Ministry of Truth

Live Long and Prosper

Who controls the Past controls the Future
Who controls the Present controls the Past

— George Orwell (1903 – 50), Nineteen Eight-Four, 1949.


The struggle of Man against Power
Is the struggle of Memory against Forgetting

— Milan Kundera (1929), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1979.

Three Categories of Information Disorder

(Claire Wardle, A New World Disorder, Scientific American, September 2019, p 90)

Edward Bernays (1891 – 1995):
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government that is the true ruling power of this country.
We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. …
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether

• in the sphere of politics or business, [or]
• in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,

we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who:

• pull the wires [that] control the public mind,
• harness old social forces, and
• contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

(Organizing Chaos, Propaganda, Chapter 1, 1928, emphasis added.


Stuart Ewen (1945) [Historian of Public Relations]:
[In a consumer society, it's] not that the people are in charge, but that the people's desires are in charge.


Paul Mazur [Lehman Brothers]:
We must shift … from a needs to a desires culture.
People must be trained to desire — to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.
We must shape a new mentality …
Man's desires must overshadow his needs.
(Adam Curtis, Happiness Machines, The Century of the Self, Episode 1, 2002)


Propaganda:
A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people.
(Wiktionary, 16 February 2013)


Danny Glover:
Every aspect of our lives — from what we buy, what is sold to us, who produces it — all those things are connected.
It's not only a monopoly of wealth, it's a monopoly of information …


Noam Chompsky (1928):
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control … exercised through the mass media.
(Jean-Philippe Tremblay, Shadows of Liberty, 2012)


Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809):
When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
(1776)


Edward Murrow (1908 – 1965):
We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.
Not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak, and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent …
We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.
We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world.
But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. …

[Our] history will be what we make it.
If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. …
Good night, and good luck.
(George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck, 2005)

Ours For The Taking

We have fought [and won] without a single bullet being fired.

— Nigel Farage (1964), 24 June 2016.


There's a systems failure in this country and across the West.
We're languishing.
We're drifting without a vision or a purpose.
What do you do … when there's a systems failure?
You reset.

— Dominic Cummings (1971)

Craig Oliver (1969) [Director of Communications for David Cameron, 2011–16]:
There's the danger [with the Brexit referendum] of having unleashed something which we can't then control.

Michael Gove (1967) [Conservative Cabinet Minister]:
[David Cameron] said, if I get what I want, and we win this, it will destroy him.

Dominic Cummings (1971) [Political Strategist]:
[The social network data miners at AggregateIQ have found] 3 million potential voters not on any voter database …
Remain have no idea they exist.
If we can reach 'em, they're ours for the taking.

(Toby Haynes, Brexit: The Uncivil War, Channel 4 Television, 2019)

Are You A Dog?

Big Ideas 2013

ABC Radio National: Big Ideas

The Last Tree

Arlo Guthrie (1947)

I remember bein' a little kid one day, you know, and the teacher said:

When you see the white blast out of the school room window and the mushroom cloud, be sure and get under the desk right away. …

And that's fine, when you're five years old, or six years old.
You have to do what they say.

But when you're 12 or 13 and you start realizing it doesn't matter which way you fry.
That these people are actually insane, or they're just stupid.
And, either way, you're not expected to listen to them any more.
And so there was a time in the 60s, when it seemed like the whole world had a bunch of young people who said:

What else are these people tellin us, that is as ridiculous as that?

And so, we had, what we would call these days … a cultural revolution. …
It didn't change everything.
But it changed enough stuff.

Now we're talking about the environment.
We're arguing about it. …
We weren't doin that 50 years ago.
There was only one way to think about it, and that was:

Pollute to make money is the best way to do everything!

And that's changed.
It's changed because people started askin questions.

It doesn't matter whether they're on the Right, the Left, the this or that …
There needs to be people in every group who ask that group questions that an outsider could never ask.
So it's important to make friends in all the different groups, in all the different cultures, in all the different places …
And so that you support each other by having at least that attitude. …

I hate idea that, if you have enough money, and you have enough wealth, and you have enough influence — that you can influence entire nations, and groups of people, and take advantage of their, either, poverty or their fears, or their whatever … so that you profit by it.
Only for a short run.
You can destroy the whole world, for what?
Money.

You know, there's an old Cree Indian saying …

After you've poisoned the last lake,
And you've cut the last tree,
And you've killed the last river,
Only then will people realize that you can't eat money. …

I don't want to wait for that.
It's important to get out and talk about that.
You don't have to be right.
It's not a matter of bein right.
It's a matter of not being … herded, like some mindless cattle herd just goin down the road, goin along with the program, without at least askin.
And that's when things change.
When people are at least not afraid to ask.

(15 August 2013)

Working Life 2

Belinda Probert

Housework as a Female Occupation

The home, which is [your husband's] paradise, is

• your handiwork,
• your refuge,
• your pride,
• your castle,
• your very, very own,
• your actual self,
• a part of you inseparable.

It is your heart and brain translated into the arrangement of daily life.

(The Australian Housewives' Manual, 1885)

The Future of Work

[Technological] change is not a neutral process driven by scientific progress or an abstract concern with efficiency.
On the contrary, specific technologies are developed and applied as a result of pressure form identifiable social groups pursuing their particular [interests.]
Nor is it the case, once these technologies have been developed, that the way they are used will be shaped by considerations of broad social benefits.
Rather, the use that is made of them is determined by the economic and social relations within which they are introduced.
(p 164)

[Whether the] labour-saving potential of new technology [will be realized or not] is not something which will be democratically decided or fairly shared if [the existing system of] economic, social and political [relations] remains unchanged.
(p 171)

It is more likely that technological change will lead to permanent unemployment for some … rather than shorter working hours for all.
(p 172)

Sectoral Impacts

World Bank: Four Degree World

Ecosystems and Biodiversity

Analysis of the exposure of 185 eco-regions of exceptional biodiversity … to extreme monthly temperature and precipitation conditions in the 21st century … shows that within 60 years almost all of the regions … will experience extreme temperature conditions …
[Large-scale] loss of biodiversity is likely to occur … with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth´s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience.

(Turn Down the Heat, 2012, p 53)