DM and behavior. The US Air Force and DoD has an opportunity to capitalize on the unique and critical skills of Information Operations Officer. If they are properly integrated into all staffs, planning teams, and government agencies, the US can better navigate through great power competition with Russia and China.?"
And not limited to foreign adversaries. Americans now officially declared by the DOJ as domestic enemies for political opposition to authoritarianism. Under the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act passed in 2013 removing prohibitions on domestic propaganda put in place post-WWII after learning the dangerous lessons of a Goebbels' application of propaganda as behavioral science on a domestic population.
And don’t think for a second that PsyOps isn’t being deployed against the American people, that it’s only being targeted at foreign hostiles and adversaries. Remember, they legalized its use targeted at domestic populations, US!!
How consent to "Owning nothing and being happy" and "Eating less meat and more bugs" will be manufactured - UN Agenda 2030/WEF Great Reset Behavioral Science plan:
Whitney Houston sang, "I believe the children are our future" in her song The Greatest Love. Their minds have been prepared for this battlespace of this Information War for the future of humanity. It's why the children are still being force masked in many schools, force masked for too long, force masked at all during the pandemic. First ostensibly, "to save grandma" even though they weren't at risk. Now to save them and their teachers from impossible to calculate low risk of severe infection or death from CV. Crate training puppies, as Adam Corolla described. Preparing the battlespace. For a global authoritarian future for humanity. Renamed "freedom."
"Changing someone’s mind, persuading them to rethink their position, can feel nearly impossible. While ubiquity of information should provide enough public domain evidence to solve every argument, the opposite has happened; facts polarize people rather than bring them together in a moment of epiphany. The English philosopher Francis Bacon articulated this four centuries ago, writing:
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”
In 1979, professor of psychology and author Charles G. Lord sought answers[1] as to whether we might overcome the Bacon principle, or whether humans are always held hostage to their initial beliefs even in the face of compelling and contradictory evidence. After identifying two groups of respondents into their respective beliefs as to whether capital punishment is an effective deterrent to crime, he then supplied each group with a summary of research showing either that capital punish is or is not effective. That was followed by a more robust, scientifically sound piece of research that supported the summary. Then, he exposed each group to different research with opposite findings. Rather than softening their initial beliefs when evidence challenged them, each group discounted the research that did not align with their pre-existing beliefs, saying it was not as sound as the research that agreed with them. Scientists call this phenomenon “confirmation bias.” Lord and his co-researchers determined that objective evidence “will frequently fuel rather than calm the fires of debate.”"
Compounding this inability for humans to easily consider evidence they might be wrong is a principle known as “homophily.” It is often defined as “birds of a feather flock together.” Homophily is a profound and primal force in humans that binds people together in clans, tribes or groups. But it also signals to tribes who is not an insider. Those who send cues they are from an out-group are exiled and nothing they say will be accepted at face value. The brain reinforces this evolutionary pull by rewarding those accepted into a group with a bit of oxytocin, also known as the “trust hormone” first encountered in life when newborns breast feed. The belongingness urge is so powerful among humans that the threat of being ejected from a group brings on a sharp activation of the anterior cingulate cortex—the region in the brain that governs physical as well as social exclusionary pain.
Imagine now, if your communications overlook the huge power of homophily. You risk being immediately in the out-group. To avoid being rejected from the get-go, you must choose representatives with whom each group feels comfortable, messengers or narrators who send the proper cues that identify them as in-group members. In some cases, you may choose only one group by design, further eliciting warm trust and passion from the in-group by wantonly differentiating from the out-group. One example is the PC vs Mac campaign from 2011 which reaffirmed those who identified with or aspired to belong to the Mac group that the PC tribe was uncool. Someone sending verbal or physical cues that they are with the PC tribe would encounter immediate resistance from the Mac tribe and have little hope of changing their mind on an issue, especially if they fell prey to the evidence-driven confirmation bias. In 2013, Samsung understood the power of homophily within the Apple tribe and made an attempt to drain some of its coolness by creating a easily-duped, wait-on-line-all-night set of easily-mocked hipsters whose tribal allegiance blinded them to out-of-date technologies. In a reversal of the PC vs. Mac approach, Apple fan-boys were suddenly the out-group.
