What is Hypermanipulation?

Hypermanipulation is a byproduct of any social engineering expressed by or to Hyperreality.
To gain an appreciation for hyperreality, please read this previous essay, What is Hyperreality?


Essentially, hyperreality is the "what is manipulated" by hypermanipulation and the social engineers, (the people "engineering society") are the people either doing the manipulation, or being the manipulated, or both; And they do so with, or without being aware of this manipulation existing or being utilised.

Hypermanipulation is a the re-programming of a program, by a program which may or may not yet have achieved a sense of self. This is the Hypermanipulated Self of which I speak in my book Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self. If you, as a member of a hypermanipulated society are unaware of the mere concepts of hyperreality (or the Spectacle, as it is also named) and/or social engineering (in all realities), your hypermanipulated self is likely to remain an unknown unknown.

Yet, hyperreality exists, as does hypermanipulation. We are all constantly bombarded by it everyday.
Some of us barely scratch the surface of the Spectacle, living in our huts in a jungle, living off the land. Some of us live almost entirely within hyperreality, we work there, play there. If all that is possible is our being and doing, some of us are being and doing as much as possible from within hyperreality.

Even if we are not, even if we spend as much time as possible in the "real world" the real world has become merely the foundation upon which the hyperreal exists. Yes, you still need to eat and sleep, but someday, technology will create a reality where even those physical requirements can be hypermanipulated. It's just a question of time, like all things. If you and I lived four hundred years ago, this conversation would not be necessary or even possible, without being the stuff of imagination, but also, if we lived so long ago, I probably couldn't even read or write and neither could you. So the limitations of our past, should not reflect on our abilities to imagine our futures.

For today's citizens of the post modern, hyperreality and hypermanipulation contain real, day to day considerations we undertake, contemplations deemed necessary, with or without cognition. But with cognition of these realities, able to "see the matrix" as it were, we become world builders, society shapers, influencers. For the initiated, hypermanipulation is extremely understood, practised and powerful.

For the uninitiated, the unaware, the asleep, the conservative, the technophobe, for any multitude of reasons one might harbour for refusing the evidence of any particular social paradigm, there is no denying either that the Spectacle grows more powerful as technology ties us together into an amalgam intellect or that the expansion of hyperreality into that intellect creates an equal opportunity for hypermanipulation.

The problem remains that not everyone taking part in that hypermanipulation realizes that they are doing so, thus the value of these examinations. The Hyper-Manipulated Self is awash in a matrix of all possibilities and no definition. Yet, hyperreality is nothing but definition, it is nothing but construct of data. The manipulation taking place is of that data, the hyper prefix refers to the fact that such manipulations are taking place outside your desire or will, if you have no inkling of these facts. Thus, the "programming of the program." Social Engineers, active citizens of a healthy society, should and eventually will have inklings of these realities, as time allows discovery, some do today. But technology has now passed the point of creating an amalgam intellect and in doing so has taken the control of hyperreality from the bastion of academia and politic and handed it over to the populace. Some of that populace knows this and hypermanipulates intentionally, some of that populace doesn't know this and hypermanipulates unintentionally by merely taking part in the Spectacle of hyperreality.

It is now possible, unlike in times incapable of an amalgam intellect, for members of society taking part in hyperreality to develop ownership of hypermanipulation and make conscious, intentional marks on the "chalkboard of the world," defining what taking part in society should mean. But it is also possible for that same intellect to create bad ideas, wrong directions, for the "marks on that chalkboard" to contain offensive symbols or unnatural, counterproductive ideologies. The dangers of the unintentional directing of any social contract are immediately apparent and when the domain of hyperreality retards our ability to separate the true from the false, our adherence or resistance to any particular engineering being made from a place of our ignorance at the most, confusion at the least, must lead to eventual, historical change or become the seed of a destruction so complete, no changing of minds could it restore.

Hypermanipulation is real. You are a social engineer if you take part in any expression of your personage into hyperreality, which you have been doing, everyday of your life. You're doing it right now, by reading these words. If you weren't previously aware that hyperreality is real and has been real for hundreds of years, you now are. Congratulations and I'm sorry. I'm hypermanipulating you. You're hypermanipulating me.

Let's first agree that this is happening.
Then we will talk about what is to be done about it.
The conversation continues on this blog and is alive in the Spectacle...

Tune in, take part, or be left behind..

What is Hyperreality?

