The whole problem is that the information avalanche, crashing down on our consciousness on a daily basis, began its course about 15 years ago. The speed of the information flow is becoming dozens of times faster than our brains have time to adapt. We are simply not evolutionarily prepared for such lightning-fast changes... But who's going to ask us... Evolutionary frenzy is belched right into our faces, or rather into our brains, which as it turns out can be very easily programmed. The technology of 5 stages of programming our consciousness, including the example of how it’s been done in recent events with Russia and Ukraine, will be explained in this episode to enable you to keep your brain clean.
So, first of all, we need to choose a theme to drag from the state of "Unthinkable" for our consciousness to the "Normality" of life. You can think of anything, even a fantastic theme: for example, people's negative thoughts provoke emissions in the air, or pants are better worn on the head, or... 99% of wages the state has decided to take for itself... I think you began grinding your teeth when you had heard this last phrase, so let's take this one.
To work for just 1% of your salary sounds unbelievable, even stupid, but you know, the idea of the universal basic income once seemed insane as well. But somehow, they sat down, discussed it and even tried it in the advanced countries like Switzerland and Finland. Yes, the result was rendered ineffective, but that didn't stop them from starting discussions.
If there was an attempt to just hand out money from the state, why not try the opposite approach. But of course, we are not going to try it, we have a purely scientific interest. In the blink of an eye, a working group of researchers has already been set up. Buuuuut… some crazy people have also appeared who are already
shouting on the internet "give all our money to the state!" And here we are, right now discussing the subject, and the wackos on the Internet are only helping us. After all, the number of expressions on the topic has only increased. On the one hand scientists with their hypotheses and on the other - radical communists, who will simply be made fun of in the current realities, but the process of "making fun of" means an increase in the citation of the phenomenon. As they say, there is no colour to PR. Thus, we have made the transition from the Unthinkable to the Radical. Thus,
we have introduced outright madness into our information field. That was the first step. Step number 2. In the second step, we need to appeal to curiosity, research and diversity. So, we need to come up with a new, soft term for our phenomenon. It is not like the state is forcibly taking all your money, they are simply centralising money for better management. Moreover, why are we always talking about “money”? In time we will come up with yet another softer term – “the accumulation of population’s resources”. No one is taking money from anyone, the state is only accumulating resources.
Creating a soft term is very important in the current step. You have to detach the form of the word from its meaning. The main rule is that the new word has to be made in a way that society does not associate it with the time in the past when it was unacceptable. And then the same scientists, joined by intellectuals, start discussing the accumulation of resources of the population, and then it turns out that once upon a time there was such a thing in Rome, or even in the history of your country. And there's still some work to be done to explore what effect it's had.
So, here, we moved from the Radical to the Acceptable. Step number 2 is complete. Step number 3 Now that we are already freely discussing the accumulation of population's resources, we have to determine people’s attitudes to this. On the left, we have radical opponents and, on the right, we have radical supporters. The main focus here is to do two things: firstly, we need to admit that there are radical points of view and they have the right to exist. But at the same time ordinary people who are against the accumulation must be
labelled as radicals, we need to try to brand them as uneducated ignorants who do not understand a single thing, and generally they want their own country to be weaker. Just a little longer and we will call them internal enemies, or the ones being controlled by an external enemy. After all, just think about it, accumulation has its disadvantages, but it also has its positive sides. So, the new phenomenon falls somewhere in the middle between radical against and radical for, embodying some kind of sanity and progressivity. Congratulations, we have moved onto the realm of Sensible. Step number 4 The topic has gone viral. It is no longer just
discussed in narrow circles, but by the masses at large, thanks to the media, of course. The most important thing is to find popular people who will say that they would be happy to give 99% of their income to the state, because it will strengthen people's power, make society equal, and justice will prevail in the country. So, we will need talk-show hosts, artists and bloggers for that.. - I vote for accumulation! - Accumulation isn't about taking away at all! - So it's for the greater good! - Don't be selfish! - I heard that George Washington did that! - That was Franklin’s idea! - Once upon a time, Jeeeesus… Step number 5. The final shot. Since all possible studies have been conducted, and public debate now leads to the masses literally asking for the implementation of resource accumulation, those who planned it all from the beginning come out from the shadows and listen sensitively, out of the kindness of their hearts, to the wishes of the common people. Opinion polls are being published, confirming the wishes of the majority. There is a high proportion of supporters for a strong, solid and indestructible state. We are at the end of the play - the authorities are preparing a legislative framework, and a new dogma is being introduced into society - "the happiness of the individual is forbidden, one can only be happy for the whole country". If you get a slight chill at the possibility
of a similar event, it confirms the viability of this technology. And it was invented… no, not by me. The one who created it was Joseph Overton. You have to admit, it all sounds pretty cool. Someone powerful out there is controlling us. And by the technology of someone called Joseph Overton. I'm telling you, the best myth is a collection of half-truths, slightly mystified by the presence of the World Government.
