It isn’t just a federal issue. Rather, it concerns the very heart of community – whether community is defined municipally, provincially, nationally, or as the global collection of humankind. This article by Charlie Angus, first published in Policy Magazine and reprinted in The Tyee, raises important questions about how in the existing, highly politicized climate we can even know and trust each other sufficiently to connect. “New Abacus Data polling reveals some pretty sobering findings on the state of the Canadian political landscape”, says Angus in his opening sentence. I agree with him that current trends pose “an existential threat to democracy.“ But on an even broader level they threaten the adhesion of community, which underpin most of what we call the “successes” in human history. They document the growing rifts in the social fabric on which we all depend – including in Nanaimo.
The Dangerous Rewiring of Canadians’ Minds. The Tyee. June 22, 2022. “The Abacus polling is the first deep dive into the state of Canadian thinking since the convoy blockades last February. The numbers are pretty shocking but I doubt any elected official would be surprised. The propaganda vortex of politicized conspiracy theories is now part of our political landscape.”
June 27, 2022 at 1:00 pm
Interesting article. The part that bothers me is the funding of these groups trying to tear the social fabric. These groups believe in all sorts of weird interlinked conspiracies, and conspiracies tied to major groups such as the WEF.
The real conspiracy is where the money to support these groups comes from and the blindness to the manipulation when such conspiracy believers refuse to look at who is manipulating them. The funding comes from some groups and individuals who wish to change the social fabric for political reasons and some for their own personal/business reasons.
Why was a marketing group in Bangladesh an organizer in right wing fund raising? Many groups overseas would wish to weaken the North American fabric for their own political reasons.
Individuals such as billionaire Tom Siebel donate heavily to right wing groups as they have their own reasons for disruption, and they have the money to support.
Money manipulates and corrupts in both directions. Imagine the damage that can be created in social uprising if you have enough money to hire experts in social manipulation and disruption. But rich people rarely donate to lower economic uprisings unless they have a purpose, stated or hidden.
I believe more information on these donors should be researched so everyone understands how and why we are being manipulated.
After the money issue is the huge increase in anger and the lowered threshold for violence that now exists. Why the increase? We really aren’t sure. Lots of guesses but no solid answer. The interesting fact in this is that Sociological studies and research have not been well funded over many decades and so we are left to become amateur sociologists guessing on what is really destroying social fabric. This in turn creates unusual links to theories with no solid research to support them.
More valid research and an understanding of the goals of those who are manipulating these right wing groups, could enlighten us all. I believe many wealthy donors suddenly understood how well and easily a population can be manipulated thanks to a the idiocy of Trumpism.
It also becomes apparent how much the social fabric can be twisted and used for some peoples advantage when you can stack a Supreme Court in the USA. Then combine the fact that in the USA government and religion are seemingly very intertwined.
We are all subjects of attempted manipulation from both sides of these arguements. We really need more honest truthful public information and discussion on who, why and how we are being manipulated from both sides. Lack of real information leads to conspiracies to answer the questions we don’t really understand the answers to.
July 5, 2022 at 11:45 am
I have to say that while it is concerning by whom, why, and how we may be manipulated, but I am more concerned about what it is about human beings that allows us to follow others so readily. I guess that is why I focused on psychology rather than sociology 🙂
I read a book while on holidays called “Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being” by Brian R. Little, a professor specializing in Personality Psychology. I am going to share one of the (many) paragraphs that caught my attention and really caused me some consternation. I would love to read other peoples’ opinions about this topic, as I do believe it is a key factor in politics, climate change behaviour, and many other issues related to our day to day functioning. It frightens me that some people would so “willingly” change their perceptions to conform to the majority.
” Resistance to Social Influence
One of the early classic studies in social psychology demonstrated the power of social influence on perception. Imagine you are a participant in an experiment on how accurately you can make perceptual discriminations. You are in a room with five other participants. You are asked to judge whether two lines flashed briefly on a screen are or are not the same length, a fairly straightforward perceptual task for which there is a clearly correct answer. As the experimenter asks each of the group in turn, you hear the others say, “Same, Same, Same, Same, Same,” and now it is your turn. What you don’t know is that all the others in the groups are confederates of the experimenter, and they have been scripted to give incorrect answers. What would you do when you see two lines that are not equal in length but everyone else says they are the same? There is a strong tendency to be influenced but the group consensus. Even though the lines are clearly different, the pressure to misperceive is very strong. In the actual experiment this is exactly what happened: the real participants conformed with the consensus opinion, indicating that they thought the lines were the same. In short, people were willing to be influenced in ways that made their judgements suffer. However, subsequent research shows that there was a group if individuals who were relatively resistant to influence – those who scored high on a measure of internality. Internals may be been puzzled that other people saw the lines differently from how they did, but they did not hesitate to declare their own judgment. Externals, confronted with the same social pressure, were the most likely to yield to the majority decision.”
June 28, 2022 at 9:10 am
Counter moves towards depolarization? https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/06/28/Community-Solidarity-Meets-Convoy/