"When partisan subjects saw their own favorite candidate “flip-flopping” on an issue, Westen’s research[2] showed correlations in the brain with areas that govern dissonance and even pain (the anterior cingulate cortex). The theory goes, therefore, that we tell ourselves little lies and reject contradictory evidence to make that dissonance, that pain of being wrong, go away. Worse, says Westen, once we do that, another part of the brain (ventral striatum) kicks in with brain chemical rewards (dopamine) to reinforce that little lie. The implication is that humans are wired through evolutionary development to resist being proven wrong.Jason Reifler, assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University, has also pushed the investigation into motivated reasoning. In 2011[3], he also encountered a strong “backfire effect” when presenting subjects with evidence they were incorrect. Even if the evidence appeared to be incontrovertible, subjects still discounted a truth they could find easily in the public domain rather than change their minds. They, too, dug in their heels and reported feeling even more convinced and determined than ever after seeing evidence contradicting their views. But Reifler did discover an interesting avenue to opening minds. He found that if you first primed subjects with self-affirming attributes (e.g. letting them write about value important to them and an instance when they felt particularly good about themselves) they were more flexible and more willing to reconsider their views. He attributes this to disassociating the identity of the person from their view. If you do not do this, he theorizes, then a person’s identity and self-esteem is inextricably linked to the view they’ve espoused, so attacking their view amounts to attacking them as a person. Reifler also found, without being to explain why, that graphical evidence tends to persuade more effectively than text."
"Since then, an entire field of research around confirmation bias (also sometimes called “motivated reasoning”) has sprung up. While it may not have been particularly surprising that people cling to their beliefs to the degree that they filter out any evidence that challenges their beliefs, an unexpected finding of the experiment was a backfire. Indeed it is now called the “backfire effect.” Research has shown that when people are shown evidence they may be wrong, they not only discount that evidence, they become even more extreme in their original belief.Drew Westen, director of the departments of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, performed an updated version of Lord’s experiment using fMRI brain scans. He had subjects self-identify as to political views and split them into two groups. He showed them their rival party’s presidential candidate reversing himself on an issue. He then showed them their own favorite candidate also reversing himself. Just as with Lord’s experiment, both groups clung to their initial beliefs in the face of new evidence undermining those beliefs. They saw their favorite candidate’s reversal of views as something smart, while condemning the flip-flops of the other candidate. When peering into what was going on in their brains during all this, Westen observed, “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning. What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.”"
A 2009 research study titled, "Of snakes and faces: An evolutionary perspective on the psychology of fear." A healthy society requires faces be seen. Not just eyes. Full facial expressions are an essential form of human communication and stabilizes society. And perhaps most importantly, human aggression is moderated by full faces.
In the study they refer to masked faces. Not in terms of an actual facial covering, but in terms of unnatural neutral faces that intentionally don't communicate any emotion in situations when facial expressions are customary and expected.
Masks terrorize no differently than seeing snakes all around us all day, every day. Just reflect back to 2019 when if you saw a mask on someone in public you reacted with apprehension, perhaps fear in the environment, like in a bank or on a plane. Terrorists wore masks not just to hide their identity, but to terrorize. It takes constant higher reasoning reminders to self to push through the fear and anxiety masked faces creates just as surely as if surrounded by snakes all the time, even at an subconscious level. Follow the science. Straight to Behavioral Science. Fear amplification. Chosen as pandemic NPI by epidemiologists, extensively trained in behaviorial science techniques to modify human behavior during a pandemic. Scare people sufficiently to have them avoid others, normalize anti-social behaviors, even making it preferential, virtuous.
Flipping the script of a healthy society. As recently as 2019, less than three years ago, masks were *banned* outright on public transportation. For good reasons upheld by international courts. These rational and legal justifications for banning masks were true in 2019, as understood by sociologists. Has human psychology and civil social structure been evolved to a higher state of being in two years that negates prior social science and psychology findings?
2014
"Judges at the European court of human rights (ECHR) have upheld France's burqa ban, accepting Paris's argument that it encouraged citizens to "live together".
The law, introduced in 2010, makes it illegal for anyone to cover their face in a public place...the law was not aimed at the burqa or veil but any covering of the face in a public place...
...The European judges decided...that the preservation of a certain idea of "living together" was the "legitimate aim" of the French authorities.
Isabelle Niedlispacher, representing the Belgian government, which introduced a similar ban in 2011 and which was party to the French defence, declared both the burqa and niqab "incompatible" with the rule of law.
Aside from questions of security and equality, she added: "It's about social communication, the right to interact with someone by looking them in the face and about not disappearing under a piece of clothing."