Hyperreality, is defined by Wikipedia as:
(*Note: Wiki def may have changed since I wrote this essay...)

"Hyperreality, in semiotics and postmodernism, is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins."

This is almost completely an inaccurate definition, but Wikipedias' incorrect definition does help illustrate both Hyperreality and Hypermanipulation, because of what Wikipedia is and from where it generates content. 

Hyperreality is not a condition of our conscious distinction. It is not something that is created in our perceptions. It is true that Hyperreality is a product of a technologically advanced postmodern societies, but it is a real thing, an observable, quantifiable facet of true reality, in fact reflected by the existence of Wikipedia.

The fact that Wikipedias' definition of Hyperreality comes to us from a media that simply couldn't exist before our societies' technological advancement, that very media falls squarely into the definition of the domain of 'Hyperreality.' The website is part of hyperreality because the internet, by definition, is part of hyperreality. The internet is real, therefore, hyperreality is real. Before the internet, working backward through history, the technological advancements of previous media created the realm of hyperreality: Television, radio, to a lesser degree, the telegraph, all moving communication of ideas from the first person to the non-person, moving reality into the hyper.

The fact that Wikipedia's incorrect definition was also created inside hyperreality, coming as all data has come to Wikipedia, from the hyperreal, to the hyperreal, defines hypermanipulation. There is no first person attached to this information, it is just pure information and we can not truly know whether or not this information is good, right and true or the opposite of these things.

So Wikipedia, like ourselves in this post modern world, are essentially full of shit and do not know it.

That's Hyperreality for ya... It is "the Spectacle" aspect of what "living life" means. "The Spectacle" has been around for as long as we have been creating it to define what society should or shouldn't be. 

Anyone wishing to delve further into the correct definition of hyperreality would be best served by delving into the work of Philosopher Jean Baudrillard, in particular, Fatal Strategies. You could also attempt to read Philosopher Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, a beautiful, ingenious work that is mind boggling. Baudrillard's work is much more accessible.

Of course, my Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self is the most accessible explanation of this reality, but you've already read that, right? Oh, you haven't?

We have Debord to thank for naming hyperreality "The Spectacle." In his book, he claims that when a society advances well enough technologically, particularly in societies built around accumulation, such as consumerism, commodities detach from reality, becoming images. Those images make up the constituents of hyperreality. "Real reality" still exists, it is still necessary because we can't yet spend all our time in hyperreality. Please notice my use of the word, "yet." These concerns are coming, if they're not already here, dictated by the amount of time and energy we put into hyperreality.

Hyperreality exists. It is not a condition of the modern mind, it is the product of technological society. Hyperreality is not the medium, it is the message. We are all "tuned into it" to more or lesser degrees. The power of hyperreality is directly proportionate to our involvement with it. Where the tribesman, living in the jungle, subsisting off the land, may never catch more than a glimpse of the Spectacle, I, in my office, typing on this screen, almost live absorbed by the Spectacle. Both of us are asked to decipher what is real and what isn't. The tribesman is going to have a much easier time than I, in this endeavour, because the hyperreal is so much less influential to him than it is evaluable to myself.

Hyperreality is everywhere, not just on your tv or the internet. It's in the ideas that source themselves from these domains. It is not like electricity, or computer code. It is not the Matrix, it is what's in the real Matrix. (The Matrix movies are built around the philosophical concepts we're discussing, right now, simply placed into a future where we have "figured out how to live entirely in Hyperreality.") Hyperreality is the ideas expressed and the intentionality of that content, not the machine expressing the content. Nor does hyperreality add some dramatic danger of machines taking over our consciousnesses, for any purposes. The machines do not contribute the content of hyperreality, society does. 

Hyperreality is only as useful as we can make it. For instance, if you wanted to know about Hyperreality and you only went to Wikipedia to educate yourself, you would take the incorrect definition at face value, remember it, taking it out of hyperreality and into "the real world" perhaps sharing it with others, (social engineering,) spreading disinformation, etc. This may not be too bad of a problem, for you or anyone else who comes to believe this erroneous data correct, in the particular case of defining "hyperreality," but surely you can see the problems inherent when even such a feat is possible by accident, or deliberately designed. Imagine all the different types of wrong thinking currently rattling around in our heads...

How much of that wrong thinking is creating our philosophies, our politics, our beliefs, our knowledge, our language, our imaginations, our actions, our being, our doing, everything?

Thus the value in understanding the Spectacle, Hyperreality.

