John Maynard Keynes wrote about economics, saying, "We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." America and much of Western civilization have drifted into a witch's brew of group insanity composed of overwhelming stress, inability to solve political problems, group denial, and impaired judgment by a public under duress.
The WOKE lackeys who try to solve problems tell us to reimagine our history. However, rethinking the Bill of Rights and the Constitution requires imaginative editors. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. Instead, we have raging emotional quasi-political groups whining about how our history of freedom and equality is a slogan of terrorism that needs to end. It is ridiculous; no problems get solved. So, how is it that such a powerful and efficient country can regress to chaos so quickly?
In my earlier book, Burnt Offerings (2010), I wrote that "America devolved in the 1960s into something alien to our original republic. We have become that which we were originally against. We have become topsy-turvy where wrong is now the right." Unendurable stress has initiated a perceptual shift that has reversed public opinion. No one thought that unendurable group stress could quickly upend a well-entrenched Judeo-Christian ethic and usher in opposite values. This shocking black swan has never happened before. What has been considered normal in the past is now considered crazy by liberal progressives. The American zeitgeist suddenly seems upside-down as it tries to glorify dementedness without facts, logic, or historical faith. Until recently, an irrational attention shift was unthinkable.
Unresolved problems from the past have intensified. About 2008, overwhelming public stress forced a rare irrational perceptual shift to reverse public opinion (Unhinged, 2018). The turmoil created by that shift continues to this day. I believe turmoil is part of a disturbing increase in mental illness and impaired judgment. Unendurable emotions have become so intense that many American citizens are now mentally ill. The result is bad judgment and an inability to solve problems.
In the past, voting meant having a public vote on issues involving the public. First, there is a time frame for honest communication to the voting public on the issue; then, the public votes for its choice. This past communication process has been largely unbiased, with few unpleasant emotions interfering. Voting today has changed as disruptive emotions now interfere radically with rational voting. Voting has become a forced vote for the most pleasant outcome.
Recent political elections are irrational under forced choice voting as stress and distractibility intensify. Under these conditions, confused voters seek avoidance or escape from the increased frustrations of problem-solving. The development of forced choices when voting is a new phenomenon associated with mass hysteria and the evolution of electronic media.
Loosely allied groups, sometimes called the Great Reset narrative, are espoused by George Soros, Joe Biden, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and others. This narrative includes WOKE social theories, specific social platforms and search engines on the internet, electronic high-tech groups, some traditional print media, civil rights groups, sociopathic billionaires, public school officials, and governmental agencies. These groups stress, among other things, that climate change results from progressive technology's overuse and abuse of our natural resources. However, there is little evidence for an association between climate change and technological innovation.
The result is political pressure to implement unpopular cancellation of the production of fossil fuels, the development of a move to propagandize our school system without the involvement of the parents of our school children, and a refusal to enforce border laws that protect our citizens from harm. Any other criminalization also makes it impossible for us to work together to pursue happiness. These ideas are all part of the development of extraordinary reverse attention shifts. We are no longer solving problems; we are just trying to survive.
The 2008 presidential election was particularly irritating because it involved controversial political ideas for which politicians offered no accurate, consistent, factual information. In addition, vast amounts of money flooded the market, creating confusion and blurring. As a result, almost all of the marketing was viscerally intense, with very little factual information to back it up.
The same problem seems to hold for the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, only more so. Political combatants resorted to name-calling, investigations without reason, and failed impeachment attempts without much factual information. Then, the Covid 19 pandemic began in 2020 as it superimposed itself on top of a highly stressed voting public, making the public highly emotional again. The internet, with its social platforms, reinforced the unpleasantness as search engines and other innovative computer systems flooded the minds of Americans with an overdose of distorted and misguided information. Mass hysteria followed, and it continues today.
In the past, newspapers, radio, and word of mouth have been the medium of regular communication. The result was that the news was slower and muted. The result is that the message was less emotional. Today, large groups in crisis have become emotionally unhinged (Unhinged, OPA, 2018) because of the quickness and intensity of response. The focus on blaming the police for the crime instead of the criminals is now the norm in topsy-turvy America. In addition, the American voting system in crisis has become dysfunctional.