The French and Belgian laws were aimed at "helping everyone to integrate", Niedlispacher added."
"On August 1, 2019, the “Act Partially Prohibiting Face-Covering Clothing,”also known as the “Burqa Ban,” entered into force in the Netherlands. The Act prohibits the wearing of clothing that completely or partially conceals the face in spaces where people are expected to communicate with each other. Thus, face-covering clothing is banned on public transportation and in educational, governmental, and nursing care institutions, but is still allowed in such public spaces as on train platforms. The ban applies to burqas, niqabs, full-face helmets, balaclavas, and masks, but not to headscarves."
Until facial coverings are banned outright the manipulated and coerced psychosis that has taken hold of our society will remain. Faces are necessary, are a requirement for public life, for civil society. As the study on faces and snakes, fear evolution shows. The same basis that international courts found true just before Covid still applies. It never stopped applying.
Some of them quite literally believe they look “better” with a mask on and want to keep that little piece of security blanket. It’s just one other reason that age group likes it as it might improve their status or at least blunt rejection.
Hmmm... maybe it's their immaturity and lack of experience. Not to mention poor schooling (i.e., successful indoctrination) and their unreasonable/illogical fear of death.
Mission accomplished, I guess. Too bad they couldn’t be manipulated into emptying the dishwasher in a timely and orderly fashion, and mow the lawn without constant badgering.
What little NARC pieces of turd. The writing was on the wall in 2015 with those students at Yale screaming about Halloween costumes oppressing them.
Yep. These were early day warning signs but if you tried to say anything you were often called a Conspiracy Theorists, told that the Slippery Sloop argument is a fallacy.
IN the second graph there isn't a big range in the STRONGLY SUPORT group across all age groups. It is in the STRONGLY OPPOSE followed by SOMEWHAT SUPPORT that we see the largest difference in Age. So where as STRONGLY AGAINST goes up as Age increases STRONGLY SUPPORT does not equal increase as Age goes down.
How depressing! Although I suspect this is an American thing as here in the UK the youth appear to have mostly stopped masking. My American niece (18 years old) recently told her grandmother that she is scared all the time of everything. The wearing of a mask would fit into that fear. The damage that has been done to young people will never be fixed - they are damaged for life now. Even the UK youth who have discarded their masks are nervous of life and would undoubtedly put them back on if they were told to. The future looks bleak.
I'm from both countries. It's a decidedly middle-class thing. In the US working-class or "blue collar" people, by and large, don't wear these face nappies.
It depends largely (in the US) on location (ie State) and family back ground. Those who homeschool despite location are less likely to support mandates for masks or vaccine. The same for those in Southern states who are not in a major city. If however you are in a major city or reside up North and do not home school then you likely support or at the very least tolerate both mandates.
Or are, like me, a fish out of water and filled with deep-seated anger at the shitlib twats who run things--by hook or by crook.
Brilliant legal and philosophical minds foresaw the collective mind of the young today as a result of the societal trends towards accepting, desiring authoritarianism. And analysts understanding mindsets prevalent in other cultures, collectivist cultures describe the same child-like understanding of the world that enables authoritarianism.
From obituary for Dr. Walter Berns in the Washington Post, January, 2015:
https://archive.ph/5lgZM
"Much of his work, the legal scholar Jeremy A. Rabkin wrote in an overview of Dr. Berns’s career, “reflects the classical view that democracy depends on the character of the citizens, so their opinions and beliefs, their personal habits and degree of self-discipline — in a word, their virtues — will matter to the prospects of democratic government.”
Dr. Berns argued against unbounded individual rights and for restrictions on pornography, which he believed eroded self-restraint.
“Those who are without shame,” he remarked, “will be unruly and unrulable; having lost the ability to restrain themselves by obeying the rules they collectively give themselves, they will have to be ruled by others.”
From recent ZeroHedge column on the Shanghai Lockdowns, analysis of the Chinese child-like Mind:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/whole-planet-pot-and-were-all-frogs
There is something that most foreign analyst do not grasp: the Chinese Mind (the "collective subconscious" if you wish.)
The Chinese Mind likes to be seen in the Struggle doing things to fight in the Struggle (no matter what the Struggle is, whether those actions give tangible results or not, at least they make great photo ops for the media.)
