Know Thyself and the War for Your Mind
Time to dust off the armour of some ancient maxims
“It is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War (circa 475-221 BCE)
“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”
Socrates (470-399 BCE)
The axiom “Know Thyself” has been around since time immemorial. On its face, the simple message is to know who you are, and to use that as a starting point for developing your own potential and facing down would-be foes. Both Socrates and the legendary military strategist, Sun Tzu, saw the value in this seemingly simple act.
But the advice to “know thyself” takes on a new resonance in our modern information age, where it seems every corporation, government body, and their dog wants to know more about us with every passing day.
Do you remember the first time you noticed an ad targeted at you after making a random comment within earshot of a device connected to the internet? I’ll never forget the time I was describing an obscure Alan Parsons music album to my dad while my computer was on in the next room – only to discover an Amazon ad for exactly that album when I went back online.
It's one thing to feel like you’re being monitored opportunistically by advertisers hoping to lure you into making some kind of purchase – it’s another thing to feel like, well… like you’re never really alone.
Indeed, the “information age” we find ourselves in has turned the simplest details of our daily lives into commodities to be bought and sold. Where you go, who you call, what you buy – all of this data about our movements through life are not just being tracked, but in some cases sold. Most of the time we don’t even know that it is being collected, much less who is interested in it and why.
There was a big stir a little over a decade ago when the former NSA contractor Ed Snowden started warning us about the surveillance activities the US government was undertaking on its international allies and even on its own citizens. Next came journalist Glenn Greenwald warning us about PRISM, another NSA project that gave the security agency access to people’s search history, their emails, file transfers and live chats, all with a little help from their friends at Google, Facebook and Apple.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the next thing Greenwald was reporting on was not just data collection – but the use of the same platforms where they’d been spying on us (Twitter, Facebook and Youtube) to actually change our behaviour. The British government was particularly “aggressive and eager” in this area, with one intelligence unit saying its purpose was to “[use] online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world.”
If that sends a chill down your spine, you’ve been paying attention over the past 4 years. That bit about the British government being so interested in “making something happen” sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?
When the covid plandemic was rolled out across Britain and the world, the UK’s “Nudge Unit” (officially known as the Behavioural Insight Team) became a household word. Originally set up by the UK government in 2010, the Behavioural Insight Team has since become completely owned by a “charitable” group called Nesta. This has allowed it to set up shop in the US, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The purpose of the Team is “to influence public thinking and decision making in order to improve compliance with government policy.”
And while it was originally focused on things like getting people to pay their taxes or donate their organs, during the plandemic the unit became more widely known for “nudging” people towards complying with unprecedented and even invasive measures to protect us from … the common cold.
It's interesting that the justification for all the surveillance and ubiquitous “sharing” of the supposedly mundane details of our lives always seems to fall into one of two categories: protecting us from invisible terrorists, or protecting us from invisible diseases. Or we could just reduce it all down to keeping us safe.
Of course, governments finding excuses to control people, even if that comes in the form of smothering us in cotton wool, is really nothing new. The “Five Eyes” alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has been monitoring world-wide communications since the close of WWII. And CCTVs have been in use by various governments around the world since the 1960s. But as we’ve moved from using telephone lines to satellites to wirelessly connected smart phones, the speed and ease with which our data can be gathered has accelerated.
And now all those tiny bits of data on us can be analyzed in real time using AI, while simultaneously monitoring our reactions to various sophisticated behavioural modification campaigns.
We find ourselves in a situation where, if you are not completely paranoid about being watched, you may very well be mentally ill. Or at least a moron of the lowest order.
But before you go rummaging through the bathroom cabinet for razor blades, consider the bigger picture. And no, I’m not talking about an 85-inch flat screen TV broadcasting in 4K. I’m talking about the larger reality we are living within, spatially and temporally.
The quotes at the beginning of this article were uttered (as far as we know) well over 2,000 years ago. Socrates’s admonition to “know thyself” wasn’t just graffiti on a wall – it was engraved above the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War may be available in paperback today, but the original manuscript was recorded in brushed ink on painstakingly prepared strips of bamboo.
Clearly, knowing yourself and knowing your enemy has been valuable advice for quite some time. The business of understanding and defending your own mind is an age-old thing, and has been advocated by sages from East to West.