Thank you for letting me explain this, if you have any questions, please ask in the comments below.

You might also like to read the next instalment of this blog where I define Hypermanipulation.

In a postmodern world where technology has created an amalgam intellect, where individuals are simultaneously anonymous and celebrity, where the engineered, yet unwritten social contract demands, more than ever before, we react to the spectacle of hyperreality as part of the day to day mechanics of what it means to live your life, to reveal your Authentic Self requires you Anti-Social Engineer the Hypermanipulated Self.

What will Bigots do when Trump is Gone?

The bigotry of the right has been celebrated since Trump went into office, by applauding the actions of the office and the words of the man.

Immediately American backs straighten at the idea of the right being the bastion of bigotry. 

But Conservatives, by definition, reach back, aiming for status-quo via tried and true practices of authority, ingroup, sanctity. 

This is how Conservatism is unnatural and works counter to progress, it is literally not looking forward, figuratively anti-change.

“There's good people on both sides of the argument,” claims your idiot President.

No. Those aren't good people.

And there was no argument.

You, Mr. President, are racist. So are a hell of a lot of other Americans.

So many bigots that, in fact, this is the norm.

It's great that everybody is talking about it now, from within an framework of shame, rather than pride.

Well, I guess most of you are looking at it with shame and only some with pride.

A few too many?

Way too many?

While the President's bigotry seems to know no bounds, the entire world marvels at the ignorant force that put him in power. 

That same force now cowers under the fury of oppression. 

That force shares the same wilful ignorance as Trump, the same ideals, the same false beliefs, the same wrong thinking, the same apathy and lack of intelligence.

When Trump is no longer President, what will the bigots do?

Become silent again, raging under their breath, waiting for opportunities to express their “opinion?”

Unless you address this problem now, with real change, the kind of change that will make an actual difference, the Right will rise again. 

Such is the extremity of your dichotomous government.

You have through your action begun a process that could lead to a better America.

This could be an American Spring... We'll see if you can keep at it.

However, you have multiple problems occurring simultaneously because so much of your way of life is founded upon a lie.

Your immediate concern is getting Trump out of the White House.

Not in November, not after the riots, now.

And you have to do it in such a way that everybody realizes that the Right is wrong and why.

However, I don't think this is possible because you are so very, very damaged by the paradigm that you loudly claim makes you greater.

Might is Tenuous

The problem with terrorists is, they don't differentiate between the people and the target.

If the people are fair, free and just it is a product of their choosing, by way of being free.

Yet if the people believe and act upon those beliefs, to some detriment to others, are they not also free to do so?

It stands to reason...

But if the people are slaves to a system, (for example,) and it is the system that is despicable, why not attack the system?

The people, (we assume,) are merely purveyors of the system, because they must. To refuse membership is to render one's self a failure. How can slaves be targets?

It isn't the ideas of freedom, democracy or even stupid capitalism that are the targets of anyone other than seeming tyrants or true brutes. Why wouldn't everyone want to be free, fair and affluent?

The things that make a target real are products of being slaves to a faulty system.

When one is greedy, one takes. When one is mighty, one takes what one wants. When one is both an unholy palindrome ensues.

Without learning to share, the glutton bully perishes.
This is to be expected.
This is natural.

So it is that those making decisions to send people to war based on pre-programmed ideals of earnest well being. That is to say, these (mostly) men from either side truly believe they are doing right.

These decision makers are thus slaves.
The Terrorists, as it were, are attacking drones and machines.
Not even fit to be slaves.
Robots of slaves.
Tools.

However, if you're trading one life for another because one side wants oil and one side wants to be despotic, this is an incongrous dichotomy. Both sides are dupes, not just in the sand, but too in the marble hallways.

The real boss is the system, and the system is hungry.
Might is tenuous.

Hindsite 2020 - Concludes with a review of my book

The Hindsite 2020 essays are concluding with a review of Anti-Social Engineering the Hypermanipulated Self

From today until June 5th 2020 you can get 15% off all my books by using coupon code SAVE15

at my bookstore.