The Chinese Mind is hive-like, it's blindly obedient, and it lashes out at the "Enemy" (whether real or imaginary)
The Chinese Mind is a bit childish, it is for sure stubborn, and non-rational/logical (non-Cartesian)
The Chinese Mind is constantly under ideological propaganda, everywhere, every time, from childhood til death, from home to the workspace...
The Chinese Mind is never guilty, it always blames the Other (and the object of the blame is constantly shifting)
The Chinese Mind hates losing face (what face, nobody knows) and hates being criticized (just shut up and put it under the carpet)
Remember the famines? One day they wake up and decide to kill all the birds (that were eating bugs that were eating crops...)"
It's how you prepare the battlespace for the war of ideas, ideas of the type of governance humanity will live under in the (near) future. Today, here, now. Yesterday, in fact. Not futuristic sci-fi.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277743265_Winning_the_Soft_War_The_Employment_of_Tactical_PSYOP_Teams_in_Combat_Operations
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/changing-hearts-and-brains-sof-must-prepare-now-neurowarfare
https://gangstalkingmindcontrolcults.com/psyop-as-a-fundamental-component-of-organized-stalking/
Not a conspiracy when our DoD tells us they are doing it:
US Army Recruitment Video:
Ghosts in the Machine,
May 2, 2022
https://youtu.be/VA4e0NqyYMw
USAF Communication Blog:
The 6th Warfighting Domain
November 5, 2019
by Lauren Elkins, USAF Information Operations Officer, 390th Cyberspace Operations Squadron.
(https://www.afhra.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/862058/390-cyberspace-operations-squadron-acc/)
“As such, 21st-century warfare seeks to virtually impose perceptions as opposed to the physically imposed will of the past. Victory is no longer achievable in decisive, physical conflict. Unseen victory, achieved in the human domain, is the new victory. This paradigm shift in warfare is a novel implementation of Sun Tzu’s principle where the acme of skill is to defeat the adversary without ever physically fighting. This is the future of war: the imposition of perceptions to achieve unseen victory.”
“US Air Force Information Operations Officers (IO’s) have the requisite background and training to contest the cognitive space and compel desired behaviors. All officers must have a psychology-related undergraduate or master’s degrees for career field consideration. The initial IO corps trained at the US Army Psychological Operations Qualification Course and completed several other related trainings such as operations security, signature management, and operational military deception. The integral trainings piece together the requisite understanding of how to operate within the human domain. Each course strives to affect perceived information and ultimately affect DM and behavior. The US Air Force and DoD has an opportunity to capitalize on the unique and critical skills of Information Operations Officer. If they are properly integrated into all staffs, planning teams, and government agencies, the US can better navigate through great power competition with Russia and China.?"
And not limited to foreign adversaries. Americans now officially declared by the DOJ as domestic enemies for political opposition to authoritarianism. Under the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act passed in 2013 removing prohibitions on domestic propaganda put in place post-WWII after learning the dangerous lessons of a Goebbels' application of propaganda as behavioral science on a domestic population.
And don’t think for a second that PsyOps isn’t being deployed against the American people, that it’s only being targeted at foreign hostiles and adversaries. Remember, they legalized its use targeted at domestic populations, US!!
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
Precisely how consent to authoritarianism is manufactured in a population, as Noam Chomsky (and Edward Bernays) described decades ago:
https://chomsky.info/19890315/
How consent to "Owning nothing and being happy" and "Eating less meat and more bugs" will be manufactured - UN Agenda 2030/WEF Great Reset Behavioral Science plan:
https://www.undp.org/publications/behavioural-insights-united-nations-achieving-agenda-2030
Whitney Houston sang, "I believe the children are our future" in her song The Greatest Love. Their minds have been prepared for this battlespace of this Information War for the future of humanity. It's why the children are still being force masked in many schools, force masked for too long, force masked at all during the pandemic. First ostensibly, "to save grandma" even though they weren't at risk. Now to save them and their teachers from impossible to calculate low risk of severe infection or death from CV. Crate training puppies, as Adam Corolla described. Preparing the battlespace. For a global authoritarian future for humanity. Renamed "freedom."