The big difference we are dealing with today really centers around the enemy’s use of AI to crunch noughts and ones. That gives them a lot of power – or does it? What exactly is data, and what is information?
Data is just a collection of little facts, bits and pieces of numbers or text that has no inherent meaning in and of themselves. Information is data that has been analysed and organized into something that does have meaning. The individual pixels that make up a picture are a kind of data – once they are organized into a picture that can be interpreted as a recognizable object, you are looking at information.
Who is going to be better at organizing the data, the tiny details of your life, into the most meaningful information? Obviously, the evil number crunchers employed by our overlords to keep us under control have their own idea of what is useful information, and that usually has something to do with making money, or keeping us fearful and hence more compliant. But we can compile our own information on ourselves, and that can take things to a whole other level.
Consider the value of critical thinking and the value of intuitive thinking. Critical thinking is the ability to analyse and evaluate situations and events based on objective facts, and to thereby to make reasoned judgements about a particular matter. It is usually a “step-by-step” process. Intuitive thinking proceeds from a more subjective path of reasoning, and tends to be characterized by “aha” moments that come about as a result of unconscious processes.
You could loosely call critical thinking a masculine pattern of thought, and intuitive thinking a feminine one. (Though obviously, women can be critical thinkers and men can be very intuitive.) Both critical and intuitive thinking processes have their place in helping us find our way in daily life. Using the appropriate method in the appropriate situation requires experience, and using the two in tandem could be called “holistic” thinking – a way of contemplating the world that involves our entire being.
This is the kind of thinking that we each can bring to bear in applying the maxim “know thyself,” and we can equally apply it to Sun Tzu’s exhortation that we know our enemies as well as ourselves.
Do you think AI can do the same thing? Do you think a computer with lots and lots of RAM can take data about you, data of a nature that can be transmitted wirelessly from one man-made device to another, and come up with the kind of information that we can arrive at through holistic thinking?
I think not.
We were each created by a divine intelligence, an intelligence that left a calling card inside us known as our conscience. That quiet little voice inside us can be an implacable guide to reaching the truth. Computers, AI, and all the related surveillance paraphernalia are but man-made objects. They might be capable of very fast computations, but they are hardly capable of taking in the bigger picture, and coming up with truly meaningful conclusions about it or ourselves.
Given its oppressive nature and its track record, should we be afraid of the surveillance state?
I think we should be wary of it. But I don’t think we should bend to their desire for us to live in a constant state of paranoia or fear, either. I’d rather take their eagerness to “get to know me” as an incentive to get to know myself, such that I am less vulnerable to their machinations.
As commenter Aelred A. put it so astutely:
“Today, it takes courage to become an individual (as Jung showed us, individuation is the goal of living). It's the hardest thing to do and the most satisfying (as most difficult things are). This new year is predicted to be historic and probably not pleasantly so, but like everything else in life, it can guide us toward our goal of individuation whatever happens. We are more than we know, and always will be.”
We don’t need to live in fear of those who think they are our overlords. In many ways, it is they who are afraid of us, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so damn hard to micromanage every waking, breathing second of our lives. We just need to have the courage to know ourselves as well as we can, and double down on insisting that the truth matters.
And like Sun Tzu said in The Art of War: we also need to know our enemy. If you’re reading this substack, you’re already half way there.
To not live in fear...
That's the thing about being clear-sighted--the more clearly you see the world, the more menacing it becomes. That's why it takes actual courage to act in terms of the world as it really is. Reality isn't for the faint of heart. I think there are people, maybe a lot of people, who make almost a conscious decision just not to know.
In the immigration restriction movement, few will allow themselves to speak honestly about the primary driver of our civilization-ending immigration policies--Jewish political power. Which means the movement is doomed to fail.
Maybe the cattle entering the slaughterhouse are better off not knowing what's coming. But we aren't cattle. Unless we choose to be. When we choose to be proud men and women, the inheritors of a glorious civilization, unafraid of the truth, the fear turns to resolve. We may all end up in the slaughterhouse, but it won't be as cattle.
Important message. Great essay, Anne.
You know who wants to control every detail of the people, who they trap in a ghetto to make the task easier?
The rabbis.