The Sense of the Status Quo

Wrote this on facebook. Thought I'd share it here on the blog, too.

We have a short memory as a culture, and a tendency to believe and think that the way things are now is the way they have always been. The idea of the status quo is very strong, and yet - false. Is it a faculty we've developed in order to handle the seeming chaos that surrounds us?

The world is in a state of constant change, so much so that reacting to every alteration in our surroundings would be exhausting, and occupy our every thought and moment. It makes sense we would develop a way, a means of perception, that allows us to "freeze" the world so as to react to it properly, a way to filter out trivial changes that need not concern us immediately.

This may be getting all heady and meta, but bear with me - it means we carry with us a kind of mental image of the way the world IS which governs how we act in and react to the world, and that we tend to maintain that image as if it were a permanent state when, actually, it's a flux state, constantly changing - both the interior "image" (in small, often imperceptible ways) and the world (always in motion).

That puts the urge - the need? - to create an interior sense of status quo on an instinctual level - it's a survival skill. It's then understandable that our sense of the present is as strong as it is - however wrong in its sense of permanence it is. We could be wired to have a short cultural memory.

It seems that, all together, we maintain a sort of cultural version of this sense of status quo, either by individual agreement and maintenance, or, if non-local mental phenomena are allowed, through a sort of communal mental sense of the present here-and-now, the status quo. At the very least, we often assume others have the same inner mental image that we do, until proven wrong, and act as if there is some larger bond.

This "faculty" - this self-creation of the status quo - is apparently a fluid thing, perhaps easily manipulated due to its lack of identification. We don't think about how we perceive the world or our sense of now - and ordinarily, why would we?

Why? We need to become more aware of our sort of "base of perceptions" because it's under assault by those who would shape the culture's sense of status quo to better reflect their own private views, views not necessarily in line with those of our Democratic Republic here in the United States and democracies around the world. Awareness that we carry such a mental image within our minds might make it less vulnerable to attack.

No conspiracy theories here. There's no need. We see wealthy individuals, corporations, companies and other well-funded interest groups spending their money on media buys and politicians to change the cultural conversation on a national level. If they're doing it in the open, it's not a conspiracy. Why should they hide? Recent rulings like Citizen's United in the US have said money is equal to free speech - they can be loud and proud with how they spend their money to influence politics and the culture.

We can blame the media, the world of advertising and marketing, for creating the tools we use to manipulate our inner sense of status quo. When it was only being used to tweak that subtle mental image to introduce an artificial NEED and create a buyer and consumer, the power of our collective imaginations to change the cultural sense of what we need -based on the manipulation of our inner sense of status quo - wasn't yet evident.

In other words, it was "fine" when we were told to fear "simple, chronic halitosis" - bad breath - and use mouthwash (one example of an idea advertising introduced into the cultural sense of status quo). We didn't "need" to fear the manipulation when the ends were to take our money and make us all more "minty fresh".

When these tools began to be used to manipulate the culture politically, a bomb went off. Literally. Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" ad used footage of an atomic bomb exploding - and the implication this was what Barry Goldwater's election would lead to - in one of the world's first highly manipulative political TV ads. Effective? It was September of 1964 - Johnson won easily two months later. The ad didn't even mention Goldwater by name. And? It only ran once.

It's still world-famous.

With the discovery that media messages could alter the culture's very concept of status quo on a political level, the race was on, as it had been with consumer goods, to see how far those creating the messages could push their manipulations - how far could they go? What would people believe?

Thankfully, even without an "up-front" conscious awareness of this sense of status quo, we have defenses against some of this manipulation. Those crafting the messages are required to be more subtle as we grow more savvy. Thus the constant testing and probing to see what we will "believe" - or what beliefs we will allow into our inner, mental sense of status quo.

We need to develop an awareness that this sense of a status quo exists as a mental image within our minds, that it can be manipulated by external forces, and that we, in turn, project and maintain a larger, cultural sense of status quo. Awareness is a preventative defense and leads to strength.

Strength is needed, for this manipulation has come at a price. Ours is now an age of many "status quos" - the world has become fractured, and yet, more focused, in smaller ways. As it became more difficult to manipulate the larger community's sense of status quo, and as first cable TV and then the internet allowed for it, those crafting their messages wrote off altering the status quo of the masses in favor of finding and growing smaller, already receptive audiences. Why try so hard?

This happens across the political spectrum. It is not political equivocation to say this - all sides now engage in this meta-manipulation of their audiences. However, one of the keys into manipulating the cultural sense of status quo favors those on the so-called "Conservative" end of the spectrum.

Of course, there may be a natural appeal to our cultural sense of status quo in anything that calls itself "Conservative" and claims that it is dedicated to preserving and maintaining the status quo. And, indeed, this does work on the "right".

On the "left", however, when one's sense of the status quo finds the ideas proposed by Conservatives to be regressive, backwards, or destructive, Conservative does not equal maintaining the present state of things but trying to throw the culture into reverse, which doesn't just create disagreement but also closes the door to manipulation.

Above and beyond this facile level, however, the most powerful entry into our inner sense of status quo seems to be through an appeal to a lost golden age of some kind. This does favor the Conservative message, though appeals to centrists and those on the left referencing the "Clinton Years" or "Obama Years" can be evidence of this messaging.

Any appeal to a lost golden age should be a red flag - you are about to be manipulated. Any suggestion those appealing to you are capable of bringing back that golden age should be a bigger red flag - they are lying to you. The only golden age each of us can bring on is our own.

Beware the one who preaches the virtue of individual struggle, yet then claims they are all about lifting you up. Beware those who say they are working for you as they preach each should only look out for oneself. And beware the politician who suggests that their election alone is all that is necessary to bring about the return of a great, golden age, as if your vote or support alone is all that is required of you to make things happen.

The insidious nature of these appeals to a lost golden age is that they draw their strength from our own longings. The less satisfied we are with our place in the world, the more open we are to this messaging. The messages reinforce our inner suspicions or beliefs, sometimes the worst of these.

When the worst, most repressed feelings, rise up, suddenly reinforced, they sometimes spring forth with amazing power, let loose. Psychology suggests things we suppress and force into the subconscious or unconscious can return with near-demonic force and "possess" us. When they rise again to consciousness, they can be uncontrollable.

Drawing political power by loosing these "demons" of the unconscious seems a dangerous thing. And yet, it's done now as a matter of course, with promise of a return to a mythical, golden status quo that never existed. Creating a mythical goal creates cognitive dissonance in those whose status quo isn't currently so golden, which generates anger, an energy that can be used and manipulated.

All this because we aren't aware of the way we maintain a filter on the world, of the way we perceive a status quo inside our minds making the ever-changing world more manageable, and project and maintain the same sort of sense of status quo on a larger level for the community around us.

Our short cultural memory may be the result of this need to maintain an illusion of a permanent status quo. But the concept's vulnerability, and our vulnerability to manipulation thanks to our ignorance of it and its power, means we need to grow more aware of the illusion, the filter, or whatever we want to call this maintaining of a sense of status quo.