In my book (Burnt Offerings, 2010), I explained that people seek pleasant feelings to avoid unpleasant emotions. Unfortunately, everyone is limited in the intensity and amount of unpleasantness they can experience. Mass hysteria results from experiencing intense, unpleasant feelings for a long time. While in crisis, using the media will magnify that unpleasantness, including distractibility (Stolen Focus, 2022). If unpleasant emotions are experienced by large groups and distributed by the electronic media, unpleasantness becomes unbearable. As Marshal McLuhan once said, "The medium is the message."
For the first time, a recent group experience of unendurable emotions has resulted in a dysfunctional reversed perceptual shift that has affected the outcome of several recent elections. Unendurable emotions have interfered with the mostly rational voting system Americans have used for over 200 years. Because unendurable emotions suppress all choices, voting trends support more pleasant choices regardless of content. The answer to unpleasant choices involves a calm, calculated, rational plan that benefits the average American if they vote. In this way, unpleasantness is overcome by a more pleasant plan.
I now want to give examples of group hysteria and stress interfering with problem-solving. These examples reveal the development of a criminal justice system that rewards the criminal instead of law enforcement. Such a system reverses the Judeo-Christian ethic that punishes the criminal. In my previous book (Burnt Offerings, 2010), a narrative depicts the O.J. Simpson trial years ago where it all started. In that discussion, this author said, "We appear to be losing the past, but we are not gaining the future." In the case of the O. J. Simpson trial, a dysfunctional perceptual shift was the first publicly acknowledged reverse perception. Instead of focusing on the bad guy, the focus was on the criminal justice system. The police were racists. Does that scenario seem familiar?
My book (Burnt Offerings, 2010) focused on "something other than...justice." Instead of focusing on the bad behavior of O.J. Simpson, Racial prejudice, as an accusation, shifted the focus in that trial from the defendant's bad conduct. By doing that, the defense attorney turned their attention to the police and law enforcement. The implicit suggestion was that the police may be harmful instead of being the good guys: they may be "racist". As a result, Mr. Simpson was found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
There are now numerous clear examples of how this extraordinary attention shift works in current politics. There are so many examples that shifted attention has become institutionalized as public opinion. One such instance occurred on May 15, 2021, as Hamas in the Gaza Strip launched 2900 rockets toward Israel. Hamas is a well-known terrorist group that refuses to acknowledge Israel's existence. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), a U.S. politician, condemned Israel for defending itself against the Palestinians instead of condemning Hamas for its bad behavior.
Another horrific attack occurred more recently when Hamas attacked and killed over 1400 Israelis. The Israeli military responded with an invasion of Gaza that continues today. This time enormous protest groups throughout Western civilization called for the demise of Israel while praising Hamas. This is the kind of reversed perception that has now become institutionalized as public opinion. The result is rampant verbal discrimination of Jews under the guise of white racism.
This kind of cockeyed reasoning illustrates the attention-shifting happening publicly throughout Western civilization. Traditionally, Americans have rewarded good behavior for individuals and groups. In this case, the protestor's comments should be about Hamas's evil behavior, but true to form, Israel is blamed for defending itself. In this case, our Judeo-Christian ethic is topsy-turvy as the reverse is suddenly true as it regresses into chaos. This kind of sudden reversal of dearly held traditional beliefs has never happened in quite the same way before.
This overwhelming, irrational response is now out of control as the public generalizes public opinion to justify a dysfunctional perceptual shift. Instead of factual detail, anyone who disagrees is intimidated and called names. No disagreement is allowed as denial sets in. Name-calling such as racist or deplorable is the response instead of accurate information reinforcing the traditional point of view. This trend has resulted in defunding law enforcement while letting criminals go free.