Let me explain. There is a widely spread essay on the Russian internet called Technology of Destruction, which tells that society's values can be changed by employing 5 steps. There are 6 states of attitude to the topic, you remember them from the previous chapter, and if you use the tools - namely, topic’s transition from the taboo into the info-field, creating a soft term, labelling the opponents as radicals (condemning radical non-acceptance and acceptance of the topic), popularizing through on-screen heroes, and legitimizing - then you can shift the public consciousness, move that Overton Window and make anything acceptable as the norm. And by “anything” I mean literally anything.
Now, look. I’m going to read this widely spread on the Russian internet article in full. It has been the subject of conspiracy theories for almost 10 years. And if you are asking, why it is so, let me tell you what example the author used for the explanation of Overton Window… It’s cannibalism. So, sit back, relax and listen to the story. Of course, if you don’t want to listen to it you can read it yourself via the link in the description and skip to this time stamp, the mainline of the video will continue from there. Alright, here we go.
Such a wild example has opened a can of worms, or should I say a can of conspiracy theorists, on the Internet. Here is a channel with a magnificent head cover "Evolve with Us" doing the same thing, retelling an article, or rather a copypaste from 2014, with the final conclusion that the evil there is the capitalists, the world government – here they are, those pyramids, eyes and other attributes of the the Committee of 300. Oh, really truth - evolve with us. And the video has been viewed by 2 million people, I wish I could see the dislikes, but 126,000 likes are a shit load for sure. The Overton Window was invented by Joseph - all of a sudden - Overton.
He got a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, and then a doctorate in law. He was a senior vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. And apparently an engineering view on society helped him see the concept. Once again. THE CONCEPT, or the model, but not the technology. Its essence is that there is a framework of topics that are acceptable in society at a given time. And stepping outside these boundaries towards bigger or smaller freedoms can make you unpopular. Just a quick and clear example. Imagine what would have happened to a person if
they had spoken out in 2017 in favour of entering cafes via the QR code. He would have been put in an insane asylum at best. An important comment here. No, I'm not advocating that the virus is a chemical weapon, no I don't think anyone wants to kill us on purpose, and yes, vaccines work, and yes, so does the Russian Sputnik V, we even had a video about it. Now, who gives a damn about this window anyway? Politicians. American politicians. Who need to know what to talk about,
so as not to get into trouble and lose popularity, more specifically lose votes during elections. And they really have a federation there, unlike the Russian Federation. There is political activity, every state has its own regulations, it would be inconvenient to come to the home state of gun fans and start chanting that guns should be banned. Well, roughly speaking. And that Mackinac Center for Public Policy where Overton worked - still exists to this day. There's no mystique here. That is, the centre's employees would come to the sponsors and say: "So, in order to get into some local council, you'd better say this, but these topics shouldn't be spoken about". That's all. They helped politicians to be more politically literate in their statements.
Moreover, the very name "Overton Window" was not invented by Overton. It was invented three years after Overton himself died. The visual form of it was introduced by Overton's colleague Nathan Russell, and the concept now had a shell. Then, it was introduced by some guy named Joshua Treviño. He sort of refined this picture by adding the stages you are already familiar with: unacceptable, radical and the rest.
