Wokeism (newdiscourses.com)
I do cognitive modeling using a neurologically-sound cognitive theory as a meta-theory. In plain English, I have found that understanding how the mind works makes it possible to explain many areas of human thought and behavior, including language acquisition and linguistics, economics, neurology, Big Five, theology, scientific thought, and mathematical thought. Every time I use the cognitive model of mental symmetry to explain some field or system, I find that it emerges not just unscathed but actually refined. In order to add rigor to this process, I analyze systems and books rather than isolated facts. I recently started writing an essay on wokeism and stumbled across the newdiscourses.com website of James Lindsay. After realizing how much material there is on that site, I thought it would be more useful to do a cognitive analysis of the website. I did not listen to any of the audio material but I have gone through most of the articles as well as the ‘social justice encyclopedia’. Lindsay’s material fits nicely into the cognitive model of mental symmetry and analyzing this site also helped to clarify several concepts of mental symmetry. Thus, this essay places Lindsay’s material within a larger picture by providing a cognitive explanation for what mental circuits wokeism is using, why it developed, and why it can be treated as a form of Marxism.
This hundred page essay has been written as a standalone unit, which means that it should not be necessary to refer to other essays for supplementary information. The first part of this essay will place the concepts mentioned on newdiscourses.com into the theory of mental symmetry by quoting from a number of different articles. This mapping will lay the foundation for the second part of the essay which will then look more closely at specific key articles. The order will be as follows:
(Note: A 28 page analysis of Edward Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda and Bernays’ relationship to Nazi propaganda has been added to the end of this essay.)
Table of Contents
1) Introduce the theory of mental symmetry.
2) Compare the truth of science with the ‘truth’ of wokeism.
3) Use the concept of mental networks to explain wokeist thought.
4) Interpret social hierarchy cognitively as dueling mental networks.
5) Examine Thomas Kuhn’s concept of scientific paradigms.
6) Describe the two primary overgeneralizations of wokeism.
7) Discuss the shift from inequality to equity.
8) Explore the mindset of Critical Race Theory.
9) Explain the cognitive basis for ideology.
10) Analyze the educational approach of Paulo Freire.
11) Examine the cognitive legitimacy of Social Emotional Learning.
12) Discuss the cognitive implications of gender.
13) Examine the cognitive implications of Queer Theory.
14) Examine Lindsay’s analysis of Marxism.
15) Discuss the four virtues that Lindsay says are required to recover from wokeism.
16) Discuss Lindsay’s interpretation of wokeism as a form of Gnosticism.
17) Examine Lindsay’s comparison of wokeism to a cult.
The following sections look at the effect of Edward Bernays upon propaganda.
a) Six factors of World War I propaganda.
b) The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the six factors.
c) British and German World War I propaganda.
d) Edward Bernays and propaganda.
e) Bernays and Nazism.
f) Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda.
g) Bernays’ description of mental networks.
h) Mass media and the individual.
i) Propaganda and TMNs.
j) The method of Bernays.
Brief History
Mental symmetry models the mind as seven interacting high-level cognitive modules. It began in the 1970s as a system of cognitive styles based in a list of seven ‘spiritual gifts’ described in Romans 12:6-8. This list was first interpreted as a set of cognitive styles in the 1970s and is still taught in various Christian circles. In the early 1980s my brother (Lane Friesen, 1986a, 1986b) used these seven categories to analyze 200 biographies. The result was a list of psychological traits for each of the seven categories. My brother and I then realized that each list of traits could be summarized by a simple form of cognitive processing. I focused upon learning neurology and came to the conclusion that each of these seven basic forms of cognitive processing corresponds with the functioning of a major region of the brain.
This mapping onto brain regions led to a theoretical dilemma. On the one hand, each cognitive style emphasizes mental processing that is being done by one portion of the brain. On the other hand, everyone has a complete brain. The only solution was to propose that cognitive style corresponds in some way to consciousness: Everyone has a mind that contains all seven cognitive modules. But each cognitive style is conscious in one cognitive module while the other six modules function automonously under the surface.
This could be described as a social theory of cognition, but the direction is the opposite. The typical social theory views the mind as a tabula rasa which acquires its content through social interaction between people. Mental symmetry views the mind as seven different forms of processing (cognitive modules) that interact ‘socially’ within the mind to generate thought and behavior, and mental symmetry suggests that internal ‘social’ interaction between cognitive modules is more fundamental than external social interaction between people. Stated more simply, the way that I treat some form of processing within my mind will determine how I respond when encountering this form of processing externally. Thus, mental symmetry suggests that wokeist writings should not be viewed as statements about reality but rather as accurate observations of what is happening within the mind of the wokeist individual. Thus, the term ‘wokeist mind’ will be used to refer to what is happening within the mind of a person who espouses wokeism. Summarizing, wokeism can be analyzed cognitively as an accurate description of what is happening within the wokeist mind. And yes, I know that this approach massively violates basic assumptions of wokeism. But this approach works, and what works takes precedence over assumptions. Describing this approach more generally, postmodernism says that objective truth is just a matter of opinion. Cognitive analysis responds that opinion is actually guided by cognitive truth.
This does not mean that environment is irrelevant. On the contrary, the initial programming of the seven cognitive modules is acquired from the physical and social environments through physical sensation, parenting, education, and social interaction. This process of mental programming is described by Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. However, in the same way that a child learns a new language automatically while an adult has to contend with existing linguistic and cultural knowledge when learning a new language, so the initial programming of the mind happens largely automatically as a result of external input, while adult social interaction has to contend with existing internal mental content.
Returning to neurology, enough was known about the brain in the 1980s to map cognitive modules onto brain regions in a general manner. This resulted in a simple model of the mind known as the diagram of mental symmetry. Using this diagram to analyze the list of traits gathered from biographies made it possible to ‘run ahead’ of neurology and describe the nature of each cognitive module in substantial detail. Neurology has now largely ‘caught up’ and a detailed mapping of cognitive modules onto current neurology was recently done (Friesen, 2019). Science wants theories to make predictions. This detailed mapping can be viewed as a prediction because mental symmetry used cognitive analysis to predict the functioning of cognitive modules which has been confirmed by neurological research.
Mental symmetry was initially used as a cognitive theory to explain traits gathered from studying biographies and observing people. It was then used as a theory of cognitive development by posing the following question: If the mind is composed of seven cognitive modules that interact in a specific manner, then how can the mind be programmed so that all seven modules function in a cooperative manner? Saying this more generally, how does one achieve mental wholeness? Mental symmetry is currently being used as a cognitive meta-theory to explain the thinking and behavior of a number of different fields of thought, including linguistics and second language acquisition, mathematical thought, theology and scientific thought, the Big Five personality system, culture and ideology, as well as other authors at a less rigorous level. In each case it was discovered that mental symmetry could be used successfully to explain the thinking of that field and each analysis added details to the theory of mental symmetry. It was also discovered that in each case the approach taken by mental symmetry violated fundamental assumptions of scholars within that field, making it impossible to publish papers within peer-reviewed journals. This problem first appeared when studying biographies, because those who were teaching Romans 12 spiritual gifts from a religious perspective regarded studying biographies as ‘too secular’. However, several papers have been posted on researchgate, academia.edu, and psyarxiv which are being read.
More personally, I am a white male who has experienced repeated, systemic, social marginalization primarily because of my insistence upon standing up for truth, personal integrity, and individuality regardless of the social cost. And I am not making this statement trivially. When I was in grade 12, I was made assistant concertmaster of the Saskatoon Symphony. (I received my ARCT in violin performance with the highest mark in Canada and played three summers in the Canadian National Youth Orchestra.) But because I would not join the musicians union I was kicked out and blacklisted. Meanwhile, my parents were struggling to keep my schizophrenic brother at home without committing him to an institution, and I was the only other child still living at home. My brother was impervious to logic and driven purely by emotions. I found this so difficult that I distinctly remember swearing that I would never allow my thinking to be overwhelmed by emotions. Thus, I know at an experiential level what it means to experience intersectionality.
I started my research in mental symmetry while doing a Master’s degree in engineering. I entered the program on a full academic scholarship. But my supervisors would not discuss my research and I had to graduate with a non-thesis option. During the early years of my research I would wake up each morning and feel that I had no reason to live. I would then reconsider the alternatives, recognize that every other path led to a dead-end, and then find that I had enough energy to do one more day of work. I have had a co-researcher secretly write a book behind my back in order to develop a new theory that excluded me and my research. I have had professors write me scathing letters of review and tell me that I am wasting my life. I have had theologians give me books to analyze and then refuse to discuss my analysis. I have had papers rejected because experts do not want someone outside of their field tell them how to think. Even now, most of my friends regard my research as a taboo subject that must not be discussed. Thus, I really do know what it feels like to experience decades of rejection by the system. BUT I have learned that such systemic oppression can be a motivation for personal character transformation, if one is willing to act humbly and learn from one’s enemies.
This essay will not be a personal sob story or an emotional diatribe against the system. Instead, we will be discussing emotional processing using rational cognitive analysis. However, I think that it is important to open the essay by mentioning my personal history in order to demonstrate that it is possible for a white male to be able to talk authentically about systemic societal oppression.
It is also important to discuss the scientific legitimacy of mental symmetry before continuing. After all, it is possible that the systemic academic rejection that I have received is because my thinking is flawed. Maybe I am wasting my life. As far as I can tell, the primary concern is that mental symmetry starts with a general theory rather than empirical evidence. I have found that this approach deeply disturbs people within the academic community, who instinctively regard starting with a theory as anti-scientific. Lindsay discusses how philosophy and science evaluate theories. “The primary means utilized in this regard in philosophy is called defeasibility, which is a process where an idea is challenged by potential ‘defeaters,’ which are statements that, if true, would either contradict the existing claim or that expose failures of logical validity or argumentative soundness. Philosophical ideas that survive this process are, until that changes, provisionally granted the status of not being defeated.” Mental symmetry is a rationally coherent model of the mind that can be explored for implications and argumentative soundness. Much of the initial development as a cognitive theory was done by using various mental symmetries (hence the name) to theoretically predict personality traits. Similarly, using mental symmetry as a theory of cognitive development also involved exploring the theoretical question of programming cognitive modules. Mental symmetry has survived over thirty years of being ‘challenged by potential defeaters’, which means that it has ‘gained the status of not being defeated’.
Moving on, “In science, defeasibility isn’t considered enough because it is possible for something to be perfectly logically acceptable and yet out of correspondence with reality. Truth and falsity therefore take on a different meaning under scientific approaches to knowledge that is described by the ‘correspondence theory of truth,’ which roughly states that that which is true is that which corresponds with reality in some way. Thus, the scientific method, in addition to theoretical defeasibility, adds an extra dimension called falsifiability.” Mental symmetry has attempted to satisfy this extra dimension of falsifiability in four ways: First, it fits personal observation. I have been using mental symmetry to observe society as it has gone through three decades of tumultuous change. At each stage, I have found that mental symmetry is capable of explaining what is happening within society. This builds directly on reality but is not scientifically rigorous. Second, it fits the research of others. My current research focuses upon using mental symmetry as a meta-theory to explain the theories of others. This builds indirectly upon reality by explaining empirical data that has been gathered in a scientifically rigorous fashion by others. Third, it maps onto neurology. I have been following neurological research for over three decades, and I keep finding that mental symmetry is consistent with the latest neurological research. This builds upon empirical data that has been gathered about the physical brain. Fourth, it has been applied personally and I find that it works. This is obviously a subjective test but it is also a vital one. That is because a theory of the mind that does not work personally or is not applied personally will damage a person’s ability to understand the mind.
In conclusion, mental symmetry passes Lindsay’s two tests of scientific legitimacy.
The Diagram of Mental Symmetry
As was mentioned, mental symmetry models the mind as seven high-level interacting cognitive modules. The diagram of mental symmetry (Figure 1) describes fundamental characteristics of each cognitive module as well as the primary ways in which cognitive modules interact. A distinction can be made between cognitive modules and cognitive styles. Teacher thought, for instance, refers to a cognitive module that is present within all human minds. Teacher person refers to the cognitive style that has conscious awareness and control of the module of Teacher thought with other cognitive modules functioning subconsciously.
Looking at the cognitive modules in more detail, Mercy thought applies emotional labels to experiences, while Teacher thought uses words to form theories. Theories are emotional: the order-within-complexity of a theory feels good while an exception to a theory feels bad (Friesen, 2021). Teacher emotion plays a major role in ideology, which Lindsay refers to as Theory with a capital ‘T’. However, Teacher emotion also plays a role in science, as described by Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms. Perceiver thought applies labels of confidence to facts, connections, and mental maps, while Server thought applies confidence to sequences of words and actions. For instance, Server thought may have sufficient confidence to carry out the action of walking on a log, but not when the log crosses a chasm. Confidence describes the level of emotion that a Perceiver fact or Server sequence can handle without falling into doubt. (The term ‘Perceiver fact’ is shorthand for ‘facts that are processed by Perceiver thought’. Similarly, ‘Server sequence’ refers to sequences that are processed by Server thought.) Exhorter thought provides motivation and imagination which it finds either in Teacher theories or Mercy experiences. Contributor thought chooses between the options being suggested by Exhorter thought guided by Perceiver facts and Server sequences. Finally, Facilitator thought coordinates the interaction of the six other cognitive modules.
Figure 1: Diagram of Mental Symmetry
Cognitive modules can function together in three different ways which are referred to as technical thought, normal thought, and mental networks. Technical thought uses Contributor thought to follow chains of rigorous reasoning: abstract technical thought works with precise definitions; concrete technical thought works with cause-and-effect. A game is an example of technical thought, because a game pursues some clear goal by following carefully defined rules upon some limited playing field. Normal thought uses Perceiver and Server thought to look for patterns and analogies. Mental networks use the emotional processing of Mercy and Teacher thought. Cognitive modules can also be subdivided into interacting components, as revealed by both personality traits and neurological research. This essay will be looking extensively at the interaction between the three modes of thought. Science and technology have used technical thought to transform the physical world, but this physical transformation has only partially satisfied the emotional realm of mental networks. The relationship between these two forms of thought is summarized by dual process theory, with mental networks corresponding roughly to Type 1 intuitive processing and technical thought to Type 2 analytical thinking.
This essay will suggest that wokeism and Marxism can be explained most generally as people being driven by mental networks to respond emotionally to incomplete transformation achieved by technical thought.
Lindsay has a PhD in math and math with its precise definitions is an example of abstract technical thought. Lindsay’s essays on wokeism use technical thought to try to make sense of the emotional realm of mental networks. Lindsay concludes that wokeism must be driven by some nefarious plan because it does not make rational sense. This is a logical conclusion. And it is quite possible that government and corporate agencies are taking advantage of wokeism to carry out nefarious plans. But logical conclusions are an expression of technical thought and wokeism does not use technical thought. Instead, wokeism uses mental networks, and the bizarre thinking and behavior of wokeism makes cognitive sense if one understands how mental networks function.
I am not suggesting that emotions and mental networks are always irrational. Instead, emotion should be regarded as a shortcut to rational analysis—as described by dual process theory. It is possible to program emotions and mental networks to be consistent with rational thought, and this type of intuitive rational thinking becomes dominant when a person becomes an expert in some field or skill. However, it is also possible to mis-program emotions and mental networks to be inconsistent with rational thought. That type of emotional thinking will fail spectacularly, and both Marxism and wokeism are examples of such spectacular failure. However, even though Marxism and wokeism are irrational, this irrational thinking still follows the cognitive rules of mental networks.
Mental symmetry uses normal thought to look for repeated patterns in human thought and behavior. Thus, this essay will use normal thought to analyze a website that uses technical thought to describe the mental networks of wokeism. This will give us ‘two for the price of one’: First, newdiscourses.com provides a carefully written, well-researched description of wokeism—because abstract technical thought requires precise definitions and follows chains of logical reasoning. Second, viewing wokeism through the lens of technical thought will tell us something about technical thought and how it interacts with mental networks. Technical thought is very careful with the facts. Thus, the lens of technical thought will not distort the facts. Instead, the effect of technical thought will be seen in the way that these facts are presented and the response to these facts. This dual look at mental networks and technical thought is actually critical for adequately understanding wokeism, because it emerges from the interaction between mental networks and technical thought.
Going further, technical thought with its precise definitions and sense of cause-and-effect is required when interacting with the physical environment. And modern science and technology make it clear that technical thought can be used to successfully transform the physical environment. However, the mind is governed emotionally by mental networks. Both Marxism and wokeism focus upon external social interaction. But in both cases individuals are being driven emotionally by internal mental networks to think and act in a way that violates the cause-and-effect of physical reality. Wokeism may insist that the individual is irrelevant and that the mind is a tabula rasa constructed by external social forces. But the mind of the wokeist is actually an emotional minefield, filled with mental networks that explode emotionally when triggered. Most of what wokeism attributes tothe external environment is actually a description of the emotional minefield that exists within the mind of the wokeist.
The rest of this essay will add details to this overview, starting with how the mind determines truth.
Truth and Repeatability
The diagram of mental symmetry shows an arrow running from Mercy to Perceiver. Mercy thought remembers concrete experiences and attaches emotional labels to these experiential memories. Perceiver thought comes up with facts by separating Mercy experiences into different categories. Truth can be defined cognitively as a set of connections that keep reappearing—a category that occurs within many different contexts. Lindsay summarizes that “Most people, including nearly all scientists and many philosophers, generally agree that for something to be a ‘truth’ means its having something to do with accurately describing reality.” One of the primary characteristics of reality is its permanence. For instance, a knife is composed of a blade attached to a handle. This is a solid repeatable connection that does not change over time and stays the same when a knife is moved from one location to another. Philosophy and science have attempted over the centuries to discover universal connections that remain the same in all locations, in all cultures, and at all times.
This idea of finding connections that are the same within all contexts is reflected in Lindsay’s definition of science. “In general and simplifying in the extreme, science can be thought of as a set of essentially liberal methods that seek to authenticate and explain statements and certain interrelated collections of statements (theories) about objective reality through the process of falsification. Those hypotheses which survive the process of falsification are regarded as provisionally true.” An ‘interrelated collection of statements’ describes some set of connections. ‘Surviving the process of falsification’ means looking at many different contexts to see if the same set of connections appear. If these connections do not reappear, then the hypothesis has been falsified. This may describe what mathematicians do, because a single flaw is sufficient to falsify a mathematical theory. But Thomas Kuhn observed that this does not happen with science, “noting first what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies. Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. They do not, that is, treat anomalies as counter-instances, though in the vocabulary of philosophy of science that is what they are” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 77).
I am not suggesting that science is irrational. Rather, I am suggesting that science is attempting to deal with a mismatch between technical thought and reality. On the one hand, technical thought follows chains of reasoning using facts that are treated as if they are known with total certainty. On the other hand, the real world is messy and facts about reality can only be known with partial certainty. Math (and other forms of rigorous logic) deals with this mismatch by limiting itself to an abstract realm of symbols that can be defined and manipulated with total certainty. Thus, when a single contradiction in a mathematical theorem is found, then it is possible to know with certainty that this chain of reasoning is false. Lindsay describes the mathematical tendency to use rigorous logic while ignoring the foundation for this rigorous logic. “Most working mathematicians aren’t all that interested in the underlying philosophy of mathematics. This is for the simple reason that because they mostly have no need to be, as the philosophy of mathematics has very little to do with the actual doing of mathematics (isn’t this always the case?)... The working philosophy of most mathematicians is mostly an unexamined Platonist-Formalist hybrid. There’s rarely a deep exploration, therefore, of what mathematics really is or what it means—realist, formalist, nominalist, objectivist, or subjectivist—on the part of mathematicians.” Thus, the typical mathematician uses logic to construct rigorous ‘castles in the air’ without worrying about the foundations of these castles. In Lindsay’s words, “Mathematics therefore derives from axioms, explored logically... It is accurate to say that if we change the underlying axioms, or even the underlying logic that operates upon them, we would result in a different mathematics, and these things have been explored mathematically and philosophically, whether they correspond to the real world or not.” In other words, mathematical analysis starts with some ‘foundation in the air’ of axioms and then builds a rigorous castle upon this foundation by ‘exploring logically’. This makes it possible for a mathematician to start from some arbitrary ‘foundation in the air’ and explore what sort of logical castle can be built upon this assumed foundation.
This may appear to the outsider as mere wishful thinking, but in practice math starts by making obvious statements about physical reality, it makes these statements more rigorous, and it then extrapolates beyond reality. Eventually the extrapolation becomes so large that it becomes possible to cut off the ‘branch’ of abstract math from the ‘tree’ of common sense and ‘build castles in the air’. Lindsay mentions this relationship. “Mathematics is in that sense a form of philosophical inquiry where the underlying axioms, thus fundamental premises, are relatively uncontroversial for philosophical exploration. Usually, in fact, the core or base-level axioms (from which others are suggested) are also relatively simple and connect to the real world in a very obvious way, or did at one time and have been extended from there.” I have attempted to use mental symmetry to examine the foundations of mathematics from a cognitive perspective. (That cognitive analysis only goes as far as beginning calculus and some of the comments regarding calculus are speculative, but I think that the analysis is generally sound.)
Going further, history has shown that mathematical ‘castles in the air’ often end up being useful for describing physical reality. Paul Dirac discussed this correspondence in a 1939 lecture. “One might describe the mathematical quality in Nature by saying that the universe is so constituted that mathematics is a useful took in its description. However, recent advances in physical science show that this statement of the case is too trivial. The connection between mathematics and the description of the universe goes far deeper than this, and one can get an appreciation of it only from a thorough examination of the various facts that make it up.” Using the language of mental symmetry, science has discovered that there is a repeatable connection between math and physical reality that keeps reappearing in different contexts. (Saying this more carefully, there is a deep relationship between math which uses abstract technical thought to construct logical ‘castles in the air’ and experimentation which uses concrete technical thought to look for repeated patterns of cause-and-effect in the real world.)
Science deals with the mismatch between rigorous technical thought and messy reality by using repetition to increase Perceiver confidence in factual information. If a fact passes some threshold of repetition, then technical thought will treat this fact as known with sufficient certainty. Passing a threshold of repetition can be determined mathematically by looking for statistical significance, it can be determined experimentally by replicating results, and it can be determined socially through peer review. Thus, As Kuhn pointed out, science will not treat a single anomaly as sufficient reason to reject some established paradigm. But an anomaly that repeats itself will attract the attention of scientific thought, and if enough factual problems are encountered, then scientists will start looking for a new paradigm.
Summarizing, postmodern thought suggests that science cannot be trusted because it claims that science is built upon an emotional foundation of mental networks (which will be discussed in a moment). Mental symmetry suggests (backed up by authors such as Thomas Kuhn) that science occasionally overreaches and/or underappreciates because it is built upon the partial certainty of normal thought and is constrained emotionally by paradigms (which will also be discussed in a moment).
Science has discovered that the connections which appear to be most solid are connections of physical cause-and-effect: cause remains connected with effect. For instance, when an object is dropped then it will fall to the ground. This happens on all planets, in all cultures, and at all times. Thus, ‘nearly all scientists and many philosophers generally agree’ that truth involves ‘accurately describing reality’. Mental symmetry suggests that it is also possible to discover repeatable connections in cognitive mechanisms. For instance, the mind of every person contains a cognitive module of Perceiver thought that looks for repeated connections. Perceiver thought may fail to find repeated connections, but the presence of this cognitive module will drive thinking wherever humans are present, independent of culture. Notice that these two forms of universality function differently. Science looks for repeatability in observations, which will be discovered because everyone lives in the same physical world. Cognitive mechanisms described repeatabilities in the observer, which will be discovered because all observations are being made by humans with the same mental architecture. Using an analogy, science uses the lens of careful observation to study reality. Mental symmetry notes that if the same feature appears in many different areas of observation, then this probably indicates a spot on the lens and not necessarily a feature about reality. Mental symmetry examines these spots on lenses in order to learn more about the observer.
Now suppose that society becomes capable of shielding people from most of the consequences of natural cause-and-effect. For instance, society may decide to place fences in front of cliffs with warning signs that say ‘Danger! Do not cross this fence! Anyone caught crossing this fence will be prosecuted!’ The fence was constructed because people know that the law of gravity describes a repeatable connection of physical cause-and-effect and that ignoring this law can lead to injury or death. But the next generation will acquire its initial mental programming from an environment that is full of fences constructed by humans. A mind that grows up encountering only fences policed by authorities rather than cliffs of natural cause-and-effect will conclude that truth is a social construct imposed upon the masses by some elite group with social status. Notice the cognitive distinction between the builders of civilization and the consumers of civilization. Building civilization requires a knowledge of natural cause-and-effect. But successfully building a civilization will cause the consumers of civilization to conclude that truth is a social construct imposed by power. Thus, the same empirical evidence is being mentally interpreted in a different manner by the builder of civilization and the consumer of civilization. This problem becomes worse when the technology of computers and social media makes it possible for consumers to spend most of their time in virtual worlds that are not subject to the cause-and-effect of physical reality. The solution is to emphasize the mental cause-and-effect of cognitive mechanisms. The consumer living within a virtual reality may feel free of physical cause-and-effect, but that consumer is still using the same mind with the same architecture that is still subject to the same mental cognitive mechanisms.
Lindsay describes the cognitive repeatability of Marxism. “The basic structure of Marxism repeats itself through every evolution of Marxist Theory and is always adhered to religiously and with the zealot’s fervor. In every case, a special form of property is at the center of the ‘Theory,’ and the liberation of man depends on its abolition, by which is meant its ‘positive transcendence.’” We will look at this process in more detail later. For now, we are just observing that Marxism describes a general cognitive pattern that ‘repeats itself through every evolution of Marxist Theory’. This repeatability across time and culture indicates the presence of Perceiver truth.
Truth and Emotions
Moving on, confidence interacts with emotions. We have seen that repetition increases Perceiver confidence; the more times some set of connections is encountered, the more confidence Perceiver thought has that this set of connections is ‘true’. (Similarly, the more times some sequence is repeated in Server thought, the more confidence Server thought has that this sequence is valid. Perceiver confidence is increased through repeated observation. Server confidence can also be increased by choosing to repeat some action—as illustrated by practicing.) The confidence placed in a Perceiver fact (or Server sequence) determines the level of emotional pressure that this fact (or sequence) can handle. Thus, the ability to assert some fact in Perceiver thought depends upon the emotional environment. For instance, Perceiver thought may know that there is a factual connection between eating desserts and getting fat, while lacking sufficient confidence to assert this fact when faced with a slice of chocolate tiramisu cheesecake drizzled with Belgian semisweet chocolate. Thus, when postmodern thought expresses doubt about acquiring facts about reality, this could be interpreted as a statement about reality or it could be interpreted as a description of the condition of Perceiver thought within the postmodern mind.
As Lindsay reports, the postmodern mind thinks that it is impossible for Perceiver thought to gain sufficient confidence to survive emotional pressure. “According to the Theory of Critical Social Justice, objectivity is impossible to obtain and, in fact, might be something that it is even wrong to pursue. As a kind of ideal, objectivity refers to the state of not being influenced by biases, personal feelings, or opinions in the statement of facts, and it is the relevant ideal of the sciences, which see truth as something that should be approached and known as objectively as possible. That is, objectivity is what’s ‘out there,’ as compared to the subjective, which is what’s in our heads.” Notice the relationship between factual confidence and emotional pressure: ‘Objectivity refers to the state of not being influenced by biases, personal feelings, or opinions in the statement of facts’. Lindsay describes the subjective as being ‘in our heads’ and the emotional pressure that threatens confidence in facts is being generated by the mind. But mental symmetry suggests that objectivity is also ‘in our heads’ and not simply ‘out there’. Perceiver confidence is easy to gain when examining physical objects in the real world because simply looking again at a solid object provides the mind with another example of a repeatable connection for Perceiver thought. But the objectivity is actually happening within the mind. On the one hand, Perceiver confidence is being increased by focusing upon the objective realm of solid physical objects. On the other hand, emotional pressure is being minimized by thinking about solid objects in a dispassionate, non-emotional manner. In Lindsay’s words, “In practice, because objectivity is an ideal, objectivity is approached (or achieved) by attempting to identify, minimize, and control for as many potential sources of bias, personal feelings, opinions, or interpretations as possible.”
The problem with pursuing objectivity is that it leaves the scientist vulnerable to being manipulated emotionally. In Lindsay’s words, “There’s rarely a deep exploration, therefore, of what mathematics really is or what it means—realist, formalist, nominalist, objectivist, or subjectivist—on the part of mathematicians, which leaves them ripe for being made into unwitting ‘accomplices’ in an idiots’ revolution. As it turns out, when one’s foundations are largely unexamined, postmodern rhetorical nonsense can pretty easily blow the person off them.” Thus, if one protects Perceiver thought by avoiding emotional pressure, then the rational thought that one uses will be vulnerable to being overwhelmed by emotional pressure. As Lindsay observes, this is not just a theoretical problem but has become an existential crisis for technical thought.
Mental symmetry suggests that a more effective strategy is to gain the Perceiver confidence that is required to handle emotional pressure. Confidence can be gained by observing repeated connections, but confidence is also gained whenever one successfully holds on to the facts within an episode of emotional pressure. This can be seen, for instance, in the military veteran who has gained sufficient confidence to hold on to Perceiver facts and perform Server sequences under the emotional pressure of life-threatening situations. This also puts a positive spin upon temptation. Resisting temptation is typically viewed negatively as foregoing some pleasant emotional experience, but it can also be viewed positively as building Perceiver and Server confidence in knowledge and skills. More generally, mental symmetry suggests that free will is real but limited. If the level of confidence is much greater than the emotional intensity, then there is no need to exercise free will. If the emotional intensity is much greater than the level of confidence, then it is not possible to exercise free will. Free will becomes both possible and necessary when the emotional intensity is similar to the level of confidence. Thus, free will can be viewed as a ‘window of possible choices’. Passing some episode of temptation moves the mental window of free will in the direction of greater confidence while failing an episode of temptation moves the mental window of free will in the direction of lower confidence.
We have looked at Perceiver thought, how it functions in science-like thinking, and how this is affected by emotional pressure. If there is sufficient emotional pressure, then an alternate form of ‘knowing’ will emerge. The person who uses ‘alternate knowing’ will think that he is making statements about reality. That is because Perceiver thought, the cognitive module that evaluates facts, is coming up with conclusions about facts. But these conclusions are not the result of Perceiver thought actively looking for repeated connections. Instead, they are the result of Perceiver thought being overwhelmed by emotional pressure. This will be referred to as ‘knowing’ in quotes. For instance, suppose that I have a traumatic experience of being bit by a dog. This emotional Mercy experience will overwhelm Perceiver thought within my mind into ‘knowing’ that dogs are always connected with being bitten. The standard method for dealing with such ‘knowing’ is cognitive behavior therapy. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Therapists or computer-based programs use CBT techniques to help people challenge their patterns and beliefs and replace errors in thinking, known as cognitive distortions, such as ‘overgeneralizing, magnifying negatives, minimizing positives and catastrophizing’ with ‘more realistic and effective thoughts, thus decreasing emotional distress and self-defeating behavior’.” Thus, ‘emotional distress’ is causing ‘errors in thinking’ which can be overcome by ‘challenging patterns and beliefs’. Stated simply, if Perceiver thought is overwhelmed by emotional pressure, the solution is to reprogram Perceiver thought through repeated patterns. Wokeism heads in the opposite direction, which Lindsay refers to “as a kind of ‘reverse cognitive behavioral therapy’ where people are taught to become more and more sensitive to (and less resilient against) slights and minor insults.”
More generally, wokeism insists that the only kind of knowing that exists is the ‘knowing’ of using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought. Lindsay describes the emotional foundation for this ‘knowing’. “‘Other ways of knowing’ and other ‘knowledges’ are rooted largely in emotion, spiritual and cultural beliefs, traditions, and experiences.” The method of using Perceiver thought to look for repetition is rejected as impossible to achieve. In Lindsay’s words, “The Theory of Critical Social Justice rejects that objectivity is possible at all. This is because it is both critical and postmodern in its orientation, and thus it isn’t merely a statement that all humans are limited by our subjective perspectives and the biases that shape them. It makes a much more profound and radical statement about truth, reality, and knowledge that denies that it is possible to control for or minimize biases at all.” Mental symmetry suggests that this is not a statement about either reality or about mental capability. Rather, it describes the state of a mind that has successfully followed a path of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy at the most general level. Saying this another way, the window of free will has been shifted so far away that it has become unreachable. One can state with confidence that this is the case because wokeism insists that personal emotional experience is the only valid source for valid ‘knowing’. Lindsay explains, “In the Theory of Critical Social Justice, for what turn out to be surprisingly deep and philosophically (almost) sophisticated reasons, lived experience is the overwhelmingly primary way in which knowledge can be obtained. This should not be mistaken to mean one’s firsthand experience, which most of us already recognize to provide a rather weak claim upon knowledge, though it is both implied and claimed that this is what ‘lived experience’ refers to in Critical Social Justice. Lived experience, as Critical Social Justice uses the term, refers more specifically to one’s life experiences in allegedly systemic power dynamics of dominance and oppression that shape society structurally as understood with a critical consciousness and interpreted through Theory.” Notice that there are three levels to this ‘knowing’. The first level is that this ‘knowing’ must have its source in ‘one’s first-hand experience’. The second level is that this first-hand experience must be emotional. The third level is that this first-hand experience is treated by Perceiver thought as universal ‘truth’. Applying this definition to the wokeist mind, when the wokeist states as universal ‘truth’ that it is not possible to come up with objective knowledge about reality, the wokeist came up with this universal ‘truth’ by using personal Mercy experience as an emotional foundation for universal ‘knowing’ about everyone and everything. (There is an additional emotional aspect related to ‘Theory’ which will be discussed when looking at Teacher thought.) The wokeist is really saying, ‘I have succeeded in using my emotions to shut down Perceiver thought within my mind’. That describes the first-hand experience of the wokeist—which is why I am using the term wokeist rather than wokeism.
I find such a conclusion unsettling because I am a Perceiver person who is conscious within Perceiver thought. Stated bluntly, the wokeist has committed cognitive murder against me—that is my ‘first-hand experience’. And this is not just a theoretical conclusion because a lifetime of systemic social oppression has taught me that society generally does not appreciate Perceiver thought—especially when it collides with subjective emotions. (One religious author who taught for decades on Romans 12 spiritual gifts says the following about the Perceiver child: “First, teach your perceiver to respect authority and obey spontaneously. Otherwise he will become increasingly rebellious and difficult to handle” (p.226). “Praise your perceiver whenever he obeys you. Express your pride when he drops everything to come when you call. Commend him when he does what you ask without arguing” (p.227). Notice how the Perceiver child is supposed to allow emotional pressure from parents to immediately overwhelm Perceiver thought.) Looking at this from a moral perspective, mental symmetry suggests that moral goodness can be defined as all seven cognitive modules functioning in harmony, because this would presumably lead to the maximum sense of personal well-being. Permanently shutting down a cognitive module would qualify as moral evil.
One might ask how the wokeist person is capable of accurately describing mental processing if Perceiver thought is being overwhelmed. A possible answer can be found in cognitive style. The Facilitator person functions as the observer and facilitator of the mind and has a unique ability to describe the state of the mind even when it has been radically mis-programmed. In fact, the Facilitator person with a mis-programmed mind will often be drawn by internally generated discomfort to pursue a path of self-analysis. Thus, introspective fields such as psychology and education tend to be dominated by Facilitator persons—often with mis-programmed minds. It should also be added that this natural ability to analyze self is accompanied by a natural inability to change self. This does not mean that the Facilitator person is incapable of personal change but rather that successful change requires deep strategies that deal with fundamental issues. On the other side of the spectrum, the Contributor person has the strongest natural will and is typically capable of breaking habits almost instantly. However, as we saw when looking at mathematicians performing technical thought upon assumed foundations, the typical Contributor person also finds it hardest to perform self-analysis.
Mental Networks
Our discussion so far has treated emotional experiences within Mercy thought as isolated memories with emotional labels. However, emotional memories can form mental networks that will intensify and modify their impact. A mental network is a collection of emotional memories that functions as a unit. Triggering one memory in a mental network will activate the entire mental network which will then use emotional pressure to impose its structure upon the mind. Thus, a mental network generates emotion based upon consistency—which is distinct from the emotional labels applied to memories within a mental network. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to be the core brain region for handling mental networks (Friesen, 2021). A mental network can be viewed as an emotionally triggered schema. If a mental network is triggered and continues to receive input that is inconsistent with its structure, then this mental network will eventually start to fall apart and generate extreme negative emotions. This can be seen in culture shock or when attempting to break a deep-seated habit.
Both Mercy thought and Teacher thought function emotionally. Therefore, there are two corresponding kinds of mental networks. A Mercy mental network (MMN) is composed of a collection of emotional experiences in Mercy thought. The mind uses MMNs to represent both real and imaginary people. Looking at this more carefully, continuing to interact with some person will create many emotional memories involving that person and these emotional memories will form a mental network. Encountering or thinking about that person will trigger this mental network, which will then emotionally impose the likes and dislikes of that person upon the mind. Thus, for instance, a single glance from mother can trigger an entire MMN that represents the likes and dislikes of mother. Similarly, if one continues to use some theory, then it will eventually turn into a Teacher mental network (TMN) that will use emotional pressure to impose the structure of that theory upon a situation when that theory is triggered. In both cases, isolated emotional memories form a mental network after some threshold is crossed, and this suggestion is backed up by neurological evidence. Crossing this threshold usually requires working with a collection of emotional memories for a sufficient period of time. But a single traumatic experience may be sufficient to lead instantly to the formation of a MMN.
A mental network is an efficient way of retrieving the appropiate schema for interacting off with some person or situation. For instance, entering a doctor’s office will trigger a mental network that encapsulates appropriate behavior for a medical visit. Thus, mental networks can be programmed to be consistent with rational thought, but they can also be mis-programmed to reinforce behavior that is inconsistent with rational thought. Culture can be defined as behavior that is emotionally reinforced by a group of people with similar mental networks. Looking at this more carefully, children who grow up in a similar social and physical environment will have similar emotional experiences that will lead to the formation of similar MMNs. The MMNs within the mind of each of these individuals will emotionally drive them to behave in a certain manner and these same MMNs will generate a positive emotion when encountering such behavior from others. This will lead instinctively to the feeling that those who behave ‘the way I do’ are good while those who behave in a ‘different manner’ are bad.
Thus, there is some truth to the suggestion that science is socially constructed. Scientific thought will only emerge if specific cognitive requirements are met. But once a system of scientific thought has developed, then it can be maintained through cultural MMNs of accepted scientific practice, leading to an academic system in which scientists use technical thought within some specialization guided by the cultural MMNs of that specialization (the emotional role played by paradigms will be examined shortly). In summary, I suggest that it is inaccurate to regard science itself as merely a social construction. However, the typical scientist does use technical thought within some specialization inside of a framework of thinking that is typically perpetuated through cultural MMNs. And as Lindsay points out, this makes the typical scientist vulnerable to being emotional hijacked by the emotional forces of wokeism. Looking at mathematics, Lindsay acknowledges that “There’s rarely a deep exploration, therefore, of what mathematics really is or what it means—realist, formalist, nominalist, objectivist, or subjectivist—on the part of mathematicians, which leaves them ripe for being made into unwitting ‘accomplices’ in an idiots’ revolution.”
Cultural MMNs lie at the heart of postmodern thought. Lindsay elaborates, “For the postmodernists, truth and knowledge are cultural products that are embedded within narratives and justified by ‘metanarratives,’ and thus the entire postmodern project is not merely skeptical of objectivity but radically skeptical of it, believing it is utterly inaccessible to any human except by accident. That is, postmodern thinking is radically subjectivist but also sets the scene for group-based thinking, insofar as groups can be linked to cultures and cultural traditions.” Using the language of mental symmetry, postmodernism says that cultural MMNs use emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought and impose their structure upon Perceiver thought as ‘truth’. It is possible to program Perceiver thought in this manner, and Perceiver thought within the mind of every child acquires its initial collection of ‘truth’ largely through this manner. That is why it is important for children to spend time exploring nature within some safe ‘backyard’ away from adult supervision, because this allows Perceiver thought within the mind of the child to acquire facts through the repetition of natural surroundings without being overwhelmed by cultural MMNs.
Postmodern questioning laid the mental foundation for modern wokeism. Examining this cognitively, postmodern thought is ‘radically skeptical of objectivity’; it is convinced that Perceiver thought can never gain sufficient confidence to function. The only remaining alternative is for Perceiver thought to gain its ‘knowing’ by being overwhelmed by cultural MMNs. This ‘sets the scene for group-based thinking, insofar as groups can be linked to cultures or cultural traditions’. Wokeism and various forms of critical theory then build cognitively upon this mental foundation.
The mind uses MMNs as tools for what is known psychologically as theory of mind, which Wikipedia defines as “the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others’ beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one’s own.” For instance, if one’s birthday is close and one sees some wrapping paper, then this may trigger the mental network of celebrating a birthday, leading to the suspicion that ‘They are planning a party for me’. Similarly, if one encounters some ‘micro-aggression’, then this may trigger a mental network of experiencing racist behavior, leading to the suspicion that ‘They are acting in a racist manner’. Notice that theory of mind does not actually read another person’s mind but rather uses external clues to trigger mental networks that represent people and emotional situations within one’s own mind which are then ascribed to the other person.
Mental symmetry suggests that most social interaction is actually happening within people’s minds. Saying this another way, most social interaction consists of theory of mind—using mental networks within my mind to try to guess what the other person is thinking. When I interact with some person, then that person is triggering certain cultural MMNs within my mind which are emotionally imposing my concept of the likes and dislikes of those cultural MMNs upon my mind. In other words, my interaction with another person is being emotionally colored by my mental concept of that person’s social group.
However, there is a critical difference between the ‘mindreading’ of the critical theorist and theory of mind. The quote from Wikipedia pointed out that theory of mind ‘includes the knowledge that others beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one’s own’. This idea that others may actually be different than one’s own internal perception of others is missing from the ‘mindreading’ of critical theory. Instead, the critical theorist is convinced that if a mental network of racial prejudice is triggered within his or her mind, then this accurately portrays what the other person is thinking.
One can tell that this is the dominant form of ‘social interaction’ within the wokeist mind because the wokeist will typically regard his or her mental concept of some group as more valid than any actual social interaction with any person within that group. In Lindsay’s words, “Under the thought of Critical Social Justice, the individual is irrelevant (if she even exists). People do not matter in Critical Social Justice; identity groups do. Thus, any given individual is, at best, a political representative or diplomat who speaks and acts on behalf of that group... The individual is always understood in Critical Social Justice as the intersection of all relevant identity-political groups, not as an individual.”
Lindsay observes sarcastically that “Mindreading, though, is the superpower of Critical Theory. Critical Theorists obviously know everyone else’s bad intentions better than anyone, including those who deny them (as a means of self-preservation) and who are unaware of them (who suffer some form of willful ignorance or false consciousness).” This type of ‘mindreading’ describes a mind that is imposing my cultural MMNs upon other people.
More generally, the term ‘social interaction’ implies that one is interacting socially with other people. But this is not happening with the wokeist. Instead, the other person is triggering cultural MMNs within the wokeist mind and the wokeist is fixating upon this internal emotional interaction while essentially ignoring the other person. Thus, there is a fundamental flaw in the wokeist assertion that truth is socially constructed, because the wokeist is neither constructing truth nor interacting socially. Instead the wokeist is jumping to conclusions based upon mental presuppositions.
Applying this to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, during the preoperational stage, “Thinking is still intuitive (based on subjective judgements about situations) and egocentric (centred on the child’s own view of the world).” In contrast, the child who enters the concrete operational stage “realizes that people see the world in a different way than he does (decentring)”. This suggests that the wokeist mind is functioning emotionally at the level of Piaget’s precognitive stage.
