The Subtle war on Noticing

Voluntary Blindness

Photo by David Underland on Unsplash

There’s an interesting meta Ad that encourages people to buy ad space. It’s a set of eyes looking at some bold text and it usually says something like, “Hey, you looked! It works.” Quite often these can be seen on bus stop signs, above freeways. So when you're driving, taking transit or you're walking by you see these two big cartoon eyes, and bright space that looks out of place so you’re eyes are naturally drawn towards it. There is a similar effect when we notice things that are out of place in society. Our eyes are naturally drawn to urban decay and blight, broken and boarded up windows, people wearing gang colors, people ranting and raving to the air, open drug use and more. On the internet our eyes are drawn to the unnatural speeches that seem to contradict reality. Some examples from twitter: We are told that things are more affordable yet prices are up and shelves are more empty. We are told that crime is declining since the 80’s yet we can see an increase in criminal behavior happening around us or experience it first hand. There’s so many examples of us noticing things that don’t make sense. Yet when we notice these things there is a pressure, an absolute pressure from others and from society in general to conform to a set of excuses that take the power out of our hands and makes the issues seem too large for us to handle. The solution tends to involve: more taxation, expanding the Government, more rules & laws on already law abiding citizens to protect us from those who are not following the social contract.

The Subtle War on Noticing

I've been thinking about this for awhile because there's a war out there. It's the war on noticing. You're not supposed to notice certain things. I’ve seen it become a vernacular online. “Why do you care?” “How does it affect you?” “What purpose does this serve?” “It’s none of your business”. These are all efforts to discredit your observations of reality. They are meant to make you feel ashamed for seeing something and even worse talking about it. It’s a humiliation ritual, a gas lighting routine. It’s also a form of tone policing online and in person. It’s meant to put you on the defensive, to shut you up. It’s at worst a form of social conditioning that wants to force your views to align with the acceptable views of the State. Like the Matrix when Neo notices the woman in the red dress, everyone else seems unaware of the anomaly…but do they really not notice or are they so plugged into a system that enforces conformity, groupthink and manufactures consent to a narrative that their mind refuse to register what is occurring before their eyes?

The Stacking Effect on Noticing

One of the problems with noticing, is that once you start noticing one thing it can quickly compound itself into noticing other problems. If I notice that there is a meth addict smoking tinfoil outside of McDonalds while threatening people who walk in/out and I call the Police I get to notice how long it takes for them to arrive, or maybe they tell you they’re busy and it’s not a priority crime. Once they do arrive maybe they don’t arrest him and he comes back, or threatens you for calling. If he does something violent maybe you notice he’s out two hours later and back in the same spot. Maybe you notice the very lenient sentence he got and next time he stabs someone 50 times and you notice that maybe he should’ve been in jail not out wandering the streets. Here’s some more compound noticing effects. Perhaps you go on Face Book or Twitter and you comment how you noticed these things and you’ll get a barrage of people telling you to: stop noticing, you noticed wrong, your noticing doesn’t help, your noticing is rude, your noticing violates someone’s rights, etc…

Suddenly you find yourself in a state of confusion. All you’ve done is notice how broken everything appears to you. Yet people, often people in upper middle class jobs, either don’t notice (voluntarily) or they don’t want you to notice the flaws and cracks in the system. Similar again to Neo recognizing that the Matrix is fake and a system of control. Let’s say you don’t stop your behavior, you fail to yield to the warnings of those who want you to remain blissfully unaware, the next will be punishment.

Fox News

The punishment for noticing.