These distractions or shifts have become so socially contagious that they have become public opinion. Anybody who disagrees with a progressive liberal these days is a racist without any factual data to justify the accusation. In my book (Burnt Offerings, 2010), I said, "When public opinion becomes more powerful than the law, a radical blurring may occur." To date, that is what is happening. Shifting attention from the bad guys' behavior to the good guys' conduct is causing great harm. Distinctions between good and bad behavior are dimming. When people cannot distinguish between good and evil, justice becomes a sad game without meaning.
The boundaries between accepted cultural norms are in the process of being destroyed. We can no longer make distinctions between male and female, teacher and student, law enforcement and criminals, and normal and abnormal people. We are now all one, all without distinction. We are all part of an infinite cosmos without end. Our knowledge structure is in shambles because we now know nothing. We do not even know what a woman is.
High stress and poor judgment disrupt the normal problem-solving process. If attention shifts from the goals of the responsible group to the group process itself, then attention shifting will disrupt the accountable group. Focusing attention elsewhere to discredit a group can harm responsible groups attempting to solve significant problems. That is the problem that we have today. The citizens of America are now at an impasse in solving problems. Unendurable emotions force avoidance responses that blame the wrong person or group, making problem-solving more difficult.
I hope America's current reverse focus of attention is not a manipulative attempt by antagonists to stop responsible groups from attaining essential goals. The special attention shifting in this article is called a dysfunctional perceptual shift. Intense, unpleasant emotions in groups trigger a special kind of shifting. A more detailed narrative is available in my book "Perceptual Shift".
Such a shift is irrational and abnormal in large groups. Large dysfunctional groups force bad choices that make problem-solving impossible. As a result, we cannot solve problems as we drift into chaos. Such dysfunction is not a surprise since Americans have long been known for their practical, hands-on approach to life. They are not known as wise, creative thinkers who seek the truth.
Another problem for politicians or anybody who tries to solve problems is that they are still trying to solve problems the old way. Our inability to solve political issues has rested on the belief that differentiation and insight will solve our problems. Similarities have yet to be considered part of the problem-solving process. Today's problems often involve politics and politicians who use differentiation to solve problems.
For instance, the difference between an orange and a banana is its shape. An orange is round, and a banana is long and skinny. Detectives use clues that are different from one another to solve crimes. For millennia, problem-solvers have analyzed crimes using only differences between things. Often analysts find solutions in their heads using similarities without explanation. Traditional problem-solving needs to explain how similarities fit into the problem-solving process as part of insight.
The saying that one cannot see the forest for the trees suggests that our obsession with differentiating between trees interferes with our understanding of the forest. The differentiating between kinds of trees can result in solutions to problems, but when detail does not solve a problem the perception of the entire forest, a gestalt provides the possibility of a new solution. Using only part of the process to solve problems makes solving problems harder.
After watching TV, reading, and talking with friends, it is increasingly evident that Western civilization is on the verge of fizzling out. The most apparent symptom of a declining culture is when traditional customs and laws rapidly fail without critique. The distinction between good and evil is almost extinct as our secular society rules supreme. As a result, our inability to solve problems has never been more apparent. We can no longer distinguish between good and evil because we deny the difference. We have destroyed the core values that made Western civilization great.
After spending years of reading, writing grants, writing psychiatric reports, and writing books, the problem is apparent. Recent communication innovations like the internet and creative technological innovations can quickly intensify unpleasant emotions and distractibility. When group members experience unpleasantness beyond their physical and mental limits, it becomes tough to solve problems. Unfortunately, those same communication innovations are also making us all more distractible (Stolen Focus, 2020) as attention deficit disorder and autism increase.
These responses result in a forced irrational choice for the most pleasant responses instead of a detailed unpleasant objective analysis. At the same time, the internet itself encourages distractibility and magnifies the message, making sustained concentration more difficult (Stolen Focus, 2020). Dysfunctional attention shifting, distractibility, and magnified, messaging are now ripping away at the entire history of Western civilization. Hopefully, there is still time to stop this nonsense.