This correspondence can be examined further by looking at other characteristics of the preoperational stage. We have already seen that egocentrism is present, which is “the tendency of young children to think that everyone sees things in the same way as the child.” Pre-causal thinking describes “the way in which preoperational children use their own existing ideas or views, like egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships.” Similarly, wokeism thinks in terms of cultural MMNs rather than cause-and-effect. Animism “is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities”. Similarly, wokeism insists that there is no such thing as an objective realm and that everything has the ‘lifelike quality’ of being motivated by cultural and personal MMNs. Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics can be attributed to human actions or interventions.” Similarly, wokeism asserts that everything is socially constructed, which is an example of artificialism. Centration “is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of the situation while disregarding all others.” Using ‘critical analysis’ to examine all situations for supposed racialism is an example of centration. Conservation “is the awareness that altering substances’ appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation and exhibit centration.” This cognitive flaw can also be seen in wokeism because the wokeist thinks that changing the appearance of a person alters that person’s basic properties of being a human being. Irreversibility “refers to the young child’s difficulty mentally reversing the sequence of events.” Similarly, the wokeist mind seems to be missing the idea that a ‘racist situation’ can be returned to the way it was before the incident happened. Instead, the ‘oppressive situation’ becomes viewed as something unforgivable that can never be undone. Finally, pretend play “is a favorite activity at this time. For a child in the preoperational stage, a toy has qualities beyond the way it was designed to function and can now be used to stand for a character or object unlike anything originally intended. A teddy bear, for example, can be a baby or the queen of a faraway land!” Notice how a physical object is capable of triggering a MMN in the mind of the child who then becomes mentally immersed within this MMN. Similarly, the wokeist treats people as physical objects who trigger cultural MMNs within the wokeist mind Which then immerses itself emotionally within some imaginary social situation. Repeating part of an earlier quote by Lindsay, ‘Any given individual is, at best, a political representative or diplomat who speaks and acts on behalf of that group.’
Looking cognitively at this final characteristic, when the environment triggers an MMN in the childish mind, it becomes immersed within that MMN until being triggered externally by another MMN. In contrast, the adult mind places MMNs within a larger mental framework, making it possible to move internally between one mental network and another. This summarizes the difference between mental networks and theory of mind. Neurologically speaking, mental networks are centered within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while theory of mind uses a more integrated form of processing that is centered within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (Friesen, 2021).
Summarizing, there is an extensive correspondence between wokeism and Piaget’s preoperational stage, leading to the conclusion that wokeist mind is functioning emotionally at the level of Piaget’s preoperational stage. Thus, it is technically accurate to tell the wokeist to ‘Grow up and stop thinking and behaving like a little child.’
Dueling Mental Networks
Going further, when more than one mental network is triggered simultaneously, then each will attempt to impose its structure emotionally upon the other. The end result will be an emotional hierarchy of mental networks, with more powerful mental networks imposing their structure upon lesser mental networks and lesser mental networks being forced to adapt to the structure of more powerful mental networks. Wokeism believes that all human interaction functions in this manner. Quoting again from Lindsay, “Critical Social Justice believes power to be an intrinsic part of society and its operation, and it considers power to be at the root of all interactions between individuals in groups in society. Moreover, power is not to be thought of in the sense of the way one individual might attempt to control another individual, or even in the sense of politics, so much as it is a complicated set of social forces generated and transmitted by all of us at once that controls how people think, vote, believe, act, identify, and so on. The main purpose of power, according to Critical Social Justice, is for the powerful to ‘impose their ideas and interests on everyone.’” Notice how this power is not being exerted explicitly through control or politics. Instead, it is being exerted emotionally as ‘a complicated set of social forces generated and transmitted by all of us at once’. In other words, each individual is being prompted emotionally by the cultural MMNs in his or her mind to respond emotionally to the words and behavior that are encountered. This power is being exerted socially in the sense that one person is responding emotionally to the behavior of another person as these people interact. But this social power is being generated emotionally by individuals as each person is being prompted by the mental networks within that person’s mind to act and react in a certain manner.
This essay will refer to cultural MMNs and personal MMNs. Personal identity can be defined as the mental networks that repeatedly come to mind. These originally come from the physical body. Looking at this closer, my physical body has certain abilities and limitations and it also imposes emotional sensations upon my mind. As my mind develops knowledge and skills, experiences involving this expertise will also come repeatedly to mind. A cultural MMN or an MMN that represents another person may come to mind often but it lacks the repeatability and inescapability of a MMN of personal identity. Stated simply, I can run away from other people but I cannot run away from my own body or my mental skills.
This may sound obvious, but distinguishing between cultural and personal MMNs requires Perceiver thought, because Perceiver thought organizes Mercy experiences into categories based upon repeatability, and it requires Perceiver confidence, because Perceiver thought has to distinguish between mental networks that are emotional. Perceiver thought will learn over time which MMNs are truly repeatable and which only reoccur some of the time, leading to a distinction between personal and cultural MMNs. This will result in self-image, which can be described as the Perceiver category that includes MMNs of personal identity. A mind that lacks sufficient Perceiver confidence will be unable to distinguish between cultural MMNs and personal MMNs and will tend to confuse personal identity with social interaction. This can be seen in wokeism, because emotional pressure from cultural MMNs is overwhelming Perceiver thought, causing the wokeist mind to be mentally unable to define personal identity, leaving the wokeist mind emotionally susceptible to pressure from cultural MMNs as they are triggered by other people and/or the environment. Lindsay describes this inability to define personal identity. “By ‘identity,’ Critical Social Justice thought means ‘social identity,’ which implies ‘political identity’ in a universe that is only concerned with identity politics. That is, ‘identity’ in Critical Social Justice refers to one’s social group identity.”
Thus, instead of having a self-image, the wokeist mind will sense that social interaction is leading to various kinds of emotional pressure. However, the fact still remains that every human is trapped within a physical body with limited capabilities and has a mind with limited knowledge and skills. Lacking the Perceiver confidence to recognize these facts does not make them false. Lindsay describes this problem of wokeism. “Social Justice is set up for the advancement of identity politics, which requires centering human experience entirely in group identity (and, frankly, stoking grievances within them). This requires it to reject both the biggest and smallest measures of humanity: the universality of human experience and the atomic individualism that defines each of us as we actually are, in favor of something in between.” Notice how ‘human experience’ is centered ‘entirely in group identity’ and that the emotional focus is upon the discomfort caused by dueling mental networks. Perceiver thought looks for repeated connections. Thus, disabling Perceiver thought prevents the mind from recognizing ‘the universality of human experience’ by noticing repeated connections in the social environment as well as preventing the mind from recognizing ‘atomic individualism’ by noticing which mental networks are truly repeated within the mind.
When cultural MMNs collide, then individuals within the dominant cultural group will tend to be oblivious to what is happening. That is because they seldom encounter any behavior that is inconsistent with their cultural MMNs. In contrast, a member of some cultural minority will continually experience social behavior that is inconsistent with internal cultural MMNs and will also continually experience emotional pressure from the dominant cultural group to conform to the MMNs of the dominant group. This interaction is known in wokeism as dominance. Lindsay explains, “In Critical Social Justice, dominance is not an individual act. It is a systemic one, based mostly in how we think, talk, and teach and in the expectations we lay for members of the society... Dominance impacts almost every dimension of the lives of minoritized groups, mostly negatively, even if they don’t realize it themselves. This creates a pressure on minoritized groups to abandon ‘their’ cultures in favor of the dominant culture.” Notice how the dominant group is exerting emotional pressure upon other groups to conform simply by existing. That is because individuals within the dominant group are being motivated by their cultural MMNs to ‘think, talk, and teach’ in a certain manner and these same cultural MMNs are generating a negative emotional response when encountering different behavior. This is an accurate description of how mental networks work. This will become the dominant mental mechanism when cultural MMNs rule the mind. And this mental pressure will become inescapable when Perceiver thought lacks the confidence to function with mental networks.
The cultural group that is most ubiquitous will tend to become the dominant group for the simple reason that the MMNs of that group reside within more minds and thus will be triggered more frequently. However, if some elite group or individual is given special emotional status within Mercy thought, then that ‘power group’ will be able to impose its cultural MMNs upon the rest of society. As was quoted previously, “The main purpose of power, according to Critical Social Justice, is for the powerful to ‘impose their ideas and interests on everyone.’”
Wokeism suggests that all society functions always in this manner. Mental symmetry suggests that society will function in this manner when Perceiver thought lacks the confidence to function in the presence of emotional pressure. Stated more carefully, mental symmetry suggests that this kind of unpleasant social interaction will naturally emerge whenever rational thought is absent and cultural MMNs come into direct contact with one another without being buffered from one another through the rule of law. One sees again that what wokeism ascribes to society is more accurately a description of the state of the mind of the wokeist.
Teacher Emotion
We have looked at the role that cultural MMNs play in society. We will now turn our attention to Teacher thought and the mental networks that emerge from Teacher thought. Teacher thought works with theories and theories generate Teacher feelings of order-within-complexity. (I wrote a short article entitled ‘Theories generate emotions’ that is currently approaching 20,000 views.) Teacher thought feels good when many items fit together in a simple manner, and Teacher thought feels bad when there is an exception to the general rule. Consistent with this, neurology has found that mathematical beauty activates a region within the medial orbitofrontal cortex that deals with emotions (Zeki, 2014). Zeki begins this paper by saying that “The beauty of mathematical formulations lies in abstracting, in simple equations, truths that have universal validity.” This describes finding order within complexity.
Going further, Zeki’s research shows that it is possible to find cognitive universality in socially constructed emotions. “The experience of mathematical beauty is derived from a highly intellectual, cognitive source; it is indeed this very source and its preoccupation with eternal and immutable truths that led to consider mathematical beauty as the highest form of beauty. It is also the most extreme example of aesthetic experience that is dependent upon culture and learning. Unlike visual or musical beauty, only those versed in mathematics can experience the beauty of mathematical formulations. And yet the experience of mathematical beauty correlates with activity in the same part of the emotional brain as the experience of beauty derived from sensory sources, such as the visual or the musical” (Zeki, 2018). On the one hand, ‘Only those versed in mathematics can experience the beauty of mathematical formulations’. Thus, the ‘aesthetic experience’ of math is ‘dependent upon culture and learning’. But on the other hand, ‘The experience of mathematical beauty correlates with activity in the same part of the emotional brain as the experience of beauty derived from sensory sources’. If mathematical beauty activates the same part of the brain as visual beauty and musical beauty, then it is neurologically valid to talk about a cognitive module that processes information by generating feelings of order-within-complexity.
As far as I can tell, Mercy emotion feels the same as Teacher emotion, but it is generated in a different manner. This makes it possible to fool the mind. For instance, if a person is given emotional status in Mercy thought, then the words of this person may be interpreted emotionally as having generality—the Mercy feeling of personal honor is being interpreted by Teacher thought as a feeling of generality.
Mental symmetry suggests that Teacher thought can construct a theory through generalization or it can formulate a theory through overgeneralization. We will look first at the role that Teacher thought plays when using generalization to construct a theory by looking at Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a scientific paradigm. That will be followed by examining the role that Teacher thought plays in overgeneralization by examining what Lindsay says about wokeism and ideology. This will allow us to see more clearly where these two methods are similar and where they are different.
Paradigms
Constructing a theory treats Perceiver facts as mental ‘bricks’ which are assembled to form some mental structure. The factual ‘bricks’ are not emotional. But the structure that is formed out of these bricks is emotional, and this emotion is Teacher emotion and not Mercy emotion. This provides a cognitive explanation for Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm. Kuhn observes that ‘One perceptive historian, viewing a classic case of a science’s reorientation by paradigm change, recently described it as ‘picking up the other end of the stick,’ a process that involves ‘handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 85). Notice that a paradigm shift does not change the Perceiver facts; it ‘involves handling the same bundle of data as before’. Instead, a paradigm shift takes these Perceiver ‘bricks’ and use them to construct a different ‘building’ by ‘placing them in a new system of relations with one another’. Thus, a paradigm can be defined more carefully as the Teacher theory that lies behind some technical specialization. The thinking that happens within a technical specialization is characterized by rational thought and chains of logical reasoning. But this rational thinking occurs within some framework that is supported emotionally by Teacher feelings.
Thomas Kuhn emphasizes that the average scientist spends very little time constructing or changing paradigms. Instead, science spends most of its time solving technical puzzles within some paradigm. “The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skilful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well” (Kuhn, 1970, p.38). Saying this more carefully, concrete technical thought plays by the rules of some ‘game’, usually guided by the Mercy goal of trying to improve some bottom line. Abstract technical thought does the ‘technical puzzle solving’ described by Kuhn, usually guided by the Teacher goal of bringing order to some complexity. The puzzle solving of abstract technical thought could also be described as playing by the rules of some abstract game on the ‘limited playing field’ of some specialization in order to achieve some goal.
Any theory or paradigm that continues to be used will turn into a TMN, and like any mental network, this TMN will impose its structure upon the mind when it is triggered. In this case, the structure that is being imposed is the structure of some theory. Thomas Kuhn describes how this mental imposition changes when a new paradigm is adopted. “Since new paradigms are born from old ones, they ordinarily incorporate much of the vocabulary and apparatus, both conceptual and manipulative, that the traditional paradigm had previously employed. But they seldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other. The inevitable result is what we must call, though the term is not quite right, a misunderstanding between the two competing schools” (p. 149). Notice again that the same Perceiver facts are ‘falling into new relationships one with the other’, which indicates that the TMN of a new paradigm is imposing itself upon the mind.
In the same way that a group of people with similar MMNs will naturally form a culture, so a group of thinkers that are guided by similar TMNs will form an academic community. A mental network generates positive emotion when encountering input that is consistent with its structure. Thus, interacting with fellow members of an academic community will provide a general positive emotional ‘glow’ for Teacher thought. A mental network generates negative emotion when encountering input inconsistent with its structure. This emotional response can be seen in the technical specialist who uses ‘pure logic’ when functioning within the field but then switches to sarcasm and emotional belittling when the field itself is questioned. Sarcasm and emotional belittling are both ways of emotionally minimizing the generality of some theory or statement.
A theory that has not turned into a TMN will generate positive feelings but a person will find it easy to drop this theory in favor of some other explanation. It becomes much more difficult to drop a theory when it turns into a TMN, and this theory will become ‘alive’ in the sense of actively imposing its explanation mentally upon situations. Kuhn describes the impact of this mental imposition. “In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. As a result, early fact-gathering is a far more nearly random activity than the one that subsequent scientific development makes familiar” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 15). Notice that the presence of a paradigm is focusing attention upon factual information that is relevant to the paradigm. Going further, once a paradigm emerges and turns into a TMN, then adopting a new theory requires dismantling the existing TMN. In Kuhn’s words, “After the pre-paradigm period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has in fact demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between competing schools of scientific thought” (p. 96). This process is so painful that a scientist will only let go of an existing paradigm if provided with an alternative. In Kuhn’s words, “Once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place” (p. 77). Many scientists are emotionally incapable of making a paradigm shift. Kuhn quotes Max Planck, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” (p. 151).
Summarizing, a technical specialization is guided by the emotion of a paradigm, but this emotion is different than the ‘socially constructed’ emotions of cultural MMNs, and a paradigm is different than an ideology (which will be discussed next). And the thinking that happens within a technical specialization is logical and rational and not emotional. A hard science is held together by the TMN of some paradigm, such as the periodic table in chemistry, or quantum theory in physics. A soft science that lacks a paradigm will typically contain a multiplicity of theories and be subdivided into various schools of thought, each based upon the teachings of some authoritative expert who is mentally represented by a MMN with emotional status. Going further, scientific thought at the most general level tends to be held together by socially constructed cultural MMNs, because the typical scientist may be guided by the TMN of a paradigm within the specialization but carry out scientific thought because ‘that is how one behaves in a scientific community’. The outsider who lacks technical knowledge will tend to view all science as a form of culture that performs its strange activities and incantations within college campuses. This outside view of science is illustrated by how scientists are typically portrayed in movies.
Teacher Overgeneralization
A paradigm uses Teacher generalization to develop simple statements that summarize the essence of some collection of Perceiver facts. An ideology uses Teacher overgeneralization to generate Teacher feelings of universality by making sweeping statements. Perceiver facts are the enemy of overgeneralization, because they tend to act as counterexamples that limit the scope of the sweeping statement. Thus, for instance, ‘All whites are racist’ is an overgeneralization that generates positive Teacher emotion. The Perceiver fact that my white neighbor did not behave in a racist manner becomes a counterexample to this overgeneralization, and this exception to the general rule will make Teacher thought feel bad. An overgeneralization can be recognized by the combination of universal language and antipathy to facts. Like any Teacher theory, an overgeneralization that continues to be used will turn into a TMN that will use emotional pressure to impose itself upon thought and behavior. Thus, at the level of mental networks, the TMN of a scientific paradigm functions like the TMN of an overgeneralization. But if one looks at the details, one will notice that the paradigm-turned-TMN is motivating people to use Perceiver facts to construct and evaluate theories, while the overgeneralization-turned-TMN is motivating people to ignore and suppress Perceiver facts.
Looking at this from the other direction, Teacher thought will naturally overgeneralize when Perceiver thought contains a minimum of solid factual information. Thus, postmodernism laid the mental foundation for wokeism by causing all Perceiver facts to fall into doubt. Lindsay explains, “Postmodern thinkers rejected the confidence and hubris of the Enlightenment and Positivism, both of which presumed that truth could be known and discovered and that truth was universal and constant. Postmodernists are much more skeptical about truth.”
I suggest that the civil rights movement was motivated by the overgeneralization of universal equality. First, the racist horrors of World War II caused traditional Perceiver facts regarding racist categories to fall into doubt, making it possible for individuals to mentally consider the overgeneralization of universal human equality. Second, the potential of global atomic warfare played a mental role by threatening to destroy all the Perceiver facts of human civilization. Quoting from an article in the Stanford University Press, “The bomb, then, became the link that connected all of these issues and brought together musicians, artists, peace activists, leftists, clergy, journalists, and ordinary citizens inside the black community.” At a speech in 1959, Martin Luther King “linked the domestic struggle for racial justice with the campaign for global disarmament: ‘Not only in the South, but throughout the nation and the world, we live in an age of conflicts, an age of biological weapons, chemical warfare, atomic fallout and nuclear bombs... Every man, woman, and child lives, not knowing if they shall see tomorrow’s sunrise.’ He asked, ‘What will be the ultimate value of having established social justice in a context where all people, Negro and White, are merely free to face destruction by strontium 90 or atomic war?’” Notice how the potential of a global nuclear war that would destroy all the facts and objects of civilization is causing Teacher thought within the black community to consider universal concepts that transcend traditional Perceiver categories.
Lindsay summarizes that “The phrase ‘social justice,’ here intentionally left in the lowercase, means something that most people in society can get behind—more fairness, equality, egalitarianism, and less bigotry, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and the likes. There are very few people today who would say they don’t seek social justice, even amongst conservatives; any disagreements are about how to achieve it and what it would look like.” Notice the use of universal words: fairness, equality, and egalitarianism. Notice also the abhorrence of Perceiver categories such as bigotry, discrimination, and disenfranchisement. Notice also the lack of specific Perceiver facts illustrated by ‘disagreements about how to achieve it and what it would look like’. This Teacher overgeneralization can also be seen in the term ‘colorblind’. Lindsay explains that “The term ‘colorblind’ de-emphasizes or ignores race and ethnicity as a large part of one’s identity.” De-emphasizing Perceiver facts is a characteristic of Teacher overgeneralization.
Stated simply, universal inequality is a negative definition which believes that some vague universal state of ‘equality’ can be reached by removing all Perceiver categories that separate one group of people from another. In contrast, mental symmetry provides a positive definition of mental and societal wholeness that is reached by developing all seven cognitive modules so that they function in harmony. Wholeness can be constructed; universal equality is achieved through deconstruction. Consistent with this positive focus, both the Greek (εἰρήνη) and Hebrew words (שָׁלוֹם,) for peace used in the Bible have the sense of wholeness in which essential parts are joined together. Similarly, the Greek word translated ‘perfect’ (τέλειος) also has the sense of reaching a state of completeness.
It is important to clarify that the overgeneralization of universal equality can have significant beneficial results when society uses socially constructed Perceiver categories to treat one group of people different than another. For instance, this was the case with blacks and whites in the civil rights era. The distinction between blacks and whites is a peripheral distinction that involves primarily skin color. This peripheral distinction and its associated collection of Perceiver categories (such as white washrooms versus colored washrooms or white schools versus colored schools) needed to be questioned. Blacks and whites have also tended historically to have distinct cultural MMNs, but culture is socially constructed and can be reprogrammed. The problem arises when the overgeneralization of universal equality is used to question Perceiver facts that are not socially constructed but rather physically natural or cognitively natural. That will be discussed later.
Notice that this puts a different interpretation upon the liberal view of equal rights. Liberalism thinks that the civil rights movement started with an adequate foundation which was then twisted to turn into wokeism. Mental symmetry suggests that the civil rights movement started with an overgeneralized theory of universal equality which generated beneficial results as long as socially constructed Perceiver categories were being questioned.
Looking more closely at the precise nature of this overgeneralization, Lindsay describes the viewpoint of liberalism. “Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” On the one hand, rational thought is being used to construct a liberal society through ‘incrementalism and step-by-step progress’. On the other hand, the human individual is being treated as a sort of ‘black box’ and the goal is to treat these human black boxes in a more equal manner. Saying this another way, humans are being treated as minds within the objects of physical bodies, and the technical thinking of ‘legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law’ is being used to eliminate discrepancies between human ‘objects’. However, the human ‘black box’ is not being opened up, which means that this concept of human equality is actually a Teacher overgeneralization that is ignoring Perceiver facts about the human mind. Thus, the overgeneralization does not come from using technical thought but rather from using technical thought in an objective manner. And this overgeneralization did not result from suppressing Perceiver facts but rather from an absence of factual knowledge about the mind. That is because the cognitive revolution that gave birth to cognitive science only began in the 1950s.
Mental symmetry, in contrast, opens up the black box of human thought and looks inside. Looking at this more carefully, mental symmetry models the mind as seven interacting cognitive modules. The basic premise of mental symmetry is that each of these seven cognitive modules has a right to exist. For instance, wokeism does not have the right to shut down Perceiver thought. Similarly, objective technical thought does not have the right to shut down subjective Mercy feelings. This will naturally spill over into social interaction because way that I treat a certain cognitive module within my mind will determine the way that I treat a person with a cognitive style that is conscious within that cognitive module. For instance, if I suppress Perceiver thought within my own mind, then I will also suppress Perceiver persons as well as any expression of Perceiver thought within the environment.
This is different than the overgeneralization of universal equality in three major ways: First, it is not an overgeneralization but rather a generalization, because subdividing thought into seven cognitive modules leads to a cognitive meta-theory that is capable of explaining a wide range of fields, as illustrated by this essay. Second, it changes the focus from the external to the mind. The primary goal is not to change the world but rather to change me and how I think and feel. The onus is upon me to follow a personal path of cognitive development. Third, human diversity is respected. All seven cognitive modules may have a right to exist, but they are not the same, they do not function in the same manner, and they do not have the same requirements. In simplest terms, Perceiver thought wants truth while Mercy thought wants pleasant experiences. Teacher thought wants theories, Server thought needs sequences that can be repeated. Exhorter thought needs excitement, Contributor thought needs plans, and Facilitator thought needs continuity. Respecting human diversity is typically interpreted as giving freedom to different cultural MMNs. And this is an aspect of respecting human diversity. However, wokeism does not respect cognitive diversity, because Teacher thought is not being given freedom to come up with theories, neither is Contributor thought being permitted to pursue plans. Perceiver thought is being suppressed, the Mercy feelings of the wokeist are being imposed upon others, and Facilitator sensibilities of continuity and politeness are being violated.
Looking at this personally, when I realized that my mind was composed of seven interacting cognitive modules, I mentally ‘signed a bill of rights’ with subconscious thought agreeing that all my cognitive modules had a right to live. Taking such a step may sound corny and childish, but it was a turning point in my path of cognitive development. Going further, I suggest that regarding such a step as corny and childish actually indicates a lack of respect for subconscious thought.
I should add that giving every cognitive module the right to live does not mean leaving that cognitive module in its current state of cognitive development. Significant cognitive development of both conscious and subconscious thought is required before the mind becomes capable of functioning in a whole manner in which all seven cognitive modules simultaneously acquire what they need and want. Learning what each cognitive module needs and wants is actually fairly simple. One simply has to observe the corresponding cognitive style and see what that person needs and wants. For instance, I can learn about what the Exhorter module requires within my mind by observing the behavior of the Exhorter person. Summarizing, when I refer to universal equality as a Teacher overgeneralization, I am not trying to replace civil rights with some form of racism. Instead, I am suggesting that there is a more fundamental form of civil rights that involves the mental right of cognitive modules to exist.
Equality versus Equity
Wokeism began with a dissatisfaction over the results of the strategy of liberalism. Lindsay summarizes, “Critical race Theory began in critical legal studies in frustration that the legal wins over institutional racism in the 1960s did not more quickly succeed in ending racism or repairing disparate outcomes by race.” Liberalism was using technical thought to institute legal changes guided by the overgeneralization that every human ‘black box’ should be treated the same. But every human ‘black box’ was not experiencing the same emotional results; the overgeneralization of universal equality was not being achieved.
This led to a shift in focus from equality to equity. Lindsay clarifies, “In Critical Social Justice, the meaning of ‘equity’ takes pains to distinguish itself from that of ‘equality.’ Where equality means that citizen A and citizen B are treated equally, equity means ‘adjusting shares in order to make citizens A and B equal.’ In that sense, equity is something like a kind of ‘social communism,’ if we will—the intentional redistribution of shares, but not necessarily along lines of existing economic disparity but in order to adjust for and correct current and historical injustices.” Notice that the black box of the human mind is still not being opened up. Instead, the argument is over which mental strategy should be used to ‘implement’ the overgeneralization of universal equality. Liberal equality thinks that objective technical thought is the right strategy, while wokeist equity thinks that mental networks should be used.
Liberal equality thinks that technical thought should be used to implement the overgeneralization of universal equality, while wokeist equity thinks that mental networks should be used to implement this overgeneralization.
Looking first at the option of liberal equality, technical thought implements plans within some system of rules—such as the rules of a game. Liberal equality means that everybody has the same opportunity to play the same game on the same playing board with the same rules. In Lindsay’s words, “Equality and equal opportunity are goals and ideals of liberalism.” Lindsay expands upon this elsewhere, “Liberalism is a broad political philosophy that bases itself upon principles such as individualism, meritocracy, universalism (of humanity), equality, Enlightenment rationalism, objectivity, science, Rule of Law, capitalism, inalienable rights for citizens, governance with the consent of the governed, liberty (including freedom of speech), tolerance, pluralism, and democracy.” These are all good principles—and I really mean that—but they still treat the individual person as an object functioning within the physical world: Individualism treats the person as the fundamental unit. Objectivity suggests that the person should be treated as an object. Universalism of humanity overgeneralizes from this fundamental unit, as does equality. Inalienable rights for citizens means that this overgeneralization should not be questioned. Governance with the consent of the governed attempts to minimize physical oppression over the objects of people’s bodies. Liberty, tolerance, and pluralism suggest that what happens within the human mind is of secondary importance. Enlightenment rationalism and meritocracy both imply using the mind, but Enlightenment rationalism is an expression of abstract technical thought while meritocracy emphasizes the goal-oriented behavior of concrete technical thought. Putting this together, the focus is upon using technical thought to achieve the overgeneralization of equality for all human people. These principles of liberalism are necessary because every human mind is trapped within the object of a physical body. But they are not sufficient because the human mind is more than just the physical body. Saying this in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, one starts by meeting physical needs and then moves up the ladder to deal with more internal needs.
Looking now at the second option, wokeist equity redefines the overgeneralization of universal equality in terms of mental networks. Liberal equality says that every person should be able to pursue the same ‘game’ of technical thought. In Lindsay’s words, “A liberal society aims to make sure that everybody is treated equally by ensuring that race, gender, or sexuality does not prevent anyone from accessing any opportunity and then evaluates each individual on their abilities. This is known as ‘meritocracy’.”
Wokeist equity says that the feeling of mental networks imposing themselves upon one another should be eliminated—the emotional hierarchy of mental networks should be dismantled. In Lindsay’s words, wokeism believes that “Invisible systems of power and privilege are understood to hold some people back in often invisible ways because of their race, gender, sexuality, or other marginalized identity factors. Therefore, ‘equity’ requires giving some identity groups privileges in order to redress the perceived imbalance.” In other words, cultural MMNs that feel oppressed need to be given emotional status so that they feel more equal.
One major problem with the wokeist approach is that it shuts down technical thought. Lindsay complains, “An equity approach is almost wholly unconcerned with the root causes of disparate outcomes and merely seeks to identify where they occur and then artificially ‘correct’ them, perhaps through preferential hiring, grading, promotion, pay, etc., by eliminating measurements that reveal disparities like standardized testing, by open, secret, or tacit discrimination against ‘dominant’ group members, or even by installing quotas and specific guidelines for how outcomes must come out, regardless of what leads to them.” Technical thought—by its very nature—plays by the rules of some game. Quoting from Thomas Kuhn, “What then challenges [the scientist] is the conviction that, if only he is skilful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. Many of the greatest scientific minds have devoted all of their professional attention to demanding puzzles of this sort. On most occasions any particular field of specialization offers nothing else to do” (Kuhn, 1970, p.38).
Using the example of the game of chess, wokeist equity interrupts the game by allowing a player who has lost a piece to take a free piece and place it on the chessboard. When equality complains that this changes the rules of the game, then wokeist equity responds that the ability to play chess is itself an unfair advantage. As Lindsay summarizes, “The critical view is that the existence of systemic power automatically unlevels the playing field (and the ‘knowing field’), thus rendering equality of opportunity impossible without equitable adjustments and equality of access.” Notice Lindsay’s reference to a ‘playing field’, indicating a mindset that thinks in terms of the rules of some game. In contrast, the wokeist author that Lindsay quotes refers to equal opportunity as an ideology (which will be discussed later), indicating a mindset that thinks in terms of mental networks. “A second related ideology is that of equal opportunity. This is the idea that in today’s world, people are no longer prejudiced, social injustice is in the past, and everyone has the same opportunities.” Notice how equal opportunity is not viewed by the wokeist author as the freedom to use technical thought but rather as a futile attempt to minimize the emotional hierarchy of cultural MMNs.
Mental symmetry suggests that every person is already playing the ultimate game—a game with a clear goal, well-defined rules, and a limited playing field. The playing field is my mind, the well-defined rules are cognitive mechanisms, and the clear goal is to achieve mental wholeness. Mental symmetry views the objective games of technical thought as simulations of the ultimate game, and the complaints of wokeism as a description of a person’s poor ‘score’ within the ultimate game. That is why I keep saying that wokeism is an accurate description of what is happening within the mind of the wokeist. Wokeism can be interpreted as mental networks begging technical thought to stop playing simulations and start playing the ultimate game. But wokeism is mentally incapable of making this request in a coherent manner because wokeism is losing the ultimate game of having an integrated mind. Thus, mental networks are only capable of throwing a temper tantrum at the edge of the playing field and sobbing ‘I am losing the game’. A website such as newdiscourses.com is an important step forward, because it uses technical thought to listen intelligently to the incoherent sobs of mental networks.
If the only games that exist are the objective, specialized games being pursued by modern technological society, then technical thought has an inherent advantage. Technical thought—and Contributor persons who excel at using technical thought—will usually be the winners. Observation of Contributor persons indicates that what typically happens is that they have a midlife crisis in which they realize that they have become the winner of some inconsequential game while being a loser in the ultimate game. Playing the ultimate game levels the playing field. Technical thought has to learn how to play the real game with its subjective Mercy emotions and universal Teacher principles. Mental networks have to learn how to play the real game by sticking to the rules instead of continually demanding special treatment. And normal thought becomes valued as the mental glue that is required to integrate technical thought and mental networks, instead of being rejected by technical thought as insufficiently rigorous and overwhelmed by mental networks because ‘the facts make me feel bad’.
This transition from the equality of technical thought to the equity of mental networks can also be seen in Lindsay’s essay on the master’s tools. Lindsay summarizes, “It is the system that enables systemic bigotries that Lorde insists needs dismantling and that she insists will never be dismantled using tools inside that system. The obvious silliness manifests here, though, as many, if not most, legal reforms in terms of institutional racism were achieved using legal methods and by arguing within legal discourses (i.e., the master’s tools are exactly what dismantled the master’s house of institutional racism on the legal level). Histrionics of this type, however, are typical of the critical genre.” Lindsay is pointing out that the civil rights movement used technical thought at a legal level to eliminate institutional differences between one person and another. In other words, technical thought was used to implement the Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. Thus, Lindsay views Lorde’s statement about ‘the master’s tools’ as ‘obvious silliness’ and ‘histrionics’. Looking at this cognitively, a mind that is driven by mental networks will appear as histrionics to technical thought, and a mind that uses cultural MMNs to overrule Perceiver thought will generate what technical thought views as obvious silliness. Lindsay then takes several paragraphs to attempt to define more precisely what Lorde means, and establishing precise definitions is a basic characteristic of abstract technical thought.
However, Lindsay’s response actually demonstrates the point that Lorde is trying to make, which is that technical thought does not grasp the gooey, messy, irrational realm of pure mental networks but rather tries to categorize them and then belittles them when they do not fit into nice logical categories.
The viewpoint of mental networks can be seen in the passage in Lorde’s book that Lindsay quotes. “Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” Notice the focus upon marginalized cultural MMNs: ‘poor, lesbians, black, older’. These marginalized people are rejecting technical thought: ‘Survival is not an academic skill’. That is because they have discovered that attempting to use technical thought inevitably creates a solution that minimizes the emotional realm of mental networks: ‘They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.’ Therefore, they have decided to reject technical thought and focus upon mental networks by ‘learning how to take our differences and make them strengths’.
I know what Lorde feels like because I spent decades trying to become acceptable to both technical thought and mental networks and finding that nothing I did was good enough. Looking first at technical thought, mental symmetry was initially rejected because it was not technically rigorous enough. So I spent decades defining terms and clarifying concepts. Mental symmetry was then rejected for having insufficient empirical evidence. So I have spent over a decade using mental symmetry to explain empirical evidence that has been gathered by technical thought. But that is rejected because ‘It is not what we are looking for’. Turning now to the realm of religious mental networks, mental symmetry began with Romans 12 ‘spiritual gifts’ but it was initially rejected because my brother’s analysis of biographies was deemed to be ‘too secular’. So I spent decades using mental symmetry to examine one Christian doctrine after another. Mental symmetry was then rejected for not being Bible-based. So I have spent over a decade using mental symmetry to analyze over half of the New Testament in the original Greek. But that is rejected because ‘It is not what we are looking for’. I have now come to the conclusion that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’: Being compatible with technical thought is not enough. Instead, one must wear the mental straitjacket of technical thought. Being compatible with mental networks is not enough. Instead, one must wear the emotional straitjacket of mental networks. But the solution requires using normal thought to break out of these two straightjackets.
While I may empathize with Lorde, I have not followed her approach. She responded to the rejection of technical thought by following mental networks to the exclusion of technical thought. Lindsay points out that Lorde’s approach leads ultimately to a wholesale rejection of rational thought. “A recent Theorist, Alison Bailey, wrote explicitly in 2017 that features of the ‘knowing field’ such as a reliance upon reason can be understood under the heading of what Lorde ultimately referred to with “master’s tools”... In this regard, reason, evidence, logic, civility, rules of order, rule of law, due process, rigorous methodologies, methodology at all, science, and even keeping to a timetable and meeting agenda can all be construed as implements of white supremacy used by white dominance to maintain its hegemony over other ways of knowing.” In contrast, I have attempted to use normal thought to analyze the empirical data gathered by technical thought in a semi-rigorous manner that is compatible with technical thought. Similarly, I have attempted to use normal thought to analyze mental networks (and religion) in a respectful and non-dismissive manner that recognizes the role that they play in defining and maintaining human life.
Moving on, we saw earlier that liberal equality does not open the black box of the mind. Wokeism also does not open this black box by asking questions such as ‘Could you teach me how to play a game?’ or ‘Can you help me to understand my feelings?’ Instead, wokeism treats the person as a black box with feelings and team colors. The ‘team colors’ come from the physical factors that trigger cultural mental networks. The feelings come from cultural MMNs imposing themselves upon one another. Mental networks tend to function silently when experiencing consistent input while complaining when experiencing inconsistent input. This was mentioned earlier when looking at dominance. Therefore, focusing upon mental networks will lead naturally to feelings of complaint from those whose mental networks feel suppressed, who will also complain that those who are doing the oppressing are not feeling anything and should feel something.
One would think that focusing upon feelings would naturally open up the black box of the mind to look inside. But instead of opening up the mind and attempting to understand what is causing these feelings, wokeism 1) insists that the mind is a blank slate programmed by the environment, 2) focuses upon the social interaction that is expressing these feelings, and 3) fixates upon physical features that trigger mental networks rather than the mental networks themselves. Thus, wokeism agrees with liberalism that a person is an object with no user serviceable parts inside. Lindsay describes the first flaw. “Because of the blank slatism and simplistic ideas of power and identity found within Critical Social Justice worldviews, all imbalances of representation in desirable areas of work are held to be caused by these perceived power dynamics. Equity is the intended remedy to this problem.” Thus, ‘blank slatism’ blames ‘all imbalances of representation’ upon external, social ‘perceived power dynamic’. Lindsay points out the second flaw. “Social Justice tends to exaggerate the influence of systemic power dynamics in society. Not only does it do this on its own and by speaking over and for any members of minoritized groups it claims to represent but whose experience and beliefs are different, but it also does this by casting progress as largely a myth.” Notice how a focus upon social interaction is ignoring the actual content within people’s minds. Notice also how Lindsay complains that actual progress being achieved by technical thought is being ignored. And Lindsay describes the third flaw. “Social Justice oversimplifies the highly complex (as it has it) nature of systemic power based on identity, particularly by bulldozing its nuances and cramming it into an essentializing program that links culture, status, social capital, authenticity of experience, mindset, etc., to demographic identity.” Thus, the ‘highly complex nature’ of mental networks that represent ‘culture, social capital, authenticity of experience, mindset, etc.’ are replaced by external ‘demographic identities’ that trigger these various mental networks.
The inadequacy of the wokeist social approach can be illustrated by the impact that computers has had upon machines. When I studied engineering back in the 1980s, it was possible to decipher a complicated machine by physically examining the function of every button, knob, and dial. Saying this another way, one could understand the guts of a machine by studying its ‘social interaction’ with the user and this social interaction could be analyzed by looking physically at the machine. One did not have to ‘open up the black box’ and look inside. The situation changed completely when machines became controlled by computers, because computers made it possible to change the function of a button or knob, leading to soft buttons with reprogrammable features. Understanding the machine then required looking past the external buttons and knobs to the various internal states that the machine could take. Similarly, the human mind is not just a stimulus-response machine but rather a kind of computer that is capable of being reprogrammed. This means that studying social interaction and focusing upon physical appearance is not enough. Instead, one needs to open up the black box of the human mind in order to examine the various states that the mind can take.
Critical Race Theory
Wokeism is motivated by the overgeneralization of universal oppression. We will look later at various reasons for this overgeneralization, but it is possible to come up with a general explanation using the concept of playing a game. On the one hand, by refusing to open up the black box of the human mind, wokeism accepts the general premise of technical thought that people should be treated as objects. Obviously the playing field will be tilted against mental networks if mental networks attempts to play the game of life as defined by technical thought. On the other hand, after allowing allowing technical thought to define the game, wokeism then refuses to learn how to play by the rules but instead sits at the side of the game and sobs as technical thought continues to rack up points. If I allow someone else to set up the game and then refuse to play by the rules of the game or even learn these rules I will obviously lose the game—badly and repeatedly.
One might think that the cold hard facts of physical reality would knock some common sense into wokeism, and it eventually does. However, modern civilization goes to great lengths to protect its citizens from coming into direct contact with cold hard reality. Instead of encountering cliffs, the wokeist citizen encounters fences. And if the wokeist citizen climbs over the fence and falls down the cliff, then search and rescue will come to pick up the wounded wokeist and take him to a hospital to be treated. Thus, instead of learning from reality, the recovering wokeist will probably complain that the rescuers took too long to reach him. And the wokeist will conclude that it is not necessary to learn how to play by the rules because sitting by the side of the game (or at the bottom of the cliff) and sobbing will generate a beneficial social response.
Lindsay describes the universal nature of this overgeneralization. “In critical race Theory, it is simply impossible for racism to be absent from any situation. One may be actively racist by perpetuating racial prejudice and discrimination against non-white people (particularly black people), or passively racist by failing to notice racism in oneself or others and thus failing to address it. Both of these are bad. One can only be ‘antiracist’ by noticing racism all the time, in every person and every situation, even when it is not readily apparent.” When it is ‘impossible for racism to be absent from any situation’, then this describes an overgeneralization of universal oppression.
Overgeneralization is a universal Teacher theory that ignores the Perceiver facts. Lindsay describes this mindset. “Critical race Theory begins with a cynical view that race is the predominant structural element of American (and other) societies, and that all analyses of race must incorporate systemic power, which is to say systemic racism. This, it insists, is everywhere, ordinary, permanent, and mostly hidden, a kind of racism that is just beneath the surface. Indeed, it tends to proceed from Derrick Bell’s assumption that racism has a permanence to it and thus is not overcome and does not end but instead changes forms to something more subtle and harder to find. A consequence of this belief is that racism does not improve in society or stay the same but actually gets worse by virtue of staying roughly the same while becoming more insidious.” Asserting that systemic racism is ‘everywhere, ordinary, and permanent’ describes a universal Teacher theory. Responding to Perceiver facts that contradict this theory by saying that racism has ‘changed forms to something more subtle and harder to find’ is a symptom of Teacher overgeneralization, because any facts that ignore the overgeneralization are being ignored.
This overgeneralization has turned into a TMN that emotionally imposes itself upon specific situations. In Lindsay’s words, “Antiracism carries with it a commitment to accept the systemic definition for racism—i.e., that it exists immanently, always and everywhere, regardless of intent—even if there isn’t a single person who is racist in the usual understanding. The system itself can be ‘racist’ even if there are no racists within that system. An antiracist has the obligation of searching for instances of racism that confirm the systemic ‘reality’ of racism, internally, with others, and in society and its various forms of representation.” A TMN imposes its explanation when triggered, which is being expressed as ‘a commitment to accept the systemic definition for racism’. And a TMN is alive in the sense of actively imposing itself upon situations, leading to ‘the obligation of searching for instances of racism’.
The TMN of universal oppression is an overgeneralization about people that abhors Perceiver facts about people. Lindsay elaborates, “Under the thought of Critical Social Justice, the individual is irrelevant. People do not matter in Critical Social Justice; identity groups do. Thus, any given individual is, at best, a political representative or diplomat who speaks and acts on behalf of that group.” For instance, “Kanye West, a black man, was declared ‘no longer black’ after donning a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and saying he had much in common with President Donald Trump. This is because West’s political identity didn’t align with capital-B Black identity politics as Critical Social Justice defines them.” I am not trying here to defend Trump. As a Perceiver person who is attempting to determine truth, I have major problems with a person who lied over 30,000 times while being president. The point is that specific facts about Kanye West (and other individuals) are being ignored because they contradict the wokeist overgeneralization of universal oppression.
Thus, wokeism can be viewed as a sort of ‘paradigm shift’ from the civil rights movement because it has adopted a new Teacher overgeneralization. Quoting from Lindsay, “In the Theory of critical Social Justice, the liberal ideal of colorblindness (not considering race or ethnicity a determining factor) is considered an unjust ideology that is used by dominant racial groups (white people) to oppress people of color by denying the relevance of race and racism in their lives. It is, in fact, considered a harmful and racist myth, and much theoretical work goes into attempting to deconstruct and dismantle the idea and problematize it.” Notice the effort that is being exerted to replace the old TMN of universal tolerance with the new TMN of universal oppression.
Going further, an overgeneralization of universal oppression is mentally destructive because it pits Teacher emotion against Mercy emotion. For instance, Mercy thought feels good when my white neighbor treats me kindly. But this kind act will make Teacher thought feel bad if I am holding to the overgeneralization that ‘All whites are racist’. Going the other way, if my white neighbor treats me badly, then this painful encounter will make Mercy thought feel bad while making Teacher thought feel good. A negative overgeneralization is emotionally beneficial in the short-term because the positive Teacher emotion of the sweeping statement balances the Mercy pain of the situation. For instance, if I drop an ice cream cone on the sidewalk, it is tempting to respond with the overgeneralization ‘I am such a clumsy person’. My unfortunate incident has now been given a name and I belong to a general category. One sees this kind of emotional comfort described by people with mysterious debilitating conditions when they discover that their ailment is an example of a well-known syndrome that has its own name.