Just like in the Matrix, as Neo begins to vocalize and take action based on his inability to remain silent on the things he’s noticed the system fights back against him. The post modern equivalency to this is the perpetual banishment from society via a “cancellation” The system doesn’t need “agents” who take over the bodies of those plugged into the system. The system is the group of people who are so invested in the idea that their ideological leanings are right and just that they’ll voluntarily destroy their opponents and often gain smug satisfaction from it. They’ll abuse the social contract, with the cooperation and egging on from the State and Private Capital, to have their opponent removed from the equation all together which will gain them traction in their own circles. They will use the power we’ve given private and public employers to police people’s opinions and beliefs outside of the workplace to have them removed from contemporary society. An agent for the State will see someone complaining about the high levels of crime, the grooming of children, the illegal immigrant crisis or whatever the issue of the day is and begin a campaign of harassment towards that person until four things generally occur:

1. The person loses their primary source of income or ability to store money in a bank

2. The person is separated from friends and family (divorce, partner loses their job as well, friends distance themselves)

3. The person loses social standing (titles, rank, medals, letters are stripped from them)

4. The person is digitally ousted (removal of social media account support network)

5. (optional) The person has the legal system used against them in a form of legal warfare.

Cultural sadists will call this “accountability” but it’s far more insidious then that because the above steps are hoping to have one of the two options (or maybe even both) occur:

1. The person submits to the mob, apologizes, agrees to “do the work”, takes all the courses and accepts all the humiliation rituals involved. They will eventually be accepted back into the system but always with a eye on them to ensure they are compliant. Unlike 1984 O’brian here in 2023 doesn’t need you to believe it (although that is preferred) your silence will suffice to them. You may notice things still but you wouldn’t dare speak of them, in most cases you’ll simply become part of the crowd because noticing without speaking will drive you to madness. Unlike Cypher in the Matrix, there is no way to come back fully once you’ve noticed too many things.

2. You kill yourself.

In this new world we’ve allowed to be cultivated, the only people who are supposed to comment on any issues are people whom the system has deemed responsible enough to overcome reality. I would recommend that one watch the show Thank You For Smoking for examples on this. If the issue is crime, they won’t get a bunch of front line cops, EMS workers or late night gas station security guards to talk about it, they literally get paid to notice ( but their pay is also tied to their silence). Nope, they’ll get a Luxury Liberal Criminologist from a University to talk about it or some Public Relations mouth piece.

Credentialism since the pandemic, has become an even more major player in the war on Noticing. If you notice that there’s a lot of broken windows at your local businesses you can be assured that the State will find a State sympathetic expert who will tell you that Crime has been dropping since the 80’s, the chance of being randomly attacked is very low, businesses have insurance, these people are hurting and need our support not hate, people that notice these things are bigots and they lack empathy, etc… Name any social issue and the State issued manufacturing consent mouth pieces will find a way to tell you that your noticing is a signal of your moral and ethical depravity. If the issue is contentious enough they’ll even mention how they are fixing it, however the way they claim they are fixing the issue often falls far short from an actual solution.

Should the issue not be resolved by the above methods the State may resort to a cancelling process, there are groups in Canada funded by the Government who’s sole purpose is to do this on the behest of the State. They keep a public archive of people they’ve targeted. Once you fall in their crosshairs you are done. They’ve been sued successfully before but that won’t stop them. In the war on noticing, they’re the State’s spy arm. Always seeking out people in their never ending purity spiral.

Should you not be dissuaded by the lost of income, family and friends, social status and the loss of your professional credentials. The final method they have to get you to fall in line is to send in the shock troops. Paid agitators will come to your house, your workplace, etc… to stage and hold a demonstration. Bonus points for them if they can get away with violence and crime without being hassled by the authorities. These are the young revolutionary arm of the leftist parties. Don’t kid yourself, they train for this. They understand how to bend the law right to the breaking point and they are often left to do worse with little consequences. The goal of course is for you to submit to the two options I mentioned above or to goad you into doing something that gets you into legal trouble.

So at the end of the day you need to make a choice. Similar to Neo in the Matrix. Do you take the blue pill and settle into a comfortable enough state of existence, ignoring the cracks and flaws in the system, embracing mediocrity? And either joining in on attacking people or staying quiet because you don’t want trouble?

Or do you decide to notice and make your observations heard?