I am saddened that my reply didn’t make the cut Ben.

Otherwise, it is an interesting post. But specifically I do wonder if your intention is to point that a therapeutic tone coming from the left is a bad thing? Or do you intentionally leave it as a point of reminder with no leaning?

The languages of peace and understanding being weaponised against others for an agenda is truly ironic and truly a bad thing.

But I’m not surprised that they are finding it effective using psychobabble speak against Trump. Maybe you sit on one side or the other on an issue to Trump (I’m pretty sure I sit opposite in nearly everything), but one thing about near everyone can agree is that Trump is a verifiably a narcissist. Maybe the word “enable” is to trigger the memory of other enablers and narcissists.

In the same vein, maybe the “civil war” narrative is to trigger the amygdala and the fear response, which again is ironic because in this context the appropriate response in this war is to downplay that there even was a war.

But in either case, the narrative/language virus is triggering those strong responses by borrowing associated memories with those words.

Or maybe I’m writing a bunch of bullshit. Who knows?

Anyway I appreciate the troll on twitter. It’s really the best way to be. Elon in that sense has mastered it the most though probably.

Right? It’s literally like fighting a fever.

Hi Ben - thanks for the post. Our neural pathways create associations, linking related things or experiences. Those associations can sure act like a virus, contaminating our thoughts with feelings instead of facts. Your post made me think about how I think.

Having never been much a Twitter user I can’t attest to the infection, but I definitely felt a sense of nauseation with it as soon as I’ve started using it. I think the best way to innoculate yourself to the virus is first always asking yourself why? Even personally ET is a masterclass in that specific thing; it’s not about understanding how but always trying to get at why?

The how is usually pretty boring and almost always mundane, but the why? If nothing else, is always entertaining. Or sometimes horrifying.

Interesting observation and I think a large part of the response from the right is that they have a varying level of agreement and dissociation with the act of Jan 6. Some deny it happened. Some deny it was bad. Some deny it should have been stopped. Some think it’s still happening.

In the left’s argument, I think it seems to be self evident that Trump was a narcissist and he had enablers. There is no need to question that narrative and they are happy to be in lock step with it because that’s the unified belief system that was either manufactured or maybe naturally arose.

I think the note does a fine job on that and there’s nothing to expand on there. I only thought it would be of interest to discuss the “how” and the homework to be the "why*.

The water is always there and it’s not going away just because I’m discussing the currents. To miss the forest because of the tree is a shame, to miss the tree because of the forest is also a shame.

So true, Joey, and congrats on cutting the dopamine/norepinephrine habit!!

One thing I want to ask though Ben, with the advances in AI and already prior accusations of twitter bots, how much engagement are we certain is a human being?

Is it truly that it’s human being acting like bots, or is it bots acting like human beings on twitter?

It sure seems clear to me that that, whatever it was initially meant to be, social media has become something that is optimized for bots - to nudge humans towards behaving like bots and to allow bots to impersonate humans. The built-in incentives for bot-behavior just seem to grow stronger with every passing year.

There is definitely that perverse incentives for likes through the cheap dopamine hits. I counter act this by being acutely aware of my own failings and putting my self in situations or thoughts which makes me actively disliked or appear disagreeable.

Kaiser,
I have also found that asking “why” can be very helpful. And, also, for me, not intuitive.

This makes me wonder about how much of viral language is constructed versus coopted, or simply used.

The word constructed projects an image of racoons sitting around a room, like Mad Men copywriters, thinking of the next great tidbit of viral language. But, I suspect that 99%+ of the time their talent lies in simply sensing, intuiting, and discovering (analytically, or otherwise) which viral language trends are already taking place and which aren’t. Perhaps someone like Trump falls into the intuiting camp, and someone like Mike Madrid into the analytic discovery camp (in fact, it’s part of his job description).

However, once we depart from construction into the less nefarious usage, combined with the assumption of all of us being infected, what then separates us from the raccoons? Is it that they have more money? More social capital? Is it that raccoons are smarter, and they know the sins they are committing, while the rest of us are just viral victims?