However, finding Teacher pleasure in Mercy pain has the long-term result of mentally imprisoning a person within unpleasant experiences, as illustrated by the psychological condition of learned helplessness. Quoting from the linked article, “Learned helplessness occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable, stressful situations, then does not exercise control when it becomes available. They have ‘learned’ that they are helpless in that situation and no longer try to change it, even when change is possible.” In other words, remaining in the situation generates painful Mercy emotions. But there is no attempt to leave the situation because Teacher thought has come up with the theory that change is not possible.
Ideology
We have looked at MMNs and we have looked at TMNs. We will now examine how they interact. We have seen that specific emotional experiences in Mercy thought can form MMNs and that general theories in Teacher thought can form TMNs. When cultural (and personal) MMNs come into direct contact, then they will struggle for dominance, leading to an emotional hierarchy. This emotional hierarchy is the central theme of wokeism. The rule of law acts as a buffer that prevents MMNs from coming into direct contact with one another. When theoretical TMNs come into direct contact, then they will also struggle for dominance because there is only room for one general theory (unless one theory is a translation of the other). That is why paradigms shift; one paradigm will be replaced by another paradigm because there is only room for one general theory. In contrast, experiential MMNs can coexist with theoretical TMNs because they occupy different domains: one involves specifics and the other generality. But there will still be a struggle for emotional dominance. Does theory rule over experience or does experience rule over theory?
There are three basic alternatives. First, theoretical TMNs can function independently of experiential MMNs. That describes the situation with modern science. Science has come up with TMNs of scientific paradigms and has used technical thought to transform the physical world. But this physical transformation does not directly impact personal and cultural MMNs because scientific theories were developed in an objective manner that tried to minimize the presence of these subjective MMNs. Second, theoretical TMNs can be based upon experiential MMNs. This is typically done by overgeneralizing from personal experience. The result is an ideology. Third, theoretical TMNs can rule over experiential MMNs. This expresses itself cognitively as a concept of God. Stated more carefully, mental symmetry suggests that a concept of God will emerge when a sufficiently general theory applies to personal identity, and a concept of God acquires emotional power when this general theory turns into a TMN. This third option is discussed elsewhere. We will focus here upon the second option of ideology because that describes the path taken by wokeism.
The combination of MMNs and TMNs can be seen in the following quote: “Lived experience, as Critical Social Justice uses the term, refers more specifically to one’s life experiences in allegedly systemic power dynamics of dominance and oppression that shape society structurally as understood with a critical consciousness and interpreted through Theory. That is, one’s ‘lived experience’ refers to the interpretation that Critical Social Justice Theory gives for the anecdotal accounts of experiences one has had.” ‘Lived experience’ refers to MMNs based in emotional experiences. These are being ‘interpreted through Theory’, which means that theoretical TMNs are also involved.
The relationship between MMNs and TMNs changed when moving from the civil rights era to wokeism. I suggested earlier that the civil rights movement was motivated primarily by a Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. This overgeneralization formed a TMN and this TMN implicitly ruled over cultural MMNs. That is because objective technical thought was used to minimize differences in the way that human individuals were treated in a ‘colorblind’ manner that disregarded cultural MMNs. I am not suggesting that everyone ignored cultural MMNs, but rather that the general goal was to regard all humans as equal independently of what cultural MMNs were mentally triggered. In Lindsay’s words, “The liberal approach to anti-racism is to divest race categories of social significance and treat everyone equally. That is, race is to become largely irrelevant and we, as a society, come to see skin color as having no more significance to a person’s worth or abilities than their hair color.” I am also not suggesting that everyone used technical thought, but rather that the major improvements came as a result of using technical thought to organize movements and change laws.
Wokeism reintroduced cultural MMNs, viewing ‘identity politics’ as the ‘central feature’ of the ‘liberal equality movements that came before’. Lindsay describes this reintroduction. “As can be read throughout the Critical Social Justice literature, especially through the 1980s and into the mid 1990s, critical race Theorists, working in the name of Social Justice and, more specifically, identity politics, deliberately aimed to restore the social and cultural significance to racial categories that liberalism (like lived at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement) had significantly but not completely eroded.” The civil rights movement had implicitly minimized cultural MMNs by using technical thought to pursue the TMN of universal equality. Identity politics explicitly reintroduced cultural MMNs in order to ‘restore the social and cultural significance to racial categories’.
And when cultural MMNs were reintroduced, then a new Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression emerged. In Lindsay’s words, “Under the first core presumption of critical race Theory, the question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’ for all social phenomena. That is, the racism is presumed to be present and in need of a critical race Theorist to find it and point it out.” Notice the assumption that racism is always present and that there is no need to use Perceiver thought to examine the facts. Teacher thought overgeneralizes by making universal statements that disregard the facts.
Looking at this more carefully, we saw earlier that wokeism replaced the equality of liberalism with equity. Cultural MMNs naturally arrange themselves in an emotional hierarchy, with stronger MMNs imposing their structure upon weaker MMNs. Equity attempts to undo this emotional hierarchy, guided by the Teacher overgeneralization that every cultural MMN should be treated emotionally as equal. This means that social pressure has to be used to actively undo the emotional hierarchy of cultural MMNs. In Lindsay’s words, “Where equality means that citizen A and citizen B are treated equally, equity means ‘adjusting shares in order to make citizens A and B equal.’ In that sense, equity is something like a kind of ‘social communism,’ if we will—the intentional redistribution of shares, but not necessarily along lines of existing economic disparity but in order to adjust for and correct current and historical injustices, both as exist in reality and as have been drawn out by the various critical theories.” The active nature of equity is seen in ‘the intentional redistribution of shares’. And the goal is not to help the individual in an objective manner by minimizing ‘economic disparity’ but rather ‘to adjust for and correct current and historical injustices’, which means giving assistance to people who trigger cultural MMNs of oppression.
For instance, if I belong to a cultural group that was colonized, then this means that some colonizing culture emotionally imposed its cultural MMNs upon my cultural MMNs. Equity attempts to eliminate this emotional imbalance by giving emotional status to my cultural MMNs. As Lindsay points out, equity focuses upon groups with emotionally prominent cultural MMNs. “It is made applicable only (and especially) to positions of status and influence. For example, there is no equity program that attempts to increase the number of female sanitation workers, though there are equity programs that seek to increase the number of female doctors and politicians, and these endure even in high-status positions that employ more women than men. Of particular concern are positions that have influence where power is concerned.” Equity is not concerned about ‘female sanitation workers’ because their job does not have emotional prominence and thus tends to be ignored by mental networks. Instead, equity focuses upon cultural MMNs with strong emotions, such as doctors and politicians who have emotional status or blacks who were historically mistreated. A theory will turn into a TMN whenever it continues to be used. Thus, continuing to think about oppressed cultural MMNs and advocate on their behalf will lead to a TMN of universal oppression. This will also be an overgeneralization because the method of thinking is focusing upon cultural TMNs in a way that overwhelms Perceiver thought.
The end result is that the overgeneralization of universal equality remains the official goal, but this becomes emotionally overshadowed by the overgeneralization of universal oppression. The feeling will be that universal equality can be achieved if everyone focuses sufficiently upon universal oppression. Lindsay explains, “The view from Social Justice is one that sees people in terms of their social group membership, the relationship of those social groups to societal power and privilege, and the ways those ‘positionalities’ intersect in a ‘matrix’ of domination, oppression, and marginalization that promotes the interests of the dominant while excluding or harming everyone else... Its goal is to identify, expose, disrupt, dismantle, subvert, and overthrow those dynamics in a radical revolutionary process that seeks to remake ‘the system’ itself in the name of its ideology.” Notice how the overgeneralization of universal oppression has become the dominant TMN that emotionally imposes its ideology upon all human thought and behavior. The overgeneralization of universal equality turns into some future goal that will supposedly be reached after ‘a radical revolutionary process’ that has ‘remade the system’. This emotional overshadowing of the goal by the means did not happen with the liberal focus on equality because liberalism used technical thought to take specific objective steps to further the overgeneralization of universal equality. While the goal was emotional and general, the method was technical and specific.
Looking analogically at this transition from objective thought to mental networks, if one team is playing the game and the other team is either sitting at the sidelines crying that they are losing or comforting those who are crying because they are losing, then obviously the team that is playing the game will continue to pull further ahead. That describes what happens when thinking shifts from technical thought to cultural MMNs. Technical thought is always playing some game and trying to win. Mental networks do not think in terms of playing and winning games. Instead, mental networks think in terms of conformity and emotional hierarchies. Thus, changing the focus from technical thought to mental networks will naturally cause people to stop playing the game in order to provide feelings of solidarity with those who are feeling marginalized and oppressed. Technical thought will naturally conclude that mental networks are dumb. But technical thought tends to overlook that games are played by people. When a player gets injured, then the game will stop, and everyone will focus their attention upon the injured player. That is because being a healthy player really is more fundamental than winning the game.
Mental symmetry suggests that the ultimate game is the quest to become mentally healthy or whole. This combines technical thought with mental networks. Turning briefly to religion, this combination can be seen in Galatians 6:7-8. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” The first phrase suggests that there will be a natural tendency to be guided by an incorrect universal theory in Teacher thought. The second phrase indicates that the cause-and-effect of concrete technical thought is valid; one is playing a game with rules. The second sentence clarifies that this game involves the personal realm of mental networks with its life and spirits. (Mental symmetry suggests that spirits can be interpreted cognitively as mental networks and that any actual ‘spiritual realm’ would interact with the mind by empowering mental networks.)
Technical thought tends to make the mistake of playing the game while assuming that the players will be healthy. Wokeist thought makes the opposite mistake of focusing upon cultural MMNs to the exclusion of playing a game. Thus, the old liberal method of using technical thought to minimize racial differences will be seen as inherently racist. In Lindsay’s words, “Critical race Theorists reject colorblindness and meritocracy as myths and illusions that allow white people to perpetuate their own privilege by failing to see racism operating beneath the surface of systems. Essentially, they see liberalism as the belief that equality, colorblindness, and meritocracy have already been achieved or enable white people to pretend it has or to be satisfied with a painfully slow incremental change, which is inadequate, while misleading people of color by hiding from them the realities of their oppression.” In other words, liberalism thinks that equality has already been achieved because technical thought has been used to remove legal differences between ‘people as objects’. Stated analogically, technical thought thinks that equality means giving everyone the opportunity to play the same game. Wokeism views playing a game as inherently oppressive to those who are crying at the edge of the playing field. But wokeism does not open up the black box of the mind to ask why these people are crying. Are they injured? Do they need to be taught how to use technical thought so that they can play the game? Are they trying to play the ultimate game? Are they throwing a tempter tantrum because they are emotionally stuck at Piaget’s preoperational level? Are they crying because they have learned that crying is effective in a world of fences and rescue services? Asking such questions requires using Perceiver thought to distinguish between various categories. But postmodern thought is convinced that it is impossible to use Perceiver thought in the presence of mental networks.
The end result is that cultural MMNs become the standard of thought. But mental networks exist within people’s minds and are triggered by clues from the environment. Thus, what really becomes the standard thought for the wokeist mind is the cultural MMNs that exist within the mind of that wokeist. Lindsay outlines this amplification in an article on Obama, Trump and the spread of wokeism. Lindsay mentions that there was a racist reaction when Obama was elected president. However, he does not know “how widespread and rampant this latent racist sentiment that the Critical Race Theorists capitalized upon really was, though... The activist media, which we thought was merely corporate at the time, seized upon this narrative and amplified it, likely to many, many times its true scope and certainly well beyond its true depth and significance... Thus, the narrative that conservatives were a bunch of racist hicks who hated the very idea of a president who happens to be black was leveraged very effectively in left-leaning circles to denigrate virtually all conservative objection and all conservative thought as reactionary.” Notice how wokeism is amplifying some experiences of racism into a universal system of racism. This amplification is being done in a manner that makes it difficult to establish the facts in Perceiver thought, consistent with the approach of Teacher overgeneralization. And this amplification is extrapolating from mental networks within the wokeist mind.
Relating this amplification to what was said earlier about Perceiver thought and truth, when Perceiver thought is overwhelmed by some emotional situation, then Perceiver thought will ‘know’ that this specific situation describes universal ‘truth’, and jumping from the facts of some specific situation to universal ‘truth’ is, by definition, a form of Teacher overgeneralization. One can tell that the wokeist mind is overgeneralizing from cultural MMNs within its own mind because it uses theory of mind inappropriately. Repeating an earlier quote by Lindsay, “Mindreading, though, is the superpower of Critical Theory. Critical Theorists obviously know everyone else’s bad intentions better than anyone, including those who deny them (as a means of self-preservation) and who are unaware of them (who suffer some form of willful ignorance or false consciousness).” This was interpreted earlier as the immature theory of mind of the preoperational child.
As was mentioned earlier, theory of mind uses mental networks within my mind to try to guess what is happening within another person’s mind. Some clue from that person will trigger a mental network in my mind which will then emotionally impose its structure upon my mind and I will interpret this imposed structure as a prediction of what that person is thinking. This happens within every person’s mind, but the wokeist ‘knows’ that the triggered mental network portrays ‘truth’ about the other person’s mind, that this ‘truth’ is ‘universal truth’, and this ‘knowing’ is impervious to any Perceiver facts from the other person about what they are actually thinking. Such ‘knowing’ happens when Perceiver thought is overwhelmed by emotional pressure, ‘universal knowing’ indicates that MMNs are being amplified by Teacher thought, and rejecting Perceiver facts is a characteristic of Teacher overgeneralization. This goes beyond the preoperational child who has not yet fully developed Perceiver and Teacher thought to an adult mind in which Perceiver thought is overwhelmed by cultural MMNs and Teacher thought overgeneralizes from cultural MMNs. The cognitive result is similar, but the adult version can use adult language to defend and rationalize behaving like a preoperational child.
One can tell that cultural MMNs within the wokeist mind are being overgeneralized to form a TMN of universal oppression because one of the main goals of wokeism is to get everyone else to recognize that the MMNs within the wokeist mind that predict what others are thinking are more ‘true’ than any personal knowledge that others have about what they are actually thinking. Stated simply, ‘You need to recognize that my mental simulation of you is more ‘true’ than the real you.’ This can be seen in the attitude of anti-racism. Repeating an earlier quote by Lindsay, “In critical race Theory, it is simply impossible for racism to be absent from any situation. One may be actively racist by perpetuating racial prejudice and discrimination against non-white people (particularly black people), or passively racist by failing to notice racism in oneself or others and thus failing to address it. Both of these are bad. One can only be ‘antiracist’ by noticing racism all the time, in every person and every situation, even when it is not readily apparent, and ‘calling it out.’”
That was discussed earlier as an example of Teacher overgeneralization. Let us now examine it in more detail. The wokeist is experiencing the emotional pain of being at the bottom of the emotional hierarchy of mental networks. That is because the wokeist is crying at the side of the playing field (for whatever reasons) instead of playing the game. The experiential pain of being a loser at the side of the game is creating cultural MMNs of oppression within the mind of the wokeist. Instead of developing technical thought to be able to play the game, the wokeist interprets losing the game in terms of mental networks: ‘I am failing because others are imposing their cultural MMNs upon my society’. This is then overgeneralized into a universal theory: ‘It is simple impossible for racism to be absent from any situation’. This causes the cultural MMNs of the wokeist mind to be attributed to other people. ‘One may be actively racist by perpetuating racial prejudice’. Thinking about this overgeneralization will cause it to turn into a TMN within the mind of the wokeist, which will generate emotional pressure within the wokeist mind to apply this theory universally, causing the wokeist mind to interpret using technical thought to play the game as being ‘passively racist by failing to notice racism in oneself or others’. Notice how the wokeist ‘knows’ what is actually happening within the mind of other people better than those people. The wokeist then expects others to overgeneralize within their own minds based upon the cultural MMNs within the mind of wokeist. ‘One can only be antiracist by noticing racism all the time, in every person and every situation, even when it is not readily apparent’. One can tell others are being expected to overgeneralize because they are supposed to notice racism everywhere even when this is not supported by facts. Teacher thought feels bad when there is an exception to the rule. A universal Teacher theory that overgeneralizes from my cultural MMNs will feel bad when encountering any exception to my cultural MMNs within the social realm. A universal Teacher theory that turns into a TMN will use emotional pressure to eliminate any exceptions to the general rule. The end result is a hurting person who expects everyone in the world to fixate emotionally upon their hurting experiences.
Finally, one can tell that painful cultural MMNs have turned into a universal theory that is being applied to everyone because nowhere in this thought process is there any concept of actually addressing the problem and fixing it. That is because fixing the problem would face the wokeist with experiences that are inconsistent with existing cultural MMNs. This is a significant principle that needs to be stated carefully. Individual Mercy experiences acquire emotional labels of pain and pleasure. A mental network generates emotions based upon consistency. This means that it is possible for painful Mercy experiences to form MMNs. This creates an emotional dilemma that can be seen in the battered spouse. On the one hand, remaining in the relationship leads to painful experiences for Mercy thought. On the other hand, leaving the relationship leads to inconsistent experiences for MMNs which will respond by generating emotional discomfort. Stated simply, the abusive environment is painful but it is also familiar. Overgeneralizing from painful cultural MMNs magnifies this problem by building a universal theory upon my personal painful experiences. Fixing the problem then threatens both my cultural MMNs and the TMN of my worldview because living within the problem is familiar and it supports my ideology. A person can emotionally handle one of these mental networks falling apart if emotionally supported by the other. A person cannot emotionally handle both MMNs and TMNs falling apart. Stated crudely but accurately, the wokeist mind has damned itself to perpetual failure, because it rejects the technical thinking required to fix problems, it builds its emotional identity upon pain, and it turns this personal pain into a universal worldview. Stated simply, the wokeist mind wants emotional solidarity with existing problems and not solutions. In Lindsay’s words, “All forms of oppression by all forms of identity are linked into one broad, pervasive ‘Matrix of Domination,’ thus necessitating solidarity across all forms of oppression.” Notice how many specific forms of oppression are being overgeneralized into a ‘broad, pervasive matrix of domination’ and that the response is ‘solidarity across all forms of oppression’.
It should be added that mental symmetry also claims to know people better than they know themselves, and one of the goals of mental symmetry is to help people open their eyes so they can see what is happening within their minds. But this is different than the ‘mindreading’ of wokeism. Wokeism uses emotional pressure to impose the content of my cultural MMNs upon all of society. Mental symmetry describes how mental networks function within all minds. Saying this another way, wokeism focuses upon mental software while mental symmetry focuses upon mental hardware. Wokeism has to impose itself upon others, while mental symmetry merely has to point out inescapable cognitive mechanisms that are already functioning. Going further, wokeism ignores what anybody says about their own minds. Mental symmetry, in contrast, listens carefully to what people say about their own minds, because cognitive mechanisms function invisibly and gaining an accurate understanding of cognitive mechanisms requires examining the structure of the mind from many different personal perspectives.
Lindsay refers to the Teacher amplification of cultural MMNs as Theory with a capital ‘T’. “Theory is most centrally concerned with the way that knowledge is socially constructed and put into the service of power.” If ‘knowledge is socially constructed’, then Perceiver thought is being emotionally overwhelmed by cultural MMNs. If this is ‘put into the service of power’, then cultural MMNs are colliding with one another and forming emotional hierarchies. If this is the ‘central concern’ of theory, then Teacher thought is forming a general theory based upon dueling cultural MMNs. And if this turns into Theory with a capital ‘T’, then this general theory is forming a TMN. But notice that this is not a theory about how mental networks function, as is being presented in this essay. Such a theory includes the various ways that mental networks can function making it possible to reprogram mental networks. Instead, it is a theory about how mental networks behave when society is playing the game of technical thought and one decides to opt out from the game in order to focus upon mental networks’ it is a general theory of dueling cultural MMNs portrayed by someone at the bottom of the societal pecking order.
Saying this in terms of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, the preoperational mind is centered upon cultural MMNs. In the concrete operational stage, a child learns how to use abstract thought to analyze concrete examples. Finally, the teenager in Piaget’s formal operational stage becomes capable of using Teacher thought independently of concrete MMNs. Wokeist Theory traps the mind at the preoperational mind by forming a universal theory that everyone always functions at Piaget’s preoperational level because nothing else exists. Instead of helping Teacher thought to function independently of childish MMNs, Teacher thought builds a universal theory upon childish MMNs and fixates upon this theory until it turns into a TMN—which then feels bad whenever it encounters thinking that is not driven by childish MMNs. Stated simply, school, which is meant to educate childish minds, is teaching street urchins to be more effective gang members, and telling these street urchins that the entire world is just a bunch of street gangs.
The Educational Method of Freire
Unfortunately, this is not an analogy but rather an accurate description of the educational approach of Paulo Freire. Wikipedia summarizes that “During his childhood and adolescence, Freire ended up four grades behind, and his social life revolved around playing pick-up football with other poor children, from whom he claims to have learned a great deal. These experiences would shape his concerns for the poor and would help to construct his particular educational viewpoint.” In other words, Freire’s goal was to teach street urchins guided by knowledge that he learned from street urchins.
Freire’s method starts with emotionally relevant MMNs that attract the student’s attention and then—supposedly—moves from there to TMNs of abstract understanding. In Lindsay’s words, “The sales pitch for the method is found in their saying that by engaging in the ‘culturally relevant’ themes in the learners’ lives, they will be very engaged in the learning process. They will see the image in the codified theme and be ready to connect it to a reading, math, or history lesson that will interest them, driving them to want to learn more. They will want to decodify not only the theme in front of them but also the academic subject that allows them to learn more about it.” However, instead of providing Teacher thought with rational understanding of these emotional MMNs, Freire uses Teacher emotions to amplify these emotional MMNs through ‘political reading’. Lindsay clarifies, “It’s learning to read the fact of bicycles as a feature of living in poverty and of being limited in one’s capacity to get around. It’s learning to see the ‘racism’ hidden in the statistics or society... It’s coming to learn that these features of life aren’t just the way it is; they’re political decisions made by people with the power to make those political decisions and force everyone else to abide by them.” One of the primary goals of true education is to enable the student to use Teacher thought in a rational manner independent of personal and cultural MMNs, as seen in Piaget’s final formal operational stage. ‘Political reading’, in contrast, places personal and cultural MMNs within the general theory that all knowledge is based in colliding MMNs. Thus, instead of educating street urchins, Freire is teaching them that the entire civilized world is nothing more than an urban ghetto ruled by fighting gangs. Lindsay summarizes, “As demonstrated by the experiments in Nigeria, this radicalization works. It does not, however, create academic engagement. It creates political engagement. The learners truly are more engaged with the subject matter, but not academically. The learners are ‘emotional wrecks.’ They don’t see the point in learning. They do see the need for immediate political action, though.”
Looking at this from the outside, it is easy to conclude that Freire and his followers are maliciously attempting to deliberately destroy civilization. However, if Perceiver thought becomes disabled within the mind, then the mind will become cognitively stuck at the level of dueling MMNs. And when this mind attempts to understand itself, it will conclude that human thought and behavior is comprised primarily of dueling MMNs. Thus, Freire’s educational approach will naturally emerge when a street urchin attends a postmodern university. Looking at this more carefully, Freire was attempting to address a legitimate shortcoming in scientific education, which typically tries to remain objective by ignoring cultural and personal MMNs. Education should be made more relevant by connecting it with the personal MMNs of the student. However, this will only be mentally and societally constructive if Perceiver thought has sufficient confidence to function in the presence of these emotional MMNs and if Perceiver thought is emotionally backed up by theoretical TMNs that use and appreciate rational thought.
Saying this another way, mental symmetry suggests that the first stage of personal transformation is to construct an accurate understanding within Teacher thought of childish MMNs. Using religious language, this means recognizing that one is a sinner in the presence of a holy God. However, the basic premise of wokeism appears to be that ‘I am never a sinner!!’ and anyone who suggests otherwise will be damned. This indicates cognitively that the wokeist mind is emotionally ruled by its cultural MMNs.
One cognitive result of having a mind that is emotionally ruled by mental networks that are not independent of identity and culture is that it becomes hard work simply to exist as an individual—because the mind cannot emotionally rest upon any mental networks that are independent of identity and culture. This is referred to as emotional labor. As Lindsay explains, there is some validity to this concept. “Within the realms of organizational psychology and sociology, emotional labor refers to the idea of having to manage one’s emotions in a particular way as a part of one’s work requirements, for example when one’s job requirements include presenting with a positive or affable affect, cheerfulness, friendliness, or even stoicism in the face of frustrations.” This can be explained cognitively as having to behave in a manner that matches the average person’s mental network of how such a person should behave. A mental network can be viewed as an emotionally imposed schema. Psychology normally focuses upon the content that is being imposed, such as how a salesperson should behave. But a schema also includes emotional aspects, such as the pleasant demeanor that a salesperson is supposed to express.
Lindsay adds that “In Critical Social Justice, however, the concept has been expanded considerably from these reasonable roots... For an example of the other type, since trans people are deemed profoundly oppressed by the Theory of Critical Social Justice, and because being trans is legitimately more complicated than not being trans, Critical Social Justice would say that emotional labor is required just to be trans (in a cisnormative society).” The cognitive mechanism has not changed. One is still attempting to behave in a manner that is consistent with some mental network. What has changed is emotional support from other mental networks. Being ‘trans in a cisnormative society’ would mean that one’s behavior is inconsistent with the mental networks within the average person’s mind, and mental networks generate negative emotions when experiencing inconsistent behavior. Thus, even if ‘being trans’ receives no active disapproval from normal society, simply existing within ‘cisnormative society’ will cause one to continually encounter behavior that is inconsistent with one’s own mental networks. Going further, Perceiver thought can protect the mind from being inundated by societal expectations by asserting ‘that is not me’. But this mental buffering will not happen if Perceiver thought is overwhelmed by cultural MMNs. Instead, the cultural MMNs that are currently being triggered will impose their expectations upon the mind in full emotional force, causing the mind to be emotionally pulled in a new direction whenever a different cultural MMN is triggered.
The previous paragraph assumes that only cultural MMNs exist. However, there is more to the story, which can be explained with a personal example, and will be discussed later when looking at gender. The theory of mental symmetry has turned into a TMN within my mind that continually imposes itself upon my thought and behavior. Meanwhile, the postmodern world has continued to drift in a totally different direction. Thus, I find that merely existing within society requires emotional labor. However, even though there is a deep inconsistency between my personal mental networks and the mental networks that guide my society, my behavior is emotionally supported by rational TMNs based in an understanding of how the natural world works (I have a Master’s degree in engineering) as well as TMNs of cognitive understanding based in a comprehension of how the mind works. Thus, I find that it is usually possible to eliminate the feeling of emotional labor by changing my mental context away from social approval to a rational understanding based in how things work. The wokeist mind does not have this option because it is built upon postmodern thought and one of the basic premises of postmodern thought is that all Perceiver knowledge and Teacher understanding is inescapably controlled by cultural TMNs.
And when it takes extensive emotional labor to maintain some lifestyle, then this implies that there is something cognitively unnatural about that lifestyle. This is similar to the way that it takes a lot of energy—and money and soldiers’ lives—to air condition tents in the desert. Maintaining a ‘cool American lifestyle’ for American soldiers in the Iraqi desert heat took a lot of energy because it was physically unnatural.
Looking at emotional labor from a different perspective, a distinction needs to be made between feeling bad and falling apart. As far as I can tell, the mind is incapable of questioning the fundamental mental networks upon which it is based. That is like trying to lift up the leg on which one is standing. Instead, an alternate set of mental networks has to be constructed that can emotionally support the ‘weight’ of the mind. For instance, education constructs TMNs of rational understanding within the mind of the student making it emotionally possible for the student to question the MMNs that were acquired in childhood. Looking at this analogically, lifting up one leg requires putting one’s weight upon the other leg. The wokeist mind cannot question childish MMNs because it has ‘no other leg to stand on’. Freire’s method of education reduces the mind to ‘one leg’ by mentally ‘tying the other leg’ of Teacher thought onto the ‘existing leg’ of childish MMNs. Thus, I suggest that the wokeist rejects personal correction not just because ‘it would make me feel bad’ but rather because ‘it would cause me to fall apart’. When cultural MMNs form the basis for the mind, then questioning the validity of these MMNs becomes an existential threat. Others observing from the sides with different fundamental MMNs wonder why the wokeist mind is so stubbornly resisting seemingly obvious facts. But the wokeist mind is incapable of thinking in terms of facts and has gone past feeling bad to dealing with an existential crisis. And society must be blamed, because not blaming the rest of society for this existential crisis will make the existential crisis worse.
This existential threat can be seen in the term ‘hate speech’. Lindsay clarifies that “Hate speech is an object of central concern in much of the activism motivated by Critical Social Justice. Speaking generally, hate speech is considered to be any form of expression that might ‘spread, incite, promote, or justify hatred, violence, and discrimination against a person or group of persons,’ which is a rather broad definition... Generally, advocates of Critical Social Justice and many others with similar sympathies support ‘banning’ hate speech, that is, making it illegal or removing its protections under various guarantees of freedom of speech and expression.” ‘Hate’ is a strong negative emotion directed at some person. This is not ‘You are wrong’ or ‘You do not understand’, but rather ‘You hate me’. If ‘hate speech is an object of central concern’, this indicates that speech is being interpreted through the experiential lens of MMNs, consistent with the suggestion that the wokeist mind is emotionally based upon cultural MMNs.
Going further, a mental network will only become active and generate emotional pressure if it is triggered. Personal identity within the wokeist mind consists of the cultural MMNs that are currently being triggered, because the wokeist mind lacks the Perceiver confidence to assert that ‘I am not your expectations’. Attempting to ‘ban hate speech’ is is a way of bringing emotional stability to personal identity by controlling the verbal environment so that unwanted mental networks are not triggered.
This is cognitively similar to forcing women to cover themselves from head to toe in a shapeless garment so that mental networks of ‘lust’ are not triggered within the male mind. In both cases, I suggest that the primary flaw lies within the mind of the person doing the complaining. Men need to re-program infantile hormone-driven mental networks so that they view women as people with whom one interacts intelligently. Similarly, those calling for the banning of ‘hate speech’ need to reprogram their childish mental networks so that they view other cultures and lifestyles as people with whom one interacts intelligently. Unfortunately, the term ‘hate speech’ itself demonstrates the difficulty of such cognitive reprogramming. Teacher thought uses words to form theories. (There are other kinds of theories, but words are the basic building blocks for Teacher thought.) The fact that speech is being labeled as hateful indicates that the mental building blocks for Teacher thought have become emotionally tainted by feelings of personal antipathy being generated by MMNs.
I mentioned earlier that TMNs of understanding ‘how things work’ can lighten my ‘emotional labor’ of living within postmodern society. Teacher thought can only provide this emotional assistance if it functions independently of Mercy thought. In contrast, Teacher thought within the wokeist mind is used to amplify the feelings generated by personal MMNs. This emotional amplification turns some incident of personal hatred (real or imagined) into a mindset of hatred against an entire group being perpetrated systemically by all of society. I suggest that this statement should not be challenged as an inaccurate statement about reality because such a response does not address the fundamental problem of refusing to open up the black box of the mind. Instead, it should be treated as an accurate statement about the mind of the wokeist, because that uses Perceiver thought to analyze cultural MMNs. And what the wokeist mind really needs is the ability to use Perceiver thought to analyze cultural MMNs.
Focusing upon reality rather than what is happening within the mind will lead to an emphasis upon the external factors that trigger mental networks rather than the mental networks. Using a cognitively similar analogy, the focus will be upon what type of burqa or niqab women should wear as opposed to the mental networks that men use to represent women. One can tell that the goal of wokeism is to prevent unpleasant mental networks from being triggered because many essays that talk about sensitive subjects are now preceded by a trigger warning. A 2016 NPR survey found that “About half of professors said they’ve used a trigger warning in advance of introducing potentially difficult material.” However, a 2021 article relates that “Researchers have also produced numerous studies showing that they don’t work—in fact, they may make people even more anxious. Brandeis University has now turned on trigger warnings as well—because the word trigger is, well, triggering.” Looking at this cognitively, the word ‘trigger’ has now become part of the unpleasant mental networks that are not supposed to be triggered. This happens naturally, as illustrated by the succession of neutral words that have been used over the decades to refer to stupid people, which have then become tainted by association: moron and imbecile had to be replaced by mentally retarded, which itself was replaced by special needs, which has now been replaced by intellectual disability. The point is that preventing mental networks from being triggered by the environment is a difficult strategy to follow in the short-term and essentially impossible in the long-term.
The emotional need to stop unpleasant mental networks from being triggered can also be seen more generally in cancel culture. Lindsay explains, “Generally, the more woke a person or their audience is, the more susceptible to cancellation they are, not less. The simplest explanation for this is that the woke pay far more attention to other woke people than to others, and they are borderline obsessive about examining the discourses of all public figures. A somewhat deeper explanation is that the woke, who have a critical consciousness, are expected to be more aware of systemic power dynamics and positionality, not to mention an underexamined heart of the problem, while everyone else is considered rather unwashed or potentially irredeemable and undesirable.” Looking at this cognitively, mental networks naturally form an emotional hierarchy, and public figures will be at the top of this emotional hierarchy. We just saw that the woke mind contains no mental networks that are independent of cultural MMNs which can provide for emotional support for mental identity. (The wokeist mind also lacks the Perceiver confidence to be able to define personal identity. Therefore, personal identity becomes whatever cultural MMNs are currently being triggered.) One option that remains is to find emotional support in MMNs that represent important people who talk and behave in a manner that is consistent with the cultural MMNs within the wokeist mind—some famous person who is sympathetic to my lifestyle. Unfortunately, it only takes a single sufficiently emotional event to create or modify an MMN. Perceiver thought can bring stability to MMNs by looking for connections that are repeated, but this cannot happen if Perceiver thought has been disabled. Thus, the ‘discourses of all public figures’ have to be continually re-examined to ensure that they remain consistent with cultural MMNs—which themselves are subject to being altered by societal pressure. The ‘borderline obsessive’ attention suggests that the wokeist mind has no other alternative but to depend upon this unstable method for emotionally supporting cultural MMNs.
Depending upon socially prominent persons for emotional support makes the mind emotionally vulnerable to the cultural MMNs of those people. When some emotionally supportive public figure changes his or her cultural MMNs, then this will turn the emotional support of consistent mental networks into the emotional attack of inconsistent mental networks. Someone who was ‘showing solidarity with my lifestyle’ has now turned into a traitor. The wokeist will feel as if violence has been done to his or her mind. Lindsay clarifies that “Social Justice has a complicated relationship with the term violence, but for the time being, suffice it to say that ‘violence’ can include words, speech, ideas, symbols, images, and potentially even thoughts that the Social Justice activist considers dangerous in their contribution to producing or sustaining dominant discourses. By branding these phenomena ‘violent,’ it is far easier to justify significant and censorious activism against them.” This description may be accurate, but it gives the impression that the woke person is choosing to use the term ‘violent’. The woke movement probably contains some cynical individuals who are taking advantage of this mindset, but I suggest that for the average wokeist, this labeling of ‘violent’ reflects an instinctual gut response.
For instance, I lived and worked in South Korea from 2002-2010, and I would see a person with a tattoo about once a month. When I moved back to Canada, a significant portion of the population had acquired large tattoos. Every time I saw such a tattoo, it literally felt like a kick in the gut. Even now I flinch at the larger tattoos. I suspect that the woke person is feeling something similar. (The problem with a tattoo is that it performs a counterfeit, external version of what I am trying to do internally. I am trying to submit MMNs of personal identity to the TMN of a general understanding. A tattoo replaces the TMN of a rational understanding with an arbitrary symbol and then applies this to the physical body rather than to the mind.)
Lindsay describes what happens when “a public figure is found to have said or done something problematic and is then called out for it, most commonly on social media. This leads to mass outrage and demands for a boycott of the individual’s work, their firing from their job or work opportunities, or the retraction of invitations to events (or an outright cancellation of their event).” Responding on social media indicates that the mental processing is happening within the realm of cultural MMNs. Mass outrage means that cultural MMNs within the minds of many individuals are generating negative emotions. Boycotting an individual’s work ensures that MMNs associated with that person will not be triggered. And getting them fired and removed from work opportunities attempts to topple them from their current location at the top of the emotional hierarchy. A technically trained scholar such as Lindsay has to do significant research to be able to describe this combination accurately. For the woke mind, no intelligent thought or analysis is required to behave in this manner. Instead, this type of mental processing will naturally emerge within the mind that uses education to reinforce functioning emotionally at Piaget’s preoperational level.
Looking more explicitly at the Teacher realm of words, the emotional dominance of cultural MMNs over TMNs can be seen verbally in the concept of discourse. Examining how this developed, Perceiver facts provide meanings for words within Teacher thought. Lindsay summarizes, “Prior to postmodernism, and for most people even now, language was seen as straightforwardly connected to objects and actions in the world. The word ‘dog’ refers to a species of canine. Once you have learned that word, you can use it to identify something as a dog, and you can do so correctly or incorrectly.” Thus, Perceiver facts are performing the dual job of organizing Mercy experiences into objects and categories and providing meanings for words in Teacher thought. But then Foucault came along. “‘Discourse’ may well have originally meant simply conversation or speech but Foucault argues that any speech is in fact shot through with various assumptions, rules, and principles of exclusion: ‘In appearance,’ he explains, ‘speech may well be of little account, but the prohibitions surrounding it soon reveal its links with desire and power’. For Foucault, then, discourse is ‘a violence that we do to things, or, at all events, as a practice we impose upon them.’” In other words, words do not have solid meanings because Perceiver thought is continually being overwhelmed by cultural MMNs. This means that speech is inescapably controlled by cultural and personal MMNs. As Lindsay says, “Critical Social Justice Theory holds discourses and the meaning contained within them as wholly socially constructed and intrinsically imbued with the politics of whoever authenticated or authenticates them.” Putting this together, Teacher thought uses words to construct theories and discourse analysis is using words to come up with theories about how people use words. This implies the existence of a cognitive module that uses words to come up with theories. But this cognitive module of Teacher thought is being programmed by the verbal theory that all words are hopelessly biased by cultural MMNs. Again one sees TMNs under the control of MMNs. A person such as Lindsay who uses abstract technical thought to assign precise definitions to words will see this thinking as absurd. (And that is the basic premise of logical positivism.) But the mind will naturally think in this manner when cultural MMNs are being used to actively overwhelm Perceiver thought. Because Perceiver facts determine the meanings of words, actively overwhelming Perceiver thought will change the meanings of words, and this will feel like cultural violence is being done to words because the mind is being driven emotionally by cultural MMNs. Going further, a rationally trained mind will assume that some rational thought still exists within the wokeist mind to which one can appeal. But when Perceiver thought becomes overwhelmed at a fundamental level, then no rational thought remains. Instead, it becomes turtles all the way down.
Using TMNs to amplify MMNs is described more explicitly by the concept of hegemony. Lindsay explains that hegemony “ties in with postmodern concepts of ‘metanarratives’ or ‘grand narratives’ and ‘dominant discourses.’ Social Justice concepts of socialization hold that individuals learn what they consider true from society to the extent that it can be extremely difficult or even impossible to think in any other way or challenge the dominant ideas in society. These ideas are then considered hegemonic.” On the one hand, individuals are acquiring ‘truth’ from society by being mentally programmed by MMNs of culture. On the other hand, these experiential MMNs are being amplified by Teacher thought to form ‘metanarratives’ and ‘dominant discourses’.
A metanarrative is cognitively different than a meta-theory. A metanarrative comes up with a universal Teacher theory by overgeneralizing from the MMNs of some cultural group—it is based upon the personal narrative of some representative group or individual. (A metanarrative also needs to be distinguished from an exemplar. An exemplar or characteristic example focuses upon the steps being taken in Server thought, while a metanarrative focuses upon the emotional experiences within Mercy thought.) A meta-theory is a theory in Teacher thought that provides a general explanation for many other theories. For instance, mental symmetry is a cognitive meta-theory that has been used to provide a unified explanation for many fields. A metanarrative gives the feeling of being emotionally ruled by some societal group. A meta-theory gives the feeling of having a theory looking over one’s shoulder and commenting. For instance, when I recently attempted to publish a paper on language acquisition, one professor told me that researchers do not like to have a theory ‘looking over their shoulder and commenting’. The distinction between a metanarrative and a meta-theory can also be seen in a national language versus a global language. Most national languages are heavily associated with the cultural MMNs of some country or cultural group. For instance, French is the language of France and the French language is officially controlled by the Académie Française. English, in contrast, is an international language that is not controlled by any single country and has become associated with global TMNs such as international trade, the Internet, and the publishing of academic papers.
The relationship between MMNs and TMNs can be seen nonverbally in the concept of authenticity. Lindsay describes how wokeism interprets authenticity. “One’s politics are not the whole of one’s authentic identity status in the Theory of Critical Social Justice. To qualify, one must also be that identity. Thus, a white woman (like Rachel Dolezal) could not claim to be authentically black, no matter what her politics or how she speaks about things (or presents herself outwardly). That is because the relevant marker of authenticity in Social Justice is this: having the lived experience of being in a marginalized or oppressed position relative to systemic power dynamics and speaking in a way that reflects having had that experience. Because Theory has taken great pains to outline exactly what those experiences look like and cannot be contradicted, this renders authenticity (in this context) as being in agreement with Theory.” Thus, an ‘authentic’ person must pass the following hurdles: First, the ‘right’ MMNs must be triggered by the physical appearance of that person. For instance, one must be physically black to speak ‘authentically’ about racism. Second, one must share the same cultural MMNs. For instance, one must have ‘the lived experience of being in a marginalized or oppressed position’. Notice that physically triggering the right mental network takes precedence over having similar mental networks. For instance, someone who is not black who has experienced marginalization or oppression would not be regarded as authentic. Thus, the personal experiences that I described at the beginning of this essay would not be regarded as authentic. Cognitively speaking, this means that the wokeist mind is not speaking cognitively—the black box of the mind is not being opened up. Instead, MMNs are being triggered by the external environment rather than being internally organized or analyzed. This sort of fragmented mind is a characteristic of preoperational thinking. Passing these first two tests makes a person potentially authentic. Third, one must use Teacher thought to extrapolate from cultural MMNs in order to remain authentic. As Lindsay clarifies, “A person may be said to have an ‘authentic black voice’, but no black person who speaks against Theory or its conclusions would qualify for such an appellation. Indeed, they’d likely be accused of inauthenticity, usually in the form of some sort of false consciousness or selling out.”
Mental symmetry suggests that authenticity is significant. That is because objective science tends to ignore subjective and cultural MMNs, which are essential elements of what it means to be human. However, if Perceiver thought acquires sufficient confidence to function in the presence of the emotional pressure of these MMNs, then one will realize that it is possible for others who look different to have similar MMNs that are also authentic. One can look at these individuals and conclude, ‘You have experienced similar situations. You understand at an emotional level what it is like to be in my situation’. This leads to a sense of empathy. Going further, placing these MMNs within a mental structure of rational understanding leads to the realization that one does not have to be mentally and emotionally ruled by one’s authentic experiences. One can actually move beyond mental trauma and learn valuable lessons from life. One’s personal experience then becomes authentic in the sense that one is not just making theoretical statements but rather knows from personal experience how theory applies to real life. However, it is not possible to move beyond one’s painful cultural MMNs if one builds one’s mind upon these painful MMNs because attempting to change the situation will lead to an existential crisis.
