Behavioural modification

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Isaiah 35:5

Last week’s update, “Shopworn narratives”, chronicled the fact that the good citizens of Canada have long been suffering through a plethora of nonsensical and unsubstantiated narratives in firehose fashion. These included “diversity is our strength”, the “science is settled” and the “far right”, as identified by our ruling classes, are “deeply racist” and extremist.

It’s as though the common folk cannot see such realities for themselves and must be nudged, no coerced, to see the light of day that has so far evaded their cognitive abilities. For the more discerning amongst us the question inevitably arises, are we misconstruing the way things actually are and in need of help with removing the scales from our eyes or are we being fed a plate of smelly codswallop? As noted in the logic and facts presented within the “update”, the evidence at hand supports the latter case and is now resulting in Canadians gagging on stinking buffets chock full of deceit, deception and dishonesty.

The case is further made by the fact that the mere asking of such questions inevitably results in a barrage of invective aimed directly at the questioner. Who could forget the slings and arrows suffered by the Freedom Convoy 2022 protesters as they were pilloried as “Russian assets” by their own ruling class and then saw their supporters doxed by elements of the Canadian legacy media. How stark was the contrast between this vitriol and the cross-country support offered the truckers by rank-and-file Canadians who would pour some $20 million into their coffers – in a matter of days? The disjunct is an interesting one as it speaks to the fact that narratives that falsely depict reality are not sufficient on their own to convince every citizen that traditional worldviews are no longer relevant. Indeed, as President Abraham Lincoln famously said, “you cannot fool all of the people all of the time” and it might be further stated that lying to some just might make the scales fall from their eyes and cause them to dig in against such bully tactics!

It would seem that, given an objective that requires mass acceptance of a foreign or less-than-honest concept, narratives on their own cannot be expected to suffice. Measures will need to be expanded to include those capable of modifying the perceptions and behaviour of an individual, or even whole populations, to effectively counter an onset of “cognitive dissonance”. Such dissonance comes in the form of a discomfort that is felt when an individual, or a society, is confronted with two or more ideas or beliefs that clash and contradict each other. And so it is that over the years techniques and comprehensive sciences have been developed to alter the cognition and behaviour of a target audience to the benefit of a manipulating force. The history of such “psychological warfare” operations go back to the times of Xerxes and Genghis Khan and have been refined and made extremely effective over the intervening ages.

Behavioural modification

When it comes to the onset of psychological warfare or “psyops” being used in Canada against its own citizens, one needs to begin with something called “behavioural modification”. This field of study had its beginnings with the likes of I. Pavlov and B.F. Skinner in the early decades of the 20th century and focuses “on changing an individual’s environment in ways that increase the likelihood that certain behaviors will occur”. The applications of behaviour modification are now wide and varied and can be seen to be impacting the everyday citizen on a daily basis. From product advertising to education to parenting to health and wellness and beyond, behavioural plans and techniques are shaping our every waking moment. It is interesting to note that such programs were introduced into Western systems of governance with President Obama’s first administration through his regulatory czar, Cass Sundstein. Sundstein implemented the “nudge” theory on a national basis to “help people do better for themselves (and the rest of us) with small changes—nudges—in the structure of the choices people face”.

The “nudge” idea was seen by its progenitors as a public service to rank-and-file citizens who just did not have the time or the intelligence to know what was best for them. This “libertarian paternalism”, as it would come to be known, proudly advertised the fact that it didn’t relieve the citizen of his free will. After all, for any preferred default option that was presented to an individual there would be an accompanying opt-out alternative. And so it is with driver’s licenses that automatically enroll you into an organ transplant program “voluntarily” unless you take the time and effort to formerly opt-out of the virtuous, but not-so-transparent, offer. The “nudge” concept that promised win-win solutions with altruistic aims being realized without impinging on an individual’s ability to choose freely proved, however, to be a cover for the co-optation of the representative democracies of the West.

The American move to “nudge” its citizens down preferred paths didn’t take long to cross the border into Canada. Leading the charge would be government agencies like Policy Horizons Canada that can be seen, in its policy document, “Exploring Change in Social Connection”, to be preparing the Canadian public to accept and deal with a world in which “data-centric reputations and ratings become an integral part of social life”. One cannot help but feel that the agency has been charged with softening Canadians up for a new reality that embraces a Chinese-style “social credit system” that surveils and grades citizens on the basis of their conformity with the desires of a centralized authority. Certainly, there is nothing in Policy Horizons Canada prescriptions that call for the reining in of such excessive powers. Rather than this, it discusses the need to sacrifice personal autonomy in the face of draconian measures like those associated with the Wuhan virus lockdowns in order to facilitate and retain critical “social connections”.

Engineering reality

The Canadian government was no laggard in deploying behavioural modification techniques both before and after the onset of the much-ballyhooed Wuhan virus pandemic. Even before exhortations to “flatten the curve” hit the streets in early 2020, RCMP In Alberta were busy raiding private homes of people who had been evacuated due to floods allegedly with a mind to illegally confiscate personal firearms. In doing so, they “failed to comply with legal requirements concerning the seizure of firearms.” The RCMP members exceeded their authority by seizing some guns that were properly secured or that were not "in plain view." They failed to adequately plan for communications with the public during the catastrophe, which created difficulties when word of the forced entries and seizures began circulating. The heroes had become the villains in short order. And if that was not enough, the federal force would be seen to take the lead in enforcing quarantine measures even as the Canadian military undertook psyops to coerce populations to hunker down in the face of phoney wolf scares!

The use of Canadian behavioural modification programs and security services may have had a part to play in coercing Canadians to bow down before Wuhan virus pandemic dictates. They were not, however, the major factor in forcing compliance with decidedly draconian measures. The real impetus behind the herding of a whole population would come from the medical and public health communities that were afforded carte blanche to shut the country down. LCol Dave Redman (Ret’d), an emergency preparedness expert with the government of Alberta, would note that normal emergency management protocols, engineered by a cross section of representatives from all provincial agencies and institutions, would be thrown out the window leaving the citizen, and society writ large, with no voice at the decision-making table. Instead, economic considerations, civil liberties and long-standing social constructs would be trashed to make way for rule by diktat.

Public health authorities may have been given a free hand in shaping the nation’s response to the Wuhan virus pandemic but the importance of behavioural modification in engineering a new reality cannot be underestimated. In bringing Cass Sundstein’s “nudge” theory to bear in his administration, Barak Obama would effectively begin the process of relacing a representative democracy where citizens had the power to input the political process with a benevolent dictatorship that would make better decisions on their behalf. The way would be cleared to promote virtuous, but unsubstantiated, narratives as noted in our last update but, more than this, psyops based on emotional scripts focusing on hereditary fears like fear of loss, social rejection or danger would be allowed to come forward with little pushback by an anaesthetized public. After all and as even Canadian courts insist, our authorities should not be “second guessed”?

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