This isn’t a dirt-road piece, except maybe in a figurative sense. It is a diary entry, though. I’ve been cooking in the kitchen all afternoon, which isn’t unusual for me, but it has been a while. I recently had surgery to repair some broken parts, and the recovery process hasn’t been trivial. A dirt-road ride is still a few weeks away. But just a week ago, spending an afternoon in the kitchen cooking seemed like a fantasy, too.
While bouncing around between the counters, I listened to a couple of half-century-old albums, and music has a funny way of taking my mind back to when the tunes were first heard. I was listening to Warren Zevon’s third album, “Excitable Boy,” from 1978, which was around the same time that I ventured out into the Great Wide World on my own.
It seemed like it was a simpler time back then—or at least that’s what my mind tells me. Life felt slower, more intentional, and that’s exactly what we strive for at 3mph. But am I a better person for having lived through that era than for what people face in today’s technocracy? Maybe. One thing I’ve learned over the course of my life is that there’s a great deal I don’t know.
What I do know is that the older I get, the wiser I’ve become. I was pretty stupid back in 1978, though I didn’t realize it until much later. Another thing I’ve learned is to question everything and be prepared to change what I believe. I think the key is to use first principles to deconstruct the absurd narratives ubiquitous in modern society.
It’s not like they didn’t browbeat us with false narratives in the 1970s and 80s during the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations; they did. It just happened a lot slower, through newspapers, magazines, and the evening news. There was plenty of time for pondering back then; in the 21st century, narrative travels much faster than verification and reality. Our minds are constantly bombarded with moral framing, shaming, and enough expert opinions to convince you that your own analysis is a waste of time – just trust the science (experts).
But institutional science has become a self-reinforcing narrative machine. Scientific method, rigorous testing, and transparent data have been jettisoned to make room for status, ideology, policy, and more money—much more money. Questions are moralized and politicized. Dissenters have their funding cut, or they’re completely ostracized. That’s what they call science in the present paradigm. I don’t know about you, but I’ll put my trust in first principles, which is what science looked like back in the day.
So, it seems prudent to consider practical steps to deconstruct any narrative:
- State the narrative in its plainest, least emotional form
- Make sure assumptions are testable
- Strip out the loaded language
- Break it down
- What physical or biological realities actually exist?
- What data patterns are undeniable? (You will have to look at the data)
- What is the simplest explanation (Occam’s razor)?
- Identify assumptions
- List what must be true for the narrative to hold
- Cui Bono? (Who benefits)
- Status, money, power
- Who’s shaping the narrative
- Media seeks outrage
- Academia seeks conformity
- Government seeks control
- Start with fundamentals
- Data is evidence, words aren’t
- Correlation does not equal causation
- Test with extremes
It’s sort of funny where a diary entry can lead. I start off in the kitchen baking bread and listening to Warren, and the next thing I know, I’m off down a rabbit hole, chasing Fifth-generation narrative warfare, but that’s life in the slow lane;<)
Fifth-generation narrative warfare is a form of conflict where perception, information, and social cohesion are the primary battlegrounds. Rather than using traditional kinetic weapons, state and non-state actors weaponize emerging technologies and social media to manipulate human psychology, exploit cognitive biases, and destabilize societies from within.
It’s been over three months since I ventured out onto the gravel on the bike, and I have at least another three weeks to wait before I go again. I hope I don’t go stark raving mad in the meantime.