It was suggested earlier that the woke mind attempts to prevent inconsistent MMNs from being triggered by controlling the environment. We have seen here that wokeism uses overgeneralization to extend from personal MMNs to TMNs of ideology. Putting this together, wokeism starts with external factors that are capable of triggering differing MMNs of personal identity. Lindsay provides a partial list: “These categories include race, sex, gender, sexuality, dis/ability status, fat status, age, class, national origin and indigeneity, religion, and (sigh) just about anything else one can imagine, though typically it’s only those among these that are believed somehow to have significant cultural relevance under socially constructed categories.” Lindsay summarizes these categories as ‘just about anything else one can imagine’, but I suggest that they are actually based in a lack of imagination. Imagination makes it possible for the mind to break free of physical reality. What seems to be happening with these various categories is that each describes some physical difference that is capable of triggering different cultural MMNs. Race is physically obvious, as are gender, disability, body weight, age, and indigeneity. Sexuality, national origin, and religion are also frequently indicated by physically obvious signs such as special clothing and unusual mannerisms or speech. These physical clues are triggering MMNs which are then being extrapolated by Teacher overgeneralization to form various social groups. For instance, seeing a fat person triggers MMNs of being fat which are then overgeneralized by Teacher thought to form the general category of ‘fatness’. Notice that there is no place within this form of thinking for personal identity, because the mind jumps from external clues to triggered personal mental networks to Teacher overgeneralization without pausing at personal identity. That is because the Perceiver confidence that is required to define personal identity is not present.
In contrast, Lindsay explains that “In liberal theories of identity, which see people as individuals who share a common humanity and belong to social groups, there is much opportunity to define one’s identity for oneself through character development and action. There is also an ethos that this is the best way to understand one’s identity—judgment by the content of one’s character, and perhaps what one does with that character, rather than the color of one’s skin or other (mostly) immutable demographic markers or the cultural features associated with them.” Looking at this cognitively, placing MMNs of personal identity within a mental framework of rational understanding makes it possible to change personal identity through ‘character development and action’. Going further, personal development makes it possible for individuals to move from one social group to another. Notice that Lindsay is actually opening up the black box of the mind here by referring to ‘the content of one’s character’.
Social Emotional Learning
Moving on, we saw earlier that scientific education is naturally incomplete because it tries to avoid the subjective realm by remaining objective. Social emotional learning (SEL) attempts to make objective scientific education more complete by adding a subjective component. As Lindsay says, “Social-Emotional Learning is a program of instruction for non-academic educational ‘competencies’ in the social and emotional spheres. In virtually all cases, SEL is billed as a means of educating ‘the whole child’ rather than just his academic parts.” Looking at this cognitively, the ‘academic parts’ of the mind include technical thought and its mental foundation of Perceiver facts and Server sequences. The ‘social and emotional spheres’ involve cultural and personal MMNs. Thus, SEL is filling a legitimate hole in current education by addressing ‘the whole child’. But is the whole child being educated? This is a significant question because we saw earlier that Freire uses the educational process to amplify the cultural MMNs of the child rather educate the child. Saying this another way, when cultural MMNs are added to education, what will be the resulting emotional hierarchy? Will TMNs of rational understanding be permitted to modify cultural MMNs or will cultural MMNs be placed at the top of the emotional hierarchy forcing TMNs of rational understanding to adjust?
Lindsay adds that “The leading organization for SEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five areas of social and emotional competencies to be taught... comprised of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.” Looking at these terms cognitively, self-awareness indicates the ability to use Perceiver thought to accurately describe personal MMNs. Self-management involves what neurology refers to as executive function, which means using Perceiver facts and Server sequences to regulate personal MMNs. Social awareness means recognizing that other people have personal MMNs that may be different than mine, which is a critical aspect of theory of mind. Similarly, relationship skills mean being able to maneuver within this realm of personal MMNs, while decision-making means being able to choose how to behave within the emotionally charged realm of mental networks without being controlled by emotional triggers from the environment. Thus, these five competencies are all cognitively legitimate—if they are addressed in a manner that encourages cognitive development.
Lindsay’s essay then contains a few paragraphs where he vomits on the page before pulling himself together emotionally and addressing the topic in a more rational manner. For instance, “Some, such as your humble encyclopedist, have suggested that the intentional implementation of Social-Emotional Learning in schools should be a felony and involve the relevant administrators going to prison... [because they are] practicing psychology on children without a license.” If this is the case, then all parents need to be sent to prison, because they are (almost) all practicing psychology on their children without a license. I should add that Lindsay does support the right of mothers to raise their children without outside interference in another article that will be discussed when looking at gender. I have learned from personal experience that it is tempting to vomit on the page when writing about topics such as these. I usually take these emotional passages out when editing, but I do leave some of them in—while attempting to ensure that the verbal vomit is vectored to a valid location and not sprayed indiscriminately.
Following this rabbit trail for a moment, Lindsay describes moving emotionally beyond the need to ‘vomit on the page’ in an article on being ‘based’. Quoting from the article, “Humor isn’t necessary but is the key to being truly based. Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter pointed in its general direction... This isn’t to say, of course, that being based means being disparaging. Far from it... Jokes are subversive. Jokes erode power everywhere it is abused. Jokes burn off the dead wood and leave what’s green, what’s authentic, untouched. Being based includes understanding the difference.” Vomiting on the page increases the emotional intensity; a joke decreases the emotional intensity. A wokeist cannot joke about cultural MMNs because they provide the emotional foundation for the wokeist mind. A ‘based joke’ emotionally deflates the pomposity of extrapolating from one’s own cultural MMNs to all of reality; it exposes the ludicrousness of emotionally laboring to behave in a manner that violates how things work—such as air conditioning tents in the hot desert. But a ‘based joke’ does not belittle cultural MMNs that express legitimate aspects of what are required to flourish as a human being. In other words, based ‘jokes burn off the dead wood and leave what’s green, what’s authentic, untouched’.
Skipping now to the part where Lindsay pulls himself together, he suggests a distinction between ‘individual/targeted’ and ‘systemic’ implementation. (He also suggests an intermediate category but we will just look at the two extremes.) “In ‘individual/targeted’ interventions, children or classrooms with specific challenges or issues in their social and emotional lives, particularly when those impede or limit learning, are separated from the other students and intervened on in targeted ways, often by trained psychological or social-work professionals.” In other words, rational thought is being used to reprogram dysfunctional childish MMNs without allowing these MMNs to emotionally overwhelm the learning process for other students. This is both good and necessary.
In contrast, “Systemic SEL treats social and emotional learning as something that is always present and relevant to learning and thus treats it as a purposeful educational lens to be woven into all aspects of school life, curriculum, and beyond. Mathematics class, for instance, would be taught with SEL in mind, using mathematics problems, say, to introduce ‘social awareness’ issues like race and racism, or by creating conditions to intervene socially and emotionally when students get frustrated or upset because of the difficulty of the lesson.” This describes the method of Freire examined earlier which ideologically overgeneralizes from the cultural MMNs of some marginalized group. This is not helpful and it destroys the educational system because it imposes cultural MMNs upon TMNs of rational understanding. The problem does not lie with adding culturally relevant MMNs to education, because this fills the emotional hole that is created by the objective thinking of technical thought. The problem lies with placing cultural MMNs above TMNs of rational understanding in the emotional hierarchy. For instance, the newdiscourses website deals with highly emotional topics, but it does so in a rational manner (apart from the occasional verbal vomit). Thus, it is appropriate to add culturally relevant illustrations to education as long as these are treated as applications of understanding and not as sources of ideology.
Similarly, Lindsay distinguishes between ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘transformative’ SEL. (Lindsay again adds an intermediate category which can be treated as a combination of the two extremes.) “SEL based in personal responsibility seeks to intervene with students and teach them that challenges they have in their social and emotional lives [sic] by teaching them skills for taking personal responsibility as an individual for their emotions and social circumstances.” The goal is to place personal MMNs within a mental structure of rational understanding. Using psychological language, this enables executive function. This is a significant aspect of cognitive development. In contrast, “Transformative SEL ‘social awareness’ lessons are unabashedly rooted in neo-Marxist social Theories like Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Fat Studies, and Disability Studies, and ‘Trans SEL’ in that regard is a vehicle and coordinating hub for programming (literally, as in thought reform or brainwashing) into the perspectives of these Critical Theories.” This imposes the MMNs of groups that feel suppressed upon society as a whole. Stated more simply, those who—by their own admission—feel sick are told to define what it means to be well. This is, by definition, not healthy. It is not healthy because cultural MMNs are being treated as sources of ideology rather than as applications of understanding.
Looking at a different problem, Lindsay’s discussion of SEL mentions what happens when personal and cultural MMNs are added to modern education in an objective manner. “Social-Emotional Learning involves large-scale, frequent surveying of the students about social and emotional issues related to the five areas of competencies... These surveys, however, especially when conducted digitally, amount to large-scale data harvesting of children in schools. These data are not merely used for SEL programming choices, concerning as that would be on its own; they are also provided (or sold) to other entities for purposes including economic forecasting (thus, potentially marketing) and the building of systems of social control.” It was mentioned earlier that technical thought uses information that is known with sufficient certainty. This is typically done by performing statistical analysis upon large collections of data, as is described here. Thus, cultural and personal MMNs are being turned into objective data through statistical analysis. Notice that technical thought is attempting to deal with cultural MMNs in an objective manner that avoids interacting directly with cultural MMNs.
The end result is not to make education more whole but rather to reduce humans to the level of robots who can be manipulated in an inhuman manner by existing objective technical thought. Lindsay warns about “harvesting and harnessing this SEL-generated ‘psychodata’ in order to devise what he terms a global ‘psychocracy,’ governance by (algorithm-mediated) psychological manipulation. For their part, the WEF [World Economic Forum] indicates that SEL teaches the kinds of ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘soft skills’ that will be needed for the jobs of the future. One such purpose of this data gathering is to define Pre-K to career pathways that match and place people with their future careers based on their elaborate SEL profiles. One might suspect this will limit individual freedom when put into practice.” Notice that the goal is not to change society to make it more human but rather to change humans so that they will fit better within the technical thinking required by modern, specialized jobs.
This explains why it is imperative to view wokeism as an inadequate answer to a legitimate problem and not just as insane thinking that needs to be suppressed. Wokeism is like a childish temper tantrum. But the child is screaming for a legitimate reason. If this screaming is ignored, then society will turn into a dysfunctional prison peopled by technical drones, as envisioned by manipulative organizations such as the WEF. This is not just an empty threat, because “Presently, Social-Emotional Learning is the hottest trend in education, and it is being implemented virtually universally in North American schools and beyond.”
Lindsay finishes the essay on SEL by quoting from a CASEL paper that describes the five competencies. Lindsay comments that “We trust the Marxist slant of these descriptions will be sufficiently self-evident not to require elaboration.” However, a distinction needs to be made between these five competencies and the way that they are interpreted in the CASEL paper. The interpretations have a Marxist slant. The five competencies themselves are cognitively legitimate.
Looking at this more closely, the CASEL paper provides the following definitions: “Self-awareness encompasses individual psychological characteristics such as labeling one’s feelings, relating feelings and thoughts to behavior, accurate self-assessment of strengths and challenges, self-efficacy, and optimism” (p.3). “Self-management includes regulating one’s emotions, stress management, self-control, self-motivation, and setting and achieving goals” (p.5). “Social awareness connotes perspective-taking; empathy; respecting diversity; understanding social and ethical norms of behavior; and recognizing family, school, and community supports” (p.6). “Relationship skills connote building relationships with diverse individuals and groups, communicating clearly, working cooperatively, resolving conflicts, and seeking help” (p.7). “Responsible decision-making refers to considering the well-being of self and others; recognizing one’s responsibility to behave ethically; basing decisions on safety, social, and ethical considerations; evaluating realistic consequences of various actions; and making constructive, safe choices for self, relationships, and school” (p.7). If one defines ‘diverse individuals and groups’ as people from different cultures, then everything stated in these definitions is compatible with the goal of pursuing mental wholeness. The wokeism becomes apparent when one reads the rest of the paper that expands upon these five definitions. Writing off these CASEL goals as ‘Marxist’ because they are being expanded in a ‘Marxist’ manner ignores the inadequacy of objective scientific education, giving Marxist thinking free reign to deal with this inadequacy in its flawed manner. People cannot be blamed for turning to quack medicine for a cure when the medical profession refuses to acknowledge the illness. Going further, the first step in coming up with a legitimate cure is to describe the sickness more accurately—which is what the newdiscourses website is doing.
Looking at this more generally, I suggest that CASEL is confusing Teacher thought with Mercy thought. Modern science has two fundamental flaws: First, it is objective, which means that it protects Perceiver thought and Perceiver facts by avoiding cultural and personal MMNs. Second, it is specialized, which means that it lacks the TMN of an integrated understanding. Science used to function within the TMN of a Judeo-Christian concept of God and morality, but this is no longer the case. Wokeism addresses this inadequacy by overgeneralizing from the MMNs of ‘oppressed groups’ to a TMN of ‘universal oppression’. This collapses the two distinct flaws of objectivity and specialization into a single problem that SEL supposedly addresses by treating the child in a more ‘whole’ manner. But there is a Mercy side and a Teacher side to wholeness. The Mercy side acknowledges cultural and personal MMNs. The Teacher side uses a meta-theory to integrate technical specializations. These two are not the same. As Lindsay points out, systemic SEL treats these two as equivalent. “Systemic SEL treats social and emotional learning as something that is always present and relevant to learning and thus treats it as a purposeful educational lens to be woven into all aspects of school life, curriculum, and beyond.” Recognizing that all learning is being done by students whose minds are guided by cultural and personal MMNs addresses the flaw of objectivity. Attempting to ‘weave’ the cultural MMNs of some group ‘into all aspects of school life, curriculum, and beyond’ treats these cultural MMNs as a meta-theory by overgeneralizing from these cultural MMNs in an ideological manner.
For instance, in my home province of British Columbia, all subjects are now supposed to be taught at all grades in all schools in the light of ‘indigenous knowing’. The official BC government curriculum website provides a series of documents that all open with the following statement: “In B.C.’s redesigned curriculum, Indigenous knowledge and perspectives are integrated throughout all areas of learning and are evident in the curriculum’s rationale statements, goals, big ideas, mandated learning standards, and elaborations. The First Peoples Principles of Learning offer a crucial lens for curriculum, placing a significant importance on the authentic integration of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in relevant and meaningful ways. The intent behind this integration is to promote a growing understanding of Indigenous peoples in B.C. that will contribute to the development of educated citizens who reflect on and support reconciliation.” Notice the overgeneralization from cultural MMNs to TMN of meta-theory. The goal is to ‘promote a growing understanding of indigenous peoples in BC’. Stated cognitively, these cultural MMNs have been historically denigrated, and modern society wants to make amends for the situation. However, instead of using rational thought to examine these cultural MMNs in a less biased manner, indigenous cultural MMNs are being elevated—unaltered and unexamined—to the top of the emotional hierarchy. The BC government then goes beyond emotionally elevating indigenous cultural MMNs within Mercy thought to using Teacher overgeneralization to treat indigenous cultural MMNs as a meta-theory within Teacher thought that is being ‘integrated throughout all areas of learning’. One can tell that a leap of overgeneralization is being taken from cultural MMNs to educational TMN because it is currently taboo to examine indigenous cultural MMNs in a factual manner that does not bow to their universality. Viewed politically, wokeist thought is—literally—rewriting the textbook. Viewed cognitively, this is a textbook example of wokeist thought.
Among other things, treating the cultural MMNs of some group as a meta-theory ends up oppressing the MMNs of all other cultural groups. This becomes immediately apparent when examining the BC curriculum guides for studying the languages of German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Spanish. Each of these seven guides contains the same generic instructions to include “First Peoples perspectives connecting language and culture, including histories, identity, and place.” More specifically, one is instructed to have “conversations with an Elder about local celebrations, traditions, and protocols”, one is reminded that “Identity is influenced by, for example, traditions, protocols, celebrations, and festivals”, and one is told that “A sense of place can be influenced by, for example, territory, food, clothing, and creative works.” These are all significant statements because language and culture are emotionally interrelated. For instance, when learning German one has conversations with German elders about German celebrations, traditions, and protocols, one celebrates German festivals, and one learns about German territory, German food, German clothing, and German creative works. But the BC government is now requiring that all schools have conversation with indigenous elders about indigenous celebrations, traditions, and protocols when studying German, and that learning German must be accompanied by learning about indigenous territory, indigenous food, indigenous clothing, and indigenous creative works. That goes beyond a denigration of German culture to a wholesale replacement of German culture—precisely what indigenous advocates claim was perpetrated by Europeans (such as Germans) upon indigenous language and culture. Going further, one can tell that these requirements involve an overgeneralization because they are repeated verbatim seven times for each of the seven languages without providing any more detailed instructions as to how this is to work in practice. In contrast, mental symmetry views the MMNs of some culture as a specific example of some possible path of cognitive development. Stated simply, mental symmetry places cultural MMNs within the TMN of a cognitive meta-theory rather than forming a TMN by overgeneralizing from the MMNs of some specific group. Notice that our discussion has not made any value statements—good or bad—about any culture. Instead, we have merely observed that overgeneralizing from the MMNs of some specific culture leads automatically to cultural dictatorship. This is a general statement within Teacher thought that is independent of the MMNs of any culture.
Gender
We have looked so far at wokeism that focuses upon racism. A different kind of thinking emerges when dealing with gender. I know that wokeism has made it taboo to say anything factual about gender. However, we have seen that the mindset of wokeism corresponds to the thinking of the preschool child. When a child throws a temper tantrum, one does not ignore the child and one also does not give in to the child. Instead, one uses adult thought to understand what is bothering the child.
A 2009 meta-study found that “The largest difference between men and women was found along the Things–People dimension, with men gravitated toward things-oriented careers and women gravitated toward people-oriented careers. Men generally showed more Realistic and Investigative interests as well as stronger interests in the STEM areas; in comparison, women tend to have more Artistic, Social, and Conventional interests and to express less interest in the STEM fields” (p. 871). The authors add that “These sex differences are remarkably consistent across age and over time, providing an exception to the generalization that only small sex differences exist” (p. 880). A 2015 follow-on meta-study confirmed these findings. A 2014 paper notes that “Female advantages in reading and male advantages in mental rotation are found in all nations analyzed so far (75 nations for reading, 53 for spatial) but these sex differences vary in magnitude” (p. 4). A 2016 paper concludes that “In terms of affective empathy, females, compared to men, show higher emotional responsivity and mirroring responses to others’ pain, as well as better emotion recognition abilities. Relative to men, females also seem to engage more emotional areas during social cognition. Females also tend to show more prosocial, altruistic behavior as well, which supports the notion that affective empathy drives prosocial behavior. On the other hand, when it comes to cognitive empathy, males seem to show more utilitarian behavior as well as greater recruitment of areas involved in cognitive control and cognition.” Similarly, a 2016 book on emotion points out that “across many studies, female score higher than males in identifying the meanings of nonverbal cues of face, body, and voice” (p. 279). Mental symmetry suggests that the mind can function in three primary ways known as technical thought, normal thought, and mental networks. The findings just described are all consistent with the hypothesis that male thought emphasizes technical thought whereas female thought emphasizes mental networks. Technical thought focuses upon manipulating things in an objective manner, while the mind uses mental networks to represent people and social interactions. ‘Realistic and investigative interests’ emphasize the factual realm of technical thought. Mental rotation is a characteristic of Perceiver thought, one of the mental foundations for technical thought. Reading involves the words of Teacher thought, while empathy is guided by MMNs. Artistry involves TMNs of beauty and other forms of order-within-complexity. Notice that these are all statistical tendencies that would be modified by cognitive style. Thus, a female Contributor person would place a greater emphasis upon technical thought than a female Mercy person.
If the male mind tends to emphasize technical thought while the female mind tends to emphasize mental networks, then this means that everyone’s mind contains both a male and a female side. Similarly, if each cognitive style is conscious in a different cognitive module, then some cognitive styles naturally emphasize male thought while other cognitive styles naturally emphasize female thought. This is not a problem if the goal is to program all the parts of the mind to work together in an integrated manner: male and female physical bodies emphasize different cognitive modules, male and female brains emphasize different cognitive modules, cognitive style emphasizes specific cognitive modules, and culture and environment program certain cognitive modules. Inconsistencies between these various influences may lead in the short term to identity confusion, but in the long term they make it easier to achieve cognitive wholeness. Thus, if a boy starts feeling like a girl, this does not mean that the boy has to have sex surgery. Instead, it means that the boy is developing the female side of his mind. For instance, I am a male Perceiver person who naturally emphasizes male thought. When I play violin, I am emotionally expressing the female side of my mind. But playing the violin does not make me want to cut off my penis. Instead, I feel more whole inside because I am expressing an aspect of my mind that does not naturally get expressed. (This example is not hyperbole because I know a good flautist who is not allowed to audition for the local symphony because he is not gay.)
The natural tendency of women to focus upon mental networks can be seen in the field of Women’s Studies. Wikipedia points out that “Early women’s studies courses and curricula were often driven by the question ‘Why are women not included? Where are the women?’” Examining this cognitively, if academia emphasizes technical thought, then men who naturally use technical thought will tend to be overrepresented in academia. And women will naturally tend to address this question by using female thought that emphasizes mental networks. Quoting further from Wikipedia, “Since the 1970s, scholars of women’s studies have taken post-modern approaches to understand gender and its intersections with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, age, and (dis)ability to produce and maintain power structures within society. With this turn, there has been a focus on language, subjectivity, and social hegemony, and how the lives of subjects, however they identify, are constituted. At the core of these theories is the notion that however one identifies, gender, sex, and sexuality are not intrinsic, but are socially constructed.” Postmodernism uses the mental networks of female thought to overwhelm the rational thinking of male thought. ‘Power structures within society’ involve the mental networks of female thought. Similarly, language, subjectivity, the lives of subjects, and identity involve the emotional cognitive modules of Teacher and Mercy thought. Asserting that identity, gender, sex, and sexuality are socially constructed indicates that emotional personal topics are ruled by the mental networks of female thought.
Going further, the methodology used by women’s studies emphasizes female thought. In the words of Wikipedia, “Research practices associated with women’s studies place women and the experiences of women at the center of inquiry through the use of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Feminist researchers acknowledge their role in the production of knowledge and make explicit the relationship between the researcher and the research subject.” Placing ‘the experiences of women at the center of inquiry’ builds thinking upon subjective MMNs. ‘Qualitative and mixed methods’ start with MMNs of personal experience rather than using statistical analysis to come up with information that passes the threshold of certainty required by technical thought. ‘Making explicit the relationship between researcher and research subject’ makes subjective MMNs a fundamental aspect of research as opposed to attempting to use technical thought in an objective manner. In conclusion, the cognitive approach taken by Women’s Studies strongly supports the suggestion that female thought is not socially constructed but rather can be defined cognitively as a form of thought that emphasizes mental networks. Academia has traditionally emphasized the technical thinking of male thought while downplaying the mental networks of female thought. Women’s studies are now paying back the compliment by emphasizing the mental networks of female thought at the expense of the technical thinking of male thought.
There is a cognitive similarity between the cognitive differences of gender and Dual Process theory, which distinguishes between ‘System 1’ intuitive thought that is fast and emotional and ‘System 2’ rational thought that is slower, analytic, and rule-based. Strangely, I cannot find any paper that makes this seemingly obvious connection. This may be because Dual Process theory regards intuitive thought as subconscious and rational thought as conscious, consistent with a mindset that is approaching the subject from the analytic perspective of male technical thought. Going further, Dual Process theory suggests that intuition can learn from rational thought, and the very idea that women should learn from men would be anathema to Women’s Studies. Intuitive thought is subconscious in the sense that it usually follows a path that does not correspond to any chain of logical reasoning by technical thought. But for the cognitive styles of Mercy, Exhorter, and Teacher, this type of thinking is used consciously and deliberately.
The distinction between male and female thought provides an alternative way of interpreting the inherent deficiencies of scientific education. Male technical thought will naturally tend to ignore and/or suppress MMNs of subjective experience and TMNs of universal understanding by remaining objective and specialized. The solution is to add female thought with its emphasis upon mental networks. But female thought by itself will tend to use feminine intuition to overgeneralize from MMNs of personal experience to TMNs of universal understanding, as illustrated by the ‘case study’ that focuses upon personal narrative. Thus, what is needed is a mental ‘marriage’ of male and female thought, which is consistent with the goal of achieving mental wholeness. Male technical thought needs to extend its domain of analysis beyond the objective and the specialized to include the subjective and the universal. Female mental networks need to learn rigor and accuracy from technical thought. Stated bluntly, male thought by itself is inhuman; female thought by itself is wishful thinking. I recognize that this interpretation violates all sorts of wokeist taboos, but I suggest that mental and societal wholeness depend upon coming up with legitimate cognitive definitions for male, female, and marriage.
Lindsay provides an example of using female mental networks in an intelligent manner to deal with gender. The linked article is on the newdiscourses website. However, it was not written by Lindsay, but rather by a mother whose teenage son decided that he was ‘transgender’. The anonymous author relates that “I published an open letter about my Weird Son and his sudden and very unlikely self-diagnoses of being transgender. To my surprise, it was blocked as ‘Hate Speech’ by Medium.” (The 2021 open letter is also on newdiscourses.)
The author adds that “Among the many comments was the theme: ‘Her son is probably trans and she just can’t tell. She’s just oblivious. She’s probably just been ignoring the signs. She should just believe him. She’s a bad mom.’ Beside the laughable idea that a stranger on the internet could adequately diagnose a teenager from afar by reading a description of him written by his mother, I was bothered by the dismissal of a mother’s observations and insights.” This comment theme is similar to the BC government telling schools to teach foreign languages in the light of indigenous language and culture. In both cases, the cultural MMNs of some oppressed group are being treated as a universal standard to be imposed upon other cultural MMNs. This corresponds to the centration of the preoperative child who assumes that the world revolves around him or her and has no concept of other points of view. Except, this is an adult version of centration that uses Teacher overgeneralization to amplify childish thought.
The author points out that “It is time to stop dismissing mothers. Because these women are the experts on their children. And yes, no person can read the thoughts inside another person’s head, nor perfectly measure every emotion someone else feels, but moms are as close to that as it gets.” Looking at this cognitively, a mother has many emotional interactions with her children, which will cause extensive mental networks to develop within the mother’s mind that represent the thinking and behavior of these children. The end result will be a close correspondence between the mental networks within the child’s mind that are motivating the child’s behavior and the mental networks within the mother’s mind that represent the behavior of her child. Plus, a mother is a woman and women are naturally talented at using mental networks. Saying this another way, a mother’s experiential knowledge of her child is far more authentic than some stranger parroting wokeist ideology. It is true that some mothers are dysfunctional, but what has just been described applies to the vast majority of cases.
The author mentions that she is part of a group of about seventy mothers in a similar situation who are attempting to understand what is happening. She summarizes that “100% of the boys in our group are socially awkward... These are boys who acknowledge they had never even questioned their gender until quite recently... These are lonely, isolated, and confused boys, trying to understand why they feel so different.” In other words, these boys are all dealing with confused mental networks, and the male mind is not naturally talented at dealing with mental networks. In the words of the author, “Our teen boys can’t even remember to put the ice cream away – let alone floss their teeth or wear coats on cold days. Their brains are literally not capable of accurately assessing risks or predicting consequences. That’s why they have mothers (and fathers)!” In other words, mental networks within the mind of the child are not internally integrated but are rather being triggered in a fragmented manner by the environment. In contrast, the similar mental networks within the mind of the mother that represent the child can be accessed internally by the mother without having to be triggered in a fragmented manner. Thus, the mother can be trusted to use her mental networks to bring coherence to the fragmented mental networks of her confused child. The author suggests, “Let’s start listening to mothers. Let’s center their voices. Let’s overthrow the misomateric [hatred of mothers] idea that what mothers think and observe doesn’t matter. Let’s believe moms, and trust moms.” And the author reports that “Most (60-85%) young children with gender dysphoria who were left alone came to terms with their birth sex by the time they were 18.” In terms of Piaget’s stages, an 18-year old reaches the formal operational stage which is capable of forming TMNs of abstract understanding that are independent of personal MMNs, which can provide an alternative source of emotional stability to the fragmented MMNs of chaotic childhood—unless Freire and his followers prevent this from happening.
Looking more generally at the topic of gender, Lindsay summarizes that “In Critical Social Justice thought, gender is something that is learned and done, not something that necessarily has anything to do with one’s biological sex. Sex refers to features of the body for reproduction only and has nothing to do with who someone is; gender is the part that relates to who you are and who you experience yourself to be. Learning gender happens through socialization.” Stated cognitively, gender is viewed as something unrelated to the physical realm which is based upon mental networks. Stating this more clearly, “In Critical Social Justice Theory, gender is nothing more than a set of beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and practices that are culturally produced and culturally enforced... The idea that biology has something to do with gender is not just considered wrong but also immoral because such views could potentially be used by sexists and other bigots to enforce their bigotries.”
The categories that we have encountered so far have all been based upon obvious physical differences. Some physical characteristic is triggering cultural MMNs which are then being overgeneralized into TMNs. But one can tell that the cultural MMNs within the mind of the wokeist are ultimately in charge because anyone who is physically black will be rejected as inauthentic—not really black—if their cultural MMNs do not match the cultural MMNs within the wokeist mind. Using the example of BC language instruction, a native German teaching German from a German perspective will be rejected as inauthentic because it does not recognize the indigenous cultural perspective.
Now suppose that this wokeist mindset wins the cultural war and becomes officially mandated policy to be imposed upon all of society—as is now the case in British Columbia. By winning the social and legal battle, wokeism has effectively lost the cognitive war. There are two main reasons for this: First, strong emotions are required to overwhelm Perceiver thought. If these strong emotions start to fade, then Perceiver ‘knowing’ will fall into doubt. Fading emotional ‘knowing’ can be revitalized by fixating emotionally upon some specific situation. This emotional revitalization can be seen, for instance, in the religious revival, which uses emotional meetings to re-overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ that religious belief is ‘true’. Similarly, fading wokeist ‘belief’ can be revitalized by fixating emotionally upon specific incidents of cultural oppression.
Lindsay gives an example of such emotional revitalization happening with ‘black lives matter’. “On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, who also happens to be black, was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, allegedly, and incorrectly, with his hands up asking the officer not to shoot him. ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ set the country on fire, and within the midst of the conflagration, an organization, not just the grassroots movement it portrayed itself to be, arose proclaiming, now with appropriate capital letters, ‘Black Lives Matter’... It was a huge, divisive thing, just like it was intended to be. Less heard, however, were organizers on the ground who had been involved in the nascent grassroots organization mentioning that copious amounts of Astroturf had been laid where their movement once stood.” Notice how this specific situation of societal oppression is being transformed into an emotional conflagration that overwhelms Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ that Black Lives Matter—written in capital letters. Notice also that the goal is to use social astroturf to revitalize ‘belief’ in the universal ‘truth’ of universal oppression as opposed to actually addressing cultural MMNs in a legitimate manner.
We saw earlier that a theory that turns into a TMN will use emotional pressure to impose itself upon thought and behavior. What is being described here is an additional factor that comes into play when a universal theory is formed by using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ that specific facts are universally ‘true’. In the same way that living in a secular environment will cause religious believers to start doubting their religious ‘truth’, leading to a need for emotional revivals to re-overwhelm Perceiver thought, so living in a civil rights environment in which blatant racism has been largely eliminated will cause wokeist ‘believers’ to start doubting the universal ‘truth’ of universal oppression. This doubting can be eliminated by treating incidents of racism as ‘religious revivals’ that revitalize Perceiver ‘belief’. I should add in passing that a distinction needs to be made between the mindset of emotionally based religious ‘belief’ and the content of the Bible. The mindset of religious fundamentalism has major limitations while the Bible is an unusually perceptive book, especially when analyzed in the original language.
The first reason for losing the war involves the intensity of Mercy emotions. Keeping Perceiver thought overwhelmed requires strong emotions. These strong emotions will disappear if wokeism wins the cultural battle and the rest of society attempts to tiptoe around the subject emotionally in order to avoid offending anyone. An environment of emotional tiptoeing lacks the strong emotions that are required to keep Perceiver thought overwhelmed within the wokeist mind. The second reason is related to the first. Perceiver thought is typically overwhelmed into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’ whenever some source of ‘truth’ with great emotional status proclaims ‘truth’. But suppose that I gain emotional status relative to my source of ‘truth’. Eventually my feeling of self-importance will rise to the level where I start to doubt my sources of ‘truth’. Saying this another way, Perceiver thought within my mind will only remain emotionally overwhelmed as long as my sources of ‘truth’ have much greater emotional status within my mind than personal identity. This doubting of ‘truth’ can be seen in the typical teenager. As far as a child is concerned, anything that an adult says will naturally be regarded as ‘truth’ because adults are far more important—and much bigger—than children. When the child becomes a teenager, then adults are no longer physically larger and the teenager has also acquired some knowledge and skills. The rise in personal status of the teenager will cause the ‘truth’ that the teenager acquired as a child to fall into doubt, leading to teenage rebellion. (This second point will be mentioned later when looking at the inner circle of a cult.) Applying this second principle to wokeist ‘belief’, the wokeist mind will ‘know’ that universal oppression is ‘true’ when functioning at the excluded edge of society. But what happens when wokeist thinking becomes the center of social attention and/or official government policy? The rise of the social status of wokeism will inherently cause wokeist ‘belief’ to fall into doubt.
Summarizing, when wokeism wins the battle for societal approval, then it will lose the war for mental certainty. That is because wokeist ‘belief’ requires strong emotions and exclusion from authority to survive. Removing strong emotions from social interaction and giving wokeism social approval will cause wokeist ‘belief’ to fall into doubt. This will cause wokeism to experience angst. Angst can be explained cognitively as a sort of panic attack. A phobia has a specific source. For instance, one may have a phobia for spiders. Focusing upon episodes of racism functions cognitively at the level of a phobia, because one can point to the specific situation that is causing the emotional reaction. A panic attack has no source but rather strikes out of the blue. This happens when Perceiver thought loses certainty. Instead of being emotionally hit by some situation, Perceiver thought loses the ability to hold the mind together. The result is angst, a generalized sense of uncertainty that has no specific cause.
The description of gender-confused youth given in the article quoted earlier conveys a sense of angst. “These are kids who were ‘typical’ boys in early childhood. They did not cross-dress, they did not demand nor even show much interest in the toys of the other sex. They were completely ‘normal’ until their sudden announcement between ages 14-16. Well – not completely normal. 100% of the boys in our group are socially awkward. 64% have anxiety, 52% have depression, 40% have ADHD, and around 50% have Autism or Autism-like behaviors... Generally, these are nerdy, awkward boys on the edges of their social circles. Some of them have no friends at all.” Notice the striking lack of social interaction, which would lead to an absence of emotionally potent cultural MMNs. Similarly, there is no emotional fixation upon mental networks of female existence. The author concludes that this is not emotional ‘knowing’ caused by potent mental networks but rather confusion caused by a lack of Perceiver certainty. (Perceiver thought can acquire certainty either through knowing based in repetition or through ‘knowing’ based in emotional intensity.) The author adds, “These are not boys with a strange sexual fetish. These are not porn addicts. These are boys who acknowledge they had never even questioned their gender until quite recently. Most of them have not changed their public behavior or requested female pronouns. These are lonely, isolated, and confused boys, trying to understand why they feel so different.” Notice how the confusion is striking out of the blue suggesting that Perceiver certainty is falling below some required threshold.
And research indicates that transsexual individuals have a much higher incidence of mental health issues. For instance, a 2015 literature review examined 31 studies and noted that “all found similar results, suggesting that there is an association between being trans, NSSI and suicidality. The findings from the research tend to suggest that most of the difficulties associated with gender dysphoria and NSSI and suicidality are associated with the experience of victimisation, and lack of social acceptance, which could be mediated by depression.” Notice that the authors—of course—blame these problems upon systemic oppression by cultural MMNs leading to ‘the experience of victimization and lack of social acceptance’. Looking more specifically at NSSI (non-suicidal self injury), the paper reports that “Studies examining levels of NSSI in young people attending the only Gender Identity Development Service in the UK for children and adolescents found a strong association between a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (as defined by the authors) and self-harm (defined as non-suicidal self-harm by the authors), with 24% of the patients reporting previously engaging in self-harm behaviour... the most common type of NSSI was self-cutting.” Similarly, a 2019 systematic review concluded that “SITBs [suicidal thoughts and behaviors], among the transgender population, are both universally high and impacted by race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and income.” One concludes that the mothers’ assertions that their children are deeply confused teenagers is backed up by the scientific literature.
Wokeism versus Science
I have suggested that winning the battle will ultimately cause wokeism to lose the war. We will now look more closely at the extent to which wokeism has won the battle, the method that it used to overcome scientific thought, and the war that it is now losing. This conflict could be referred to as a ‘battle of the sexes’ because it is a struggle between the mental networks of female thought and the factually-based technical thinking of male thought. More generally, the modern technological world can be viewed as a triumph of male factually-based technical thought over the female mental networks of traditional culture and religion. Similarly, the postmodern world and wokeism can be interpreted as a triumph of female thought over male thought. This is obviously a simplification, but I suggest that it remains a useful generalization and not just an overgeneralization. In other words, opening up the black box of the mind and examining the mental concept of gender does not have to end up in confusion and angst. Instead, one can find solid cognitive mechanisms that survive careful examination. One solid cognitive mechanism is that a ‘battle of the sexes’ will always be lost because both people and society will be incomplete when one of these modes of thought is pursued to the exclusion of the other.
Lindsay describes the cognitive shift that happened when the wokeist focus on cultural MMNs succeeded in overwhelming Perceiver thought. Using the game analogy, wokeism succeeded in focusing so much attention upon the sobbing people at the side of the game that the very concept of playing by the rules of some game became questioned. “This is one of the main sites of disagreement between gender studies scholars and activists and gender-critical feminists, who are much clearer on their Derrida and strongly wish to maintain the physical binary of the sexes and to more or less do away with this new-fangled understanding of gender entirely.” Derrida focused upon categories such as male versus female and then stated that one side of the category tends to be honored at the expense of the other. Similarly, classic feminism assumes Perceiver categories of male and female. Gender theory, in contrast, regards the Perceiver category of male versus female as socially constructed. Notice that this is a different cognitive shift than the previous one which moved from focusing upon universal equality to dueling cultural MMNs.
Summarizing the three stages, 1) The civil rights era used technical thought to implement the Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality in an objective manner that respected Perceiver thought but did not open up the black box of the mind. This led to equal opportunity but did not address the emotional hierarchy of cultural MMNs. 2) Classic feminism and antiracism used mental networks to implement the overgeneralization of universal equality in a subjective manner that focused upon cultural MMNs and overwhelmed Perceiver thought when it collided with cultural MMNs. This led to a focus on equity and introduced a new Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression. Pursuing equity minimized societal expressions of inequality, which meant that the Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression could only be maintained by ignoring Perceiver facts and insisting that oppression was still universally present. This developed the alternate form of ‘knowing’ of using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ ‘facts’ about oppression. 3) Gender theory observed that using scientific thought to thinking factually about reality is itself a major source of societal inequity. This has led to a questioning of Perceiver thought by attempting to replace the scientific search for repeatable Perceiver facts with alternative forms of emotional ‘knowing’. It has led to a questioning of any Perceiver facts that make cultural MMNs feel bad—even when these facts are clearly based in reality. And it has led to an alternate mindset that actively emphasizes and/or creates incidents of societal oppression in order to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ that the Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression is ‘true’. The end result is culturally-based insanity and angst. We will now examine this third stage.
We will start by looking at the wokeist questioning of science. In Lindsay’s words, “For them, discourses—how things are and may be spoken about—are the determiners of reality, and scientific discourses are seen as particularly powerful in this regard because of their strong relationship with knowledge and the truth. In this branch of thought, power and knowledge are the same thing, so knowledge about sex and gender is literally tantamount to political control where sex and gender are concerned.” Notice the double emotional attack on science. At the Mercy level of subjective experiences, scientific knowledge is being equated with cultural power by asserting that the Perceiver facts of science are actually being imposed by cultural MMNs. At the Teacher level of words, scientific theories are being reinterpreted as scientific discourses by asserting that theoretical TMNs merely amplify the struggle between cultural MMNs.
Lindsay describes the method that wokeism uses to win the battle over science. “First, scientific knowledge and ‘diverse knowledges’ from ‘other ways of knowing’ are ‘sublated’ onto ‘equal’ footing through a dialectical reinterpretation of ‘knowledge.’ Once the epistemological superiority of scientific knowledge is thereby obscured, it is relentlessly attacked for all the ‘harms’ it causes and has caused (benefits aren’t useful to denounce, so they’re not mentioned) and all the negative ‘systems’ and ‘structures’ it’s associated with. This process inverts the worth of the different ‘knowledges’ on moral grounds.” Looking at this cognitively, this first step claims that Perceiver thought can be programmed in many different ways. This makes intuitive sense to a scientist who is used to working in academia with its many different specializations and physical buildings: ‘The department of physics acquires its knowledge in the physics building. The department of sociology acquires its knowledge in the sociology building. One can get a PhD in physics by doing original research and one can also get a PhD in sociology by doing original research. A PhD in physics is more prestigious than a PhD in sociology.’ This fragmentation reflects the objective, specialized nature of scientific technical thought and gives the impression that there are many equivalent, alternate ways of knowing. It also leads naturally to the interpretation that each discipline is associated with a certain set of cultural MMNs and that these cultural MMNs have arranged themselves into an emotional hierarchy, causing a PhD in physics to be regarded as more prestigious than a PhD in sociology. Lindsay describes the wokeist viewpoint. “Scientific knowledge and activist gnowledge (gnosis) are still both knowledge, and how dare you exclude mine? Yours is a culturally produced product; mine is a culturally produced product; and no one has the privileged standpoint to say yours is better than mine. They’re just different.” This interpretation is not totally wrong because each academic discipline is at least partially supported by the cultural MMNs that maintain the traditions of that field. As Lindsay observes, “All the people we consider scientists are people. People like—in fact, need—to be liked, or at least held in esteem, especially to function in institutional settings.” One concludes that male technical thought has largely lost the first stage of the battle with female mental networks before it has even begun.
However, if one looks beyond academic buildings and technical specializations to open up the black box of the mind, one concludes that all forms of knowing are not equivalent because a distinction can be made between using Perceiver thought to look for repeated connections and using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought. A form of knowing that uses Perceiver thought is superior to one that shuts down Perceiver thought. Unfortunately, technical thought does not naturally distinguish between these two but instead asks whether a fact is known with sufficient certainty to pass the threshold demanded by technical thought. This could mean that the fact has been encountered with sufficient repetition or it could mean that this fact has been proclaimed by an expert with sufficient emotional status. Science claims to be based in repeatable evidence, but one can find many examples of evidence being ignored because it was not presented by a source with sufficient academic prestige. Similarly, when a student learns some scientific law, it is often difficult to tell whether this law is being mentally accepted as truth because the student believes that this law describes reality or because the student has respect for the professor and/or textbook. However, as Lindsay observes, “The natural sciences have withstood the dialectical assault for longer than almost any other discipline of thought.” That is because science generally recognizes the need to use Perceiver thought, largely because not using Perceiver thought to determine the facts tends to result in painful natural consequences.
Lindsay then describes the second stage. “‘Critical’ thought... doesn’t just understand; it has a moral dimension of understanding too. Refusing to recognize other knowledges and ways of knowing is exclusionary, which is a word that means ‘chauvinist’ and carries all its pejorative stink, on steroids. You’re closed minded. You’re bigoted. You’re sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, capitalist, imperialist, colonialist, fascist, and all the other things you’re desperate not to be considered by friends or foes—or, especially, yourself.” Notice that the underlying assumption of all of these ‘moral’ terms is the Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. In each case, the pejorative term accuses someone of committing the sin of distinguishing between the ‘black box’ of one human being and another. We saw earlier that liberalism accepts the Teacher overgeneralization of human equality while using objective technical thought to minimize human differences. Wokeism claims to be superior because it functions within the realm of mental networks that technical thought ignores. Quoting from Lindsay, “The case is made that every ‘knowledge system’ proceeds from a concept of the world and man. They realize this, but you don’t. It’s always happening, but only they are aware of it. Yours causes all these harms. It’s complicit in all these evils. They point it out relentlessly. Theirs is, thanks to the sublation, epistemologically roughly the same, but it distinguishes itself by being conscious of all the harms yours causes and evils yours is complicit in, which, in being conscious of those, it denounces. Theirs is actually better than yours.” In other words, wokeism says that technical thought is morally inferior because it functions in an objective, specialized matter that is not aware of the mental networks of ‘the world and man’. In contrast, wokeism ‘distinguishes itself by being conscious’ of these emotional implications.