Intense emotions like anxiety, depression, anger, and rage interfere with developing good judgment. Stress is the enemy of sound judgment. Stress in groups is even more difficult. Unfortunately, social internet platforms, high-tech innovation, sociopathic billionaires, and the government have decided for us. These groups have become known as cancel culture or the Great Reset as they determine what is true or false for us. Cancel culture's scheme to eliminate essential parts of our past to reduce stress is false. Indeed, the reality is that they are trying to market a dead horse while denying that the past was good for America.
If you believe censorship will solve our problem, consider what happened to Hitler, the king of censorship. The whole problem-solving process is necessary for wise and creative solutions. The intensity of the emotions regarding a problem must not exceed human endurance. Decision-making beyond our limits forces an avoidant response coupled with bad judgment.
Censorship is not a solution because solutions to problems are found by examining all relevant data and extrapolating appropriate theoretical solutions while following all parts of the problem-solving process. If you eliminate a part of the problem by changing the basics, you diminish the ability to solve problems by limiting the information available.
Once upon a time, America believed in a history that evolved or developed. Knowledge of the past was necessary because civilizations developed toward good government by studying history. History was like an onion, each layer representing a step in the right direction. What we have today is a dishevelment that emphasizes denial of the past. Cancel culture seeks to determine what is historically relevant for us as it destroys our history. If cancel culture were to succeed, we would no longer know the historical building blocks that we have relied on to feel safe and secure.
If a problem had several conflicting parts, canceling part of it including basic parts would not be helpful. Reducing the amount of available information for solving problems makes solutions more difficult. Recently, when censorship arose, many citizens were unpleasantly adrift in a brain fog that disrupted problem-solving normalcy.
America has been good at solving problems precisely because we did not experience long-term, unendurable emotions quickly. Without instant flooding of emotions to large groups of people, unpleasantness was adapted over extended periods. Currently, we use only differentiation as part of the problem-solving process. If we used differentiation conjoint with similarities to overcome unendurable stress more efficient problem-solving would occur.
I have been saying for years that the introduction of the internet and its electronic wizardry provided better communication as well as the potential for harm (Burnt Offerings, 2010). From 2008 on, unendurable stress interfered with a reasonable election process. Passing beyond the limits of our unpleasantness made many people unable to make rational decisions. Instead, we began to seek more pleasant emotional states or entirely avoid the current perceptual emotional distress. If we are stressed out and forced to decide, the result will be bad judgment. In the case of a presidential election under pressure, the result could be disastrous.
Under our current conditions, group stress has interfered with political elections encumbered by a stock market crash in 2008, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, and the lingering trauma of the COVID-19 virus in the 2022 mid-term elections. Multiple stressors created bad judgment, allowing some of the worst decision-making in American history.
Democratic self-government uses technological innovation to develop a more efficient economic system with a higher standard of living. However, this time, the problems were so new and extensive that there needed to be a way for innovation to develop to manage the situation. Instead, tremendous stress and bad judgment created public opinion that was a lie. This untrue zeitgeist is just as false as the belief in the 15th century that the earth was flat.
Stress can appear anywhere, not just in politics. Politics is the focus at present. Forced choice voting under unimaginable pressure in national elections has created an unbelievable situation. Solving problems even under stress has been Western civilization's forte for several hundred years. Whenever a crisis occurred, our problem-solving ability led us to the future.
Since communication was slow and factual data scarce, individuals had time to gather information and focus on the problem. Today, Western society's problem-solvers are in disarray because of enormous stress and distractions with little time for honest analysis. Instead of a lack of information, our minds are suddenly overwhelmed with too much information. We do not know what is true any longer.
It may surprise you when I say the American way of life is in danger. Why? Because we can no longer solve problems. In 2008, extreme fear, anxiety, depression, and anger all collided in mass hysteria concerning politics. There have been extensive panics and other unpleasant feelings, but the media did not magnify unpleasant emotions enough to create unendurable stress. The unsolvable problem is that all accepted traditions, including our constitution, are now being questioned. But, unfortunately, no one is willing to debate the underpinnings of our way of life forcefully.