If we limit the definition of raccoons to those who construct narratives, then there is a solid distinction. However, I am often uncomfortable with the image of powers-that-be constructing narratives. Of course, there are the standard wag the dog type narratives that are, indeed, constructed by the political class. But they are rarely so competent. Anyway, in the fast moving world of the zeitgeist troika, construction is an inferior tactic.

Ben uses another word - weaponization. This fits better into my ‘coopting and usage versus construction’ thread. Initially, weaponization seems to offer a path for differentiation. “Viral language doesn’t kill people, people who use viral language kill people.” But even here, the conflict is not resolved, because we all use viral language (knowingly and unknowingly) and most of us like to win (knowingly and unknowingly). We might not be throwing Twitter bombs, but maybe just family dinner hand-granades.

In our current world, even pre-troika, how many professions had construction and effective use of viral narratives as a core OKR? Are those professionals raccoons? Is it the case that the troika simply activated our latent raccoon tendencies? In which case, it is highly corruptive but also slightly more egalitarian (how much more or less is difficult to measure) in that raccoonery is no longer the purview of the elite.

Before the Nudge Fiat, there was the Fiat Fiat — one God, yes WMDs, no WMDs. It was constructed by the elite and consumed by the us, affording us a relative humility and the freedom to bake cookies for our neighbors. Today, with the lines being redrawn, how much of raccoonery is tied to the size of the individual’s megaphone — an amplifier function. One who previously used weaponized viral narratives at home, with wife and kids, in order to get what one wanted, now can do so on a larger stage. Same raccoon or different?

So, I’m still not sure how to resolve this conflict. I have said things like “we are all x% raccoons” — and I am inclined to stick to this resolution. I suspect this may make many uncomfortable so I welcome a clearer red line differentiation.

@TyB
“I dive for the remote the same way a Labrador retriever goes after a tennis ball.”
My first good laugh today.
Thanks,
Jim

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

To quote a legendary raccoon:

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

I don’t mean this to relativize your response. As much as I may question my own levels of raccoonery, I was really trying to get towards a more stable definition of raccoon. Much like if you and I were to continue discussing this, I would ask you ad nauseam to define “honor” and “shame” and “exactly the context that my ancestors for all their centuries of sacrifices asked me to uphold”. Without that sort of very long (perhaps endlessly Borgesian) discussion, I may struggle to know the difference between the viral meaning of those words, and your meaning of them.

As a side note on personal responses to raccoonery:

I’m currently sequestered to our tiny house with my first bout with COVID. This has made for my first opportunity since my son was born (16 months ago) to binge TV shows. Since I don’t watch on my own anything I would enjoy together with my wife on the big screen, I ended up watching this quasi-reality show called Jury Duty — “chronicling the inner workings of an American jury trial through the eyes of juror Ronald Gladden, who doesn’t realize that everyone, except him, is an actor.”

The show was quite entertaining and funny… and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that there’s a “reveal” scene at the end, when he finds out the whole thing was fake — after several weeks of living and interacting with these people (the jury was sequestered).

Anyway, during this reveal I found myself crying, almost sobbing. I’m not much of a cryer, but I do tear up at weddings, funerals, some movies… And in this case, I’m pretty sure I know why I’m crying. I am crying because of the pain associated with the idea of being lied to so profusely for so long. My empathy with this non-actor was very strong (although he himself wasn’t crying and he didn’t seem upset — so it was not an accurate empathy).

So I went online to find out if I was the only one. And indeed, many others cried, but according to their comments, none cried for my reason. They cried because of the climax of him being hailed a hero.

This was a show about honor and shame, much of it fake and some of it real. Was it also a show about raccoonery? I guess I thought so.

100% agree with you. That’s what I mean that it’s all symbols and stories. All of it. All of mine and yours and everybody else’s on here whether we recognize it or not.

I think “raccoon” in the personal context could be just be the manifestation with how optimistic your personal self image is. If you perfectly in love with yourself- a narcissist- they would be one more likely to label themselves as not a raccoon. If you perfectly hate yourself- depressed, self hate- you are more likely to label your self as a raccoon.

The truthful answer probably would not fall in either ends, but the person answering could never be able to evaluate themselves without personal bias.

So thus I think the answer of where you put yourself on the scale of raccoonery is not important because it’s mostly wrong, but it is however indicative of how positive/negative your self image is.