The solution is to gain sufficient Perceiver confidence to recognize that Perceiver facts are independent of Mercy feelings. Lindsay describes this struggle. “It’s not impossible to stop a dialectical inversion. It’s not even all that hard, honestly. You’ll get run through a public relations storm from hell, though, because we’ve already let this thing get way too far out of hand already. What you have to do is stand up for your science’s epistemological superiority, which it really does have, and thus prevent the sublation of ‘knowledges.’ You have to reject their appeals to consciousness as crankery and crackpottery and then flip it over on them, pointing out the myriad harms and outright catstrophes [sic] that reliably follow from either their specific activist program or every historical attempt to intentionally subvert science to ideology.” In other words, recognize that allowing emotions to overwhelm Perceiver thought leads inevitably to disaster and gain sufficient Perceiver confidence to use Perceiver thought despite the emotional pressure of ‘a public relations storm from hell’.
Lindsay’s solution may be sufficient for the hard sciences. That is because a hard science deals with the hard facts of physical reality and is emotionally backed up by the TMN of some paradigm. But what about the social sciences that lack paradigms and deal with the emotional, nonphysical realm of human interaction? I suggest that the solution requires replacing the overgeneralization of universal equality with a general theory of mental wholeness. Instead of treating every human being as an indistinguishable black box, the human mind needs to be treated as seven interacting cognitive modules. This was discussed previously when looking at the idea of signing a mental ‘Bill of Rights’.
Lindsay gives several examples of using the overgeneralization of universal oppression to overwhelm Perceiver facts about reality. “The biology of sex being considered ‘true’ by people who accept biology is often considered a transphobic or sexist application of power if they suggest that men and women are different, either physiologically or psychologically on average, respectively. Teaching science in South Africa has been deemed ‘colonialist and inappropriate, for example, in the ‘Science Must Fall’ movement, and generally calls to ‘decolonize’ the curriculum across education see knowledge claims as being the result of colonialist power. Calling obesity a health risk is deemed a fat-shaming, medicalizing, and healthist narrative that is used to oppress fat people according to fat studies. Here, medical truths are considered as being imposed upon obese people.” Notice that not all Perceiver facts about reality are being questioned. Instead, Perceiver facts that make a cultural group feel bad are being rejected. In other words, whenever cultural MMNs collide with Perceiver facts, then Perceiver facts are suppressed—even basic facts about physical reality that are backed up by extensive repetition.
For instance, a fat person sees the same fact body whenever looking in a mirror. A fat person has to move the same fat body whenever attempting to go from one location to another. This experience of fatness is repeated endlessly every day throughout the day. Despite this extensive repetition, cultural MMNs are still using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought. Achieving such a ‘victory’ over rational facts requires the sort of double emotional attack mentioned earlier when looking at wokeism and science: Cultural MMNs are recruited by making sure that it becomes culturally taboo to discuss the topic in a factual manner, and the wokeist TMN of universal oppression is recruited by treating being fat as another example of the universal theory of being oppressed by society. This works because Teacher thought will generate positive emotions when encountering another example of a general theory, because this increases the order-within-complexity of that theory. Responding to this emotional attack with the approach of objective, specialized science will not be sufficient, because this approach tries to protect Perceiver thought by avoiding emotions. Obviously, a strategy that avoids emotions will tend to fail when encountering subjective emotions enhanced by ideology.
Lindsay describes this selective questioning of Perceiver facts. “Correspondence to reality here is not considered ‘possible, or even desirable’. One’s claim on the truth under this way of thinking appears to merely be that one has claimed it, but this is not quite correct because one’s claim on the truth is given more attention and weight if it comes from a ‘way of knowing’ that centers lived experience of oppression or that has been systemically excluded... Under such an analysis, only systemic marginalization establishes a superior claim on truth.” In other words, ‘correspondence to reality’ is not being completely rejected. Instead, Perceiver facts are being rejected whenever they come into contact with cultural MMNs of societal oppression.
Queer Theory
We now come to the point where wokeism stops winning the battles and starts losing the war. A questioning of facts about reality leads naturally towards queer theory. Lindsay summarizes, “Queer Theory exists, in a nutshell, to antagonize norms, normativity, and the normal—that is, anything that can be considered normal by society (even in accurate, neutral description) and thus that carries or can be construed to imply a morally normative expectation about it, which it deems intrinsically oppressive.” In other words, being guided by cultural MMNs is regarded as ‘intrinsically oppressive’ because someone else is imposing content upon my mind.
Stated more clearly, “Queer Theory wouldn’t merely seek to expand the boundaries of ‘normal’ to include circumstances like homosexuality or, stretching the idea further, intersex conditions but to abolish the idea that ‘normal’ is anything but constraining and oppressive entirely.” Notice how the goal has changed from altering the emotional hierarchy of cultural MMNs to regarding the very existence of cultural MMNs as an example of cultural oppression.
Thus, wokeism starts losing the war by changing its emotional focus from supporting oppressed cultural MMNs to challenging the Perceiver categories that these cultural MMNs assume. In Lindsay’s words, “Many people mistakenly understand queer Theory as somehow relevant to LGBT civil rights and acceptance—including most queer Theorists—but this is not at all the case. Queer Theory has nothing positive to say about lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender rights except to the degree that those can be made useful for breaking societal norms, and it has no interest in lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender acceptance at all, as that would make them fall within the reach of acceptable societal norms.” Notice how the gender approach of questioning any Perceiver facts that attack my cultural MMNs leads naturally to the queer approach of questioning any Perceiver facts that define cultural MMNs. That is because Perceiver thought is a cognitive module; shutting down Perceiver thought will shut down all Perceiver thought. Lindsay describes this general shutting down of Perceiver thought. “The less sense something makes and more paradoxical it is, the more properly queer it is (making sense is, after all, normative).”
Going further, queer theory loses the ability to define even itself. Quoting from Lindsay, “Queer Theory elevates only one identity as authentic: the queer identity, which ceases to be queer the moment it is accepted or even able to be categorized.” A social movement that ceases to exist whenever it is socially accepted—or even recognized as a category—has lost the war because it has placed itself in a situation that cannot be won. Notice that the war is now being lost on two levels: First, queer theory is no longer standing up for various ‘oppressed cultural categories’. Second, queer theory has become incapable of standing up for itself.
Lindsay describes where this leads. “This renders queer Theory extremely interested in expanding possibilities by being weird, violating taboos, and disrupting and subverting (not just challenging) norms, which is viewed as a way to achieve liberation for those outside of what the existing dominant power structure considers ‘normal’ or acceptable.” This could be interpreted as malicious behavior, and much of the violating of social taboos is probably malicious. But I suggest that growing angst also plays a role. If Perceiver thought becomes sufficiently disabled, then the categories that the mind uses to organize itself will themselves start to crumble, leading to the sort of confused mind that we saw when looking at gender-confused teenage boys. One can tell that these fundamental Perceiver categories are being questioned because queer theory avoids categorizing itself and the causes which it supposedly supports.
However, it is still possible to use emotional experiences to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’. Choosing to behave in a societally inappropriate manner will create an emotional experience of oppression from society, which will re-overwhelm Perceiver thought within the queer mind into a state of ‘knowing’. Thus, ‘being weird, violating taboos, and disrupting and subverting’ becomes the queer equivalent of the religious revival meeting. Going further, maintaining the Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression requires keeping Perceiver thought in an emotionally overwhelmed state. One can tell that this is the case because ‘queer’ turns into a verb with theoretical overtones. In Lindsay’s words, “To queer something, then, is to in some way challenge (nearly always abstractly and symbolically) those normativities by acting or behaving well outside of them, often in ways that are intentionally absurd or exaggerated. This is considered subversive to the extant normativities and transformational in that it opens up new possibilities around them.” Summarizing, maintaining the TMN of universal oppression and preserving mental categories within the queer mind requires continually discovering new ways of shocking society in order to overwhelm Perceiver thought with emotional experiences of cultural disapproval. The queer mind must continue to do this in order to avoid collapsing into angst.
One would think that such a movement would collapse, but it becomes driven by leaders whose minds are held together by extensive mental networks based upon the emotional experiences of being ornery cusses. Looking at one primary example, Lindsay says that “Judith Butler’s influence on queer Theory literally cannot be overstated. In some sense, her influence very much is the heart of queer Theory.” It is enlightening to notice the emotional controversy described in her biography on the European Graduate School website. “She is a philosopher and one of the most challenging thinkers of our time. She rose to prominence in 1990 with Gender Trouble, which caused an unexpected stir as it unearthed foundational assumptions both in philosophy and in feminist theory, namely the facticity of sex. Controversial debate on the subject(s) extended far beyond academia to which Butler responded, in part, in Bodies that Matter (1993). Butler’s academic rigor is pursued through innovative and critical readings of a wide range of texts in philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, challenging the confines of disciplinary thinking. Within, and beyond that, Judith Butler is also known for her critical voice in socio-political discourse and debate.” Notice that Butler is a ‘challenging’ thinker who has ‘caused an expected stir’ that ‘unearthed foundational assumptions’ which led to ‘controversial debate’ and the response was ‘critical readings’ that ‘challenged the confines’. These are all negative terms and there is no mention of developing, starting, or constructing anything. One concludes that Butler has a PhD in being an ornery cuss. This may make them difficult to interact with, but these emotional controversies also play the cognitive role of overwhelming Perceiver thought within their mind, allowing them to avoid being mentally threatened by feelings of angst. People like Butler must not be attacked, because being the victim of an attack keeps their mind alive. Instead, they must be laughed at and pitied for having embraced insanity. (The Wikipedia article on Butler uses the pronoun ‘their’ and points out that “They use both they/them and she/her pronouns but prefer to use ‘they’ pronouns.” I am using ‘them’ to show how confusing this makes reading at a purely grammatical level.) Butler’s strength of personality makes it possible for them to continue being ‘the heart of queer Theory’ long past the stage where normal people would have self-doubts, get confused, cut themselves, or try to commit suicide. People like them drive wokeism to continue past the stage of no longer winning battles deep into the territory of losing the war. If the ultimate game is achieving mental wholeness, then queer theory has lost the game, burned down the playing field, and shot all the players. But that will only become apparent if people to become willing to open up the black box of the mind and look inside.
In conclusion, the spreading insanity of wokeism has indirectly had a positive impact upon society by forcing the rest of society to deal with uncomfortable questions. Wokeism has forced me to use mental symmetry to analyze topics that I would not normally touch with a ten foot pole. It has forced Lindsay to respond rationally to insane assertions like 2 + 2 = 5. It has forced religion to address topics that have historically been swept under the rug like gender and sexuality. And it is now forcing society to understand what it means to be normal instead of simply assuming normality. Thus, the insanity of wokeism will have had a net positive impact upon society—if rational thought can be used to dissect and analyze all of various worms that have emerged from all of the cans that wokeism has opened. That is the goal of this essay.
Marxism and Wokeism
We have looked at the various elements of wokeism and have seen that Lindsay’s descriptions fit well into the theory of mental symmetry. Lindsay uses Marxist theory provide a general explanation for wokeism. This works well but it treats Marxism as some strange way of thinking that appeared out of nowhere and has somehow taken different forms. Mental symmetry can be used to place Marxism within a cognitive and historical perspective.
We will begin with Lindsay’s description of the original economic Marxism of Karl Marx. Lindsay says that economic Marxism has two basic components. One component is that “People—especially those with access to structural power—can shape society as a matter of continually becoming what it is and will be (called ‘praxis’), and in turn structural power in society shapes the people who live within it (called ‘the inversion of praxis’). Phrased otherwise: Man makes Society makes Man makes Society.” Using the language of mental symmetry, cultural MMNs both impose themselves upon society and are programmed by society. On the one hand, growing up within the emotional experiences of some society will lead to the formation of cultural MMNs. That describes ‘society shaping the people who live within it’. On the other hand, these cultural MMNs will generate a positive emotion when encountering behavior that is consistent with their content and they will also form an emotional hierarchy. That describes people—especially those with access to structural power—shaping society. As far as Marx is concerned, nothing else exists. In other words, Marx’s thinking reflects the wokeist mindset, which interprets everything in terms of cultural MMNs. This type of preoperational thinking will naturally guide society unless some form of education causes other modes of thought to become dominant. This education could be secular or religious, but it must go beyond the ‘education’ of Freire that merely reinforces childish thought.
The second basic component of Marxism involves private property. Lindsay describes Marx this way. “Some people illegitimately declared themselves the exclusive possessors of some special kind of private property and order society and its supporting ideological narratives to justify their claim on this property’” Notice Marx’s viewpoint: Property owners are using their emotional status to impose their cultural MMNs upon the rest of society and they are using the TMN of an ideology to justify this cultural imposition. That may describe what is happening within the mind of Marx. But what is happening within the mind of the capitalist? Some of them are probably thinking the way Marx accuses them of thinking, especially those who have been born into their wealth and privilege. But most of them are using technical thought to better their personal condition.
This essay has described how technical thought is interpreted by mental networks, but we have not talked much about how technical thought actually functions. This is discussed extensively elsewhere so we will mention enough here to understand the basic elements. The diagram of mental symmetry labels Mercy and Server as concrete. Stated simply, Mercy thought focuses upon some desirable experience and Server thought performs the actions that are required to reach this desirable experience (or possibly leave some undesirable experience.) However, one can also see in the diagram that there is no direct line running from Mercy to Server. Instead, the connection goes Mercy – Perceiver – Contributor – Server. Looking at this in more detail, Perceiver thought places Mercy experiences within a mental map of categories and connections. Contributor thought then chooses which Server action to perform.
The intermediate Perceiver – Contributor part will happen automatically in a mind that is governed by MMNs acquired from the external environment: The arrangement of objects within the physical environment will substitute for a mental map. Encountering some desirable Mercy experience within reality will trigger a MMN which will emotionally impose its structure upon the mind resulting in some Server action. Instead of choosing to perform some action guided by factual knowledge, the triggering of cultural MMNs is causing certain Server actions to be automatically performed.
According to Marx, this cycle of MMNs motivating Server actions defines animal behavior, while man can go beyond instinct-driven animal behavior by using cycles of ‘society programming MMNs which guide society’. In Lindsay’s words, “For animals, they are their ‘life activity.’ That is, they are what constitutes their survival. This isn’t actually different for Man, but the ‘life activity’ of Man has a different character because of Man’s consciousness. Man’s life activity is the construction of society, by which he constructs himself through himself.” Summarizing Marx: Animal = instinctive mental networks -> Server actions. Human = cultural MMNs -> Server actions. Humans are more than animals because they can change their cultural MMNs.
Turning away from Marx now to the mindset of capitalism, capitalism explicitly replaces cultural MMNs with Perceiver facts and Contributor choices—in the objective. Perceiver thought is used to create private property by subdividing physical reality into different categories. Private property may use physical markers to denote boundaries between various properties but it is primarily a mental division that uses Perceiver thought to subdivide Mercy experiences into categories of mine, yours, hers, and so on. Private property makes economics possible: Contributor thought can be used to change Perceiver facts of ownership, making it possible to exchange something I want less for something I want more. Contributor thought can also be used to spend more of my time doing Server actions in which I am skilled. Thus, capitalism contains the two fundamental elements of private property (in Perceiver thought) and skilled labor (in Server thought).
The goal of concrete technical thought is to improve some emotional bottom line in Mercy thought, while research and development uses abstract technical thought to multiply the effectiveness of capitalism. Applying concrete technical thought within a society driven by cultural MMNs will obviously lead to the acquisition of wealth because concrete technical thought improves while cultural MMNs merely perpetuate. When concrete technical thought changes, improves, or exchanges objects, then laws of private property are required to ensure the stability of these various changes. For instance, if cultural MMNs say ‘That is not how we do things around here’, then capitalism can respond ‘I own this piece of property and I have freedom to act as I wish on this location.’ Or if cultural MMNs say ‘My grandfather used to live in this house’, then capitalism can respond, ‘Your father sold the property to me and I have the title deed’. In the words of Wikipedia, “Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.” Returning to the mind of Marx, all he knows is that some cultural group appears to be hoarding the wealth, using its emotional status to protect this wealth by imposing cultural MMNs of private property upon society, and then backing this up emotionally with the TMN of an ‘ideology’ of capitalism.
Marx did his thinking in the midst of the world’s first Industrial Revolution. We have seen that capitalism combines private property in Perceiver thought with specialization in Server thought. These two aspects became separated during the Industrial Revolution. The capitalist with his private property (maintained by Perceiver thought) hired factory workers to perform repetitive tasks (using Server thought) within a factory setting. When a person continues to repeat the same sequence of Server actions then this repetitive action will become represented in Teacher thought by a smooth curve that summarizes the essence of this sequence. This will lead to a TMN which will emotionally guide the action to be smooth and efficient. This will also lead to the development of a form of concrete technical thought, but in this case Contributor thought will be spatially adjusting actions in order to maximize Teacher feelings of smoothness and efficiency of movement.
Marx, observing from the outside, notices the emotional impact that industrialization has upon the ‘natural human cycle’ of cultural MMNs -> Server actions. Quoting from the Communist manifesto, “Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him... Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.” Notice how the Server actions of the worker have been made repetitive and have placed within the Teacher order-within-complexity of a system of manufacturing. As Marx suggests, an army with its ranks and giving and following of orders is an example of humans functioning within a Teacher system of order-within-complexity.
This leads emotionally to an ‘alienation of labor’. Quoting from Marx: “The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.” Stated cognitively, Marx concludes that the Server actions of the worker are not being personally motivated by the cultural MMNs of the worker because the worker stops working if he is not paid. Going further, Marx says that there is a mental split within the worker between his cultural MMNs and his Server actions: ‘He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home’.
Looking at this split from the capitalist viewpoint, money uses Perceiver thought to provide an internal connection between labor and reward. The worker gets money for his labor and then uses money to buy what he wants. However, capitalism is an expression of technical thought—which tends to be objective. Thus, there will be a natural tendency for capitalism to treat factory workers as living machines that function alongside mechanical machines. The solution is to recognize that a worker is a human being with personal MMNs that express legitimate needs and wants. This recognition did gradually appear in Britain in the form of legislation to protect workers, affordable consumer goods, leisure for the masses, and factory towns with humane living conditions.
Marx, in contrast, interprets this from the social viewpoint of cultural MMNs. Quoting from the Communist manifesto, “No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat... With the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more... The workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts.” Marx says that the individual is becoming swallowed up by the group. On the one hand, capitalist individuals are turning into the group of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, individual workers are turning into the group of the proletariat through the formation of trade unions. Thus, while Victorian Britain used capitalism and the rule of law to make life better for the individual worker, Marx’s focus upon struggling cultural MMNs replaces the individual with the group.
Going further, Marx says that capitalism leads to an estrangement or alienation of life because it replaces ‘workers cultural MMNs -> workers Server actions’ with ‘capitalist cultural MMNs -> workers Server actions’. Quoting further from the Communist manifesto, “Does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour... To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.” Notice how Marx is viewing the capitalist as part of some social group that is imposing its cultural MMNs upon the worker.
But that is not how the capitalist mind functions. For the capitalist, private property is an external aspect of the internal Perceiver confidence that defines the individual and lays the foundation for using concrete technical thought to better the condition of the individual. This internal Perceiver confidence makes it mentally possible for the capitalist to set up and run the factories for the workers, just as the internal Perceiver confidence that I gained by musically choosing to be an individual made it mentally possible for me to explore the internal landscape of the mind and follow an internally guided path of personal cognitive development.
Marx, in contrast, calls for the abolition of private property. Quoting from the Communist manifesto, “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property... We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?” For the workers of the past, private property was the physical location where artisans and peasants performed the traditional cycle of cultural MMNs -> Server actions. Marx points out that this past has been largely eliminated through industrialization, leading to the private property of the ‘modern bourgeois’.
Marx wants to abolish modern bourgeois private property. “You reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by ‘individual’ you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.” Marx defines bourgeois private property as the ability to exchange the Server actions of the worker into personal prosperity that is protected behind Perceiver walls of ownership. Marx recognizes that the capitalist—accurately—says that private property is a requirement for the capitalist to use concrete technical thought as an individual. Marx does not care because concrete technical thought based upon Perceiver confidence is not functioning within the Marx’s mind. Marx assumes that it is possible to continue experiencing the physical benefits of capitalism while destroying the mindset of capitalism.
Looking at this more carefully, the mind of the capitalist is using the mental circuit of concrete technical thought: [Mercy experiences -> Perceiver facts about experiences including value and private property -> Contributor plans and choices ->] structured Server actions organized by Teacher thought. All that Marx sees physically is the ‘structured Server actions organized by Teacher thought’ happening within factories. Thus, Marx thinks that it is possible to replace everything in square brackets with the cultural MMNs of the worker, leading to the cycle of: workers MMNs -> structured Server actions organized by Teacher thought.
But notice that this is different than the traditional artisan cycle of cultural MMNs -> Server actions. First, the original cultural MMNs of the workers no longer exist. That is because the workers view owners and bosses as important people in Mercy thought who have the emotional power to override existing cultural MMNs: ‘You will work on that machine. Yes sir. Whatever you say, sir.’ Second, owners and bosses have used their Mercy status to organize workers into a structure with Teacher order: ‘You will run this machine over here which will produce parts for that machine over there’. Continuing to work within this factory structure will cause a new circuit to form within the workers minds: factory system TMN -> structured Server actions. The communist manifesto describes this new Teacher-based mindset. “The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat... The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State.” Marx recognizes that capitalism has led to a new international community, connected by the Teacher feeling of ‘freedom of commerce’ within the ‘world market’. Marx wants to exploit this Teacher emotion by ‘centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state’. In other words, Marx wants to use Teacher thought to overgeneralize ‘factory system TMN -> structured Server actions’ into a universal Teacher theory that organizes the entire country. Marx thinks that this will lead to a worker’s paradise. After all, if this generates unprecedented wealth within a factory, then it should really generate wealth when applied to the entire nation—or world. This ‘logic’ makes sense for the average factory workers, because they are simply exchanging one inscrutable boss for another while continuing to work in a system of Teacher order.
But, history has shown that ‘centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state’ leads to a centrally planned inhuman system that has no place for human individuals or the facts of physical reality. That is because the new communist party leaders lack the Perceiver thought that is required to run a factory intelligently in a manner that respects the facts of reality or is capable of adjusting for the specific facts of local reality. The destruction of the Aral Sea provides an unfortunate but vivid example of this kind of misguided thinking.
Summarizing, capitalism used technical thought to generate unprecedented growth during the Industrial Revolution. However, this growth was limited to the objective realm and created a class of factory workers with incomplete mental content. Marxism mentally resonated with the incomplete mental content of the factory worker. A similar interaction will be seen in the various forms of wokeism: Technical thought will improve society—but this improvement will be objective and specialized. This incomplete improvement will create a class of dumb consumers who are driven by inadequate mental networks. Wokeism will appeal to the mindset of these dumb consumers. For instance, we saw earlier that civilization will protect people by building fences in front of cliffs. This will lead to citizens who think that the world is composed solely of human constructed fences, because they encounter only fences and not cliffs. These dumb citizens will be susceptible to a postmodern philosophy which says that reality is socially constructed.
A Summary of Marxism
We will now summarize our analysis of Marxism and compare it with what Lindsay says.
1) Concrete technical thought guided by rational Perceiver facts performs Server actions that transform some aspect of society that is guided by traditional MMNs. For instance, capitalism uses private property to gain wealth for capitalists.
2) The objective nature of this technical transformation ignores the subjective MMNs of the consumers. For instance, capitalism turned village artisans into factory workers who had to perform repetitive work in slum conditions.
3) The consumers view the success of this technical transformation from the emotional perspective of cultural MMNs and conclude that technical transformation is achieving its success by imposing its cultural MMNs upon the rest of society. For instance, Marx saw private property and factory labor as the imposition of cultural MMNs upon the proletariat by the bourgeoisie.
4) Technical transformation moves beyond the goal-oriented behavior of concrete technical thought to the structure-building behavior of abstract technical thought. (Concrete technical thought uses Perceiver facts and Server sequences to improve some bottom line in Mercy thought. Abstract technical thought uses Perceiver facts and Server sequences to improve the Teacher order-within-complexity of some structure.) This introduces the consumer to the idea of Teacher generality, which the consumer interprets as an ideology being imposed upon the people. For instance, Marx interpreted the system of capitalism as a general structure in Teacher thought being imposed by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat.
5) The consumers, emotionally guided by the TMN of some overgeneralization of their personal experience, demand that technical thought stop oppressing the consumers. Technical thought is vulnerable to this attack because it avoids Teacher emotion by remaining specialized. For instance, the theory of Marxism overgeneralizes from the experiences of being a factory worker.
6) The revolution of the consumer fails spectacularly because the success came from using rational technical thought while the revolution uses cultural MMNs to overwhelm the Perceiver facts that are required to successfully use technical thought. For instance, the Russian revolution led to the chaotic hell-on-earth of Stalinism.
7) The consumer interprets its failure from the perspective of cultural MMNs and concludes that this failure is being caused by suppression from some ruling class. This repeated failure-and-blaming eventually leads to the TMN of a theory of universal suppression.
Lindsay provides the following summary, comparing classical Marxism with what he calls ‘race Marxism’. This quote will be longer than normal and subdivided because we are comparing one Teacher theory with another. My comments are in square brackets:
1) Some people (whites/capitalists) unjustly declare themselves the exclusive possessors of a special form of private property (whiteness/capital), thereby divide society into those who have it and those who don’t, and begin to arrange society such that the power granted through that access increases for those people over time.
[This describes how a mindset based in cultural MMNs will interpret success that results from using concrete technical thought based upon Perceiver facts. The first step in actually reaching some goal is to use Perceiver thought to factually work out the differences between my current location and my goal. This same factual thinking can be used to place other people within a mental map of possible locations. ‘Capital’ is acquired by moving from one location in this map to a more desirable location. A mindset based in cultural MMNs will interpret this internal capital by some obvious external characteristic, such as private property or whiteness.]
2) Those excluded from the resource and thus power by this declaration (people of color/workers) are thereby exploited for their productive capacity that is then turned into surplus value (cultural property/profit) for the advantaged class. Not only are the exploited thereby robbed of what they produce (cultural property/labor value), but they are estranged from who they really are (valid representatives of a culture/producers).
[Those who use Perceiver thought to define locations can use concrete technical thought to get from their current location to a better location. They will gather surplus value compared to the average person and become part of an advantaged class. This widespread success will transform existing cultural MMNs, causing those who live within these cultural MMNs to feel that they are being exploited, robbed, and estranged from who they really are. For instance, the Industrial Revolution led to an end of traditional artisan workshops and resulted in the short-term in exploitative factory labor. But in the long-term, everyone within society experienced unprecedented growth in personal prosperity. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Growing poverty on one hand and growing population and materialistic wealth on the other caused tensions between the very rich and the poorest people within society... The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth.”]
3) More specifically, the product of their work (cultural production/labor) is subsumed into the privileged class (becomes part of white culture/is turned into profit), leaving the exploited (people of color/worker) impoverished (culturally/materially) and unable to recognize himself for who he really is (say, authentically Black/a producer).
[The various transformations caused by concrete technical thought will combine to form a general system of Teacher order involving abstract technical thought. That is because adding abstract technical thought to concrete technical thought multiplies the ability of concrete technical thought to improve some bottom line. But this structured system guided by Teacher order will feel alien to the individual used to living in cultural MMNs. For instance, the Industrial Revolution organized labor into factories where workers worked together in an organized manner. A capitalist could multiply his ability to acquire wealth by building factories. These factories required workers.
4) All this is enabled by the privileged class structuring society at its most fundamental levels for their own benefit (structural or systemic racism/structural classism), justified by the privileged class promulgating an ideology that it’s how things are supposed to be (white supremacy/capitalism and meritocracy).
[Those who think in terms of cultural MMNs will view this extension from concrete to abstract technical thought as an ideology based in the cultural MMNs of the ‘privileged class’ which has now succeeded in transforming the Teacher order of society to benefit them rather than others.]
5) People in this dynamic system can be awakened to the structural ‘realities’ of their lives and become (race/class) conscious activists (antiracists/proletarians) who work to seize the means of production (cultural/material) of their society to make it more fair (equitable/socialist).
[Those who are mentally driven by cultural MMNs will become convinced that if the ‘ruling class’ has successfully transformed cultural MMNs and societal TMNs to favor ‘them’ as opposed to ‘us’, then it should be possible to transform these MMNs and TMNs to level the playing field by favoring ‘us’ rather than ‘them’. In other words, the consumer driven by cultural MMNs can stop being a passive recipient to the transformation affected by technical thought and can become an active agent who takes control of this societal transformation. Becoming an active agent implies using concrete technical thought. But this concrete technical thought will be based upon cultural MMNs and ideological TMNs rather than Perceiver facts and rational structure.]
6) Eventually, this will be generally understood as the right way to order a society and will, through their praxis inverting into the inversion of praxis and thus socially conditioning people to accept it, become spontaneously fair (socially just/communist).
[The problem is that the consumer driven by cultural MMNs experienced a radical societal transformation without comprehending the technical mindset that is required to perform such a transformation. The mental requirement for using concrete technical thought is to mentally place personal identity within a factual map of personal possibilities: ‘I am here. This is me. I could get from here to there if I take the following steps.’ However, factually acknowledging where I am as an individual will make me feel bad. ‘Spontaneous fairness’ is an example of Teacher overgeneralization because all personal differences are being eliminated. Applying such Teacher overgeneralization to society will lead at best to the bland ‘grayness’ that characterized communist countries. At the worst it will lead to some privileged elite class imposing its overgeneralized ideas upon the average person in the name of equity.]
Summarizing, what Lindsay says about Marxism fits well into the analysis of mental symmetry. The primary element that mental symmetry adds is the interplay between mental networks and technical thought. Technical thought is using rational thinking to successfully transform the world. But this transformation is being done in an objective and specialized manner that disrupts existing MMNs and TMNs without providing a satisfactory alternative. Mental networks recognize this emotional inadequacy but instinctively respond in an irrational and overgeneralized manner.
The solution is to use normal thought to bridge technical thought with mental networks. Normal thought uses the analogies and metaphors of Perceiver and Server thought. Analogical thinking can be used to bridge technical specializations if these analogies are made sufficiently rigorous. And analogical thinking can be used to bridge mental networks if the Perceiver facts and Server sequences of these analogies gain sufficient mental confidence. That is explored elsewhere.
Different kinds of Capital
Lindsay applies his model of Marxism to several areas of wokeism. We will use mental symmetry to examine these areas of application. (We will look at the list in this article rather than that article because I am not totally certain what the terms cultural Marxism, critical Marxism, and postmodern Marxism mean.)
Lindsay clarifies that “To fully understand Marxism, the special property or capital under consideration must be conceived of very broadly. There is material capital, cultural capital, social capital, intellectual capital, human capital, and so on, and access to any or all of these has to be considered. The currently dominant versions of Marxism view these various forms of capital, or special ‘bourgeois’ property, to be intertwined with one another and impossible to understand in isolation. Their power is ‘intersectional.’” When a similar feature such as ‘capital’ appears in many different areas of human behavior, then mental symmetry interprets this as a cognitive mechanism, because what is common to all of these different areas is that people are using similar minds with the same cognitive architecture. Mental symmetry defines capital as having the mental capacity to place cultural and personal MMNs within an internal map of Perceiver facts and Server sequences andthen improving these MMNs by moving them to better locations within this map. Stated simply, this means knowing who I am, what I want to be, how to get there, and then implementing this plan. This sounds easy, it is not. That is because Perceiver and Server thought have to be educated and this knowledge has to acquire sufficient confidence to handle the emotional pressure of mental networks.
Looking now at the specific variants that Lindsay mentions: “The bourgeoisie claims access to a special form of property called capital. They create an ideology called capitalism (based on things like meritocracy) to justify this. This allows them to structure society with structural classism that advantages the bourgoisie and exploits, estranges, and disenfranchises the working class.” Physical property is based upon the mental ability of Perceiver thought to make a mental distinction between mine and yours. Perceiver thought has sufficient confidence to maintain this distinction even when what is yours is much nicer than what is mine. And it is possible through labor and trade to improve what is mine. Meritocracy requires this mental ability to place personal identity within a mental map. Saying this more simply, concrete technical thought is being used within a mental map of Perceiver ‘locations’ connected by Server ‘roads’—in the realm of private property.
In critical race theory, “The whites (and their adjacents) claims access to a special form of property called whiteness. They create an ideology called white supremacy (based on things like meritocracy and racism) to justify this. This allows them to structure society with structural or systemic racism that advantages whites and exploits, estranges, and disenfranchises people of color.” The reference to ‘meritocracy’ suggests that one is dealing again with concrete technical thought guided by a factual map. ‘The whites’ would presumably refer to the Europeans who colonized the rest of the world in the 19th century. Including ‘their adjacents’ indicates that one is really dealing with a cognitive mindset rather than physical appearance. Europeans succeeded in colonizing the world because they had better technology and they had better technology because they had just gone through an Industrial Revolution which had been preceded by a scientific revolution and a Protestant revolution. A basic principle of these revolutions is that one uses technical thought upon a mental foundation of Perceiver facts. And one follows technical thinking even when it transforms existing cultural MMNs.
In Marxian feminism, “Men claim access to a special form of property called maleness or masculinity. They create an ideology called male supremacy or hegemonic masculinity (based on things like meritocracy and sexism) to justify this. This allows them to structure society with patriarchy and structural or systemic sexism, enforced by misogyny, that advantages men and exploits, estranges, and disenfranchises women, as a class.” The explanation for this becomes apparent if one looks beyond men and women to male and female thought. The male mind tends to emphasize technical thought, while the female mind tends to emphasize mental networks, as illustrated by the tendency of men to prefer working with things and women to prefer working with people. ‘Male supremacy’ can be defined cognitively as a form of thinking that uses technical thought upon a factual foundation, as illustrated by the TV trope, ‘Just the facts ma’am’.
Before I get my head ripped off, I need to emphasize—again—that male technical thought is accurate but incomplete. The solution is to gain sufficient Perceiver confidence to be able to think factually about cultural and personal MMNs. When somebody screams that their cultural MMNs are being oppressed, one needs to use Perceiver thought to look at the facts of the situation and then use concrete technical thought to come up with Server actions that actually improve the situation. For the male technical mind, this means going beyond acquiring more things to becoming a better person. For female mental networks, this means being willing to mentally dissect mental networks. Stated simply, technical thought needs to go beyond an external focus upon mine to an internal focus upon me, while mental networks need to go beyond a social focus upon us to an internal focus upon me. When both of these start looking internally at me, then it is possible to make genuine progress—because people are now playing the ultimate game.
In queer theory, “Straight people whose ‘gender identity’ and sex match (and those who pass as such) claim access to a special form of property called normalcy (by declaring themselves the normal ones and defining normalcy to mean like themselves). They create an ideology called normativity (e.g., heteronormativity and cisnormativity) to justify this.” Looking at this cognitively, whenever some group feels a strong need to ‘declare themselves the normal ones and define normalcy to mean like themselves’, then this usually means that this group is violating ‘natural law’ in some manner and wants to experience positive approval to make up for painful personal consequences. For instance, if I am eating some delicious cherries, I do not need to declare eating cherries to be normal or insist that everybody recognize eating cherries as normal. Instead, the pleasure of eating the cherries provides sufficient gratification. However, if all I have to eat is cherries with worms in them, then I may feel the need to get others to agree that ‘eating cherries with worms in them’ is normal. Notice that queer theory is claiming that normal people are ‘declaring themselves the normal ones’ by ‘creating an ideology’. But to the extent that normal people are eating delicious cherries, they are simply enjoying the cherries and feeling no need to declare anything—because declaring actually detracts from the inherent pleasure of eating delicious cherries. In contrast, the queer theorist is going beyond declaring to overgeneralizing that everyone is declaring in order to make up emotionally for the distasteful worms that are in the cherries that the queer theorist is eating.
Looking at this further, if the mind really is composed of cognitive modules that function and interact in a certain manner, then using the mind in a way that violates cognitive structure will lead to painful consequences. Fighting these painful consequences will require significant ‘emotional labor’. One basic principle that keeps reemerging in this essay is that the mind requires both mental networks and technical thought and that these two need to interact in a way that respects the Perceiver facts and Server sequences of normal thought. Saying this another way, male thought needs to be mentally married to female thought. A marriage is a long-term commitment that survives emotional pressure. Similarly, a mental ‘marriage’ requires repeatable connections within Perceiver and Server thought that can survive emotional pressure. Thus, what queer theory regards as ‘heteronormativity’ is not normative because it is is being imposed by cultural MMNs, but rather because it describes behavior that is consistent with the structure of the mind.
Looking at this personally, one of the most important steps I took in following the path of personal transformation was to recognize that my cognitive modules had a right to exist. I did not have the right to use conscious control to shut down my subconscious modules. The end result has been to turn my mind into a ‘bowl of delicious cherries’ that generates the inherent pleasure of interacting with helpful and intelligent subconscious cognitive modules. Queer theory, in contrast, goes beyond questioning the ‘normal’ interaction between male and female thought to attacking all categories of social and cognitive interaction. This wholesale rejection of cognitive structure ends up imposing conscious thought upon subconscious modules and denies subconscious modules the right to exist. The end result is a mind filled with the ‘wormy cherries’ of mis-programmed subconscious cognitive modules. Obviously, a ‘normal’ mind that acknowledges cognitive structure and cooperates with subconscious thought will function better—and ‘taste’ better—than a ‘queer’ mind that rejects cognitive structure and fights subconscious thought. This means that the queer mind will be cognitively disadvantaged—which will be interpreted as oppression from MMNs of ‘normal thought’.
In disability studies, “The able-bodied claim access to a special form of property called ‘ability.’ They create an ideology described from the outside as dis/ableism (based on a belief that it is generally better to be fully able-bodied than not, and further based in ideas like ‘medicalism’) to justify this.” In this case, Perceiver thought lacks the confidence to impose facts of physical capability upon personal MMNs. Instead of accepting Perceiver facts about my body, these facts are regarded as being emotionally imposed by cultural MMNs. This illustrates the extent to which Perceiver thought can lose the confidence to function in the presence of emotional MMNs. Saying this more clearly, physical limitations impose experiences upon personal identity that are repeatable and inescapable. If I cannot walk, for instance, then nothing I say, do, feel, scream, cry, demand, protest, or blame will change that fact. That describes my physical reality. This repetition should be enough to program Perceiver thought within any mind, but one sees that this is not necessarily the case.
Finally, in fat studies, “The ‘thin’ (those who are not ‘fat’) claim access to a special form of property called ‘normal weight’ or even ‘health.’ They create an ideology described from the outside as thinnormativity (based on a belief that it is generally better to be at a healthy weight than not, and further based in ideas like ‘healthism’ and ‘medicalism’) to justify this.” It is true that society can place an undue emphasis upon being skinny, but the fact still remains that body weight is an objective measure that can be factually determined by stepping on a scale. And excessive body weight is usually a symptom of lacking sufficient Perceiver confidence to be able to postpone satisfying MMNs of physical appetite. Such postponement of pleasure can be seen in the Protestant work ethic.
In each case, fighting emotionally against reality—whether physical or cognitive—will lead to repeated failure. And if this personal failure is interpreted as societal oppression, then this will lead to further fighting emotionally against reality, followed by further failure. Teacher thought will notice this pattern and come up with a theory of universal oppression. This brings to mind the meme that ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. However, that describes how technical thought guided by Perceiver facts views the situation. Perceiver thought notices the repetition of ‘doing the same thing over and over again’; Perceiver thought also notices the discrepancy between expectation and result. Given this Perceiver knowledge, technical thought concludes that it would be insane to continue repeating the same thing. But both the repetition and the discrepancy will not be mentally noticed if Perceiver thought is being emotionally overwhelmed. Instead, mental networks will drive the mind to continue thinking and behaving in a manner that is consistent with their structure, and these mental networks will respond negatively if encountering any behavior that disrupts the familiar pattern. Thus, insanity can be described more accurately as being driven by mental networks to continue behaving in a manner that violates the facts.
Technical Success creates its own Enemy
Going further, I suggest that the success of technical thought is actually responsible for enabling this mental network driven insanity.
The cognitive error of communism is that prosperity can be achieved if workers coordinate their Server actions within some general Teacher structure; Perceiver thought is not required and private property can be eliminated. This accurately describes the mindset of the typical factory worker. The owners, engineers, and bosses use technical thought to plan, build, and arrange the factory and all of its machines. The factory worker, in contrast, merely goes to the factory every day and repeats some action alongside other factory workers who are repeating their actions. The factory worker does not see the factually based technical thinking being used by the owners, engineers, and bosses. Therefore, the factory worker concludes that this thinking is not necessary. Going further, the factory worker used to live within a country village but is now crowded within low income row housing. The factory worker is susceptible to Marxism because Marx provides a Teacher theory that explains the content within the mind of the factory worker.
The cognitive error of feminism is that mental networks of female thought by themselves are sufficient to create a successful society. This accurately describes the mindset of the typical consumer. High-tech industry uses technical thought to design, build, distribute, and service the gadgets of modern society. This is then marketed to the consumer by appealing to mental networks. Going further, if manufacturing jobs are outsourced to some foreign country like China, and if the typical response to some technical problem becomes returning the device or throwing it away and buying another one, then the average consumer will never have to learn how to think technically. This mental effect will be especially pronounced for a person living in the city, who acquires everything by buying it from some person, and who seldom encounters the rational cause-and-effect of physical nature. The urban consumer is susceptible to feminism because it summarizes the content of her (or his) mind.
The cognitive error of ‘alternate ways of knowing’ is thinking that scientific thought is simply one of many possible ways of ‘knowing’. But this accurately describes the mindset that one acquires from browsing the web. Constructing the computer chips and the communication protocols used by the Internet requires not just factually based technical thought but hyper-technical thinking accompanied by an obsessive focus upon factual integrity. The average person browsing the web knows nothing about this, but rather encounters a hodgepodge of sites describing everything from cat videos to conspiracy theories to technical articles. If the content of a technical article proves too difficult to understand, then it is possible to find other websites that use ‘alternative forms of knowing’. These websites are all being faithfully transmitted from some server computer to the computer of the reader through the use of fact-based technical thought, but all of this is hidden from the mind of the person browsing the web. This makes the online mind susceptible to the idea of alternate forms of ‘knowing’.
The cognitive error of queer theory is that personal identity is arbitrary and has no relationship to the physical body. This accurately describes the mindset of the person on social media. Technical thought has constructed a global infrastructure of interconnected computers, making it possible for people to adopt online persona that are independent of both the physical body and physical reality. But this infrastructure is presented to the consumer in a way that hides the technical content and enables the expression of personal MMNs. Going further, Teacher overgeneralization can be achieved online by getting one’s personal content to be viewed by millions of readers. Thus, queer theory explains the mental content (or rather, lack of mental content) that is present within the mind of the consumer of social media.
In each of these cases, technical thought was used to create an artificial environment that makes it possible to use mental networks in an incomplete manner without experiencing painful consequences. Stated succinctly, wokeism is dumb. But science and technology enabled this dumbness.
This provides an explanation for what is happening cognitively in intersectionality. Lindsay explains that, “Crenshaw in 1989... likened the idea of occupying more than one ‘position’ of sociocultural systemic oppression to being caught in an intersection of highways. Crenshaw argued that if you are, say, a black woman, occupying at least two such positions of ‘relational’ systemic oppression, then you might be hit by racism (a car coming down one road) or sexism (a car coming down the other road) without even being able to be sure which one got you. She also noted, though her colleague Patricia Hill Collins did it much more thoroughly, that to be a black woman is also to face prejudice and discrimination (so, systemic oppression) of a unique sort specific only to that intersected identity.” This is an accurate description of what is happening within the wokeist mind. Using cultural MMNs to overwhelm Perceiver thought in some area and then using the TMN of universal oppression to ‘explain’ this resulting personal failure leads to a vicious circle. Following this vicious circle in more than one area (such as I am both black and female) disables Perceiver thought not only these two individual areas but also prevents Perceiver thought from distinguishing between these two areas. Thus, one can become emotionally hit from more than one direction and also lose the ability to determine direction. In other words, emotionally induced irrationality does not grow linearly but rather extends to new areas as it grows.