Science has long known that bad judgment is a symptom of almost all mental illnesses, and mental illness exacerbates when stressed. Therefore, under stressful conditions, bad judgment will likely occur and intensify. America is now in the midst of a perfect emotional storm, but most of us aren't aware of the true extent of the problem. This problem has been intensifying since 2008 with no solution in sight. It appears that there are more mentally ill people in America than usual. It is likely that the loonies now run things.
In 2008, Americans experienced their first emotional storm, a political firestorm encumbered by a stock market crash. Then, in 2020, the political firestorm continued as the Covid 19 pandemic was superimposed on it, creating another vast emotional firestorm during another presidential election. Finally, in the 2022 midterm elections, politicians ratcheted up the political mass hysteria encumbered by the pandemic's residual effects. Terrible judgment was often present in the final results of all three elections because of massive stress.
If unendurable stress interferes with cultural problem-solving, this stress must be reduced or eliminated somehow without altering the primary message. To do that, information about the issue needs to be communicated with less intensity and without altering its content. There also needs to be less flooding of information quickly. Yet, the rules must also allow the free and equal play of speech and action to continue. The current dysfunction does not allow for that free play of speech because it cancels out a basic part of the problem. A good example is a typical high school basketball team.
Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. Initially, there were no agreed-upon rules. Through the years, the game acquired extensive rules and regulations. Those rules were special because they allowed fairness and equality while allowing the players the freedom to play the game as an equal competition between at least two teams or people. Then, trained referees enforced the rules during the game without altering the contest itself.
Basketball is an example of the American free enterprise system where the players interacted freely within the rules. There have always been rules for the game because a lack of regulations would leave the players and spectators watching or playing under unpleasant and disorganized conditions. The important thing is that the special rules allow free interaction between players without giving one side or the other an advantage.
There are several reasons why current solutions for our political crisis will not work to aid effective problem-solving. First, a loose but large band of players, often described as a shadow campaign or the Great Reset, developed a secret and dishonest plan. In an open society, it is necessary to have honest public input and support when solving problems. Dishonesty and secrecy undermine confidence in the developers of the project. Second, this shadow group does not accept criticism and instead proclaims a vague ideology.
Last and perhaps the most crucial reason current problem-solving is not working is that the current group emphasizes diversity by racial and gender-related physical characteristics as the exclusive basis for determining diversity (WOKE Inc.,2021). In that book, the author, Vivek Ramaswamy, states that those Shadow groups "have weaponized a narrow concept of diversity to implement a monolithic social agenda increasingly intolerant of dissent."
Vivek suggests that they need to offer alternative ways to measure diversity. For example, in WOKE Inc., it is recommended that a superficial variety that focuses on race and gender exclusively makes it possible to accuse all critics of diversity as racists because they are not black or brown. In effect, reverse discrimination is now possible. However, in WOKEism, no criticism of the narrow version exists, even though a wide range of superficial diversity exists.
Any perspective that only includes the race and gender point of view cannot include other kinds of opinions for inclusion as candidates for power positions in WOKE corporate and government organizations. Under this new system, people are hired in organizations according to their ethnicity instead of the old system of hiring on ability and merit to do the job. In the meantime, all criticism is deemed racist without objective evidence of bias. In WOKE, Inc., diversity of thought is a more profound and fair solution to the narrow, superficial diversity of race and gender. Diversity of thought is the path to fair and equal diversity.
The answer is pretty simple. Create rules for managing stress that allow the internal content of any overly stressful communication to operate within established boundaries. For instance, as basketball evolved over more than the last century, it radically reduced the confusion and stress created by not having rules for playing the game. Those rules involved containment of the game without interfering with the game itself. By creating boundaries through guidelines, rules, or laws, everyone involved, player and spectator alike, understood the game better. As a result, the stress limiting the player's ability to play the game was no longer a problem. With special boundaries, basketball games became a pleasurable spectator sport with little, if any, unpleasant disruptions.