A tweet is to Twitter as a ______ is to X.

I’m infected with the idea of getting others (except Ben!) to put Twitter/X in the rear view mirror like @joeymoore9324. So…X… as in ex….as in “former”….hmm (insert mind-virus here).

Dang it, I’m nudging! (used to refer to it as selling an idea). Oh well:

https://images.app.goo.gl/EiJhzAiCRyhRK38y8

The above link is another favorite Calvin and Hobbes piece. (For you @Em_Lofgren )

I accept that posting this is some (small) % raccoonery, but the fun kind (ah, sweet dopamine).

I had this shower thought today:

There are two kinds of dishonesty: empathetic and egocentric (not suggesting that the empathetic one is better). Empathetic is one where a narrative is constructed based on a model of the receiving party – what they think, want, need, etc. Egocentric is constructing a narrative based on one’s own model and pushing it out to others. Both can be effective, but the dynamics underlying them, both internal and interpersonal are very very different.

I think that “what do I need to be true” fits squarely into the egocentric category. But, generally, there’s more of an innocence (in my opinion) to the egocentric category. Those people often believe their narrative. Empathetic dishonesty I think tends to be more intentional/devious.

Excellent article Ben.

I spend very little time on social media but still see myself as infected. I was talking with a friend today about language and how the meaning of so many words are changing and how those changes affect how we think about things. The example of war you used in an old article is a great example.

Being a person who spent much time working in the recovery industry, I do know something of enabling and that word is being misused in those posts —the similarity of language is quite staggering——we really are being told what to think. I must also admit, I did think you were referencing Jan 6 in your post.

You have any penicillin?

I think therapy isn’t necessarily bad, it just gives voice to the inner feelings of most people have trouble voicing. It’s just that when that feelings is voiced, it tends to have more similar linguistic ties. In this case, “enable” is the word that is most associated with what they are feeling. It just means lots of people probably feel similarly this way and due to being exposed to others voicing it a particular way, it all ends up blending together.

A similar sort of thing from the right was, “critical race theory”, “let’s go Brandon”, “thanks Obama”. It’s kinda funny because everyone seems to wake up one day and choose the same flavour of ice-cream.

Kaiser I hope you don’t mind if I pick on you. Here is the strong pull of the story itself. To the degree we started talking about whether ‘therapy is good or bad’ we have lost focus on the story about the story. (I know your comment went beyond this, as I said just picking on you a bit).

Therapy-related language is a gain-of-function mutation that the Living Metaverse has acquired. It acquired this mutation because the mutation afforded it success in today’s epimemetic environment.

This claim has essentially nothing to do with therapy itself! This is important because it means that, for example, criticism (like my own above) about WokeismTM and its appropriation and cartoonification of the language of victimhood and oppression will often badly misfire the reader’s own local install of the Living Metaverse IF they forget that we are talking about the story about the story.

I’ll try out another strong claim. Humans going to therapy is not what led to the rise of therapy culture! Missionaries did that - people who are professionals at iteratively building and distributing a message in order to see what has impact. It’s their job to seek out and employ these gain of function mutations. Cartoonification-at-scale is a Top Down process everywhere and always, not the result of Bottom Up human behaviors.

This is the claim I was really referring to when I stated that it was pretty strong. I think I can define and caveat my way to it being a true statement, but in general I’m not usually sure of much at all lol.

The abstractions we constantly do in our brains to be able to operate and agree on reality with other beings is definitely reminiscent of cartoonification but it is not cartoonification-at-scale (my careful caveat I added for basically the reason you brought up). Similar to the TM version of things vs the real version. I think true cartoonification is a process that requires the existence of institutions and their missionaries.

For somewhat related discussion of what is happening with language on the left, see Freddie Deboer’s writings about “affirmational ideology.”

