pp. 36-37 “Cognitive operations affect people’s perception of reality and decision-making, guiding groups of people and targeted audiences towards conditions desired by a geopolitical adversary. “Cognitive operations can also be effective tools for preventative actions to decrease the risks and threats of conventional wars. At the same time, cognitive operations can be tools of expansion or even specific colonization through transformations of outlook, values, and interests of targeted groups. Authors define hybrid cognitive control or expansion as a process of directed and controlled influence on system of values, outlook, knowledge, mental space, personal and social consciousness. Such control can give new opportunities for state colonization in the digital era. Hybrid cognitive influences may appear during communication at different levels and of different natures. “Cognitive operations can include specific sociocultural and linguistic parameters. Influence or expansion efforts do not arise in a vacuum, but are deliberate and clearly directed processes, and not spontaneous and self-regulating. Operations occur through deep knowledge of the mental space of certain target groups and societies, and an understanding of how social and mental vulnerabilities.7 Each of its components necessarily has its own customer, developer, and organizer. “Digital colonization can be treated as one of innovative and the most effective mechanisms in the digital era due to the influence on people and society using modern information technologies and artificial intelligence tools, carried out in and through cyberspace. Cognitive operations are aimed at managing the worldviews, interests, and values of people, unlike the seizure and colonization of a territory or economy of the state. That is, if in the past colonization involved the physical seizure of territories and economic systems, then in the modern world both can be controlled by transforming the cognitive sphere of the target groups through the use of digital technologies. Digital colonization can also refer to data harvesting and influence efforts, such as where “tech companies extract, analyze, and own user data for profit and market influence with nominal benefit to the data source.” "As a result, we analyze the concept of wars of the future, as wars for the outlook, mind, feelings, and perception of people. Again, there is no clear distinction between hostile operations carried out by a nation state against another, or influence operations such as microtargeted carried out against select individuals by a tech company. At times such efforts can go together.” End Quote
https://www.sophiastreet.com/depth-psychology-phenomenology-kabbalah-epistemological-models/ An Alternative Epistemological Approach: Husserl’s Phenomenology "One such epistemological paradigm comes out of the work of German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Husserl directly criticized the co-optation of philosophy and psychology by the scientific model, on the grounds that it constricted the ability of researchers to understand the psyche. He hoped instead to observe human consciousness – his word for the psyche — on multiple levels in order to identify its basic structures. "As he [Husserl] wrote in Crisis of the European Sciences (1936), he was frustrated with the prejudiced way philosophers and psychologists conduct their research. They start out, he complained, already ‘knowing’ what kinds of observations count as evidence for their conclusions. Yet they have no clear understanding of the relationship between observation, evidence and conclusions. Only a fresh, unprejudiced look at the workings of human consciousness can give them that clarity. (Kaplan, 2003) "In Husserl’s view, positivistic thinking is bound up in the “natural attitude” of perception. In the natural attitude, one thinks everything that happens in consciousness is a report on the external world. With this attitude, however, one cannot understand consciousness, because every attempt to look inside leads right back outside. So, Husserl created a tool of discernment he called “bracketing” or “reduction.” When he practiced it, he placed brackets around his experience of the external world, paying attention only to the relationships between items in his consciousness. By using this method, Husserl discovered that he perceived objects and ideas in multiple modes of consciousness. He experienced reality through sensation, emotion, memory, dreams, and more. He found that each mode of “intentionality” – consciousness reaching for its objects — had its own quality. Often multiple modes of experience were present simultaneously (Husserl, 1962/1913; 1997/1931). "One of Husserl’s most publicized insights can be used to explore and go beyond the limits of positivist psychology. Husserlconsiders the great metaphysical question of the distinction between the mental and the material. What makes them so different that philosophers have often found them to be two irreducible categories? Under phenomenological reduction they appear in consciousness as two distinct types of objects. Material objects appear as a series of perspectives, that is, different views from different sides, all of which are referred to a single object of consciousness. Each mental object, however, appears to be given whole at once, and related in time to other mental objects. (Kaplan, 2003) "When studying objects that appear to consciousness as a series of perspectives, it may be appropriate to study them through a massive accretion of facts. Similarly, objects that appear located in space may be studied on the model of the physical sciences. But objects appearing differently may require a different approach. Some of Husserl’s students described such objects: Merleau-Ponty (1962) explored phantom limb pain, recognizing in it a nonlinear experience of time. Levinas (1985) wrote about ethical awareness, describing a nonreductive apprehension of persons through responsibility. Husserl himself, however, focused on a general method for studying consciousness that would lead to the development of appropriate approaches to philosophy and psychology. Through that method, he aimed to discover basic structures of human consciousness that researchers in the human sciences could use to refocus their work. "While specific descriptions of modes of consciousness developed by Husserl and his followers have not been well-integrated into depth psychology, the spirit of his method has. . . . These methods are excellent examples of what Marcuse might call negative psychology, methods that challenge positivistic approaches, grounded in a broader understanding of the human subject.” End Quote. (Husserl was not writing politically but as a mathematician exploring the “science of consciousness,” and has much to teach us of “cognitive theory,”to include empathy and intersubjectivity, and how those can be both "positive” and “negative.” But as well, if one realizes it, of how those pertain to “Politics” and War, as the “Cognitive War Theorists” realize, and misuse. As did Heidegger, Strauss, Kendall, and other Schmittian/Straussians, and do. [See Hillsdale College and the Claremont Institute, and their auxiliaries in DC].) For those Conservatives who "recoil” at Marcuse’s name, as a “Western Marxist,” what Marcuse, and Gramsci before him, introduced into Marxist theory, already existed as “Group Psychology” theory, first incorporated into Political Psychology by the “Right” in pre-1900 France, and taken fully into “Theory” as Mussolini’s Fascist Theory. Now fully mobilized by the American Right, and particularly by the New Right,"and its promoters Peter Thiel, and Yoram Hazony, as it has been since Kendall, Burnham, and Buckley established a “theoretical basis for McCarthyism, and the Conservative Movement. Even if most of their fellow Conservatives were unaware that the “Cultural Project” they were embarked upon was the "expansion or even specific colonization through transformations of outlook, values, and interests of targeted group,” of the US populace, as a hyper-militaristic “colonization” of our very minds/consciousness! Mission Accomplished! And those are the Conservatives proudly proclaimed as precursors to Trump, and therefore, the Republican Party. As the Democrats too have turned to hyper-militarism, they should be honest and look too to the “Conservative Movement” as the precursors to their current party’s militaristic ideology!