Lindsay concludes that “It’s time we understand Marxism for what it really is: a cult-religious ideology of transforming the world ‘back into Eden’ by undoing the Fall of man into producing stratified power dynamics through allegedly self-granted access to special property. It arises from a singular error, which is the inability to perceive the legitimacy of a legitimate hierarchy, and thus proceeds by means of ignorant destructive envy.” This is an accurate assessment, but it is not the whole story. Marxism in its various forms thinks that it can go back to Eden because it believes the marketing of technical thought: ‘You do not have to learn how to think. We have done your thinking for you. Our products make it possible for you to experience paradise without any effort on your part.’ Marxism views technical thought as ‘access to special property’ because that is how marketing portrays technical thought: ‘Our technical geniuses have come up with newfangled products for your pleasure and enjoyment.’ Marxism falls into the ‘singular error’ of being unable to ‘perceive the legitimate legitimate hierarchy’ because marketing enables this singular error: ‘You do not have to learn from the technical geeks. Just listen to us. We satisfy all of your mental networks. We believe that the customer is always right.’
Cognitive Ownership
Marketing has not been mentioned so far in this essay. Cognitively speaking, marketing uses technical thought to manipulate mental networks. However, the goal of marketing is not to transform mental networks in the direction of mental or societal wholeness, but rather to appeal to mental networks in order to acquire wealth, fame, and power. There is a word that describes pursuing peripheral goals (such as money) while manipulating central goals (such as transforming cultural and personal MMNs). That word is prostitution. Unfortunately, technical thought is naturally prone to prostitution, because it naturally limits its rational thought to the objective and the specialized, and there is a natural tendency for technical thought to regard anything that lies outside of a technical specialization as having lesser value. Therefore, technical thought will naturally pursue the peripheral goals that it rationally analyzes at the expense of the actual deeper goals that it avoids. Hence, prostitution. The Biblical book of Revelation devotes two entire chapters (Rev. 17-18) to a description of economic prostitution.
The solution is not the deluded thinking of Marxism, but rather lies in extending economic thought to the emotional realm of MMNs and TMNs. This extension can be described simply and rationally and extends from the concept of righteousness described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6:1-4 warns, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
The cognitive principle is that a mental network will take ownership of thought or behavior that it motivates. Notice that we are looking at a form of ownership or capital. But this is an internal sense of ownership that relates to the emotional realm of mental networks. Cognitive ownership of behavior will shift to a new mental network if that new mental network motivates the behavior and the old one does not. Matthew 6 describes such a transfer of cognitive ownership. Righteousness can be defined cognitively as Server actions that are motivated by the TMN of a concept of God. For instance, professionalism is a form of righteousness, because Server actions are being emotionally motivated by the TMN of some professional system. Public behavior is normally motivated by cultural MMNs; one behaves in a certain manner in order to receive social approval. In Matthew 6, people are performing actions of self-denial that are not motivated by the MMN of some bottom line by ‘giving to the poor’. However, this self-denial is being done in a public manner in order to receive social approval from cultural MMNs. Thus, these cultural MMNs will take cognitive ownership of this behavior. This will result in the reward of social approval, which may include financial compensation. One will also experience the cognitive reward of being able to find personal satisfaction in helping the down-and-out rather than exploiting them. However, the TMN of a general understanding will only take ownership of this behavior if one follows this understanding without receiving either a personal reward or social approval. That reward will take the form of a mental ability to acquire further understanding in Teacher thought, and one will also become a righteous person who has an identity that is guided emotionally by a TMN of understanding.
The principle of cognitive ownership also makes it possible to make a bad mental purchase. Suppose that one’s behavior is guided by the Teacher overgeneralization of universal oppression and that one clings to this theory despite experiencing repeated personal failure and societal disapproval. The TMN of universal oppression will then take cognitive ownership of personal behavior because it is not being motivated by personal success or societal approval, creating the character of a person who looks everywhere for universal oppression.
Cognitive ownership and transfer of cognitive ownership happen emotionally and do not require Perceiver confidence. However, Perceiver and Server confidence are required to become consciously aware of cognitive ownership and to be able to choose to perform ‘economic exchanges’ that lead to greater mental wholeness and not to emotionally entrenched insanity.
One might think that a succession of bad mental purchases condemns the wokeist mind to inescapable damnation. But another conclusion is possible. That is because feedback from reality is gradually transforming the mindset of wokeism into a theory of religious redemption. The wokeist does not realize this because his mind has not become truly ‘woke’. The wokeist says that systemic oppression from normal society is causing him or her to experience personal failure. This overgeneralization of universal oppression has turned into a TMN which emotionally drives the wokeist to search both externally and internally for examples of oppression by cultural MMNs. The wokeist believes that focusing upon these micro-aggressions will eventually transform society, leading to a paradise of universal equality.
This can be translated into religious language by recognizing that a concept of God emerges when a sufficiently general theory applies to personal identity and that a concept of God acquires emotional power when this theory turns into a TMN. Thus, the wokeist mind has actually constructed the mental concept of a God that associates universal judgment with a mindset that thinks in turns of dueling cultural MMNs. If mental networks always struggle for domination when they encounter one another, then this means that the TMN of universal oppression (the God of universal judgment) will also struggle with cultural MMNs for emotional dominance. Queer theory shows that the TMN is gaining victory over cultural MMNs, because queer theory continues to hold to the TMN of universal oppression while deconstructing all of the cultural MMNs that it is supposedly defending. This leads to the conclusion that the concept of a God of universal judgment is deconstructing all of the cultural MMNs of the wokeist mind. This provides an alternate method of escaping from angst. The queer wokeist is attempting to maintain the TMN of universal oppression by performing outrageous acts that lead to emotional responses from others that re-overwhelm Perceiver thought within the queer mind into ‘knowing’ the ‘truth’ of societal oppression. But suppose that the queer individual opens up the black box of its mind and looks inside. The queer mind will discover the cognitive principle that using emotional pressure from cultural MMNs to overwhelm Perceiver thought leads universally to failure. And this cognitive principle is being ‘socially imposed’ upon the queer mind by the TMN of a concept of God.
In a similar manner, the wokeist mind fixates upon struggling cultural MMNs and is driven by the TMN of universal oppression. The wokeist insists that there is universal oppression even when there is no evidence of struggling cultural MMNs. This means again that the TMN rules over cultural MMNs. Translating this into religious language, a God of universal judgment is bringing universal condemnation to the wokeist mind because it is fixating upon struggling cultural MMNs. Going further, wokeism insists that only external social interaction matters. But the TMN of universal oppression is driving the wokeist to attribute mental states to other individuals, even when there is no external social evidence of these mental states. And individuals are being told to continually search within their minds for any examples of ‘racist thinking’. Thus, what started as a battle over social interaction has turned into a battle over thinking.
Translating this into religious language, the God of universal judgment is condemning the wokeist because s/he keeps focusing upon the imagined shortcomings of others rather than facing the fundamental flaws within his or her own mind. Wokeism says that people need to become ‘woke’, which means becoming mentally aware of what is happening. This describes a change of thinking that happens within the mind. Stated religiously, what is needed is repentance because the Greek verb translated repent (μετανοέω) means to ‘think differently afterwards’. Wokeism is portrayed as a social problem, but it is primarily an error of thinking, and the wokeist person needs to become ‘woke’ to what is happening within his or her mind in order to ‘think differently afterwards’.
But why would the queerist or the wokeist be willing to repent? Because it eliminates the emotional labor. Imposing my cultural MMNs upon the rest of society is hard work. Being a professional ornery cuss is hard work. Thinking and behaving in a way that violates the facts of reality is hard work. Submitting emotionally to the TMN of a concept of God who condemns me because I insist upon using the wrong thinking brings rest to my mind. I no longer have to perform the emotional labor of holding my mind together. Instead, my mind is now being held together by the TMN of a universal theory that is based in solid facts of reality and solid facts of cognitive mechanisms. And resting my mind upon the TMN of a universal theory of condemnation against my stupid thinking makes it possible for me to change my stupid thinking because my mind is no longer built upon my stupid thinking. Plus, recognizing that my stupid thinking is stupid gives me a strong emotional motivation to change my stupid thinking and make it less stupid. And I keep repeating the word ‘stupid’ and the personal pronoun because this method will only work to the extent that I recognize that my thinking is stupid and I label it verbally as stupid.
But when the wokeist submits internally to the TMN of a concept of God who ‘condemns me because of my stupid thinking’ then something marvelous happens. It turns out that the wokeist actually has legitimate expertise in an area where technical thought tends to be stupid: The wokeist has a deep understanding of the emotional realm of mental networks. This is a legitimate knowledge about cognitive mechanisms. Notice that this marvelous discovery is not a matter of the wokeist using emotional labor to try to impose something upon society. Instead the TMN of a concept of God within the wokeist mind is noting that the wokeist has genuine understanding about solid cognitive mechanisms. Note that the repentance comes first and then the marvelous result happens.
And because every mind is subject to the same cognitive mechanisms, the wokeist can also rest from the physical travail of endless protesting, screaming, and cancelling. Instead, the wokeist merely has to point out to others what happens when others experience the painful cognitive consequences of misusing mental networks. Again notice the order: first repentance, then marvelous realization, then a focus upon internal transformation guided by a knowledge of cognitive mechanisms.
If these first three steps are followed in the correct order, then the wokeist will gain a theory of mind that is both accurate and useful. The wokeist may be a child when it comes to scientific thinking and technical thought, but the continual soul-searching for micro-aggression has given the wokeist extensive practice when it comes to exploring the emotional realm of mental networks. Previously, the wokeist was overgeneralizing from the content of cultural MMNs and attributing this inaccurately to the motivations of other people. But if the wokeist submits internally to the TMN of a God of sane thinking, then the wokeist will start generalizing from the functioning of cultural MMNs and attribute this accurately to the functioning of mental networks within other people’s minds.
Going further, because the wokeist is now generalizing about how mental networks function and not overgeneralizing from the content of mental networks, the wokeist will acquire a genuine, non-judgmental curiosity about how other people from other groups actually feel, motivated by a desire to learn more accurately how mental networks function. This curiosity will lead to the realization that women tend to have a better grasp of mental networks than men. It will also lead to the amazing discovery that there is another mode of thought known as male technical thought which has legitimate expertise in areas where the wokeist is naturally stupid.
This description may sound facetious but I am attempting to describe a legitimate cognitive path of redemption. One thesis of this essay is that wokeism is an accurate description of what is happening within the wokeist mind. What had just been described merely takes the elements of wokeist thought that have been discussed in this essay and puts them together in a different way.
Wokeism says that society will become transformed if enough people become woke. This is an accurate statement if one redefines becoming woke as becoming mentally ruled by the TMN of a universal theory that connects focusing on cultural MMNs with personal failure. If enough people within society shift mentally from being ruled by cultural MMN to being guided by the TMN of an understanding of cognitive mechanisms, then society will be transformed.
Summarizing, if one applies the various pieces of what wokeism is doing and saying to the mind of the wokeist, one ends up with a legitimate and meaningful theory of personal and societal redemption. This is significant, because it means that defeating wokeism does not require descending to the wokeist level of struggling mental networks. Instead, one simply has to use Perceiver thought to define and connect the existing fragments of wokeist thought. Using wokeist language, the wokeist mind needs to become woke to what is really happening within her or his mind. (And one aspect of becoming truly woke will be recognizing that ‘her’ and ‘his’ are legitimate pronouns.)
Going further, this provides a path out of the insanity of wokeism that is emotionally possible for the wokeist mind. The wokeist mind does not care about logic. All it knows is that the rest of the world is playing a game and the wokeist feels like a loser. The emotional labor of being a wokeist loser can be cognitively leveraged to enable the wokeist to start playing the ultimate game of character development.
Four Cardinal Virtues
Lindsay provides ‘four cardinal values’ for recovering from wokeism. We will use mental symmetry to examine these four values of truth, beauty, liberty, and merit.
Starting with truth, Lindsay says that “A post-Woke world must be based on the relentless and uncompromising pursuit of objective truth, external to any particular individual or affinity group or its nearest approximation. Your truth will not do; neither will my truth. These are subjective heuristics useful in your own life but meaningless beyond that, and it’s time we remembered that fact.” We have seen—repeatedly—that the fundamental flaw of wokeism is using emotional pressure from MMNs to overwhelm Perceiver thought. Thus, mental symmetry would agree wholeheartedly with Lindsay’s emphasis upon truth. The problem lies with the term ‘objective truth’. That is because the scientific practice of protecting Perceiver thought by avoiding subjective emotions has the undesirable side effect of creating an uneducated class of consumers who become susceptible to wokeist ideology.
Thus, I suggest that a better goal is to seek independent truth, which means recognizing that facts and feelings are independent variables. Stated more clearly, instead of suppressing subjective emotions, one needs to gain the mental ability to recognize that facts are independent of feelings. Another problem with the term ‘objective truth’ is that it equates truth with the external world of physical objects. These are related because it is much easier to think factually when dealing with the physical world with its objects. But we have seen that it is possible to come up with facts about the mind by looking for repeated cognitive mechanisms. And we have also seen that comprehending the problem of wokeism requires approaching the mental world from the factual perspective of cognitive mechanisms. Lindsay adds that ‘Your truth will not do; neither will my truth’. This is very true in the sense that mental networks should not be allowed to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’. But while facts may be independent of personal feelings or personal identity, the mental ability to acknowledge facts varies widely from one person to another. Stated another way, not everyone has the same mental ‘capital’. Thus, a distinction needs to be made between ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’ in the sense of looking not just at the facts but also at a person’s mental ability to acknowledge the facts. Saying this another way, ‘my truth’ should not be interpreted as my personal opinion but rather as my personal capacity to handle the facts.
Lindsay alludes to the interaction between personal feelings and the ability to recognize truth. “We have no options except to humble ourselves before that which is true or to rise in our hubris against it only to eventually be humiliated by it.” Humility in the face of truth means accepting how things connect in Perceiver thought even if this makes personal identity feel bad in Mercy thought. And, as Lindsay points out, one accepts the facts in Perceiver thought because the emotional pain that comes from acknowledging the truth is much less than the lasting pain that comes from violating principles of cause-and-effect. “By humbling ourselves to how the world really is, which is to the truth, we free ourselves from the suffering that always follows from the disastrous combination of ignorance and pride.”
And Lindsay has learned that discovering truth does not require technical thought. “Ironically, there is little need for any individual in a society that values truth to know much truth or even to pursue it with the sort of rigor we expect out of an idealized scientist... This process has been identified as requiring only two general principles: no one has special authority and no one gets final say.” Stated simply, personal and cultural MMNs should not be allowed to overwhelm Perceiver thought. This is an accurate statement but it needs to be put within a cognitive context. Every childish mind acquires its initial ‘truth’ in Perceiver thought by being emotionally overwhelmed by various sources of truth, including parents, teachers, and other authority figures. Thus, every mind is initially convinced that certain people have special authority and that they get final say. And being an enlightened parent that refuses to make any dogmatic statements will not fix the problem because the child will simply acquire its initial ‘truth’ from other, less qualified, sources of authority. Instead, education involves the tricky task of using adult authority to provide the childish mind with the best possible ‘truth based in authority’ and then weaning the developing mind from basing truth in authority.
Turning now to beauty, Lindsay says that “A world without beauty is a dead world. A world filled with beauty that no one can appreciate is identically dead.” Beauty refers to Teacher emotion. Most academic specializations do not recognize the significant role played by Teacher emotion. One major exception to this is mathematics, which is consciously aware of being emotionally guided by Teacher emotions of beauty. Lindsay has a PhD in math and would recognize the significance of Teacher emotion. Beauty is critical for escaping wokeism because it provides a source of emotions that is different than the Mercy feelings of cultural and personal MMNs. In Lindsay’s words, “There is something in beauty that goes beyond the subjective, not into an objective realm (as does truth) but into a transcendent one that is in its own way bigger than man. The ancient Greeks referred to this aspirational ideal as arete: excellence. Christians, Jews, and Muslims see it in their transcendent God and rightly understand that it is universal through its transcendence.” Notice that Lindsay distinguishes between the subjective realm of Mercy emotions and the transcendent realm of Teacher emotions. And Lindsay recognizes that a concept of God is related to a universal theory in Teacher thought.
Lindsay also describes the relationship between Perceiver facts and Teacher feelings of beauty. “Truth, by comparison, is merely necessary, but it is not sufficient. Truth is all head with no heart. Without beauty to grant inspiration and aspiration, truth is cold and even demoralizing.” This description is consistent with Teacher generalization (not overgeneralization) which uses Perceiver facts to construct Teacher theories. Facts are not emotional, but theories are. As Lindsay points out, facts by themselves are insufficient to overcome cultural and personal MMNs, because one will only be able to assert the facts for a while before becoming overwhelmed by emotional pressure. This will lead to cycles in which one alternates between asserting the facts and succumbing to emotional pressure. In contrast, Perceiver facts that are combined into a Teacher theory are capable of winning the battle over cultural and personal MMNs.
Beauty usually (always?) involves a combination of MMNs and TMNs. Thus, it is important to distinguish between ideology and beauty. Lindsay describes it this way. “Beauty is that supplemental necessity which inspires us and enables our subjectivity in a way that is not merely selfish but that, in its transcendence, lifts us up and all others with us. Beauty is what makes life worth living. It is also what makes that which is worth doing well worth doing at all. Beauty grants sufficiency to life.” Ideology uses overgeneralization to extrapolate from personal MMNs to a universal TMN. Thus, my personal and cultural feelings become regarded as a universal standard that should be imposed upon everyone else. Beauty recognizes that Mercy thought and Teacher thought inhabit different domains: Cultural and personal MMNs summarize the desires and needs of my group and my person; TMNs describe universal principles that apply to all groups and all persons. Thus, beauty expresses universal theories in some specific way. Saying this another way, beauty uses TMNs based in universal principles to ‘inspire’ and ‘lift up’ personal and cultural MMNs. Righteousness was described earlier as Server actions that reflect general Teacher understanding. Beauty goes beyond the actions of righteousness to becoming a person who is a finite expression of general Teacher understanding. Teacher theories that are objective can describe objects or works of beauty but a theory that ignores the subjective is incapable of making people beautiful. Becoming beautiful requires a Teacher understanding that applies to personal identity. However, a sufficiently general theory that applies to personal identity will form a concept of God. Thus, becoming beautiful is cognitively equivalent to the religious concept that humans are made in the image of God. Mental symmetry could be described as a cognitive theory of human beauty because it expresses human well-being as a simple and symmetrical theory of personal excellence. Placing the elements of human beauty into such a general theory adds to their beauty.
Looking at liberty, Lindsay observes that “Liberty only makes sense in the realm of the individual, who has agency, feelings, and intelligence. Liberty makes no sense in terms of groups, which have none of these things and, indeed, are ultimately composed of individuals. By focusing on liberty, we focus on individualism over collectivism, and we understand that teamwork—the formation of purpose-driven, voluntary ‘collectives’—becomes possible.” I suggest that Lindsay’s statement is accurate and significant, but it should also include the mental requirement for being able to think in terms of individuals rather than groups. Our discussion of wokeism has focused upon cultural MMNs rather than personal MMNs because Perceiver thought is required to distinguish between various MMNs to determine which mental networks really are inescapable and thus define me and which mental networks represent various forces within society that are being triggered and are attempting to impose their structure upon me. This relates to Higgins self-discrepancy theory and its distinction between the actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self. Saying this another way, the wokeist mind has no emotional liberty, because a mind that is obsessed with cultural MMNs will be continually emotionally dragged here and there by the triggering of these various cultural MMNs.
The primary facts of human liberty are that 1) human minds and bodies are finite, and 2) every human mind is trapped in a vulnerable human body. The first point means that humans have to interact socially. Thus, humans have to team up to work together in collectives, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. The second point means that humans need physical security. Thus, “Liberty exists in uneasy tension with two important forces: security and liberty itself. Liberty is freedom, and freedom is dangerous... Further, my liberty and your liberty exist in a similar uneasy tension because what I choose to do in my own freedom may well restrict yours.” Notice that using Perceiver thought to mentally define the individual human makes it possible to use Perceiver thought to determine what a human being actually needs.
Wokeism, in contrast, uses Teacher overgeneralization to extrapolate from struggling cultural MMNs to some vague Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. In Lindsay’s words, “It wrongly believes that liberty emerges from enforced equality rather than understanding that equality results from valuing liberty. It also favors absolute security, provided by a perfected state that cannot exist, on the belief that the responsibility we have against our insecurities constrains our freedom to do whatever we would. In this way, it vainly hopes that liberty might be enjoyed without responsibility to self, others, or society. Thus, ‘liberation’ is a utopian dream (not a ‘historical possibility’), and the attempt to realize it will always end in calamity, suffering, bondage, and death.” Looking at this cognitively, instead of dealing factually with actual inescapable human needs, wokeism wants the ‘absolute security’ of never feeling a sense of need, which means never triggering mental networks that feel oppressive. Instead of understanding factually what sort of society gives maximum personal freedom to finite humans, wokeism wants the feeling of personal freedom, which means that mental networks do not feel restricted when they are triggered. And instead of addressing inequality in a factual manner, wokeism wants the Teacher feeling of universal equality.
These emotional goals are impossible to achieve, because giving freedom to the MMNs of one cultural group will automatically oppress the MMNs of other cultural groups. Going further, overgeneralizing from the MMNs of one cultural group will lead to a dictatorship of that cultural group over other groups. Thus, any attempt to realize enforced equality will always end in calamity, suffering, and bondage. Going still further, any Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality will have to be imposed by some group of people, leading again to a dictatorship by that group. This turns liberation into a utopian dream. Meanwhile, any actual human needs will become ignored in this emotional struggle for societal dominance and equality. This removes utopia from the realm of historical possibility.
Lindsay discusses the human needs that result from being finite beings within vulnerable physical bodies. However, if the human mind is composed of seven interacting cognitive modules, then one can also define internal need factually as giving each cognitive module what it requires. Lindsay refers implicitly to two cognitive modules, pointing out that wokeism “is a violation of the human condition (denial of truth) and a murder of the human spirit (rejection of beauty), and so it always ends in catastrophe.” Perceiver thought requires truth, while Teacher thought wants beauty. These two cognitive modules generate abstract thought. Physical freedom naturally involves the two cognitive modules of concrete thought: Server thought must have freedom to act, which means giving people the freedom to choose their actions. Similarly, Mercy thought wants freedom from painful experiences, which means that the actions of one person should not harm another person.
Thus, the qualities of truth, beauty, and liberty actually summarize the needs of the four ‘simple’ cognitive modules of Perceiver, Teacher, Server, and Mercy. The three ‘composite’ cognitive modules of Exhorter, Contributor, and Facilitator build upon this foundation—and the fourth quality addresses a fundamental need of the composite cognitive modules.
The fourth quality that Lindsay mentions is merit. “Merit is the measure upon which a flourishing society is built. It is oriented on results and is the combination of talent and effort. Therefore, merit paves the road to a prosperous society.” Merit describes the ability of technical thought to improve and optimize. And objective scientific thought correctly recognizes that merit has to be built upon Perceiver facts of reality. “Without good results, bad things happen. When the storm comes, we have either prepared our house to weather it or we have not. Reality is not fantasy, and we cannot just wish the storm away or talk our way out of its injuries. Results matter, and merit is the measure of getting results.”
As Lindsay states, a prosperous society depends upon the use of technical thought based upon physical reality. But Western civilization has defined merit as using technical thought in an objective, specialized manner. This has led to a society that is ruled primarily by Contributor persons who prostitute who they are in order to gain peripheral results. This is not an offhand statement, but rather the conclusion of decades of being marginalized and belittled because I dared to follow the goal of becoming someone. Technical thought rightly concludes that wokeism is insane. But wokeism is also being motivated by a deep emotional revulsion to a world of technical prostitution. The other three values of truth, beauty, and liberty address this shortcoming, but it is still possible to define these other three values in an objective specialized manner that leaves the societal prostitution of unrestricted technical thought intact. The solution is not to shut down technical thought but rather to extend merit beyond objects to subjective MMNs and beyond specialized expertise to universal TMNs. This extension will, by definition, create a concept of God, leading to the conclusion that true merit means being a person of integrity in the eyes of God. In Jewish language, true merit means becoming a mensch. Going further, mental symmetry suggests that a mental concept of incarnation emerges when technical thought goes beyond specialization to be guided by a universal theory in Teacher thought and goes beyond objectivity to save people in Mercy thought, and this cognitive definition of incarnation corresponds with the description of Jesus Christ the incarnation in the Gospels. That is discussed in detail elsewhere.
Marxism and Gnosticism
Lindsay describes Marxism as a form of scientific gnosticism, summarizing that “Whatever might be said about other branches in Kingdom Gnosticism, Scientific Gnosticism is perhaps the most calamitous ideological phylum human beings have so far managed to contrive.”
Looking first at religious Gnosticism, Lindsay explains that Gnosticism says that “God is not the Creator who put order to the world and then called it good; He is a tyrant and the warden of a universal prison locked from within, keeps that which is truly Good for Himself, and by maintaining for us a state of ignorance keeps us enslaved. Knowledge of the higher truth, that the Garden is in fact a prison, sets us free of it, at which point we can reshape the world nearer to our hearts’ desires.” Viewing God as ‘the Creator who put order to the world’ constructs the universal theory of a concept of God in Teacher thought by integrating the various paradigms and technical specializations that govern the physical world. Using theological language, the Incarnation of ‘God the Word’ is viewed as a reformulation of the Teacher universality of God the Father. Gnosticism, in contrast, views technical thought as a prison from which one must escape in order to discover God in Teacher thought. Similarly, wokeism uses emotional pressure from MMNs to overwhelm technical thought based in rational Perceiver facts and then overgeneralizes from these MMNs to the TMN of an ideology. This ‘sets us free of’ rational technical thought, making it possible to use MMNs to ‘reshape the world nearer to our hearts’ desires’. One concludes that wokeism is cognitively similar to religious Gnosticism.
Lindsay then looks at the modern, scientific version of Gnosticism. Using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought leads instantly to a sense of total ‘knowing’, whereas using Perceiver thought to search for repetition gradually builds Perceiver confidence as one notices connections being repeated. Lindsay describes the partial certainty that characterizes genuine scientific knowledge. “Every hypothesis can be challenged. Every claim to knowledge can be overturned, especially any claim to Knowledge. Science is therefore by definition anti-Gnostic, just as are the healthy expressions of theistic faith.” Lindsay’s assertion may be true of the logic-based thinking of mathematics, but as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, it usually takes many counterexamples before a scientific hypothesis is challenged. However, the general principle still remains, which is that scientific knowledge is fundamentally different than the emotionally induced blind faith of emotional ‘knowing’.
Lindsay then turns to the emotional impact of Teacher theories. “Since science is interested in ascertaining provisional truths about all that is, a Scientific Gnosticism must seek to call truths things which are not. This is why non-reality is essential to Scientific Gnosticism, and the form it takes is Theory. Theory sits atop reality and provides the right understanding, such that those who embrace Theory are the only ones who can truly understand reality.” In other words, Gnosticism builds its Teacher theories in the realm of thought that is not covered by rational Perceiver facts. Saying this another way, wokeism extrapolates from cultural MMNs to universal TMNs in a way that avoids rational technical thought. Saying this yet another way, wokeism responds to technical thought that ignores mental networks with a focus upon mental networks that deliberately suppresses technical thought.
The problem with Lindsay’s explanation lies with the implicit equating of non-reality and theory with Gnosticism. ‘Non-reality’ implies that Perceiver thought can only acquire its facts from the objects of physical reality, while ‘Theory’ (with a capital ‘T’) implies that science is not affected by Teacher emotion. These two implications reflect the objective, specialized nature of scientific technical thought. But Perceiver thought can also find repeated connections in the unseen realm of cognitive mechanisms. And Kuhn’s description of paradigms indicates that scientific thought is emotionally susceptible to Teacher theories. This does not mean that Lindsay is wrong but rather that his statement needs to be modified: Non-factuality is essential to Scientific Gnosticism, and the form it takes is overgeneralized Theory.
Lindsay outlines the modern way of enabling Teacher overgeneralization. “Some in the modern era... believed that such an understanding of the emerging epistemology of that era, science, presents only a low-level understanding of the world as it is. Theirs is a world that becomes, not a world that is, and it does so through the intrinsically negative process of highlighting ‘contradictions.’ Unless a claim to direct revelation is made, contradictions are a typical route to Gnosis for the Gnostic.” Stating this cognitively, a Teacher overgeneralization can coexist with rational scientific thinking if the overgeneralization is regarded as transcending the rational thought, which means viewing science as a ‘low-level understanding of the world’. That is because Teacher emotion comes from order-within-complexity. The science provides the complexity and the Teacher overgeneralization provides the order that transcends this complexity. (The mysticism of Buber provides an example of this type of thinking.) Going further, Teacher overgeneralization will naturally emerge when Perceiver thought is sidelined, which can be done cognitively by ‘highlighting contradictions’. Finally, replacing the Perceiver facts of ‘a world that is’ with the Server sequences of ‘a world that becomes’ replaces Perceiver facts that limit Teacher overgeneralization with Server sequences that support Teacher overgeneralization.
Unfortunately, Lindsay again appears to be equating Teacher generality with Gnosticism and science with the absence of Teacher generality. “It was with that Wissenschaft that these German modern-era Scientific Gnostics worked... A nearer articulation of the meaning of these terms, however, would be (agnostic) understanding (of provisional truths about the world) and (Gnostic) Theory, which is to say systematic contextualization—that is, ideology—of that understanding and everything else. For Hegel, this meant that his own systematic philosophy was the better understanding, the Wissenschaftlicher, of Understanding (and therefore also not wrong). This is a great, and Gnostic, intellectual swindle.” In other words, Lindsay seems to be saying that starting with a general theory in Teacher thought is—by definition—an ‘intellectual swindle’ because real science does not start with a general theory.
However, this essay started with the general theory of mental symmetry and has taken ninety pages to use this theory to analyze Lindsay’s content in detail. This analysis is better than Lindsay’s content not because it contradicts any of the Perceiver facts or disproves his Teacher theories, but rather because it places Lindsay’s content and Lindsay’s theories within the systematic structure of a meta-theory. Thus, a distinction needs to be made between using Teacher overgeneralization to transcend the Perceiver facts of science and using Teacher generalization to integrate the Perceiver facts of science. Similarly, a distinction needs to be made between starting with an ideology that overgeneralizes from some cultural MMNs and starting with a meta-theory that places facts and theories within a more general structure. Going further, a meta-theory that becomes more detailed and more clear every time it is used to analyze some field is different than an ideology that has to avoid interacting factually with other theories. Successfully placing an extensive website such as newdiscourses.com within a single cognitive metatheory is actually a significant theoretical undertaking and not just a ‘great intellectual swindle’. Going the other way, analyzing newdiscourses.com has helped to clarify concepts within my mind that I thought I understood adequately but now understand better.
Lindsay adds that postmodern wokeist thought leads naturally in the direction of Gnosticism. “Utopia is the possibility of what may be when all oppression is removed. Put otherwise, we might not know what Heaven will look like, but it’s not this and we’ll know it when we see it—now get in the car. This is still Gnosticism.” What Lindsay is describing is another example of Teacher thought discovering overgeneralization when mental content is removed. Perceiver facts limit Teacher overgeneralization. Thus, if enough Perceiver facts are questioned, then Teacher thought will suddenly ‘discover’ overgeneralization and feel that it has made some great theoretical breakthrough, not realizing that such a ‘breakthrough’ is actually a symptom of growing ignorance. And as Lindsay states, the postmodern questioning of truth has made it possible to extend this overgeneralization to more areas of thought. “Now Gnostic consciousnesses proliferate at the level of identity politics, and these define the entire collection of genera in the ‘Woke’ family or families in our taxonomical hierarchy.”
Going further, when Perceiver thought within my mind is disabled, then my Teacher overgeneralization will naturally extrapolate emotionally from the MMNs that reside within my mind. For instance, “Queer Theory sees ‘queer’ as an ‘identity without an essence,’ and so every narcissistic adolescent obtains a specialized Gnosis of the world and its functioning located firmly in their own unstable sense of self that is contextualized by The Science of sex, gender, and sexuality. Race is socially constructed and imposed, says Critical Race Theory, so only by understanding yourself in terms of its structurally deterministic machinations can Gnostic awareness of Race Theory be rightly obtained.” Notice how each individual is overgeneralizing from their own personal emotional experiences. A similar principle can be seen in religious mysticism, because religious leaders who claim that God transcends human rational thought also tend to claim to be valid authorities who can speak on behalf of God. Notice also that this overgeneralizing is happening within confused teenage minds that are doubting the Perceiver content that they acquired in childhood.
Lindsay rightly points out that starting with an ideology that is regarded as transcending scientific thought will lead to human disaster. “Scientific Socialism is an approach that went on to mischaracterize lowly Verstand science as ‘bourgeois science,’ which in turn led to the unnecessary deaths of possibly more than a hundred million people in the Soviet Union and China. Recalcitrant nature, contra Kelly Oliver, retained its recalcitrance despite the strategery of the Theory.” ‘Recalcitrant nature’ will bite back hard when one becomes motivated by the TMN of an ideology that extrapolates from cultural MMNs that overwhelm Perceiver thought. Mental symmetry, in contrast, starts from a meta-theory that is based upon Perceiver facts about how the mind works. Among other things, mental symmetry can be used to explain the type of thinking that is required to build a scientific understanding of how the physical world works. Objective, specialized science requires such an understanding because it is incapable of explaining itself. If science did not exist, I do not think that objective, specialized science could invent it.
More specifically, I fear that someone like Lindsay will instinctively reject this essay simply because it starts from a theory, even though this theory provides a thorough explanation of Lindsay’s information. I say this because I have repeatedly experienced scientifically trained individuals rejecting the theory of mental symmetry even when mental symmetry is used to explain—in detail—the data gathered by those individuals. However, such a rejection is implicitly starting from the general theory that one should not start from general theories. I am not stating this to be cute or obnoxious but rather to point out that dealing with Teacher thought is tricky. As far as I can tell, the cognitive module of Teacher thought is not self-aware and will only notice contradictions or counterexamples to its theories if they are pointed out by other cognitive modules.
The first problem with instinctively rejecting an essay that starts with a theory is that defeating a general theory requires another general theory. The ‘scientific gnostic’ with a Theory will not let go of this theory unless provided with a better theory. Telling the gnostic to drop the Theory and follow evidence-based scientific thought will not work. Lindsay recognizes this principle when he says that the answer to wokeism has to include beauty.
The second problem is that science does not follow its own advice but rather starts with a meta-theory, and this meta-theory is not very nice. This meta-theory is the theory of biological evolution. One can tell that this theory has formed a mental network within the mind of the typical scientist because of the continual references to Nature with a capital ‘N’ acting as an intelligent, divine agent. Before continuing, I need to explain that I am making a distinction between the Big Bang theory and the theory of biological evolution. The Big Bang theory has major problems, such as the need for dark matter and dark energy, but it is a mathematically sound theory. I am focusing here specifically upon the theory of biological evolution.
The theory of biological evolution was developed primarily to replace religious dogmatic ‘blind faith’ with rational thought. More specifically, Thomas Huxley and others championed the theory of evolution in order to free science from the control of the clergy and their religious dogma. This transition to rational thought was necessary, but apart from this one cognitive result, I have not found any beneficial social result from the theory of biological evolution—and I have looked fairly extensively at recent history. In contrast, history provides several really nasty examples of the devastating impact of social Darwinism.
Going further, ignoring scientific thought that is based in Perceiver facts leads naturally to disaster. This principle has been mentioned several times in this essay. However, it is possible to doubt the theory of biological evolution for one’s entire life without experiencing any painful consequences from nature. Doubting the theory of evolution will lead to extensive social disapproval from scientists. However, this essay has also discussed extensively the folly of being guided by MMNs of social approval. Going still further, this essay has warned against overgeneralizing from limited personal experience, and the theory of biological evolution overgeneralizes from valid mechanisms of adaptability within species to the evolution of all species. As for building a theory that is consistent with the facts, the DNA distribution of the evolutionary tree actually fits a model of modules being reused (like using subroutines from a library of computer programs) better than a tree of common ancestry (Ewert, 2018), and the field of comparative biology fits well into such a model of reusable modules. Thus, it appears that the theory of biological evolution is not necessary—if another meta-theory can be found to replace dogmatic blind faith with rational thought.
Lindsay suggests that the four qualities of truth, beauty, liberty, and merit are required to recover from wokeism. I suggest that the theory of biological evolution fails in all four areas. Truth examines the current world for repeatable connections. Biological evolution comes up with hypothetical explanations that might explain what may have happened in the past. Beauty uses Teacher order to inspire humanity to a higher level. Biological evolution drags humanity down by focusing upon the beastly behavior of animals and proto-humans. Liberty emphasizes the individual and strives to protect the individual. Biological evolution focuses on the species while damning the individual to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ of ‘survival of the fittest’. Merit encourages the individual to develop cognitively, professionally, and spiritually. Biological evolution attributes mental development to environmental pressure combined with random DNA mutations.
For instance, the cognitive science of religion (CSR) studies religion from an evolutionary perspective (the experimental findings of CSR fit nicely into the theory of mental symmetry). The fundamental myth of CSR is that humans believe in deities because of a ‘hyperactive agency detection device’. Mental symmetry interprets this as the cognitive tendency to use mental networks to represent emotional situations. CSR attributes this to the hypothesis that proto-humans living in the jungle who had this tendency mentally jumped to the conclusion that a predator was nearby when they heard a noise in the night and thus survived to pass on their genes. There is no repeatable truth in a hypothesis that might have happened in the past. There is no beauty in dragging religion down to the level of proto-humans fleeing hungry predators. There is no liberty in attributing the human quest for religion to inheriting certain genes. And there is no merit in attributing cognitive development to external causes. Mental symmetry, in contrast, suggests that a concept of God forms when a sufficiently general theory applies to personal identity. The truth of this suggestion can be checked by examining human behavior in many fields including neurology. This is a beautiful answer that emphasizes Teacher feelings of beauty. It also emphasizes human liberty because every individual has the freedom to construct their own mental concept of God. (There is also responsibility because each individual will eventually become mentally imprisoned by the concept of God that he or she has constructed.) And it emphasizes merit because it suggests that a person’s concept of God will mature as a person develops increasing mental wholeness.
Going further, the theory of biological evolution views the structure of the mind as a random byproduct of mutations and responses to environmental pressure. For instance, Steven Pinker suggests, “There are lots of ways in which Darwinian natural selection could rewire a brain. There are chemicals that are released in the growing brain that attract nerve cells, encouraging them to grow in certain pathways versus others... All of these are under the control of genes, and as genes evolve, the way they do throughout evolution, the wiring of the brain can change.” This is a vague conjecture that explains nothing about the mind, but this conjecture has the emotional impact of making a theory such as mental symmetry that starts with the structure of the mind appear inherently unreasonable. Thus, I do not see how the theory of mental symmetry can coexist with the theory of biological evolution, because one treats mental structure as fundamental while the other treats mental structure as a random byproduct. This is an emotional problem involving Teacher generality, because a concept cannot be simultaneously fundamental and irrelevant. Thus, while the theory of biological evolution may be pro-intellectual at the factual level of encouraging Perceiver thought as opposed to blind faith, it is anti-intellectual at the theoretical level of developing a Teacher theory of cognition.
Finally, I suggest that as long as science holds to the theory of biological evolution, it will be fighting wokeism with one hand tied behind its back, because both suffer from the same fundamental flaws. Wokeism ignores the individual in order to focus upon social interaction, while the theory of evolution ignores the individual in order to focus upon the species. Wokeism blames mental problems upon external factors, while the theory of evolution uses external factors to explain cognitive development. Wokeism fixates upon external features that people cannot change, while the theory of evolution focuses upon mutations and environmental factors over which the individual has no control. And both wokeism and the theory of evolution use social pressure to impose themselves upon people while canceling those who refuse to submit.
As for Huxley’s initial goal of wresting control from the clergy in order to replace blind faith with rational thought, mental symmetry does this quite effectively. Mental symmetry has been used to comprehensively reformulate Christian theology from a cognitive perspective. This reformulation respects the Bible, is consistent with accepted Christian belief, and even leaves the door open for the existence of spiritual entities. But my repeated experience is that this reformulation is instinctively rejected by those who follow a mindset of blind faith precisely because it does not start with the assumption of blind faith in the Bible—it does not use the emotion of religious fervor to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’. Thus, mental symmetry can invade the home turf of the religious fundamentalist, replace blind faith with rational analysis, and emotionally drive the religious fundamentalist away. These may sound like harsh words, but I have seen evangelical Christendom self-destruct into a parody of itself during the Trump administration and covid crisis. Christianity is cognitively (and spiritually) valuable and needs to be rescued from what evangelical Christendom has become.
The Cult of Wokeism
Lindsay compares wokeism to a cult. This comparison can be examined cognitively. Lindsay summarizes that a cult “can be split into three circles: initiates (‘Outer School’), adepts (‘Inner School’), and disciples and leaders (‘Inner Circle’).” We will look at these three divisions, starting with the outer school.
Lindsay explains that “The members of the Outer School (initiates) will typically know very little cult doctrine. They will be morally attuned to the cult and being made increasingly socially invested and committed to it. They do not have to have read any of the relevant cult doctrine or even have heard of the people who formulated it to act in ways consistent with the cult’s values, which they are learning to adopt and having reinforced for them socially. The initiate stage of cult induction is one of increasing psychological identification with the cult, its beliefs, and its practices.” Notice the focus upon cultural MMNs, evidenced by ‘social reinforcement’ and ‘psychological identification’. This focus upon cultural MMNs leads to ‘increasing social investment and commitment’. Notice also the absence of any ideological TMNs based in the writings of the cult. Putting this into the context of wokeism, we saw when looking at various kinds of Marxism that the incomplete transformation of technical thought will create a culture of uneducated consumers who will be naturally attracted to the current version of Marxism because it explains the mental networks that exist within their own minds.
The inner school, in contrast, focuses upon building TMNs of ideology. Quoting from Lindsay, “The Inner School adepts will know the cult doctrine and will be growing in their knowledge and understanding of it. They will ‘do the work’ or undertake the relevant ‘study’ necessary to learn cult doctrine and theory, and they will, in turn, teach it to one another and to Outer School initiates, but only in comfortable, digestible ways.” Continuing to studying theory is important, because a theory will only turn into a TMN as a person continues to work with this theory. Ideology extrapolates from cultural MMNs to the TMN of a general theory. Lindsay mentions this order. “‘Doing the work’ through ‘study to become an Inner School adept mostly only proceeds after the moral, social, and psychological commitment to the cult is firmly established in an initiate. That way, budding adepts are unlikely to reject and very likely to rationalize and accept the more distorted and grotesque features of the cult doctrine.” Notice that the goal is not to build a universal understanding in Teacher thought but rather to create potent cultural MMNs and then rationalize from these MMNs to an ideological TMN.
Before making this leap from cultural MMNs to ideological TMN, cultural MMNs will be shaped through cycles of disapproval and acceptance. Lindsay describes how this ‘brainwashing’ functions. “This begins with a period of alienation: being made to feel as though you don’t fit in with the social group around you or the current of society as it progresses in some new direction. Wanting to fit in is a powerful motivator, and when that feeling of alienation is strong enough, acceptance and affirmation will flood a person with desperately wanted good feelings and the illusions of friendships and social bonds. Acceptance and affirmation are commonly used to create the initial social and moral commitment, along with interest, in the earliest phases of initiation.” A mental network generates a positive emotion when experiencing input that is consistent with its structure. The initial social and moral commitment to the cult comes from the cult exhibiting behavior that is consistent with the cultural MMNs of the visitor. Thus, cultural MMNs within the mind of the visitor generate positive feelings and create ‘illusions of friendships and social bonds’. This feeling of ‘acceptance and affirmation’ from the cult makes the visitor emotionally vulnerable to being emotionally manipulated by withholding acceptance through ‘being made to feel as though you don’t fit in with the social group’. Notice that there is no reference to either Perceiver facts or to what is good or bad in Mercy thought. Instead the primary manipulation is coming from feelings of consistency and inconsistency with the group being generated by cultural MMNs. Obviously, a mind that fixates upon cultural MMNs will be vulnerable to this kind of emotional manipulation.