The Backfire Effect and How to Change Minds
April 14, 2015
by Christopher Graves
https://instituteforpr.org/part-two-backfire-effect-change-minds/
"Changing someone’s mind, persuading them to rethink their position, can feel nearly impossible. While ubiquity of information should provide enough public domain evidence to solve every argument, the opposite has happened; facts polarize people rather than bring them together in a moment of epiphany. The English philosopher Francis Bacon articulated this four centuries ago, writing:
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”
In 1979, professor of psychology and author Charles G. Lord sought answers[1] as to whether we might overcome the Bacon principle, or whether humans are always held hostage to their initial beliefs even in the face of compelling and contradictory evidence. After identifying two groups of respondents into their respective beliefs as to whether capital punishment is an effective deterrent to crime, he then supplied each group with a summary of research showing either that capital punish is or is not effective. That was followed by a more robust, scientifically sound piece of research that supported the summary. Then, he exposed each group to different research with opposite findings. Rather than softening their initial beliefs when evidence challenged them, each group discounted the research that did not align with their pre-existing beliefs, saying it was not as sound as the research that agreed with them. Scientists call this phenomenon “confirmation bias.” Lord and his co-researchers determined that objective evidence “will frequently fuel rather than calm the fires of debate.”"
1/4
https://instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/IPR-Blog-Graves-Behavioral-Comms-Part-2_Page_4.jpg
Compounding this inability for humans to easily consider evidence they might be wrong is a principle known as “homophily.” It is often defined as “birds of a feather flock together.” Homophily is a profound and primal force in humans that binds people together in clans, tribes or groups. But it also signals to tribes who is not an insider. Those who send cues they are from an out-group are exiled and nothing they say will be accepted at face value. The brain reinforces this evolutionary pull by rewarding those accepted into a group with a bit of oxytocin, also known as the “trust hormone” first encountered in life when newborns breast feed. The belongingness urge is so powerful among humans that the threat of being ejected from a group brings on a sharp activation of the anterior cingulate cortex—the region in the brain that governs physical as well as social exclusionary pain.
Imagine now, if your communications overlook the huge power of homophily. You risk being immediately in the out-group. To avoid being rejected from the get-go, you must choose representatives with whom each group feels comfortable, messengers or narrators who send the proper cues that identify them as in-group members. In some cases, you may choose only one group by design, further eliciting warm trust and passion from the in-group by wantonly differentiating from the out-group. One example is the PC vs Mac campaign from 2011 which reaffirmed those who identified with or aspired to belong to the Mac group that the PC tribe was uncool. Someone sending verbal or physical cues that they are with the PC tribe would encounter immediate resistance from the Mac tribe and have little hope of changing their mind on an issue, especially if they fell prey to the evidence-driven confirmation bias. In 2013, Samsung understood the power of homophily within the Apple tribe and made an attempt to drain some of its coolness by creating a easily-duped, wait-on-line-all-night set of easily-mocked hipsters whose tribal allegiance blinded them to out-of-date technologies. In a reversal of the PC vs. Mac approach, Apple fan-boys were suddenly the out-group.
4/4
"When partisan subjects saw their own favorite candidate “flip-flopping” on an issue, Westen’s research[2] showed correlations in the brain with areas that govern dissonance and even pain (the anterior cingulate cortex). The theory goes, therefore, that we tell ourselves little lies and reject contradictory evidence to make that dissonance, that pain of being wrong, go away. Worse, says Westen, once we do that, another part of the brain (ventral striatum) kicks in with brain chemical rewards (dopamine) to reinforce that little lie. The implication is that humans are wired through evolutionary development to resist being proven wrong.Jason Reifler, assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University, has also pushed the investigation into motivated reasoning. In 2011[3], he also encountered a strong “backfire effect” when presenting subjects with evidence they were incorrect. Even if the evidence appeared to be incontrovertible, subjects still discounted a truth they could find easily in the public domain rather than change their minds. They, too, dug in their heels and reported feeling even more convinced and determined than ever after seeing evidence contradicting their views. But Reifler did discover an interesting avenue to opening minds. He found that if you first primed subjects with self-affirming attributes (e.g. letting them write about value important to them and an instance when they felt particularly good about themselves) they were more flexible and more willing to reconsider their views. He attributes this to disassociating the identity of the person from their view. If you do not do this, he theorizes, then a person’s identity and self-esteem is inextricably linked to the view they’ve espoused, so attacking their view amounts to attacking them as a person. Reifler also found, without being to explain why, that graphical evidence tends to persuade more effectively than text."