Currently, an inescapable American cultural mode, particularly among the educated, is one of mandatory therapeutic maximalism and an attendant tyranny of affirmation. The therapeutic/affirmational mode assumes

• Wanting and not getting is disordered and a kind of identity crime

• Human life is meant to be spent in a ceaseless state of feeling “valid,” which is to say, affirmed and respected and paid attention to and liked; any deviation from this state is pathological and a vestige of injustice

• Good people spend a great deal of their time categorically and uncritically affirming others - telling friends and strangers alike that their desires are all legitimate, their instincts always correct, their perceptions of their own needs never mistaken or misguided, their self-conception compelling

• Correspondingly, we should all assume that anyone who is not affirming us is necessarily doing so out of a particular kind of politicized wickedness, that they are likely motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, or other kinds of bigotry, and if these specific accusations are not plausible, then by simple evil

• The job of society is to enable every individual to achieve every desire they believe that they’re entitled to, and the fundamental sin of our present order is not poverty or inequality or exploitation but the serial denial of the dreams of some individuals

• Society writ large has the ability, the right, and the duty to manage the psychiatric health of every individual

• Psychiatric health entails all elements of a person’s inner life, including basic aspects of the human condition like sadness, shyness, irritation, fear, disappointment, and the various other permutations of unhappiness, all of which are inherently pathological and disordered; there is no such thing as an appropriate negative emotion

• The ratchet of expanding the number of conditions that are seen as falling under the broad umbrella of mental illness goes only in one direction - we add things to the DSM, we never subtract; the necessary and correct evolution of mental health mores over time is for more and more people to find themselves diagnosed with more and more conditions, and it’s cruel and bigoted to suggest that there is an overdiagnosis problem

• The actual provisioning of medical care for genuinely pathological mental conditions is and should remain ancillary to the social conversation about mental health, which must instead stay fixated on the task of proscribing behaviors that might result in the psychic unease or unhappiness of anyone, rather than focusing on treating and curing medical conditions

• Claims of psychiatric need are a special kind of claim which can override the wants and needs of others, and simultaneously, everyone is free to make a claim of psychiatric need at any time; the obvious contradictions and destructive consequences of this combination are not to be explored

• We do the best for others by affirming what they already believe and validating what they already want; people are happiest and healthiest when they are encouraged to think that vulnerability is more valuable than resilience and that their pain is more beautiful than their strength.

See also his attempt at coming up with a clear definition of “wokeness”, in which absolutist moral rectitude through use of politically appropriate progressive language is taken as both the means and goal of political engagement. The Emotionalism point is particularly useful for this discussion:

1. Academic - the terminology of woke politics is an academic terminology, which is unsurprising given its origins in humanities departments of elite universities. Central to woke discourse is the substitution of older and less complicated versions of socially liberal perspectives with more willfully complex academic versions. So civil rights are out, “anti-racism” is in. Community is out, intersectionality is in. Equality is out, equity is in. Homelessness is out, unhousedness is in… This has the advantage of making political engagement available only to a priestly caste that has enjoyed the benefits of elite university education…

2. Immaterial - woke politics are overwhelmingly concerned with the linguistic, the symbolic, and the emotional to the detriment of the material, the economic, and the real. Woke politics are famously obsessive about language, developing literal language policies that are endlessly long and exacting. Utterances are mined for potential offense with pitiless focus, such that statements that were entirely anodyne a few years ago become unspeakable today. Being politically pure is seen as a matter of speaking correctly rather than of acting morally. The woke fixation on language and symbol makes sense when you realize that the developers of the ideology are almost entirely people whose profession involves the immaterial and the symbolic - professors, writers, reporters, artists, pundits. They retreat to the linguistic because they feel that words are their only source of power. …

3. Structural in analysis, individual in action - the woke perspective is one that tends to see the world’s problems as structural in nature rather than the product of individual actors or actions. … The fundamental unit of politics is not the masses but the enlightened person, in the social justice mindset, and the enlightened person is one who has attained a state of moral cleanliness, particularly as expressed in language… The only real political project is the struggle against the self; the only real political victory is the mastery of one’s thoughts. The distinction between the effective political actor and the morally hygienic thinker is collapsed. …

4. Emotionalist - “emotionalist” rather than emotional, meaning not necessarily inappropriately emotional but concerned fundamentally with emotions as the currency of politics. In woke circles, political problems are regularly diagnosed as a matter of the wrong emotions being inspired in someone. Someone feeling “invalid” is no longer an irrelevant matter of personal psychology best left to a therapist but instead a political problem to be solved, and anyone who provoked that feeling is someone who has committed a political crime no matter what the context or pretext. Good political action makes people feel better. To the extent that material victories like feeding the hungry are celebrated, they are celebrated because they inspire good feelings rather than solve corporeal problems. The famous woke antipathy towards the concept of civil liberties and personal freedoms stems from the triumph of emotions; things like rights are no match for the claims of any individual of psychic distress. Economic, legal, and political inequality are all relevant only to the extent that they make people from minority identities sad. The fixation on emotions fits snugly in the assumption of the individual as the basic unit of politics. It also ensures that woke politics assume the possibility of a frictionless universe in which everyone feels good all the time.