Going further, “This alternating cycle of alienation and affirmation is then continued with increasing intensity once inside the cult structure in the ‘criticism’ phases, which are meant not only to criticize you for failing to live up to the cult expectations but also to teach you to reflect upon yourself and criticize yourself in the same way.” MMNs are composed of emotional experiences. Thus, as the member of the outer school has emotional experiences with the cult, this forms cultural MMNs which can then be manipulated emotionally by withholding or giving acceptance based upon ‘living up to the cult expectations’. This emotional manipulation will increase the emotional intensity of these new cult cultural MMNs. And as these new cultural MMNs grow and expand, the expectations of the cult will increasingly ‘live’ within the mind of the initiate in the form of MMNs, making it possible for the initiate to ‘reflect upon yourself and criticize yourself in the same way’.
The end result is to replace existing cultural MMNs with a new set of cultural MMNs from the cult. Lindsay quotes Robert Lifton, “Not only did making these accusations increase their feelings of guilt and shame, it put them in the position of subverting the structures of their own lives. They were, in effect, being made to renounce the people, the organizations, and the standards of behavior which had formed the matrix of their previous existence. They were being forced to betray—not so much their friends and colleagues, as a vital core of themselves.” Notice how the cult member is being emotionally driven by the cultural MMNs of the cult to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with previous cultural MMNs.
Lindsay emphasizes that this process of replacing cultural MMNs happens at the social and personal level. “There can be no unity with a ‘racist,’ and you can’t stop being ‘racist’ until you want to be ‘antiracist’ and start the ‘ongoing process’ of ‘self-reflection’ and ‘self-critique’ that will ultimately transform you. Shame and humiliation are key tools in this process. The people doing this do not have to know virtually any Woke Marxist ideology or even that there is such a thing, but they’re following its moral strictures nonetheless because those can be learned without reading a single page of ‘the work.’” The cult member is being emotionally forced to explicitly reject existing cultural MMNs (‘stop being racist’) in order to have emotional ‘unity’ with the cult cultural MMNs. This is happening at the social level of cultural MMNs ‘without reading a single page of the work’. This involves using ‘shame and humiliation’ from the group in order to overwhelm any feeling of personal identity.
Looking at this more carefully, personal identity is defined as the mental networks that continue to come to mind. Perceiver thought within my mind defines my personal identity by distinguishing between mental networks that are only triggered when other people are present versus mental networks that are always triggered, either by my physical body or by my knowledge and skills. ‘Shame and humiliation’ place me in a public situation where other people can trigger the cultural MMNs of the group and create emotional pressure that will overwhelm my ability to use Perceiver thought to define what is me. Notice how shame and humiliation take implicit advantage of inescapable facts of personal identity. The reason that I can be shamed and humiliated is because my mind is trapped within a physical body that can be placed in the center of a crowd of people whose minds are trapped within their physical bodies. The cult member who is at the center of attention wants to slink away and hide, but he cannot because he is trapped in his physical body. Because he is trapped in his physical body, his knowledge of being trapped in a physical body can be emotionally overwhelmed.
Becoming emotionally controlled by the cultural MMNs of the cult lays the emotional foundation for the study of the inner school. In Lindsay’s words, “Learning the Theory yourself and becoming an Inner School adept in the cult is something mostly done by people already committed to it through the above processes. The first grip the cult has on people is moral and social. That proceeds through the above alienation, criticism, affirmation cycles into the psychological domain through vitiating the essential core of initiates’ identities and replacing that core with the cult moral and linguistic frameworks. If you feel like a cultist and talk like a cultist, you’ll start to identify as a cultist. Only after the commitment is made personal through this process will studying the doctrine be likely to stick, outside of rare cases in which people ‘find a voice’ for things they already feel in the literature.” As was just mentioned, cycles of ‘alienation, criticism, and affirmation’ replace existing cultural MMNs with MMNs representing ‘the cult moral and linguistic frameworks’. Teacher thought uses words to build theories. A theory can be prevented from coming into contact with other theories by using special words to describe this theory. Thus, the ideology of a cult can be intellectually protected from factual counterexamples by using a special vocabulary to describe this ideology. The goal is to ‘feel like a cultist and talk like a cultist’, which means mentally associating the MMNs of the cult with the special words of the cult. In contrast, this essay has continually been saying things ‘in other words’ in order to use Perceiver thought to build connections between one verbal theory and another. Notice also how the cultist mind is jumping directly from Mercy feelings to Teacher words. One can tell that Teacher theory is extrapolating from cult cultural MMNs because ‘the commitment made personal through this process’ is causing ‘the doctrine to stick’. The only exception to this is the individual who already has MMNs that resonate emotionally with the theory of the cult.
Learning cult ideology in Teacher thought will be assisted by application in Server thought. We have looked at the cognitive mechanism of righteousness, in which Teacher thought provides an emotional motivation for Server actions. Going the other way, repeating these Server actions builds Server confidence which gives stability to the Teacher theory. This can be seen in education when hearing the words of a lecture is followed by doing homework or performing a lab. Lindsay describes this combination. “Progression from the Outer School to the Inner School is a matter of ‘study.’ It’s also one of action, namely ‘praxis,’ which is a fancy word that means putting the cult doctrine into practice and shaping your life’s activities around it. So, after enough criticism and struggle, you will want to start ‘doing the work,’ which is your initiation rite into the Inner School of the Woke cult.”
We have seen that Perceiver thought fights Teacher overgeneralization, because facts provide counterexamples to sweeping statements. In contrast, Server thought can support Teacher overgeneralization if actions are performed in a selfless manner. (Selfless means that Perceiver thought lacks the confidence to distinguish between cultural and personal MMNs.) This selflessness is described in Zen and the Art of Archery. “The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull’s-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill.” Thus, a cult will combine overwhelming Perceiver confidence with developing Server confidence. In Lindsay’s words, “The Inner School members, who are adepts, largely end up directing and facilitating the criticism, struggle, affirmation, and acceptance cycles mentioned above. These not only solidify and consolidate those in the Outer School but keep their ideas and activities in line with the doctrine. Most of your life as an adept in the Inner School is devoted to study of theory and application of praxis.” Notice how inner school members are combining Teacher theory with Server praxis by ‘directing and facilitating’ the process of using emotional pressure to implant new cultural MMNs. Thus, building Server confidence is being combined with overwhelming Perceiver thought.
Constructing a theory uses Perceiver thought to build connections. A cult ideology suppresses these connections. Quoting from Lindsay, “Theory becomes a set of elaborate, complicated rationalizations for why the cultist should stay a cultist despite literally everything in the world saying otherwise.” Notice how the TMN of cult theory does not connect with any Perceiver facts from the outside world but rather is based upon the MMNs of the cult. In terms of an emotional hierarchy, the MMNs of the cult rule over the TMN of cult theory. In Lindsay’s words, “The purpose of ‘study’ is to develop an intellectual commitment on top of those other commitments to the cult doctrine, which will also enable you to reframe and rationalize away contradictory information, ideas, and evidence.” This describes extrapolating from the cult cultural MMNs to the TMN of cult ideology.
The third level in a cult is the inner circle. Lindsay explains that “Only the most committed and loyal members of the cult’s Inner School have any chance of progressing into the outer circuit of the Inner Circle; that is, to become disciples. Disciples are very few in number relatively speaking because they will actually start to learn the real purposes of the cult and its ‘mysteries.’” This gives the impression that the inner circle chooses to be cynical manipulators. That may be true in some cases but it also describes how technical thought would interpret the situation, because technical thought uses choices to implement some plan. Instead, I suggest that this is a natural cognitive byproduct of using emotional pressure to overwhelm Perceiver thought.
Stated simply, Perceiver thought will only remain overwhelmed as long as the emotional status of the source of truth is much greater than the emotional status of personal identity. A cult may try to use emotional pressure from cultural MMNs to overwhelm my sense of personal identity, but when I become a source of authority in the cult, then this authority is coming from my mouth, my mind, my knowledge, my skills, and my body. Going further, when ‘disciples are very few in number’, then individuality will emerge from the group. The end result is that anyone who rises high enough in the emotional pecking order will start to have doubts about the ‘truth’ of the cult. This problem does not arise with scientific thought because Perceiver facts are independent of personal status in Mercy thought. The law of gravity, for instance, applies equally to every one. Similarly, the same cognitive mechanisms apply to everyone’s mind regardless of that person’s emotional status. In contrast, the process of using emotional pressure to establish Perceiver ‘knowing’ is dependent upon emotional status. Thus, the reason that the cult has ‘mysteries’ and ‘real purposes’ is generally not because the cult leaders are consciously trying to be deceptive (though that may be the case) but rather because becoming a cult leader naturally causes a person to doubt the emotionally imposed ‘truth’ of that cult.
Going further, if the emotional status of my personal identity rises with respect to the emotional status of my sources of ‘truth’, then my behavior will naturally become motivated by emotions of my personal identity rather than the emotions of the cult. In Lindsay’s words, “The Inner Circle actually advances and directs the cult’s activity, usually for their own glorification, benefit, enrichment, and power... They use the Inner School members and exploit the Outer School initiates to achieve their aims.” Notice the focus upon personal benefit. This does not necessarily mean that Perceiver thought is gaining the ability to distinguish between me and others. The emotional equating of ‘me’ with ‘the cult’ tends to remain. But instead of the cultural MMNs of the cult emotionally shaping personal identity, the personal MMNs of a leader will emotionally shape the cultural MMNs of the cult. Saying this another way, the typical cult leader will feel that L’État, c’est moi—my personal feelings are the cult.
This means that other emotional methods must be used to control the members of the inner circle. Lindsay explains, “There very well may be an initiation rite that might also involve generating blackmail on you so that you remain a safe keeper of those secrets, purposes, and mysteries even if you come to waver later.” The leaders know that those who become leaders will naturally ‘come to waver later’ because they now have emotional status within the cult. Notice that this emotional status has nothing to do with reality but rather is being given by the members of the cult. This makes an ‘initiation rite’ that ‘involves generating blackmail’ effective because the members of the cult will stop giving emotional status to a leader if they find out about this incident.
In contrast, building mentally upon the Perceiver facts of reality makes it possible to experience the reward of transformed reality. Similarly, building upon the Perceiver facts of cognitive mechanisms makes it possible to experience the reward of a transformed mind. Thus, one does not have to join some inner circle to experience rewards and one does not stop experiencing these rewards if one is ejected from the inner circle.
Summarizing, there are major cognitive similarities between a cult and wokeism. However, I suggest that a distinction should be made between the wokeist and the economic prostitute who is using wokeism to further personal gains. Looking at this more carefully, the various steps in the typical sequence of wokeism are all being driven by cognitive mechanisms: 1) The researcher who is using technical thought to come up with better gadgets is trying to help humanity. However, technical thought naturally comes up with objective improvements that ignore the big picture. 2) The marketer who is using mental networks to market these gadgets thinks that he is compensating for the emotional inadequacies of technical thought. However, focusing upon marketing and ease-of-use creates a class of consumers who lack technical thought and are driven by MMNs. 3) Wokeism thinks that it addressing the emotional needs of the consumer. But it is actually using cultural MMNs to overwhelm rational thought, leading to the cult mentality of the outer circle. 4) The wokeist activist thinks that he (she?) is helping the oppressed. But this activism is actually replacing existing cultural MMNs with a cultic mentality that interprets everything in terms of struggling MMNs. 5) The wokeist scholar thinks that she (usually) is coming up with a meta-theory that ties together the various specializations of modern technical society. But this is actually an ideology based upon the MMNs of personal failure that result from the vicious circle of continuing to use the wrong mental strategy to deal with reality. 6) The wokeist leader may be viewed by outsiders as a cynical manipulator, but he is actually being emotionally blackmailed by his need to receive approval from cult members. Stated more simply, I suggest that Hanlon’s razor applies: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
The real cynical cult leader in the inner circle is most likely the businessman who does not believe in any of the wokeist ideology but rather is using a knowledge of human psychology to manipulate mental networks in order to pursue peripheral personal gains. This psychology of propaganda was developed by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, applied by Nazism, and the Wikipedia article on Bernay’s 1928 book entitled Propaganda concludes that “His techniques are now staples for public image creation and political campaigns.” Looking further at the Nazi connection, one article relates, “Bernays learned that the Nazis were using his work in 1933, from a foreign correspondent for Hearst newspapers. He later recounted in his 1965 autobiography: ‘They were using my books as the basis for a destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.’” This type of psychological manipulation works best when hidden from the masses, because mental networks of identity, culture, religion, value, universals, and God are all being twisted for peripheral gain. Wikipedia observes, “Despite the relative significance of Propaganda to twentieth century media history and modern public relations, surprisingly little critique of the work exists.”
Conclusion
This essay has placed Lindsay’s data and theories within a cognitive and historical perspective. I think that we can safely conclude that Lindsay’s analysis of wokeism fits nicely into the theory of mental symmetry. This extensive agreement supports the thesis that the mind is guided by cognitive mechanisms that can be independently discovered, described, and analyzed.
The general thesis of this essay is that Wokeism and Marxism can be explained as a cognitively natural response of mental networks to incomplete transformation achieved by technical thought.
We began this essay by saying that normal thought would be used to analyze a description of mental networks by technical thought. Technical thought has provided an accurate description of mental networks, but it has also conveyed the impression that technical thought is superior to mental networks. Mental symmetry suggests that all three modes of thought are required and that none can function in isolation from the other. Pure technical thought thinks rationally about the world while ignoring people. Pure mental networks emphasize people and culture at the cost of becoming irrational. Pure normal thought leads to common sense but does not transform either people or the environment. However, using normal thought to integrate mental networks with technical thought can lead to an integrated mind—which is the ultimate goal of the ultimate game.
World War I Propaganda
This essay suggests that mental networks and technical thought need to function together in an integrated manner. However, simply bringing these two together does not guarantee success. This can be examined further by looking at the propaganda of Edward Bernays, which used technical thought to manipulate mental networks. We will start by looking at a 1942 paper by Bernays on the history of propaganda and we will finish with a cognitive analysis of Bernays’ 1928 book entitled Propaganda. This discussion will include a look at Nazi propaganda. Appending this analysis to the end of the essay on wokeism makes it possible to refer to the cognitive mechanisms that have been discussed in this essay.
Bernays’ 1942 paper begins by describing Harold Lasswell’s analysis of propaganda in World War I. Laswell mentions six factors: “1) Fasten the war guilt on the enemy. 2) Claim unity and victory, in the names of history and deity. 3) State war aims... security, peace, a better social order, international laws, are given as war aims. 4) Strengthen the belief of the people that the enemy is responsible for the war, with examples of the enemy’s depravity. 5) Make the public believe that unfavorable news is really enemy lies. This will prevent disunity and defeatism. 6) Follow this with horror stories... [which] should be made to sound authoritative” (p. 236).
Stated simply, get people to believe that you are angels fighting for God while the enemy consists of demons fighting for Satan. Such polarization is ironic because, unlike the Second World War, World War I was a morally confused war in which one cannot label one side as good and the other side as evil.
Looking at these six factors cognitively: 1) The enemy is responsible. Mental networks take ownership of behavior that they motivate. War creates extensive painful experiences in Mercy thought. The first factor attributes all of these painful experiences to the cultural MMNs of the enemy. In essence, this equates Mercy feelings of pain and pleasure with feelings of same and different generated by mental networks, because I am believing that all of my painful experiences are ultimately being caused by the cultural MMNs of the enemy. Stated simply, they are making me hurt. This makes universal human feelings of pain and pleasure subservient to cultural feelings of us versus them. Similarly, wokeism starts by replacing the individual with social interaction based in cultural MMNs.
2) History and deity are on our side. History refers to the Perceiver facts about people and culture. Claiming that history is on our side bases Perceiver ‘truth’ in our cultural MMNs. A concept of deity emerges when a sufficiently general Teacher theory applies to personal identity. Claiming that God is on our side turns a concept of God into an ideology by making the TMN of a concept of God subservient to our cultural MMNs. Similarly, wokeism extends from a specific set of cultural MMNs to a universal theory in an ideological manner that overwhelms Perceiver thought.
3) State war aims. Security protects the individual in Mercy thought. Peace and a better social order describe Teacher structure that benefits the individual. International laws use Perceiver thought to build international Teacher structure. Laswell’s first two factors submitted Mercy experiences, Perceiver facts, and Teacher understanding to my cultural MMNs, while the third factor claims that Mercy experiences, Perceiver facts, and Teacher understanding are all functioning independently of any cultural MMNs. Thus, the first three factors are a lie because they contradict themselves. This inherent contradiction means that Perceiver thought cannot be used to spread these factors because Perceiver thought would notice the inherent contradiction. Similarly, wokeism applies its critical analysis to ‘them’ but does not look in the mirror to analyze ‘us’, while at the same time claiming to be guided by a Teacher concept of universal equality.
4) Give examples of enemy depravity. When Perceiver thought cannot be used, then Perceiver certainty must be generated by using emotional Mercy experiences to overwhelm Perceiver thought into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’. This can be done by giving vivid examples of enemy depravity. Similarly, wokeism focuses upon specific instances of social injustice in order to support the ‘truth’ of universal oppression.
5) Equate unfavorable news with enemy lies. This extends the overwhelming of Perceiver thought to all facts about the war. Any fact that is inconsistent with my cultural MMNs is rejected as false. This uses Teacher thought to extend my cultural MMNs into universal statements that are regarded as more ‘true’ than any specific facts. This is done in order to preserve the integrity of a mindset that is built upon our cultural MMNs. Similarly, wokeism rejects as ‘inauthentic’ any person who does not fit into its ideology of universal oppression.
6) Follow with authoritative sounding horror stories. The goal here is to keep Perceiver thought overwhelmed by emotionally topping up outrage against the enemy. Similarly, wokeism attempts to replace factual scientific thinking with alternate forms of ‘knowing’ based in emotional experiences.
One concludes that both wokeism and World War I propaganda are tapping into the same cognitive mechanisms.
Russia and the Six Factors
As I write this, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in its 531st day. Unlike World War I, it really is possible to make these six statements accurately about Russia: 1) Russia invaded Ukraine and tries to maximize Ukrainian civilian suffering . 2) Russia tries to rewrite history and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church is a pawn of the Russian state who was “warned by Pope Francis against becoming Putin’s altar boy.” 3) The goal of Ukraine really is to bring security, peace, and a better social order to the world. 4) Russia continues to commit new atrocities, and 5) most of the news that Russia publishes about the war is laughably false. 6) Russia seems to take pride in proclaiming and committing horror stories. I am not suggesting that Ukraine is perfect, but the six factors that propaganda attempted to falsely attribute to Germany in the World War I apply legitimately to Russia in the current invasion. This is relevant to our discussion of wokeism because Russia illustrates what eventually happens to a country that adopts Marxism. In brief, I suggest that the very existence of an independent, prosperous, democratic Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia because it serves as a counterexample to the ideology of Russian superiority. Therefore, Ukraine must either be reduced to a vassal state or else destroyed.
Looking at this more carefully, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is different than World War I because it is a conflict between using Perceiver thought and overwhelming Perceiver thought. A society that builds upon functioning Perceiver thought really is inherently superior to a society that uses emotional and physical force to overwhelm Perceiver thought. The basic premise of Western society is that Perceiver thought, Perceiver facts, Perceiver connections, Perceiver-defined individuality, and Perceiver laws should be used to build societal structure in Teacher thought. This ideal is followed incompletely and inadequately, but it is still being followed. In contrast, the basic premise of Russian society is that Mercy status should be used to overwhelm Perceiver thought, and Russia keeps descending to new levels of evil in Ukraine in order to attempt to overwhelm Perceiver thought. Looking at this cognitively, the Russian mind is governed by the practice of vranyo. The linked article explains that “Vranyo means: You know I’m lying, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, but I go ahead with a straight face, and you nod seriously and take notes.” A normal lie contradicts the facts in Perceiver thought. Vranyo indicates that every follower ‘knows’ that the leader has sufficient personal status (and armed might) to overwhelm Perceiver thought in the followers into ‘knowing’ what is ‘true’. Stated simply, vranyo acknowledges publicly that Russian ideology is more ‘true’ than physical reality because Russia is the biggest bully.
Thus, the repeated, deliberate destruction of Ukrainian hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings by Russia can be interpreted cognitively as a non-verbal form of vranyo—keeping Perceiver thought overwhelmed into ‘knowing’ that Russian power defines ‘truth’ by deliberately creating outrageous experiences. This is cognitively similar to queer theory deliberately violating cultural norms in order to provoke a societal response of outrage. In both cases, new ways of provoking outrage have to be implemented as previously unspeakable acts become accepted as the new norm. I am not suggesting that these two are physically the same because queer theory violates the mental networks that represent people and drive culture, whereas Russian atrocity kills the people that are being represented by mental networks and destroys the physical infrastructure that makes civilized society possible. However, the cognitive mechanisms are the same.
Looking further at this distinction between physical and emotional, we saw when examining Marxism that the original economic Marxism is the only version that emphasized Server actions and physical capital. Thus, it make sense that Soviet Marxism would eventually turn into ideologically-driven Server actions that focus upon destroying physical capital. In contrast, the current variants of Marxism emphasize cultural MMNs and some form of emotional ‘capital’. Thus, wokeism has turned into ideologically-driven queer theory that manipulates mental networks in order to destroy moral and societal capital.
The primary fear of Western powers is that Russia will wield nuclear weapons. However, it was observed earlier that queer questioning of the Perceiver facts of reality seems to be limited to facts that challenge cultural MMNs and does not extend to a universal questioning of all Perceiver facts. This suggests that Russian brutality will remain limited to destroying the physical reality of neighboring countries and not extend to the universal destruction of thermonuclear war.
World War I Propaganda
Returning now to the First World War, Bernays points out in his 1942 paper the shortcomings of German propaganda. “The Germans had no total psychological approach. For instance, they paid little attention to morale on the home front... The Germans also distributed deadly dull leaflets or pamphlets... After the Great War, the Germans recognized that, from a technical standpoint, their foreign propaganda was poor – too tactless, too open, too obvious, lacking in enthusiasm and ‘inflammatory catchwords’. It antagonized more than it persuaded, and proved to be a boomerang” (p. 237). Ignoring ‘morale on the home front’ means that the Germans focused upon manipulating the cultural MMNs of other countries while assuming the existence of their own cultural MMNs. Leaflets that are ‘deadly dull’ use technical language that does not appeal to the emotional realm of mental networks, as opposed to ‘inflammatory catchwords’ that do trigger MMNs. Persuasion attempts to resonate with existing cultural MMNs, while open tactlessness explicitly attacks existing cultural MMNs.
A 1984 paper by Michael Sproule looks more closely at the effectiveness of World War I propaganda upon America. “The earliest propaganda effort was a contest of pamphleteering waged between supporters of Britain and those of Germany. The British effort was by far the more successful in both its massive material and its sense of how to appeal to the American public... efforts by Britain’s main propaganda competitor, Germany were hampered by... an inability of Berlin to adapt its case to the values and sentiments of the American audience. ” (p. 4–5). The cognitive principle here is that propaganda does not impose cultural MMNs but rather talks and behaves in a way that appears to be compatible with existing cultural MMNs. Thus, effective propaganda requires a knowledge of the culture of the target audience. Britain had this knowledge of American culture while Germany lacked it.
Sproule continues, “A train of subsequent events gradually discredited Germany’s advocates, most notably the sinking of a passenger liner Lusitania, and the publicity given Germany’s secret efforts to buy American newspapers” (p.5). Looking at this cognitively, pretending to be compatible with existing cultural MMNs will be overruled by actual behavior that is inconsistent with existing cultural MMNs.
Sproule adds, “These latter developments led to a popular fear that Germany possessed a vast secret propaganda machine of spies and agents. Ironically, it was not Germany that possessed the effective propaganda machine, it was Britain.” In other words, a cultural MMN formed within the average American mind of ‘Germany trying to secretly control American cultural MMNs’. However, it was actually Britain who managed to secretly control American cultural MMNs—precisely because British efforts did not form any distinct cultural MMNs within the American mind. Instead, “British efforts, coupled with the public fears of German submarines, sabotage, and spies, resulted in a gradual tendency to view the war as a contest of ‘we’ (the Allies and America) versus them (the Central Powers)” (p. 5). Notice how the American public came to view British cultural MMNs as consistent with American cultural MMNs and German cultural MMNs as inconsistent. Thus, propaganda works with existing cultural MMNs rather than attempting to impose cultural MMNs. It attempts to show that ‘I am your friend’. But because mental networks use external clues from other people to guess what they are thinking, it is possible to pretend that ‘I am your friend’ while actually using this sense of friendship to manipulate you—as long as this manipulation remains secret.
When America entered the war, President Wilson created a Committee on Public information (CPI) to direct American public opinion. Sproule explains, “Through the work of the CPI, the official view of the war as a struggle of good versus evil reached out at every point to the public. Voices that dared suggest the war was less than the struggle to end war and make the world safe for democracy were drowned out by the productions of the CPI... The CPI’s promotions also had a darker side. Many of its posters and magazine advertisements painted lurid pictures of the ‘Hun’ working his atrocities” (p. 6-7). Thus, the CPI went beyond pretending to be compatible with existing cultural MMNs to actively applying the six factors mentioned earlier. This worked in the short-term but backfired in the long-term. “This unofficial catering to atrocity mongering inspired paranoia was popular at the time, but led to a postwar tendency to view the CPI as a spreader of lies. At the heart of this change in public assessment of the CPI was a rise in the nation’s consciousness of propaganda” (p. 7). Notice again the principle that deceptive propaganda can be effective as long as this deception remains secret.
This relates to the idea of sincerity, a characteristic to which the Mercy person is most sensitive. Sincerity means that the mental networks that are being triggered within my mind by some person accurately reflect the mental networks within that person. Stated more simply, sincere people really are who they appear to be. Sincerity is related to self-image, because both involve repeatability. Self-image is the object that Perceiver thought forms of all my mental networks that continue to be repeated. Similarly, a sincere person continues to triggers the same mental networks at all times, in all contexts, and at all emotional depths. Insincerity becomes revealed to Mercy thought when a person stops triggering one mental network and starts triggering another inconsistent mental network. For instance, ‘I thought that Britain was our friend but now I find out who they really are and I see that they were just manipulating us.’ A person will be seen as truly sincere when they have been encountered in enough situations over a long enough time for Perceiver thought to build up an accurate concept of that person and the resulting concept contains consistent mental networks: ‘I have learned who you are and you are always the same person.’
Applying this to the CPI, it was initially successful at manipulating cultural MMNs because citizens assumed sincerity. American citizens assumed that their government would behave in a way that was consistent with American cultural MMNs. But it eventually became apparent that Western governments had been lying to their people. Sproule explains, “Soon after the war, the post-Monarchist governments of Germany and Austria and the Bolshevik regime in Russia opened their nation’s secret diplomatic archives relating to the Great War. In contrast to the prevailing view that Germany and Austria were solely responsible for the outbreak of the war, the documents showed that France and Russia shared considerable guilt. As the contents of the war archives gradually reached the public, many began to question the accuracy of Allied publications on the war and, in particular, the work of the Committee on War Information... The idea that the Allies and the U.S. government jointly had used a misleading, one-sided campaign to manipulate public opinion had entered public consciousness” (p. 7-8).
Summarizing, propaganda works best when people assume honesty and sincerity. Saying this another way, people are following Grice’s maxims of conversation when communicating, which means trying to say what is true and attempting to be informative, relevant, and clear. This assumption of honesty and sincerity can be misused as long as this misuse remains hidden and secret, because it takes advantage of the fact that theory of mind is a guessing game. This relates to Kant’s concept of radical evil, which can be defined cognitively as the temporary personal advantage that is gained by breaking universal rules in a society where these rules are generally kept. In this case, lying is effective in a society where honesty is assumed and the average person is honest. As World War I shows, this type of propaganda will stop working when the facts become evident. Thus, the deception must remain secret to be effective.
Putting this all together, we have now seen three kinds of propaganda. There is the blatant propaganda of imposing cultural MMNs, as described by the six factors mentioned earlier. There is the deceptive propaganda of pretending to be consistent with cultural MMNs while hiding the facts about reality and/or the facts about the true nature of some person or group. And there is also a factual propaganda that appeals to cultural MMNs in a manner that remains consistent with both the facts about reality and the true nature of people and groups. For instance, Ukrainian propaganda in the current war qualifies—so far—as factual propaganda. Factual propaganda can be recognized by a willingness to acknowledge facts when they are unpleasant for ‘us’, a willingness to expose corruption and dishonesty in ‘us’, a willingness to learn from ‘them’ about what is really happening, and an insistence that ‘we’ behave in a manner that reflects universal moral principles even when ‘they’ do not. Saying this in terms of an emotional hierarchy, blatant propaganda extends in an ideological manner from cultural MMNs to ‘universal’ TMNs, deceptive propaganda claims to follow universal TMNs while actually building upon cultural MMNs, and factual propaganda submits cultural MMNs to the rule of universal TMNs while observing that the enemy does not. Stated simply, factual propaganda takes the moral high ground, deceptive propaganda pretends to take the moral high ground, while blatant propaganda wallows in the mud and slings mud at the opponent.
Edward Bernays
Edward Bernays worked for the CPI. Wikipedia relates, “Bernays, along with Lieutenant F. E. Ackerman, focused on building support for war, domestically and abroad, focusing especially on businesses operating in Latin America... After fighting ended, Bernays was part of a sixteen-person publicity group working for the CPI at the Paris Peace Conference... Bernays later described a realization that his work for the CPI could also be used in peacetime... what could be done for a nation at war could be done for organizations and people in a nation at peace.”
In brief, Bernays’ book on propaganda states that one should stop using blatant propaganda in favor of more subtle methods. It emphasizes that deceptive propaganda will eventually be uncovered, which means that propaganda needs to be factual in order to remain effective. However, Bernay’s entire system of propaganda was abused by Nazi Germany, leading to a fourth kind of propaganda, which can be referred to as total propaganda. Bernays’ 1942 paper describes how Nazi Germany used propaganda and we will look further at that paper before turning to his book on propaganda.
Bernays observes about World War I that “Even though I regard the US effort as effective in marketing our war aims and ideals to America and the world on a democratic basis of suggestion and persuasion, in perspective I see it as a pioneer effort with trial and error, with much fumbling, and not as a well-planned activity. Candidates for jobs were chosen on the basis of their enthusiasm for the cause, not their training and experience” (p. 240). Bernays sees his method of propaganda as morally superior to the old method of imposing mental networks because it suggests and persuades rather than imposes. But Bernays adds that his efforts did not meet the standards of excellence required by technical thought, because there was ‘much fumbling’, insufficient ‘well-planned activity’, and not enough ‘training and experience’. Note the preference for training and experience over ‘enthusiasm for the cause’. Enthusiasm implies that one sincerely believes in the cultural MMNs that are being promoted. Bernays is pointing out that the ability to use technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs is ‘better’ than actually being emotionally guided by these cultural MMNs. This is an accurate assessment because it is more difficult to use technical thought when being emotionally guided by the cultural MMNs that one is attempting to manipulate. However, this leads in the direction of using technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs in which one does not truly believe.
Bernays’ focus upon technical thought is shown in the next paragraph. “How has the situation changed since 1917? Technical means for spreading ideas have been improved, the number of channels for their distribution increased, speed of transmission tremendously accelerated, the costs of disseminating greatly lessened. In 1917, the talking movie, the radio, and the airplane, as we know them today, did not exist” (p. 240). These all refer to technical improvements that make it possible to apply propaganda more efficiently using less money. This implies that cultural MMNs are being manipulated by using technical thought that is being motivated by money. That combination is a form of prostitution. I should emphasize that the prostitution does not lie in the propaganda or in the use of technology for advertising. Instead, the prostitution comes from using technical thought to promote some emotional goal in which one does not actually believe in order to gain more of a peripheral object such as money. This principle is described in Matthew 16:26. “For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?” I know that the term ‘prostitution’ is emotionally loaded, but I think that this emotional loading is appropriate. Propaganda may try to pretend that it is just another technical specialization, but it is actively manipulating people and their emotional identities and not just working with objects. Part of the deception of propaganda is fooling people into believing that it is not a form of prostitution.
Bernays then points out the historical results of such prostitution. “After the Great War, self-seeking men capitalized on the fact that the common man had been swayed in the war by propaganda. This powerful common man could be influenced by symbols, by words, pictures and actions. Appeals could be made to his prejudices, his loves and his hates, to his unfulfilled desires. Manipulation of symbols by unscrupulous leaders against the background of postwar psychological and economic uncertainty, led millions to follow new leaders and ideologies in the ’twenties and ’thirties” (p. 240). Stated cognitively, external ‘symbols, words, pictures, and actions’ are being used to trigger mental networks in a manner that pretends to be consistent with the ‘prejudices, loves, hates, and desires’ of these mental networks. This method is especially effective when ‘psychological and economic uncertainty’ threatens these mental networks with inconsistent input, because people will be emotionally receptive to leaders who claim to support these mental networks. Again, it should be clarified that appealing to these mental networks is not inherently prostitution. On the contrary, such a period of confusion provides an opportunity for dealing effectively with deeper issues. The prostitution comes when ‘unscrupulous leaders’ who are ‘self-seeking’ create emotional experiences that only pretend to support these troubled mental networks.
Bernays then describes various aspects of Nazi propaganda. One primary element is the symbol. “A symbol is a shortcut to our understanding of goals. Hitler used symbolism. The Hitler salute is political symbolism. Civil servants, national, state, and local, were ordered to raise their arm in the Heil salute, immediately after Hitler gained power... The symbol of the new Germany, the swastika flag, was stressed. ‘There must be no house which does not display the sign of Nationalist Socialist Germany,’ was printed on a handbill signed by the local group of the Nationalist Socialist party and placed in every mailbox the day of the plebiscite on Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations. The Fuehrer himself is the most powerful symbol” (p. 240). A symbol is a sight or sound that is associated with one mental network and not with other mental networks. Thus, a symbol is a simple way of triggering a specific mental network. We saw a similar type of thinking when looking at wokeism because categories of race and gender are based upon physical distinctions that are easy to recognize. The Heil salute, swastika flag, and image of Hitler were (and still are) symbols that triggered mental networks of Nazism.
Ideology uses Teacher thought to overgeneralize some set of cultural MMNs. Having every civil servant give the Heil salute or having every home display the swastika flag is a form of overgeneralization because it is taking the symbol of some specific cultural group and making that group appear universal. Universally displaying the same symbol gives the impression of cultural universality because the same cultural MMN is being triggered where everyone goes. Similarly, the ‘talking movie’ and ‘the radio’ referred to by Bernays generate feelings of Teacher universality by broadcasting the same message into millions of households.
Viewed from the perspective of technical thought, achieving this ubiquity is usually an example of generality, because flags, movies, and radio receivers have to be made and distributed. This can be seen in the development of the volksempfänger, a low-cost radio developed by the Nazi regime to enable the German population to receive the Nazi message. However, from the viewpoint of mental networks this is an overgeneralization, because the universal presence of a symbol is being used to trigger the same cultural MMNs, regardless of whether these cultural MMN actually expresses the sentiments of people. Notice also the focus upon personal participation. Getting every civil servant to make the Heil salute ensures that the cultural MMNs of the Nazi party will be mentally triggered whenever dealing personally with some element of the government. Similarly, getting every house to fly a Nazi flag gives the impression that Nazi cultural MMNs resonate with everyone’s personal MMNs.
Moving on, Bernays describes propaganda as the engineering approach. He explains, “Problems of public relations are handled as an engineer plans the building of a bridge... What are our goals? What are we selling? What are our aims? What is the time factor? Have we the men and materials we need?” (p. 241). These are all questions that are asked by concrete technical thought when implementing some plan in order to achieve some goal.
Bernays then turns to the manipulation of cultural MMNs. “What are the limits of tolerance of the public? What symbols – words, pictures and actions – are effective in changing public attitudes and actions. What are the channels of communication through which to reach the public with these symbols? What is the group formation of the public we are reaching. How much in men, money and materials is required?” (p. 241) ‘Limits of tolerance’ refers to the level of inconsistency with existing cultural MMNs that can be tolerated. Stated more carefully, behavior is never 100% consistent with existing cultural MMNs. Thus, a certain level of discrepancy will be tolerated before Mercy thought flips mentally from ‘You are my friend’ to ‘You are not my friend’. Examining symbols looks for external elements that can be used to reliably trigger certain mental networks. ‘Channels of communication’ are various ways of using technology to generalize from some specific message to a universal expression of this message. For instance, a Super Bowl ad will be viewed by millions of people. ‘Group formation’ attempts to identify the cultural MMNs that guide thought and behavior.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this type of research. But three critical factors are missing: First, the individual is being ignored in favor of the group. This is significant because people are ultimately individuals. For instance, my hunger is not satisfied when someone else eats. Second, the focus is upon using external factors to trigger mental networks rather than examining the mental networks themselves. Third, how much discrepancy a mental network can handle is being studied while the goodness or badness of experiences within this mental network is being ignored. This is significant because bad experiences hurt. Therefore, a mental network that contains good experiences is better than one that contains bad experiences. This may sound obvious, but using propaganda and/or peer pressure to enforce conformity with cultural MMNs is very effective at getting people to ignore either their personal pain or the personal pain of others. This can be seen, for instance, in the World War I soldier who ‘went over the top’. A BBC article explains, “Men ordered to attack – or ‘go over the top’ – had to climb out of their trenches, carrying their weapons and heavy equipment, and move through the enemy’s ‘field of fire’ over complex networks of barbed wire... Casualties were extremely high, with many men killed and wounded... One important explanation for soldiers’ resilience is the idea of the ‘primary group’: men were motivated above all by comradeship as they fought alongside friends and companions.”
These same three fallacies were seen earlier in wokeism: Wokeism ignores the individual and focuses upon the group. Wokeism fixates upon obvious external differences, such as skin color and body shape. And wokeism refuses to examine the cultural MMNs that it defends to see if elements of these cultural MMNs need to be changed because they are leading to painful consequences.
Having examined mental networks, Bernays’ next step is to use technical thought. “After we have learned all these things, we can work out strategy, planning, and timing, in an engineering approach to our objectives” (p. 241).
Bernays and Nazism
Bernays recognizes that using technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs is open to abuse. “This approach to public relations can be used for social ends, or can be abused for unsocial ones. It can be carried out on a democratic basis of suggestion and persuasion or on an undemocratic basis of suppression, threats, intimidation, and brutality” (p. 241). Saying this more clearly, the ultimate expression of using technical thought to manipulate the core emotions of people in an objective manner that ignored the feelings of the individual was the Nazi medical monstrosity that manipulated the core emotions of people in an objective manner that ignored the feelings of the individual. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Nazi physicians and their assistants forced prisoners into participating... Typically, the experiments were conducted without anesthesia and resulted in death, trauma, disfigurement, mutilation, or permanent disability.” This is an appropriate comparison because there is a direct historical link from Bernays to the Nazi regime. One article elaborates, “In the 1920s, Joseph Goebbels became an avid admirer of Bernays and his writings – despite the fact that Bernays was a Jew. When Goebbels became the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich, he sought to exploit Bernays’ ideas to the fullest extent possible. For example, he created a ‘Fuhrer cult’ around Adolph Hitler. Bernays learned that the Nazis were using his work in 1933, from a foreign correspondent for Hearst newspapers.”
Bernays quotes Lasswell describing technical thought gaining expertise in the technical skill of manipulating cultural MMNs. “The modern world is busy developing a core of men who do nothing but study the ways and means of changing minds or binding minds to their convictions. Propaganda is developing its practitioners, its professors, its teachers and its theories. It is to be expected that governments will rely increasingly upon the professional propagandist for advice and aid” (p. 241-242). Nothing is mentioned here about whether these convictions are helpful or harmful; the mental networks are not being examined to determine whether their content is good or evil. Instead, technical thought is being used to develop the profession of altering cultural MMNs without triggering feelings of inconsistency. These amoral professionals are then asking governments to use their amoral expertise in order to manipulate the population.
Bernays mentions the totality with which the Nazi regime implemented his ideas. “The Nazis with totalitarian brutality centralized all the machinery of idea formation into a Ministry for National Enlightenment and Propaganda. To persuasion and suggestion they added brutality, threat, intimidation and censorship. All negative viewpoints were eliminated by one or more devices to bring about an enforced ‘national unity.’ Besides supervision of the press, broadcasting, films, music, art and the theatre, the Ministry includes general information on home policy; the organization of national holidays and festivals; tourist and economic propaganda; the organization of art exhibits, films and sports in foreign countries. All State and Party meetings, conferences and receptions also come within its sphere” (p. 242). Notice how all public cultural MMNs are being made consistent with Nazi cultural MMNs in an expression of ‘enforced national unity’. This extension of Nazi propaganda into all areas of society transformed these cultural MMNs into the TMN of a universal theory. Keep this in mind, because we will be discussing it later when looking more closely at the Nazi regime.
It is interesting to see what Bernays suggested as a solution writing in 1942. “We have the best way of life and government yet devised. Our democracy has ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity. But they have not been effectively presented in symbols to all the people” (p. 243). As mentioned before, freedom, equality, and opportunity are all necessary, but they are not sufficient. An ‘ideal’ emerges when Teacher thought comes up with a simple theory of the essence of some quality. (This relates to the idea of a Platonic form.) ‘Freedom’ means that Contributor thought within each individual is free to choose what to think, where to go, and what to do. This corresponds with Lindsay’s liberal definition of equality and opportunity.
Bernays advised that “leadership by our government is essential for the effect of carrying out of the program... First, harness the soundest intellectual resources of the country for a psychological general staff to be called upon for advice by government; second, constructive program to strengthen faith in democracy; and third, build a program to strengthen democracy itself. Every government and private organization, carrying on any activity that impinges on morale, can fit into such a broad program” (p. 243). Notice the inherent limitations of technical thought in Bernays’ suggestion. A democracy treats each individual as an identical object, consistent with the Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. Technical thought is providing specialized technical expertise while delegating Teacher universality to government. And technical thought is functioning in an objective manner while delegating cultural MMNs to private organizations.
The term ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ is repeated about eighteen times in the final two pages of Bernay’s 1942 paper. However, ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ are not mentioned anywhere in the paper. Bernays’ solution is to use technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs, but nothing is said about examining, evaluating, or educating these cultural MMNs. It should be added that Bernays did have some ethical guidelines because he “reported turning down the Nazis, Nicaragua under the Somoza family, Francisco Franco, and Richard Nixon as clients.”
Propaganda
We will now examine the book entitled Propaganda that Bernays wrote in 1928. This book contains the most detailed description of Mercy mental networks (MMNs) that I have yet encountered.
Bernays begins the book by describing how mental networks and technical thought interact within the mind. This description relates to economics, which is analyzed elsewhere in a 150 page paper.
“In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if everyone went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing... economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds” (p. 11). This describes the role that Exhorter thought plays. This essay has talked a lot about the interaction between mental networks and technical thought, but we have not discussed how they actually interact within the mind. The diagram of mental symmetry shows that Exhorter connects Teacher and Mercy while an arrow runs from Exhorter to Contributor. Exhorter thought finds excitement in Teacher and Mercy memories with strong emotions. Exhorter thought will focus upon the memory with the strongest emotions within the current context together with a few alternatives that are also exciting. Contributor thought will then choose one of the handful of suggestions being made by Exhorter thought. The key point is that Contributor choice is limited. Contributor thought can use cost-benefit analysis to do a systematic comparison of value when making choices, and this type of cost-benefit analysis is studied in economics. But that is not what normally happens. Instead, Exhorter thought will be attracted to a few exciting alternatives and Contributor thought will then choose between the alternatives suggested by Exhorter thought.
This is like the typical election where one votes by choosing between a short list of candidates on the ballot and Bernays specifically mentions the example of voting. “American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion... We have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four” (p. 10). Stated cognitively, Contributor thought—the cognitive module that does the primary choosing—chooses most of the time to pick between one of the alternatives being suggested by Exhorter thought. That is because doing exhaustive cost-benefit analysis takes time, energy, and effort. This type of exhaustive analysis may be done when buying a major item such as a car or a house. But most of the time Contributor thought will simply ‘check one of the names on the ballot being handed it’ by Exhorter thought. Bernays says that ‘society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds’. This means that propaganda functions before choice by limiting the number of choices available to Contributor thought.