These rules were special because they left the interaction between competitors undisturbed. For example, there are extensive rules for the length and width of the playing area, the kind of floor, distinct boundary lines, as well as many in-game descriptions (i.e., distance from the basket to the free throw line) designed to enhance the quality and understanding of the game without bias for either competing team. These rules are available online at The International Basketball Federation's Website (FIBA) titled 2022 Official Basketball Rules. In this way, guidelines protect the game's fairness by using rules and definitions with which both teams agree. Yet, they do not alter the interaction between each side participating equally in the game.
This concept of special rules is the answer to our present crisis in communication. Unfortunately, this crisis involves a more complicated loose confederation of old civil rights activists, woke corporate ideologues, democratic political activists, most of the media, and sociopathic billionaires. This group has been called a shadow campaign or the Great Reset. Unfortunately, implementing this shadow campaign is wrong in most respects, including censoring issues with essential information necessary for solving problems.
In sports, basic rules define time limits on the game. Regardless of the sport, the beginning, the end, and dividing into parts (i.e., quarters, etc.) are part of the game. These rules make playing sports a pleasant spectator sport. The idea of free enterprise applied to sports has had rules all along. The free part of free enterprise has always been the unrestricted details of the competition of the participants.
Likewise, in our current political conflict, time limits on the amount of publicity allowed on all media would reduce the unpleasantness. These rules could establish boundaries by limiting the amount spent to purchase that information or by directly limiting the time allowed to market that information. The result would be less disruptive emotions and more problem-solving ability.
It has always been true that our Capitalist Economic System has rules or boundaries. The free part of free enterprise applies only to the capitalist traders as they interact competitively. These boundaries are in the process of being destroyed. We can no longer make distinctions between male and female, teacher and student, law enforcement and criminals, and normal and abnormal people. We are now all one, without merit. We are all part of an infinite cosmos without end. Our knowledge structure is in shambles because we now know nothing. We must reestablish fair and equal rules around competitive interactions that fit the definition of free enterprise.
The true answer for reducing current media stress is reestablishing boundaries for traders or players as they interact competitively, much like the game of basketball. The core interaction itself is allowed to range freely without restrictions. That is the free enterprise system. With boundaries established, the intensity of the stressors should be limited while allowing an honest examination of the problem. As in the basketball example, the game's rules, in tandem with a group of fair enforcers of the media rules, allow problem analysis to occur within the boundaries of a conflict-free mental zone.
These mental boundaries restrict the total amount of money and time allowed and allot equal amounts for all points of view. In addition, some of the essential boundaries may exclude foreign donors and donors with a conflict of interest. Much like the boundaries or rules of a basketball game, the mental limitations of media communication reduce confusion and stress. This way, stressors interfering with solving problems are reduced so that good judgment leads to efficient solutions.
So, as Western civilization descends into oblivion, we must establish rules and boundaries for harnessing intense emotions communicated over our media. The most straightforward rule is to place legal limits on national advertisements and discussions concerning political conflicts. Just as basketball is time-limited, important public depictions of intense conflicts must also be time-limited. The primary issues are not to be altered in any way. Of course, any other conflicts that create high unendurable anxiety should also follow the same rules.
A practical example of a time-limited solution would be to confine discussions of our current political conflicts to three weeks before the day of the elections. Mail-in voting should be limited to one week before the election. No votes will be allowed after the official election day. The result should be complete awareness of all aspects of the problem without the unpleasantness of overly intense emotions and impaired judgment.
It is advisable to develop some way to measure the intensity of unpleasant emotions generated by electronic media. Utilizing this complete problem-solving process will allow Western civilization to regain its ability to solve problems. In the meantime, we wade into the muddled confusion created by hundreds of fools. As the cartoon character, Pogo, once said a long time ago, "I is seen the enemy, and it are us."
Floyd Sours is a retired clinical Psychologist who has published two books and several articles. In addition, he has a manuscript titled "Perceptual Shift" that will be published soon. That book explains in detail what a dysfunctional Perceptual Shift is all about. My last book, "Burnt Offerings," is for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It’s website is burntofferingsbook.com