Quote: "Cognition refers to the mental processes and abilities that are involved in acquiring, processing, and using information. It includes things like memory, attention, problem-solving, and decision-making.Consciousness is the state of being aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. It is the subjective experience of the world around us and the sense of self.Perception refers to the process of interpreting and making sense of sensory information. It involves things like seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling. The way we perceive the world is influenced by our cognitive processes and our consciousness.In summary, cognition is about the mental processes we use to understand and interact with the world, consciousness is our subjective experience of the world and ourselves, and perception is how we interpret and make sense of the sensory information that comes to us."
If you going to speak of “propaganda” and “intelligence,” one should at least be aware of the current state of affairs. Which extends to why Julian Assange is being persecuted and prosecuted for what he published. It contradicted the “Cognitive Operations” messaging of the CIA/DOD of how “peaceful” and “International Law” abiding the US DOD/CIA are, when it is not. And thank Trump for elevating the charges against Assange up to “Espionage."
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means
Conscious or not conscious of your own bad intentions, you suspect theirs to be still worse. Their notion of your intentions is the same. Measures of mere self-defense are naturally taken for acts of aggression. The same causes produce, on both sides, the same effects; each makes haste to begin for fear of being forestalled. In this state of things, if on either side there happen to be a Minister [of War], or a would-be Minister, who has a fancy for war, the stroke is struck, and the tinder catches fire.
Jeremy Bentham, 1789, “Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace.”
For more than a year, the USA has been openly threatening to bomb Iran. Some scenarios see the use of nuclear bombs. “All options are on the table” says Bush, Cheney, Rice, and most of the candidates in the 2008 Presidential race.
The reason? They say they feel threatened by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power technology, although they formally granted Iran that right when they ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. The IAEA has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. They say they feel threatened by Iran’s support of the Shia militia, especially those in Iraq and Lebanon. Iran has traditionally played the role of defending Shia communities, even in the Ottoman era. They say they feel threatened by Iran’s opposition to Israel’s expansion and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, which is against international law and many UN resolutions. The say they feel threatened by Iran’s energy exports and its ability to influence world prices. In general, they feel threatened by an independent nation in an oil-rich region they wish to dominate. Therefore, they threaten to bomb Iran. “All options are on the table.”
The UN Charter, Article 2, section 4 states that
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
America is a founding member of the UN and has thus made that provision a part of its own national law. According to the US Constitution, treaties constitute the highest law of the land. It is thus illegal under US law to threaten to bomb Iran. Nevertheless, they threaten war. They move excessive numbers of warships into seas surrounding Iran. They cultivate client states, build bases and deploy troops on all sides of Iran.
One consequence of these threats is that Iran must prepare to defend itself. On Oct. 20, a top Iranian military commander announced that Iran is ready to retaliate with 11,000 missiles in the first few minutes after an American surprise attack. The missiles are aimed at the military bases, ships at sea, and economic assets of the threatening nations. To launch that many missiles AFTER a shock-and-awe surprise attack means that Iran must have distributed the ability to launch missiles. There is not one launch button and one commanding finger on the button.
There are many buttons and many different fingers on them. War is now on a hair trigger, and the risk of accidental war is now very, very, very high. War might be started by an Iranian religious fundamentalist eager to go to heaven, or patriot eager to defend Iran, or a traitor eager to destroy Iran, or someone depressed or bored or simply misreading a radar screen and thinking a flock of birds are an incoming attack.
The USA has over 300,000 military and support personnel in the region around Iran, all of them now the target of 11,000 missiles on hair-trigger. That is what repeated threats of war have achieved.
The epilogue by Jeremy Bentham, written more than 200 years ago, aptly describes what is happening now. War seems inevitable. With war will come thousands of deaths, maybe millions, and whole economies will collapse, the first being that of the USA since it is most dependent on imported oil.
The epilogue quote comes from Bentham’s book, “Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace.” He coined the concept of “international law” and first conceived of the idea of a united nations. In the 18th century, those were merely ideas. Now, in the 21st century, they are reality. We have international law and a United Nations. But the USA and other belligerent nations have decided to act contrary to international law and in violation of the United Nations, with the consequence that their military forces and economies are now in jeopardy.
Among all of the options on the table, the most likely are self-destruction and national suicide.
FLOYD RUDMIN is Professor of Social & Community Psychology at the University of Tromsø. He can be reached at frudmin@psyk.uit.no
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