When one does philosophy, one dismantles strings of concepts into their respective parts to examine both the parts themselves and the relationships the parts have with each other. This semantic reduction provides us the best possible opportunities for finding truth. This was exactly the type of skill Brian Taylor needed to write his new book Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self, postpaper publishing, ISBN: 978-0-557-99909-5

The book began as a series of blogged essays in a response to the “Authenticity” movement presented by the like of Eckhart Tolle, Andrew Cohen and to a lesser extent, Dr. Phil. These men, and others, were coming to conclusions on the idea of authenticity that were, among other things, subjective fallacies, rife with interpretation and possibly counterproductive. On the other side of the coin we had skeptical guru Michael Shermer or perhaps Richard Dawkins making up one half of the “four horseman of the non-apocalypse.” These men, “scientists,” were and still are guilty of the same faults as their spiritual counterparts, interpretations rather than knowledge. Brian Taylor wanted to know, “Are there any actual answers in the arena of the self and its power?” As it turns out, reality is far stranger than ever before known and we actually know so much less than we think we do, if it can be said that we know anything authentically, at all.

After four years of research into our ideas about the self through the ages, the sciences of the self and what the self is, this book comes to the conclusion that the modern self, you and I today, are not only manipulated, but that manipulation is sought out, required and pre-programmed. This is a book about how we are all being intentionally hyper-manipulated without our knowledge, by whom and to what end.

To “anti-social engineer” is to counter this phenomenon of modernity through critical consciousness, dubbed “assignee's prerogative.” This self direction is aimed toward eudaemonia, which is an Aristotelian idea roughly meaning “happiness and promotion,” and it is further suggested that virtue is found in the mean between excess and deficiency, in these concerns. This sounds rather simple in such a paragraph form, rest assured, chasing the meanings and relationships of these ideas to any philosophical depth requires a maze of rabbit holes and someone to guide you through them. Taylor is nothing if not thorough in this regard.

Entertaining, personal, conversational, exact and profound, this book has a strange undercurrent, almost a charge running through it. Most clearly defined in it's most opinionated moments, there is a subtext, not a call to arms but to a social contract. Taylor says, throughout the book, that it is specifically battling social engineering, the command, hidden or not, “think this about that.” Yet, he too wants us to think a certain way, a centrist “golden mean,” a path of no extremes. Making an argument against his ideas is difficult, regardless of the talking points he uses. (These vary from possible moral objections we may hold for prostitution or murder, to social norms such as supporting the troops or the war on terror.) In his most controversial moments, when objectivity is at its thinnest, the author's existentialism shines through and he suggests it's better to not claim to know something than to suspect something incorrectly. The exception to this rule is when the social engineering is secret, malicious, degenerative or merely in error.

There are things that we can do anti-social engineer our hyper-manipulated selves and Taylor spells these tasks out clearly. Firstly, social engineering, be it delivered by a television commercial, ideology, civility, social construct, etc. is to be expected and recognized. Then Taylor presents us his Philosophy Generator which is described as “a dismantling of paradigm” and a way to determine if any particular social engineering is more persuasive or manipulative. If we are able to first know what it is we are deciding, then do our best possible thinking on the matter, which is what working through the Generator is for, we should be able to be confident in our decision, whatever it may be. Furthermore, given the standardization of awareness, contemplation and centrist philosophy, it should be expected that the same benefit experienced by individuals would transfer to societies.

The book ends with a chapter called “God wears a yellow hat.” It is concluded with a list of 24 interesting intentions, (23 actually, one of them is missing,) this list is not meant to be a complete index of the topics discussed, but rather an indication of the book's scope. The war on terror, the war on drugs, food transportation, consumerism, capitalism, communism, false flags, dehumanization via technology, God, 2012, patriotism, culture, globalization, human rights and religion. There is an entire chapter devoted to a reasonable discussion between the two sides divided over the conspiracies associated with September 11, 2001. This book discusses conspiracy as it dismantles thought, which is a strange dichotomy. Taylor seems to want to convince us that he is a reasonable man, with a reasonable method and if such a man can find a reasonable conspiracy, we can take the suggestion from the fringe to the mainstream. He may be right. However, this is not a conspiracy book, this is a book about thinking.

One comes away from the experience of reading this book enticed to do more and this is the goal. Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self is about taking responsibility and looking ahead, prudently. It doesn't want to take anything away from you, you're entitled to have your beliefs as the author has his. We need our beliefs and we even need social engineering, these things are part of a natural, healthy species. The dangers of our beliefs are represented by the lack of awareness of them and the inability to think critically about them. Taylor argues that, if in fact we are not thinking well about the things we believe, we are not living up to the reasonable purpose we have as human beings. This appreciation of hyper-reality and our place in it defines our authenticity and is the promise expressed by the 21st Century Enlightenment.