The Window became really popular after Joseph Lehman met the writer and politician Glenn Beck in 2010. This Glenn Beck wrote a fantastic bestseller and put the notorious Window in it, but his version acquired a fundamental difference - now the Window is not a guide model on how to look at the current public sentiment and adjust your actions, but a technology to change the consciousness of society with your own hands. This Lehman, who told Beck about the concept, is still featured on the website of the Centre for Public Policy, where, as an explanatory piece, he says: “There is a common misconception about the Overton Window and that is that politicians themselves move the Overton Window. That’s backwards. What politicians are good at is detecting where the Overton Window is and reacting to it at any point in time. The Overton Window cannot tell you if a policy is good or bad. What the Overton Window does is tell you what policies are on the verge of possibility. The ideas that are near the edge
of the Overton Window but just outside of it, maybe tomorrow’s policy reality.” And it was in 2010 when interest in the Overton Window flared up in America. But here... In Russia, the outburst was organised by a regular blogger in January 2014. He took Treviño's visuals, read Beck's book, added cannibalism to it and pressed the publish button. Who knew that this button would launch a real information bomb.
Here is a graph of interest in the Window since 2014 in Mother Russia. The interest started right after the January 14, 2014 publication of the article. And radicals of all sorts, from conspiracy theorists to ultra-patriots, have come to believe that there is the technology allowing to program the mind, although the original Overton Window is actually a way of looking at public sentiment to determine what people approve of. It is a model.
By the way, it turns out that there are even PROFESSORS who write articles that cannot be called academic, no matter how hard you try. This is straight from the website of a Russian university. The naming there is on the level of scandal rag and it’s named OVERTON WINDOW - A THREAT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY. And it tells about influencing people's minds, manipulating the masses. It uses the
words "zombification" directly. Turns out Overton was not helping American politicians get votes, he was studying how immoral value systems could be introduced into society. And what does it all come down to? Correct - the substitution of cultural values and traditions. And who's to blame? That's right, GAYS. But we have blurred the author's data for a reason. The fact is that our professors are in a very difficult position, their standards are tied to the type of scientific publications, so I do not know the author, it is quite possible that the article was made for formality, to provide them with something to eat. And it's not about the author. It is about the whole
phenomenon in our country. It is like accusing a cashier of demanding you to wear a mask. But to be fair, there are videos on the internet, at least in the Russian segment, debunking this conspiracy theory, pointing to the original meaning and how it transformed in the internet But... I hope you won't fall out of your chair now... the thing is, I believe that this twisted Overton Window theory… can work. Let's take another look at the 6 states and the 5 tools of transition to these states.
Let's leave the debunking of myths out of the brackets and highlight these 5 tools: - Introduction to the info field - Creating a soft term - Illusion of sensible debate - Popularisation through on-screen heroes - Legitimisation Personally, it seems to me that these are the usual tools of propaganda or political spin machines, whichever you prefer. Take the tool number two. Watch how it works. In Russia, some media and the government officials, including Putin, often replace the original word with a softer substitute so to make it sound less radical and more abstract and distant. So “gas explosions” become “pops”. “Economic crisis” becomes “Negative growth”. “Navalniy” becomes “The Berlin patient”. In general, politicians are not the only ones to use such a technique to soften the issue.
Not a cam-whore but a webcam model, not a charity but a donation. And here, we are no longer: - Please, spare something for the poor man, kind people... But: - Yooo, give me your donos, show activity in the chat! Woohoo! Next, tool number three. Well, labeling those who disagree is a good thing
in general! They are enemies of the state, extremists, foreign agents. The fourth tool - paying off actors, TV presenters and bloggers for the sake of praise or to express one's position as if they were in favour of the issue. Even in the fifth tool, where social polls are used... let me tell you something if you didn't know: in Belarus, the only polls that are allowed are those that are approved by their dictator Lukashenko, while in Russia the Levada Center, a prominent competitor to the governmental Opinion Research Center, has been added to the register of foreign agents. Yes, these points are not always 100% true, well, because this, like any theory, is ideal. You don't always have to use everything at once, like during the recent invasion of Russia in Ukraine, BUT sometimes, there is an almost textbook example: increase of the retirement age in Russia.