3/4
"Since then, an entire field of research around confirmation bias (also sometimes called “motivated reasoning”) has sprung up. While it may not have been particularly surprising that people cling to their beliefs to the degree that they filter out any evidence that challenges their beliefs, an unexpected finding of the experiment was a backfire. Indeed it is now called the “backfire effect.” Research has shown that when people are shown evidence they may be wrong, they not only discount that evidence, they become even more extreme in their original belief.Drew Westen, director of the departments of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, performed an updated version of Lord’s experiment using fMRI brain scans. He had subjects self-identify as to political views and split them into two groups. He showed them their rival party’s presidential candidate reversing himself on an issue. He then showed them their own favorite candidate also reversing himself. Just as with Lord’s experiment, both groups clung to their initial beliefs in the face of new evidence undermining those beliefs. They saw their favorite candidate’s reversal of views as something smart, while condemning the flip-flops of the other candidate. When peering into what was going on in their brains during all this, Westen observed, “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning. What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.”"
2/4
A 2009 research study titled, "Of snakes and faces: An evolutionary perspective on the psychology of fear." A healthy society requires faces be seen. Not just eyes. Full facial expressions are an essential form of human communication and stabilizes society. And perhaps most importantly, human aggression is moderated by full faces.
In the study they refer to masked faces. Not in terms of an actual facial covering, but in terms of unnatural neutral faces that intentionally don't communicate any emotion in situations when facial expressions are customary and expected.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2009.00784.x
Masks terrorize no differently than seeing snakes all around us all day, every day. Just reflect back to 2019 when if you saw a mask on someone in public you reacted with apprehension, perhaps fear in the environment, like in a bank or on a plane. Terrorists wore masks not just to hide their identity, but to terrorize. It takes constant higher reasoning reminders to self to push through the fear and anxiety masked faces creates just as surely as if surrounded by snakes all the time, even at an subconscious level. Follow the science. Straight to Behavioral Science. Fear amplification. Chosen as pandemic NPI by epidemiologists, extensively trained in behaviorial science techniques to modify human behavior during a pandemic. Scare people sufficiently to have them avoid others, normalize anti-social behaviors, even making it preferential, virtuous.
Flipping the script of a healthy society. As recently as 2019, less than three years ago, masks were *banned* outright on public transportation. For good reasons upheld by international courts. These rational and legal justifications for banning masks were true in 2019, as understood by sociologists. Has human psychology and civil social structure been evolved to a higher state of being in two years that negates prior social science and psychology findings?
2014
"Judges at the European court of human rights (ECHR) have upheld France's burqa ban, accepting Paris's argument that it encouraged citizens to "live together".
The law, introduced in 2010, makes it illegal for anyone to cover their face in a public place...the law was not aimed at the burqa or veil but any covering of the face in a public place...
...The European judges decided...that the preservation of a certain idea of "living together" was the "legitimate aim" of the French authorities.
Isabelle Niedlispacher, representing the Belgian government, which introduced a similar ban in 2011 and which was party to the French defence, declared both the burqa and niqab "incompatible" with the rule of law.
Aside from questions of security and equality, she added: "It's about social communication, the right to interact with someone by looking them in the face and about not disappearing under a piece of clothing."
The French and Belgian laws were aimed at "helping everyone to integrate", Niedlispacher added."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/france-burqa-ban-upheld-human-rights-court
2019
"On August 1, 2019, the “Act Partially Prohibiting Face-Covering Clothing,”also known as the “Burqa Ban,” entered into force in the Netherlands. The Act prohibits the wearing of clothing that completely or partially conceals the face in spaces where people are expected to communicate with each other. Thus, face-covering clothing is banned on public transportation and in educational, governmental, and nursing care institutions, but is still allowed in such public spaces as on train platforms. The ban applies to burqas, niqabs, full-face helmets, balaclavas, and masks, but not to headscarves."
https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2019-08-27/netherlands-burqa-ban-enters-into-force/
Until facial coverings are banned outright the manipulated and coerced psychosis that has taken hold of our society will remain. Faces are necessary, are a requirement for public life, for civil society. As the study on faces and snakes, fear evolution shows. The same basis that international courts found true just before Covid still applies. It never stopped applying.
Some of them quite literally believe they look “better” with a mask on and want to keep that little piece of security blanket. It’s just one other reason that age group likes it as it might improve their status or at least blunt rejection.
Hmmm... maybe it's their immaturity and lack of experience. Not to mention poor schooling (i.e., successful indoctrination) and their unreasonable/illogical fear of death.
Mission accomplished, I guess. Too bad they couldn’t be manipulated into emptying the dishwasher in a timely and orderly fashion, and mow the lawn without constant badgering.
https://youtu.be/SMGz3sXRhvE