This limited choosing is reflected in introductory economics, which invariably talks about choosing between one item and one or two alternatives. Introductory economics also mentions another key aspect of Exhorter thought, which is a desire for novelty. The economic concept of diminishing marginal utility reflects the cognitive principle that Exhorter thought will get bored whenever some alternative continues to be repeated. This means that Exhorter thought will eventually stop suggesting the most emotional possibility in favor of some novel alternative—until that becomes boring. For instance, ‘I am tired of going to my favorite restaurant. Let us try another place for a change.’
Standard economics assumes that the consumer is a rational agent who will use rational thought to choose the alternative with the best value. Determining value involves a combination of Perceiver thought and Mercy emotions. Perceiver thought compares various items in a factual manner. These factual connections will bring to mind Mercy memories. For instance, ‘This toothpaste fights cavities. That toothpaste combats gum disease. This toothpaste is cheaper. That toothpaste is mint flavored.’ Each of these memories is associated with certain emotions in Mercy thought. For instance, I may like the taste of mint, I may be having problems with cavities, and I may be short on cash.
Standard economics is essentially Perceiver-based scientific thought with an extra dash of Mercy emotions that is ‘shaken off’ as quickly as possible. The typical economics text will acknowledge that value is based in subjective emotions. For instance, the Investopedia article on value says that “The economic value of [an] apple does not exist as any objective quality of the apple, but is entirely dependent on the subjective intention of the person valuing the apple and their relationship to it.” Having acknowledged that value is a subjective emotion and not an objective quality, the typical economics textbook will then proceed to ignore the subjective aspect of value and treat it as an objective quality. Quoting again from Investopedia, “Because economic value is subjective and dependent on a person’s intentions it cannot be directly measured... The classic method that economists use to estimate how much people value an economic good is to look at the price they pay for it.” Replacing subjective value with an objective number such as price has the cognitive benefit of turning micro-economics into an example of objective concrete technical thought that can be studied using technical thought in an objective manner that can ignore subjective Mercy emotions—even though subjective Mercy emotions drive economic decisions.
Behavioral economics recognizes that the average human does not always use rational technical thought when dealing with subjective Mercy emotions. Looking at one key example, “In 1979, Kahneman and Tversky published Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, that used cognitive psychology to explain various divergences of economic decision making from neo-classical theory.” Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel prize in economics not for pointing out that human calculations of economic value are irrational, but rather for coming up with a mathematical model for some of the irrational ways in which the typical mind determines economic value. Thus, instead of recognizing that a form of thought exists that is independent of technical thought, Kahneman and Tversky managed to reduce an aspect of this form of thought to the language of technical thought.
Bernays, in contrast, recognized that subjective feelings of value are being emotionally modified by cultural MMNs and he also realized that it is possible to use technical thought to alter these cultural MMNs in a fairly predictable manner.
Before continuing, let us summarize the various forms of economics:
Classic economics: Mercy feelings and [Perceiver connections -> Exhorter urges -> Contributor decisions]. Value involves a combination of Mercy feelings and Perceiver connections. Classic economics replaces Mercy feelings with the objective concept of utility and then uses objective technical thought to examine the part in square brackets.
Behavioral economics: ‘Mercy feelings modified in some irrational manner’ and [Perceiver connections -> Exhorter urges -> Contributor decisions]. Behavioral economics does not recognize the existence of Mercy thought, but it does recognize that a person’s sense of utility is being modified by subjective emotions in a manner that fails to meet the standard of rational technical thought.
Prospect theory: ‘Irrational Mercy feelings that can be [modeled mathematically and Perceiver connections -> Exhorter urges -> Contributor decisions]. Notice that the area within the square brackets has grown. Prospect theory includes Mercy thought to the extent that it can be modeled mathematically by technical thought.
Bernays: Mercy feelings organized into [cultural MMNs and Perceiver connections -> Exhorter urges -> Contributor decisions]. Here the square brackets cover almost the entire circuit. Bernays recognized that feelings of value and utility are being modified in a predictable manner by cultural MMNs and that technical thought can be used to manipulate these cultural MMNs in a reasonably predictable manner through the use of propaganda. However, Bernays focused upon the cultural MMNs of the group rather than the Mercy feelings of the individual.
Bernays emphasizes that he uses technical thought. “Propaganda is not a science in the laboratory sense... [but] it is now scientific in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite knowledge drawn from the direct observation of the group mind, and upon the application of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent and relatively constant” (p. 48). Using cognitive language, Bernays suggests that propaganda is scientific because it follows the Perceiver facts of ‘definite knowledge’ based upon ‘direct observation’ and it follows principles that are sufficiently ‘consistent and relatively constant’ to pass the threshold of certainty required by technical thought. But notice that Bernays is dealing with ‘the group mind’ and not the individual.
And Bernays uses technical thought in an objective manner. “The modern propagandist studies systematically and objectively the material with which he is working in the spirit of the laboratory... he determines, for example, which features of a product are losing their public appeal, and what new direction the public taste is veering” (p. 49).
Bernays’ Description of Mental Networks
Bernays’ understanding of mental networks is quite extensive. Bernays recognized that subjective value becomes modified emotionally by a form of mental processing that is different than technical thought. “Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week” (p. 51). In other words, the average consumer may think that he is using technical thought to determine value in a rational manner—as stated by classic economics, but Bernays clarifies that such a person ‘is almost certainly fooling himself’. ‘Fooling himself’ means that a person thinks that technical thought is still being used to play according to the rules of some game. That is because, unlike wokeism, propaganda does not attempt to overturn the rules of the game or attack the idea of playing by the rules of some game. Instead, propaganda functions at the emotional level of modifying the goal of playing the game. For instance, the man in Bernay’s example gives additional emotional value to a certain car because it was recently purchased by someone to whom the man gives emotional status.
Bernays recognizes that mental calculations of economic value can be manipulated by appealing to this alternate form of processing. “If low price is the only basis of competition with rival products, similarly produced, there ensues a cutthroat competition which can end only by taking all the profit incentive out of the industry. The logical way out of this dilemma is for the manufacture to develop some sales appeal other than mere cheapness, to give the product, in the public mind, some other attraction, some idea that will modify the products lately, some element of a originality that will distinguish it from products in the same line” (p.86). This is known today as brand awareness.
Previous advertising attempted to impose an Exhorter urge upon the consumer in the hope that he would choose the product being advertised. “The old-fashioned propagandist, using almost exclusively the appeal of the printed word, tried to persuade the individual reader to buy a definite article, immediately... The advertiser sought by means of reiteration and emphasis directed upon the individual, to break down or penetrate sales resistance” (p. 54). Notice how advertising was attempting to directly alter the choice of the consumer in Contributor thought.
In contrast, “The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom. He appeals perhaps to the home instinct which is fundamental” (p. 55). ‘Modifying custom’ implies altering cultural MMNs that drive customary behavior. This can be done by triggering fundamental mental networks such as ‘the home instinct’.
Altering cultural MMNs has the cognitive result of changing Exhorter urges, because Exhorter thought bases its urges upon strong Mercy (and Teacher) emotions. In Bernays’ words, “Under the old salesmanship the manufacturer said to the prospective purchaser, ‘Please buy a piano.’ The new salesmanship has reversed the process and caused the prospective purchaser to say to the manufacturer, ‘Please sell me a piano’” (p. 56). Instead of urging the consumer to make a decision in Contributor thought by saying ‘please buy a piano’, propaganda changes the cultural MMNs that are the source of Exhorter urges, causing the consumer to say, ‘Please sell me a piano’.
Bernays focuses upon cultural MMNs. “The group mind does not thinks in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits and emotions. In making up its mind its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader... when the example of the leader is not at hand in the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences” (p. 50). A ‘whole group of ideas or experiences’ that can be triggered by ‘cliché, pat words or images’ describes a mental network that can be triggered by some element within that mental network.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a ‘group mind’. Instead, the social term ‘group mind’ is like the Internet term cloud storage. There is no storage in the cloud and there there are no brain cells in the group. Instead, cloud storage actually means many computers running similar software in an automated manner. Similarly, group mind means many humans with similar cultural MMNs that are functioning primarily in an automated manner. These similar cultural MMNs will cause the members of a group to respond in a similar manner and be attracted to one another. Bernays is saying that the behavior of the members of a group is being guided by the cultural MMNs of that group. The cultural MMNs of a group can be modified by ‘trusted leaders’ who have emotional status within the minds of the members of that group.
Bernays adds that cultural MMNs cause the group to behave differently than the individual. “The group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology” (p. 47). Looking at this cognitively, people with similar cultural MMNs will emotionally resonate with one another in a social setting: When one person is motivated by cultural MMNs to behave in a certain manner, then this behavior will trigger similar cultural MMNs within neighboring people, those triggered cultural MMNs will motivate the neighboring people to behave in a similar manner, which will then trigger these cultural MMNs more potently and in a wider crowd. This positive feedback loop will cause the entire group to behave strongly in a manner that is consistent with their common cultural MMNs. Marx describes this loop of culture <-> society happening at the societal level, but a similar positive feedback loop happens within a crowd. The end result is that the emotions generated by behaving in a manner that is consistent with one’s neighbors will overpower other emotions and/or factual constraints, causing the crowd to behave differently than the way that individuals within the crowd would normally behave.
Bernays notes that the response of a group can be altered by triggering the right cultural MMNs. “By playing upon an old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions” (p. 51). Notice how the appropriate trigger is causing a positive feedback loop that alters the behavior of an entire group.
Unlike many modern researchers, Bernays appears to recognize that cultural MMNs actually function within the mind of the individual. “Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of the herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences” (p. 49). In other words, cultural MMNs that are acquired from being a ‘member of some herd’ continue to impose their patterns upon the mind even when a person ‘is alone in his room with the curtains drawn’. That is because ‘his mind retains the patterns which is been stamped upon it by the group influences’ in the form of cultural MMNs.
Bernays recognizes that cultural MMNs are based upon a common collection of emotional experiences. “John Jones, besides being a Rotarian, is a member of a church, of a fraternal order, of a political party, of a charitable organization, of a professional association, of a local chamber of commerce, of a league for or against prohibition or of a society for or against lowering the tariff, and of a golf club” (p. 17). Emotional experiences within each of these contexts will form cultural MMNs. On the one hand, each of these cultural MMNs will act as an emotional schema that guides a person how to behave appropriately within that context. On the other hand, each of these cultural MMNs will also generate Exhorter drives that influence Contributor decisions when they are triggered. And each of these cultural MMNs can also be altered by changing the behavior of important people within that group.
This principle is known today as social media marketing. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Social networking websites are based on building virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, wants and values, online. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences to businesses that share the same needs, wants, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual followers. This personal interaction can instill a feeling of loyalty into followers and potential customers.”
Bernays adds that “It is extremely difficult to realize how many and diverse are these cleavages in our society. They may be social, political, economic, racial, religious or ethical” (p. 13). Notice that this goes beyond the social and racial fixation of wokeism to recognize that any collection of related emotional experiences can form a cultural MMN. Notice also that fundamental cultural MMNs of religion, ethics, race, and politics are being included. This is known today as lifestyle marketing. In the words of one article, “Lifestyle marketing can help to create stronger, more meaningful connections between consumers and brands. When marketing is based on shared values and interests, it can create a feeling of connection and affinity that leads to lasting customer relationships.” A ‘lifestyle’ refers to the cultural MMNs with which one personally resonates. Thus, lifestyle marketing goes beyond social media marketing by attempting to resonate with more fundamental cultural MMNs. However, one is still usually dealing with the cultural MMNs of some group and not with personal identity as defined by Perceiver thought.
A single sufficiently emotional experience is sufficient to form an MMN. But an MMN normally forms after some group of related emotional experiences is repeated for a long enough time. Bernays describes both of these methods of forming a cultural MMN. “Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise” (p. 69). ‘Continuous interpretation’ presents the public with a group of related emotional experiences over time, while ‘high-spotting’ attempts to create an MMN with a sufficiently emotional situation that ‘vividly seizes the attention of the public’. Bernays recognizes that unrelated emotional memories will not form into an MMN. “The haphazard staging of emotional events without regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of effort” (p. 101).
While technical thought tends to be objective, mental networks function best with emotional experiences. For instance, during World War I, “The manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental clichés and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and the tyranny of the enemy” (p. 28). Notice how cultural MMNs based upon ‘emotional habits’ are being triggered in order to ‘produce mass reactions’ against ‘ alleging atrocities’.
Bernays observes that female thought is associated with mental networks. “Women in contemporary America have achieved legal equality with men. This does not mean that their activities are identical with those of men... Women’s most obvious influence is exerted when they are organized and armed with the weapon of propaganda... In politics, the American women today occupy a much more important position, from the standpoint of their influence, in their organized groups than from the standpoint of the leadership they have acquired in actual political positions or in actual office holding” (p. 115). Bernays starts by saying that men and women have achieved legal equality. He then observes that the activities of women are not ‘identical with those of men’. Men may have more ‘actual political positions’ than women, but women make up for this ‘from the standpoint of their influence’, because they are more skilled than men at wielding ‘the weapon of propaganda’. In other words, women are naturally better than men at manipulating mental networks. In Bernays’ words, “If I have seemed to concentrate on the accomplishments of women in politics, it is because they afford a particularly striking example of intelligent use of the new propaganda to secure attention and acceptance of minority ideas” (p. 117). Bernays also notices that social groups—which focus upon people—were the first to think in terms of actively manipulating cultural MMNs rather than being guided passively by cultural MMNs. “The leaders in social service were among the first consciously to utilize propaganda in its modern sense. The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia” (p. 135).
Mass Media and the Individual
Bernays recognizes that mass media makes it possible to create an entirely new collection of cultural MMNs. “Today, because ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even though they live thousands of miles apart” (p. 13). Normally, people who grow up in the same location will share similar emotional experiences and be bound together by similar cultural MMNs. Mass media makes it possible for ‘persons having the same ideas and interests’ to be bound together by similar cultural MMNs ‘even though they live thousands of miles apart’. Thus, Bernays writing in 1928 foresaw the creation of echo chambers on social media.
More specifically, Bernays says that “The radio is at present one of the most important tools of the propagandist. Its future development is uncertain. It may compete with the newspaper as an advertising medium. Its ability to reach millions of person simultaneously naturally appeals to the advertiser” (p. 154). And he adds that “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions” (p. 156). Thus, while Bernays recognizes that mass media can create a new kind of cultural MMN based upon common interests that is not limited by physical distance, Bernays seems to be treating mass media as a more efficient and cost-effective way of affecting cultural MMNs and does not appear to realize that mass media crosses an emotional threshold by enabling TMNs. Saying this another way, Bernays does not seem to recognize the power—or danger—of ideology.
Bernays compares the past with the present. “The history of the Industrial Revolution shows how that power passed from the King and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king. Today, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable... Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government” (p. 19). We saw earlier that Marx interpreted the Industrial Revolution as the rise of the bourgeoisie and that he encouraged the proletariat to rebel against the bourgeoisie. Marx thought in terms of the class rather than the individual and advocated physical revolution. Bernays is also thinking in terms of the group but he is focusing upon the emotional manipulation of cultural MMNs. Marx said that the minority controlled the majority by monopolizing physical capital. Bernays says that the minority can control the majority by monopolizing the emotional manipulation of cultural MMNs. In other words, Bernays is saying that the cultural elite should do exactly what wokeism accuses them of doing, which is using emotional status to impose cultural MMNs upon the rest of society as well as trigger cultural MMNs in order to manipulate society.
Marx described this loop of culture <-> society happening at the societal level. In Lindsay’s words, “People—especially those with access to structural power—can shape society as a matter of continually becoming what it is and will be (called ‘praxis’), and in turn structural power in society shapes the people who live within it (called ‘the inversion of praxis’).” This can be explained cognitively as the social environment causing certain cultural MMNs to form which then motivate people to maintain this social environment, but Marx did not look inside the mind or at the individual. Bernays, in contrast, recognizes that the individual with emotional status can choose to take control of this social cycle. “A personality may create circumstances... [or] events may create a personality... it is often difficult to say which creates the other. Once a public figure has decided what ends he wishes to achieve, he must regard himself objectively and present an outward picture of himself which is consistent with his real character and his aims” (p. 157). This describes a similar cycle between people and society, but it involves the individual public figure. A public individual with emotional status is using concrete technical thought to mentally pursue some personal goal. This individual is then creating a social persona that triggers desired cultural MMNs within society. Bernays adds that such individuals must treat their social personae in an objective manner as an aspect of concrete technical thought. “The propagandist must treat personality as he would treat any other objective fact within his province” (p. 157).
Thus, the prominent individual who wishes to control society is using objective technical thought to market himself. This may be effective, but it is also prostitution, because someone who has developed a sufficient sense of personal identity to pursue personal goals is then choosing to subject mental networks of personal identity to objective technical thought. Examining this more carefully, a pursuit of mental wholeness asks ‘What type of person do I want to become?’ and then uses normal thought and technical thought to implement a plan of becoming this sort of person. If this does not lead immediately to social success, then this lack of social approval is viewed as an opportunity to carry out a transfer in cognitive ownership in order to become a righteous person, or even better, a beautiful person. Personal prostitution, in contrast, uses objective technical thought to ask ‘What objective goal do I want to achieve?’ Technical thought is then used to create the appearance that my personal identity is guided by mental networks that are compatible with this objective goal. Meanwhile, the actual mental networks that drive my personal behavior are satisfied in private apart from the public eye.
Such personal prostitution was practiced in the extreme by Nazi Germany. They pursued the objective goal of purifying German genetics and finding physical lebensraum for the German people. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Hitler’s strategic program for world domination was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum, especially when pursued by a racially superior society.” The Nazis then prostituted their souls in order to use technical thought to reach this objective goal. As mentioned before, comparing Bernays’ propaganda with the Nazi regime is historically valid and is not just an example of Godwin’s law. Wikipedia elaborates, “In the 1930s, his critics became more harsh. As the leading figure in public relations and a notorious advocate of ‘propaganda’, Bernays was compared to European fascists such as Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. (Bernays wrote in his 1965 autobiography that Goebbels read and used his books.)”
It should also be clarified that a mismatch between one’s private and public persona does not necessarily indicate prostitution. Such a mismatch will also emerge when one is pursuing a goal of becoming someone. However, the nature of what is being hidden from public view be different. The personal prostitute who is marketing himself to sell some objective product does not want others to find out what he is really like because he does not live up to the standards of his public persona. The individual who is attempting to become someone cannot share everything with the public because they lack the cognitive development that is required to handle this knowledge.
This second possibility is described by Jesus in John 16:12-14. “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you.” Note that Jesus has to keep certain things hidden from his disciples because they are not ready to handle them.
‘Spirit’ can be interpreted cognitively as the internal realm of mental networks. A ‘spirit of truth’ describes mental networks that are consistent with Perceiver facts. Scientific technical thought—rightly—complains that the mental networks of wokeism violate the Perceiver facts of reality. A spirit of truth refers to mental networks that are consistent with Perceiver facts. Wokeism rejects a spirit of truth because this spirit uses Perceiver facts to transform existing cultural MMNs. But objective technical thought also tends to reject a spirit of truth because it goes beyond the Perceiver facts of physical reality to include Perceiver facts within the non-material and emotional realm of mental networks. Saying this more simply, wokeism wants a spirit but not truth, while objective technical thought wants truth but not a spirit. Becoming someone, in contrast, starts by learning accurate Perceiver facts about subjective realm of cultural and personal MMNs. Thus, both wokeism and scientific technical thought are naturally ‘unable to bear’ the deeper principles of becoming someone.
Going further, the marketing of self deliberately seeks public acclaim and honor, because a person needs social status in order to be able to manipulate cultural MMNs. Using the language of John 16, one speaks on one’s own initiative. This describes Bernays. Quoting from one article, “In Bernays’ eyes, generating events was one of if not the most important task of a PR adviser. He himself labelled it as the ‘creation of circumstances’, the staging of apparently spontaneous events to influence people’s behaviour, according to the wishes of the clients.”
A spirit of truth, in contrast, acquires its emotional power by resonating within people’s minds with what they know to be the truth. Thus, a spirit of truth does not speak on its own initiative but rather reinforces the internal message of a person who is becoming someone. Saying this more clearly, marketing self acquires social status and publicly behaves in a certain manner in order to achieve some objective goal by modifying cultural MMNs. Becoming someone uses Perceiver facts to analyze personal and cultural MMNs. This analysis leads to the mental network of a spirit of truth, which will resonate emotionally with mental networks of ‘a spirit of truth’ that are forming within the minds of others who are following a similar path of becoming someone. Someone who has gone farther along this path will acquire emotional status because he knows more about the process of becoming someone. Something similar happens within academia (at a more objective level) when one acquires emotional status within a field by becoming an expert who knows more about that field.
Propaganda and TMNs
While Bernays describes cultural MMNs in considerable detail in Propaganda, the concept of a TMN seems to be missing. The word ‘ideology’ does not appear either in Propaganda or in Bernays’ 1942 paper. Instead, Bernays asserts in Propaganda that “No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders” (p. 92). This seems to question the existence of anything that goes beyond cultural MMNs and what triggers them.
Bernays did discover that the manipulation of cultural MMNs can function in a symbiotic manner by inventing the practice of product placement. In the words of a 2002 BBC documentary, “Bernays was employed by William Randolph Hurst to promote his new women’s magazines, and Bernays glamorized them by placing articles and advertisements that linked products made by others of his clients to famous film stars like Clara Bow, who was also his client. Bernays also began the practice of product placement in movies and he dressed the stars at the films premieres with clothes and jewelry from other firms he represented.”
Bernays describes the totality of Nazi control in the 1942 paper but he does not seem to recognize that this totality crosses an emotional threshold. On the contrary, he complains that there is no universal plan of American propaganda. “As far as I’ve been able to find out, there is no master plan worked out by technicians drawn from the fields of the social sciences, sociology, psychology, ethnology, adult education, economics, the Army, Navy, public opinion, communications, public relations and market research” (p. 244). This gives the impression that Bernays is calling for Teacher order-within-complexity but does not recognize the dangers of what he is calling for.
It was suggested earlier that what made Nazism so powerful and so dangerous was that it crossed the threshold from MMN to TMN. Bernays was attempting to create and manipulate cultural MMNs in order to sell various products or visions. The Nazis took Bernays’ methods and applied them to all of society all of the time. Logically speaking, Nazi ideology was a Teacher overgeneralization extending from a flimsy factual foundation. Socially speaking, Nazi ideology was a generalization that extended actual Teacher order to all aspects of social interaction. This total social control was known as Gleichschaltung. Wikipedia explains that “The Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied by Nazi Germany ‘from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education’.” More specifically, “Every national voluntary association, and every local club, was brought under Nazi control, from industrial and agricultural pressure groups to sports associations, football clubs, male voice choirs, women’s organizations—in short, the whole fabric of associational life was Nazified. Rival, politically oriented clubs or societies were merged into a single Nazi body... By the end, virtually the only non-Nazi associations left were the army and the Churches with their lay organizations.” Notice how essentially all German cultural MMNs were placed within a single unified structure of Teacher order under Nazi control.
Teacher emotion is dangerous because it is inhuman and because it grows for the sake of growing. Mercy feelings involve the emotions of human experience. Teacher thought looks for order-within-complexity, which is independent of human experience. Increasing order-within-complexity generates positive Teacher emotions, while eliminating exceptions to the general rule removes negative Teacher emotions. Thus, Nazism was motivated by Teacher emotion to go beyond the propaganda of Bernays to implement a system of propaganda that spread to all of society without exception.
Saying this as clearly as possible, Bernays encouraged the prostitution of using objective technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs. Nazism practiced the prostitution of Bernays but took the additional step of transforming this objective technical manipulation of cultural MMNs into a universal TMN.
This combination can be seen in Nazi racial ideology. Wikipedia explains that “The Nazis believed that the Germanic peoples of Europe belonged to a racially superior Nordic subset of the larger Aryan race, who were regarded as the only true culture-bearers in civilized society... The principal dogma, in this Nazi historiography, was that the glories of all human civilizations were creations of the ‘Aryan’ master race, a culture-bearing race... The northern European (Germanic) Aryans did not develop into great civilizations in ancient history because they lived in the cold, damp, and harsh environment for a long time. However, they kept their purity intact and later only the Germanic Aryans at the end of history would eventually conquer and dominate the world because of their purity was maintained, being proved during the Germanic domain of Industrial Revolution.” The focus is upon cultural MMNs because the Germans are regarded as ‘the only true culture bearers in civilized society’. The goal is to manipulate cultural MMNs by ‘conquering and dominating the world’. And this cultural struggle is being approached in an objective manner by focusing upon ‘the Aryan race’ and ‘the cold, damp, and harsh environment’.
The goal of Nazism was to use technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs in an objective manner by carrying out a plan of racial purity. Quoting from Wikipedia, “The Nazis considered that the Nordic race was the most prominent race of the German people, but that there were other sub-races that were commonly found amongst the German people such as the Alpine race population who were identified by, among other features, their lower stature, their stocky builds, their flatter noses, and their higher incidences of darker hair and eyes. Hitler and the Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther framed this as an issue which would be corrected through the selective breeding of ‘Nordic’ traits.” Notice the focus upon physical traits and physical breeding.
What is being described so far is reasonably similar to the eugenics being preached and practiced in many countries, including the United States, during this time. In the words of Wikipedia, “By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers, and professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting eugenic legislation. The American Breeder’s Association, the first eugenic body in the U.S., expanded in 1906 to include a specific eugenics committee under the direction of Charles B. Davenport. The ABA was formed specifically to ‘investigate and report on heredity in the human race, and emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood.’” Going further, “In the 1930s, there was a wave of portrayals of eugenic ‘mercy killings’ in American film, newspapers, and magazines. In 1931, the Illinois Homeopathic Medicine Association began lobbying for the right to euthanize ‘imbeciles’ and other defectives. A few years later, in 1938, the Euthanasia Society of America was founded. However, despite this, euthanasia saw marginal support in the U.S., motivating people to turn to forced segregation and sterilization programs as a means for keeping the ‘unfit’ from reproducing.”
Thus, the United States was heading in the direction of Nazi race-based killing in the 1930s but stepped back because of moral qualms. A normal person might be willing to use propaganda to sell dixie cups but would draw the line at using this mindset to kill people. However, if the mindset of propaganda is applied sufficiently universally to create a TMN, then Teacher emotion will drive society to apply this mindset to all aspects of society without exception. Saying this again, Bernays’ method of propaganda used technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs in an objective manner that ignores the individual. Cultural and religious MMNs will normally act as moral constraints to limit the application of propaganda. Nazism applied this mindset to all of German society, resulting in a TMN of propaganda that drove German society to apply the methods of propaganda universally without any moral or social constraints. This made it possible for the Nazi regime to implement ‘final solutions’ that were universal and inhuman.
The goal of the Nazi regime was to implement a national program of racial purity to the extent that the average German citizen would never encounter anything that triggered any cultural MMNs independent of Nazi propaganda. This may sound like a strange juxtaposition, but it is reflected in the terms Judenfrei and Judenrein. Quoting from Wikipedia, “While judenfrei refers merely to ‘freeing’ an area of all of its Jewish inhabitants, the term judenrein (literally ‘clean of Jews’) has the even stronger connotation that any trace of Jewish blood had been removed as an alleged impurity in the minds of the criminal perpetrators.” Notice that ‘Jewish blood’ is being physically eliminated in order to eliminate any ‘alleged impurity in the mind’. Thus, the goal is to remove the physical presence of Jews—and other supposedly inferior races—to the extent that the average German will never again be mentally reminded of these ‘inferior races’.
I suggested earlier that the theory of biological evolution has had dreadful societal results. A 2013 paper outlines the detailed relationship between Nazism and belief in the theory of biological evolution. “By examining Hitler’s ideology, the official biology curriculum, the writings of Nazi anthropologists, and Nazi periodicals, we find that Nazi racial theorists did indeed embrace human and racial evolution. They not only taught that humans had evolved from primates, but they believed the Aryan or Nordic race had evolved to a higher level than other races because of the harsh climatic conditions that influenced natural selection. They also claimed that Darwinism underpinned specific elements of Nazi racial ideology, including racial inequality, the necessity of the racial struggle for existence, and collectivism.” In other words, Nazism viewed ‘Nature’ as a sort of god-like Bernays that was implementing a universal plan to manipulate the cultural MMNs of human groups in an objective manner through genetics and environment. This sort of interpretation makes cognitive sense because a sufficiently general Teacher theory that applies to personal identity will turn into a concept of God—or a concept of Nature that has god-like attributes.
Even today, the general academic consensus is that one must believe in the theory of biological evolution in order to be regarded as a legitimate scientist. Quoting from Wikipedia, “The unequivocal consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science and has no place in a science curriculum. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that ‘creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.’ The U.S. National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience. Others in the scientific community have denounced its tactics, accusing the ID movement of manufacturing false attacks against evolution, of engaging in misinformation and misrepresentation about science, and marginalizing those who teach it.”
This quote illustrates the point made earlier, which is that questioning the theory of biological evolution will lead to strong social disapproval. However, as was also pointed out before, it is possible to doubt the theory of biological evolution for one’s entire life without experiencing any negative consequences from physical reality. And our discussion of wokeism has made it clear that consequences from physical reality are a more reliable source of truth than social approval.
As far as I can tell, the only solution is to come up with a universal theory of human well-being that is more general than any other theory. That is because any universal Teacher theory that does not include human well-being will grow and extend in a manner that excludes human well-being. This provides three fundamental reasons for replacing the theory of biological evolution with the theory of mental symmetry: First, mental symmetry is a universal theory of human well-being, while the theory of biological evolution played a major role in enabling Nazi horror. Second, scientists claim that believing in the theory of biological evolution frees the mind from the irrational blind faith of religious fundamentalism. However, mental symmetry makes it possible to use rational thought to analyze emotional topics such as God, the Bible, religion, and personal identity without having to embrace a holocaust enabling ideology. Third, mental symmetry views scientific thought as an aspect of human well-being. This provides a rational explanation for scientific thought using cognitive mechanisms that can be experimentally observed and verified and it places amoral objective scientific thought within a larger, moral context.
Postwar society concluded that Nazism was evil and replaced the Nazi quest for racial purity with the Teacher overgeneralization of universal equality. This resulted in the positive impact of the civil rights movement, which has been discussed in some detail. Nazism used technical thought to optimize racial and cultural prejudice, while the civil rights movement used technical thought to optimize the overgeneralization of universal equality. However, neither of these two are either intelligent theories or theories of intelligence. An overgeneralization is not an intelligent theory, and a theory that treats people as objects is not a theory of intelligence.
Summarizing this comparison between Bernays and Nazism (because we are attempting to violate Godwin’s law by actually continuing a rational discussion after having made a comparison with Hitler), I suggest that Bernays opened a door but was prevented by his sense of ethics from venturing too far beyond the entrance. Nazism, in contrast, followed this path to its logical conclusion. Looking first at the subjective, Bernays used technical thought in an objective manner to manipulate cultural MMNs in order to reach some objective goal. This includes Bernays use of propaganda to protect democracy, because democracy treats each human as an object without looking inside. But while Bernays was willing to use propaganda to get women to smoke (while at the same time trying to ‘keep his wife distant from cigarettes’) he generally drew the line at marketing dictators. Nazism, in contrast, took Bernays’ principles and used them to market a dictator. And Nazism used technical thought in an objective manner to manipulate German cultural MMNs in order to reach the objective goal of Aryan world domination. Looking now at the universal, Bernays used technical thought in an integrated manner to manipulate cultural MMNs. However, even though Bernays sought to achieve Teacher order-within-complexity, he was still functioning within the structure of democratic society. Nazism, in contrast, applied Bernays’ principles in an integrated manner that applied to all of society and overruled existing government, crossing the threshold from cultural MMNs to universal TMN.
Stated simply, Bernays used technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs in an objective manner that ignored the personal impact upon people and in a specialized manner that ignored the universal impact upon society. Nazism transformed this objective, specialized manipulation of cultural MMNs by technical thought into the TMN of a racial ideology that drove German society to build a hell-on-earth that went beyond cruelty to efficient, structured, universal, inhuman cruelty.
Thus, analyzing Marxism, Nazism, and wokeism all lead to the conclusion that using technical thought in an objective, specialized manner will give birth to a monster.
The Nazi Holocaust opened people’s eyes to these dangers and since the Second World War TMNs have played a major role in guiding cultural groups through the overgeneralization of universal equality, the overgeneralization of universal oppression, and another TMN that this essay has not discussed, which is the TMN of globalization.
The Method of Bernays
Now that we have finished the comparison between Bernays and Nazism, we will look more closely at Bernays’ method. He summarizes his job as a sort of emotional translator. “The ideal of the profession is a pragmatic one. It is to make the producer, whether that producer be a legislature making laws or manufacturer making a commercial product, understand what the public wants and to make the public understand the objectives of the producer. In relation to industry, the ideal of the profession is to eliminate the waste and the friction that result when industry does things or makes things which its public does not want, or when the public does not understand what is being offered it” (p. 44). Stated cognitively, Bernays is trying to find areas of commonality between the mental networks of the producer and the mental networks of consumer by translating between these two. One could describe this as an entrepreneur of mental networks. And he is trying to make technical thought function more efficiently. These are both useful functions.
Looking at the first function in more detail, Bernays explains that the “First efforts are, naturally, devoted to analyzing his client’s problems and making sure that what He has to offer the public is something which the public accepts or can be brought to accept... His next effort is to analyze his public. He studies the groups which must be reached, and the leaders through whom he may approach these groups... only after this double analysis has been made and the results collated, has the time come for the next step, the formulation of policies governing the general practice, procedure and habits of the client and all those aspects in which he comes in contact with the public” (p. 41). Stated cognitively, the product of the seller is being examined from an emotional viewpoint to see if it is compatible with the mental networks of the public. As mentioned earlier in the essay, the producer is using technical thought to provide some gadget or service. But the consumer thinks in terms of mental networks. Therefore, marketing has to package the technical product in such a way that it appeals to the mental networks of the consumer. The typical consumer follows cultural MMNs that are guided by people with social status. Therefore, marketing has to look for cultural groups within the general public whose cultural MMNs resonate with the product and then appeal to the cultural MMNs of these groups, especially the trendsetting members of these groups. Stated simply, can you produce what the public wants, what is your target audience, and how do you reach this target audience?
Notice that the producer is submitting to the wishes of the consumer. Marketing is not telling the consumer, ‘You need to develop technical thought in this area’. Instead, marketing is telling the producer, ‘You need to make this kind of product and package it in this way in order to appeal to this audience.’
Looking now at the second function in more detail, Bernays points out that “A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with a vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable” (p. 63). Thus, Bernays is not using technical expertise to come up with a more efficient process for manufacturing some gadget or provide some service. That type of efficiency uses technical thought to replace some existing Server action or Perceiver object with an equivalent that is superior. For instance, incandescent light bulbs are now being replaced by LED light bulbs that provide the same illumination and fit the same electrical sockets, but use less electrical power and last longer. Bernays’ quest for efficiency does not involve any knowledge of science and/or technology. Instead, like the first function, it also manipulates the cultural MMNs of the consumer.
Bernays thinks that the consumer is ultimately in charge. “The public has its own standards and demands and habits. You may modify them, but you dare not run counter to them... The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will, or dictated to. Both business and the public have their own personalities which must somehow be brought into friendly agreement” (p. 66). The final sentence gives the impression that this is a two-way interaction. But the rest of the quote emphasizes that the cultural MMNs of the consumer are ultimately in charge. They can be modified, but the producer must ultimately appear to behave in a manner that is consistent with these mental networks. This limitation also applies to the politician. “Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear” (p. 109). In other words, the politician has to bend to the cultural MMNs of the voter.
Let us examine Bernays’ assertion. Is the customer ultimately in charge? In the medium-term, yes. In the long-term, no. Ultimately, the laws of nature and cognitive mechanisms are in charge. For instance, a society can expend great physical resources to fight the laws of nature by performing herculean tasks such as air-conditioning tents in the desert heat, but ultimately the laws of nature will prevail.
Applying this to Bernays’ propaganda, we saw earlier that objective technical thought leads to partial transformation that results in dumb consumers. We see here that marketing panders to dumb consumers and is incapable of educating dumb consumers. This gives the impression that the consumer is ultimately in charge. And this impression is backed up by my personal experience. I have tried for over three decades to provide what the consumer needs rather than what the consumer wants. The research has been great, but the marketing has been terrible. Thus, in the medium-term, it appears that Bernays is correct: the customer is always right and the customer is ultimately in charge. Curiously, Bernays is actually partially responsible for my failure because he played a key role in creating a public that was driven by irrational wants rather than rational needs. In the words of one article, “Bernays showed American corporations how to sell a product (or service) to a consumer’s emotions rather than his intellect. He started to play the central role in a concerted effort by American corporations to transform America from a ‘need-based’ to a ‘desire-based’ society in order to increase goods consumption. Bernays did this by linking products to the irrational forces in the human subconscious which were unearthed by his uncle.”
But the premise of this essay is that cognitive mechanisms are ultimately in charge. Dumb consumers will be attracted to dumb ideologies such as Marxism and wokeism, causing society to eventually reach the point where the survival of society depends upon educating the dumb consumer. We are now reaching that point in many areas. For instance, the survival of the planet depends upon educating the dumb consumer away from a lifestyle of consumerism. The survival of science depends upon educating the dumb consumer away from a mindset of alternate knowing. The survival of civilization depends upon educating the dumb Russian away from a mindset of vranyo. And so on...
Bernays also points out that there is something more fundamental than manipulating cultural MMNs to maintain a consumer society. “No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership” (p. 158). Saying this another way, there are fundamental mental networks that involve being and existing which are more fundamental than mental networks of appearing and imitating. Thus, what happens in the long-term is that the Marxism and wokeism that appeals to dumb consumers will deconstruct society to the point where these fundamental networks start to crumble. At this point, some dumb consumers will finally stop listening to propaganda being spread by those who have prostituted their souls and start learning from those who have pursued a path of becoming someone.
And I am not the only one saying this sort of thing. For instance, an article on Bernays that was quoted earlier concludes, “Today we might call what Bernays pioneered a form of branding, but at its core it represents little more than a particularly brazen set of techniques to manipulate people to get them to do your bidding. Its underlying purpose, in large part, is to make money. By convincing people that they want something they do not need, Bernays sought to turn citizens and neighbors into consumers who use their purchasing power to propel themselves down the road to happiness. Without a moral compass, however, such a transformation promotes a patronizing and ultimately cynical view of human nature and human possibilities, one as likely to destroy lives as to build them up.”
Speaking of a ‘moral compass’, Bernays mentions the ethics of propaganda. “Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensible only when its authors consciously and deliberately disseminate what they know to be lies, or when they aim at effects which they know to be prejudicial to the common good” (p. 22). Deliberately disseminating lies violates the factual foundation required by technical thought, while being ‘prejudicial to the common good’ violates the moral mental networks of society. Nazism provides an obvious example of ‘vicious and reprehensible propaganda’, but wokeism also violates Bernays’ ethics: Promoting an alternate form of ‘knowing’ that is different than scientific knowing qualifies as a ‘deliberate dissemination of what is known to be lies’. And imposing the cultural MMNs of some ‘oppressed group’ upon all of society is, by definition, prejudicial to the common good. Going further, the essence of queer theory is to be prejudicial against the very concept of a common good.
Thus, applying Bernays’ principles of propaganda will eventually lead to consumers who naturally violate Bernays’ ethics of propaganda. This will force marketing to choose between maintaining its sense of ethics and continuing to be effective. Since most marketing has already prostituted itself in order to sell some product, marketing will probably continue following this path by prostituting its sense of ethics in order to continue selling some product.
Such growing prostitution can be seen in Bernays’ campaign to sell bananas to Americans. Initially, “The United Fruit Company hired Bernays in the early 1940s for the purpose of promoting banana sales within the United States, which he did by linking bananas to good health and to American interests and by placing them strategically in the hands of celebrities, in hotels, and other conspicuous places.” Then, “In January 1952 he brought a cohort of journalists from various notable newspapers on a tour of Guatemala, sponsored by the company. This technique proved highly effective and was repeated four more times.” Bernays has now gone from promoting bananas to controlling the news. This was followed in 1954 by a coup in Guatemala and “During the coup itself, Bernays was the primary supplier of information for the international news wires Associated Press, United Press International, and the International News Service.” Bernays is now controlling the news for an armed insurrection. Wikipedia adds that “This triggered the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War between the U.S.-backed military government of Guatemala and the leftist insurgents, who frequently had a large degree of popular support.” And “It is estimated that 140,000 to 200,000 people were killed or forcefully ‘disappeared’ during the conflict.” Wikipedia also adds that Bernays was being paid “A reported annual fee of more than $100,000.” I think that this qualifies as growing prostitution.
Bernays describes the ethics of propaganda in more detail. “While recognizing, just as the lawyer does, that everyone has the right to present his case in its best light, he nevertheless refuses a client whom he believes to be dishonest, or product which he believes to be fraudulent, or cause which he believes to be antisocial... He does not accept a client whose interests conflict with those of another client. He does not accept a client whose case he believes to be hopeless or whose product he believes to be unmarketable. He should be candid in his dealings. It must be repeated that his business is not to fool or hoodwink the public. If he were to get such a reputation, his usefulness in his profession would be an end” (p. 46). Refusing a dishonest client or a fraudulent product means submitting to the factual requirements of scientific technical thought. Not accepting a hopeless client or unmarketable product means remaining consistent with cultural MMNs. These are reasonable standards, but we have just seen that Bernays’ campaign for the United Fruit Company supported a dishonest company that was being fraudulent in its relationship with the local people which resulted in the antisocial behavior of a political coup. Meanwhile Bernays tried to hoodwink the American public by being less than candid in his dealings. So much for ethics.
Going further, what happens when these ethics collide with a wokeist public? Wokeism treats honesty as a ‘hate crime’ and regards the scientific rejection of fraudulent products as implicit racism. Going further, proclaiming the overgeneralization of universal oppression leads to ‘hopeless clients’ who view actual help as a threat to their victimhood and who embrace unmarketable products precisely because they are rejected by society. Given such a clientele, propaganda has to prostitute itself in order to survive. Bernays thought that a discerning public would keep marketing honest. But that assumes that the public wants honesty and is using Perceiver thought to discern. However, a public that uses cultural MMNs to overwhelm Perceiver thought wants to be fooled and hoodwinked and will run away from candid dealings.
In summary, the techniques of propaganda developed by Bernays have had a lasting impact. One article summarizes that “Although practically invisible to the outside world, Bernays became an influential architect of modern mass persuasion techniques, which continue to inspire the PR industry. Harold Burson, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, one of the world’s largest PR enterprises, was quoted in the 1990s as saying: ‘We’re still singing off the hymn book that Bernays gave us.’”
This lasting impact indicates that Bernays was tapping into legitimate cognitive mechanisms, and we have seen that he had a deep understanding of how cultural MMNs function. Such understanding serves a legitimate function in a society that is guided by rational cultural MMNs. But if technical thought transforms society in a manner that does not impact mental networks, then consumers will be dumb, propaganda will enable consumers to remain dumb, and propaganda will have to promote dumbness to survive. This will eventually turn the propagandist into the cynical, manipulative, secretive member of the inner cult circle as described earlier by Lindsay.
Going further, it is easier to use technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs if one can do so in an objective manner that stands back from emotional involvement in these cultural MMNs. The problem is that this tends to result in some form of emotional prostitution in which one manipulates MMNs of personal identity in order to receive some lesser (usually monetary) reward. In this case, cultural and religious MMNs tend to act as emotional constraints, limiting the extent to which one is willing to prostitute oneself. The horrors of Nazism show what happens if using technical thought to manipulate cultural MMNs in an objective manner turns into the TMN of a universal theory that enables and motivates a society to override these constraints.
As far as I can tell, the only solution is to be emotionally guided by the TMN of a theory of mental wholeness.