The Act was signed into law on October 3, 2018. But the information work started three years before that, in early 2015. Remember what the internet's mutated Overton Window started from. So, in January 2015, the Minister of Economic Development declares that the discussion about increasing the retirement age has a valid point. Well, here we go. Labour and Finance ministries say a refusal to increase retirement age will make it harder for people to get pensions on a number of occasions. Former finance minister speaks out in favour. And just a couple of days later, on the annual Direct Line Putin said:
Have you noticed? We have already reached the second stage. It is already possible to discuss the topic, but it may seem radical for the time being. The softening of the issue in this case is the "but look at them" approach. Yes, the softening will also include a law to
increase the retirement age for officials. - Well, it's not for us, it's for THEM! Then, softening messagings begin to appear saying that this is actually being done to "prolong the productive lives of retirees", and also messages spoken as a citizen and not a "government official". In 2017, we are in the third stage, when we are sort of already forced to recognise the importance of the issue, there are different points of view, we need to take a sensible attitude, as Putin’s spokesman explicitly says. There is no unified point of view on the pension reform, nor are there any decisions made. In 2018, we were already in the fourth stage, when statements about the necessity of the phenomenon are already emerging. Even popular Russian sell-out bloggers and influencers joined the informational whirlwind speaking out, of course, in favour of the issue.
So, on October 3, 2018, the act has officially been signed. Stage five is over. The mutated Overton Window was being moved for about 3 years from unacceptable to legislative stage. If the example with the increase of retirement age seemed alien to you, let’s take a look at another example. The one you most certainly know of – the war between Russian authorities and Ukraine. Like we said before you don't always have to use every tool of the Overton Window all at once. That’s exactly the case here.
All of you know there is a conflict on the Ukrainian soil, the most sensible part of people call it war. But “war” sounds radical and harsh, doesn’t it? Why don’t we deescalate the term to pacify “true” Russian patriots and possibly the rest of the world? “Special military operation”. Sounds good enough. At least it does so for Putin who initiated calling the invasion a special military operation. Well, if that doesn’t seem soft enough,
they’ve also got a name with a noble message in it - Liberation operation. People in Duma and the senator from Crimea, for example, do not mind claiming that what’s happening in Ukraine, Donbass and Lugansk is a liberation operation in order to set people free from the fascist regime. This is how authorities tried to soften the term “war”. Perhaps, that might have worked for some, but generally it's been to no avail. Funny enough, and here I’m getting ahead of myself a little, authorities have banned certain words in media so you can no longer call the conflict a “war”, an “assault” and an “invasion”. Call the thing correctly – Special. Military. Operation. Or else get blocked. Period. But does this Overton Window really affect the mind? Do people really believe in it? No, of course not.
For a mutated window to work it vitally needs 2 pillars: 1) Irremovability of power 2) Forceful resolution of disagreements And voila. If the governing system knows that it will stay for another 20 years, then it can plan for 10-20 years of change. And if you add the willingness to deal with disagreements by force... then there is no conspiracy theory, much less mysticism. People just don't want to get their heads clubbed with a rubber baton. However, the creators of the Overton concept do admit that sometimes politicians do move it at their own will.
Well, that happens so over there, in the US. But it’s not that uncommon in a place where a vertical power structure has been developing for about 20 years. It's more of a rule here. In Russia, we often remember our delightful situation eight years ago. When approvals for protest were not required, when you could not get jail time for posting so-called unwanted pictures, when the feelings of religious could not be offended, when the media and even individuals could not be declared as foreign agents. All this was unthinkable then, but now it is a legal norm. Here, of course, the sophisticated viewer may argue that we have fallen into Learned Helplessness in this block, or that it is essentially five stages of accepting the inevitable, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I would even say that the mutated on the Internet version of the
Overton Window is a refined instruction of Learned Helplessness at the state level, possible only in the presence of irremovability of power and forceful resolution of disagreements. And knowing this, while looking at today’s news, looking at today's events, you can guess future possible scenarios for next 3 or 5 years. What seems unthinkable today could become the legislation tomorrow.
2022-03-19