It’s Becoming Increasingly Difficult to Maintain Our Mental Sovereignty

It’s a full-time job to protect your mental clarity in this dystopia.

It was hard enough to get a clear picture of reality when all we had to contend with was the propaganda of plutocrat-owned media corporations and the indoctrination of our power-driven educational systems. Now, on top of that ongoing confusion, we also have to contend with things like algorithm manipulation by Silicon Valley , imperial information operations like Wikipedia , and an exponentially growing field of AI perception management, writes Caitlin Johnstone .

I remember seeing Julian Assange give a lecture in 2017 in which he described a future in which artificial intelligence is capable of harvesting individual internet users’ data and then manipulating the information they see online within a custom-built perceptual prism designed to manipulate their thinking at a level far too subtle to be detected. He compared it to the way a computer program can play chess with strategies that predict 20 to 30 moves ahead at a level the human brain simply can’t keep up with, and said that one day we will have artificial intelligence capable of manipulating public perception with a similar degree of sophistication.

That future is much easier to imagine now than it was in 2017. It’s clear that the ruling class isn’t pouring 
trillions of dollars into AI so we can all get Studio Ghibli-style illustrations of ourselves for free. There’s a realization that the major returns on investment will largely come from these new technologies being deliberately woven into every aspect of our civilization, driven by the official and unofficial power structures under which we live, and that this will happen in a way that benefits the rich and powerful.

We’re on a trajectory where all our information will soon be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire mega-corporations, which can then use that information to surveil, manipulate, and oppress us. All our medical and financial information. Complete psychological profiles based on what we see and say online. A far more thorough assessment of our personalities than we could ever make on our own.

This information can then be used to determine what kind of advertisements for which products are likely to have an effect on us, or perhaps even to produce a customized ad for us on the spot. It can be used to determine which type of news media or experts serving the power are likely to appeal to our confirmation biases, and then ensure that this grabs our attention at an ideal time of day. It can be used to determine how likely we are to resist the imperial machine in any way, from participating in a peace march to forming a union or leading an armed revolution. It can be used to closely monitor our individual paths to political radicalization, and it can be used to provide us with information designed to direct that dissident energy toward political movements that do not threaten the status quo.

Our leaders see AI as an opportunity to regain the degree of social control eroded by the advent of widespread internet access—a loss of information hegemony that we ‘ve heard 
oligarchs and empire managers openly 
lament regarding the way social media has disseminated public dissent over issues like Israel and Palestine.

Journalist Whitney Webb has pointed out that Google plutocrat Eric Schmidt co- authored a book with war criminal Henry Kissinger that envisions a future in which the public becomes increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to think and create for us, leaving our consciousness increasingly intertwined with these oligarch-owned technologies.

“Kissinger and Eric Schmidt’s book on AI essentially argues that the real promise of AI, from their perspective, lies in the manipulation of perception—that humans will eventually be unable to interpret or perceive reality without the help of AI, due to cognitive decline and learned helplessness,” Webb warns .

Once we outsource our cognitive sovereignty to AI, our minds will fall into the hands of the machines’ owners.

So, it’s a dark and eerie path we’re walking. As a collective, we’ll have to find the strength within ourselves to fight back against this dystopia that’s increasingly swallowing up what’s good in our world. As individuals, we’ll have to find ways to maintain our inner clarity, despite the empire’s increasingly aggressive attempts to make us dull, stupid, and confused.

Fortunately for us, there are still significant aspects of our humanity they cannot infiltrate or control, and we would do well to familiarize ourselves with that territory. Inspiration. Creativity. Consciousness. Spiritual awakening. These are areas where the tech-plutocrats and imperial social engineers cannot reach.

Explore your own consciousness. Deeply investigate the nature of the self and mind until you find clarity. Heal your inner wounds. Remove all mental hooks of fear and hatred from yourself, so that the propagandists cannot find a psychological foothold to manipulate you. Follow the faint whispers of your muse and learn to help your inspiration bring new creative expression into the world.

These are the things we’ll have to do to preserve ourselves as we enter this strange new world, in addition to the usual things like staying informed and learning to see through the propaganda illusions. Fortunately, these things are all good for us anyway; the path to protecting our humanity also happens to be the path to becoming a healthier person and making the world a better place.

We are being called to awaken and transform. We are not being taken away from our humanity, as transhumanists imagine, but rather deep within its core, to a widespread blossoming of a bud that has waited within us all this time. This era invites us to evolve into a truly conscious species.

https://www.frontnieuws.com/het-wordt-steeds-moeilijker-om-onze-mentale-soevereiniteit-te-behouden