This is from

"Rocky didn’t like that
He said, “I’m gonna get that boy”
So one day he walked into town
Booked himself a room in the local saloon

Rocky Raccoon, checked into his room
Only to find Gideon’s Bible
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
…
Now, the doctor came in stinking of gin
And proceeded to lie on the table
He said, “Rocky, you met your match”
And Rocky said, “Doc, it’s only a scratch
And I’ll be better, I’ll be better, Doc, as soon as I am able”

And now Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room
Only to find Gideon’s Bible
Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt
To help with good Rocky’s revival, oh, ooh, yeah, yeah"

My 8th grade teacher, Mr. Morrison, would be so pleased that his teaching efforts have reached ET Forum. This song by the Beatles is based on a poem by Robert W. Service whose work is known to all Canadians, in this case The Shooting of Dan McGrew (The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert W. Service | Poetry Foundation) which Mr. Morrison taught us as a sister poem to The Cremation of Sam McGee (The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service | Poetry Foundation). Rocky Racoon was the Beatles pop culture replication (sort of a “racoonization” of Robert Service, depending on how one chooses to look at it.)

These are the stories from a time when people lived a real life. Stories from another time and place from where we live now. Mr. Morrison, being the genuine hippy spirit and good old lad that he was, wanted us 14 year olds to realize that these stories capture a real time not that long ago when life was what you had right in front of you. Want to own some frontier land? Kill the people on their now and show proof that you did and claim title. The world in which we grew up had even then long become a place where everything is done through petitioning the government, or the courts, and lobbying for by-laws or exemptions to by-laws, etc. As we swim in this water, and develop concepts, perhaps even labels such as “Racoon” it’s important to remember our human identities and the fact that our human nature (collective and individual) is inherited from our forefathers who lived in the real world, where family and community means so much more then it means in our waters today, because we live such a state-dependent and oligarchy-dependent existence.

It can be argued that what we in ET call Racoon is the manifestation of an adaptive survival strategy that allows the racooning party to thrive in today’s waters (social, political and economic ecosystems). Imo, the clear success of the “Racoon” strategy, whether or not it meets our individual or collective standards for ethical or acceptable behavior, should be respected as producing real tangible results in Rocky Racoon world.

So it’s important to remember the notion of the real world and the real fact that we all have the opportunity to protect the people and advance the interests that are most important to us by whatever means are available at the time. We owe it to ourselves, our ancestors and our heirs/descendants to keep clear heads during times like the present and not fail to distinguish the real from the conceptual. The concept of “Racoon” is meant to be helpful to us in our assessments and decision making. I certainly hope Ben would agree that it’s not meant to hold rigid laws of what does or does not make one all or part Racoon.

Edit: Lol. I can still hear Mr. Morrison relentlessly teaching us the proper way to deliver that opening:

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.”

This Twitter experiment struck me as being along the same lines as this note (I promise, no apparently pointless survey this time, I got the dumbass award of the week on that one, lol!):

I’m trying to wrap my mind around quite how this fits into the language/narrative theme, but I have a strong feeling it’s there, the puzzle pieces just haven’t joined yet.

Great note as always, Ben. I very much appreciate the self reflection at the end because as I was reading it I thought to myself, “I do that!” and “so do my friends/wife/loved ones!”

In reality, I’ve noted this exact thing in conversations and life, but not in a fully aware and articulated “we should be more aware of the words we have been taught to use and respond to” kind of way. More like when Neo notices something is off in the first act of The Matrix but can’t/doesn’t acknowledge it.

Bottom line: you do a superb job of naming the gentle nudges! Keep it up!