A Pattern Language for Navigating the Poly-Crisis and Fighting Narrative Control Wars
Pattern Languages allow us to develop new words and phrases to powerfully and easily convey concepts that shed light on real-world problems and suggest solutions, often with a splash of humor.
At about 1:50 in Eric Weinstein's1 interview2 with Chris Williamson3, Eric talks about his habit of coining acronyms and concepts and a criticism some have about him when they call such coined terms "clutter".
I think Eric's mind is unusually creative in the space of what many of us call "pattern languages". There are many pattern language books, beginning with Chris Alexander's original book "A Pattern Language/Towns Buildings Construction"4 on Architecture, followed by object-oriented programming authors, group meeting facilitation consultants and many other subject areas (domains).
I'd argue that everyone should familiarize themselves with Alexander's book even if they have absolutely no interest in Architecture because it is really a fantastic book about language and communicating complex ideas conveniently. Anyone who aspires to push the envelope of human thinking forward in any domain needs to be able to encapsulate complex ideas in short phrases so they can build even more complex ideas on top of the foundation of existing knowledge. Pattern languages are one of the best ways to do that.
I'm a software engineer, so I tend to use terms like "encapsulate" for this process, leveraging the programmer's term for making a complex function of a legacy program easily available as a simple subroutine call to a new program. In essence, that’s what we’re doing with pattern languages. We write a paragraph or a couple of pages to define a concept we’d like to reference frequently and give it a name. Then we can just use the name of the pattern in future, as long as we’re talking with other people familiar with the definition. And if they’re not, we can refer them to the definitions so they too can become more conversant in the domain (subject area) being discussed.
The idea of pattern languages sometimes reminds me of an old meta-joke (joke about jokes):
A man goes to prison for robbery.
After getting sorted, processed, and settled, it's lights out and he gets ready to sleep. After a few minutes he hears someone yell out "Forty Six!" and the whole cell block erupts in laughter. A few more moments pass and someone else calls out "Sixteen!" and again, the whole cell block starts laughing. This goes on for some time, people calling out numbers and everyone laughing at it. Eventually he leans to the side and asks his cellmate, "What's with the numbers?"
"Well, we've all been here so long that we've told each other all of our jokes. After awhile, we just numbered them, and now you yell out the number and everyone knows what it is and laughs."
"That's pretty smart," the man replies, "Can I give it a try?"
"Sure," says his cellmate, "just yell out any number between 1 and 100."
The man yells out, "Sixty Eight!"
Nothing.
"Eleven!"
Silence.
"Forty?"
You can hear crickets chirping.
He turns to his cellmate and cries out, "What gives!? Are these jokes not funny?"
Without looking up, his cellmate shrugs and replies, "Eh, some can tell em' and some can't."
Chris and Eric's primary example of such a term is "The Streisand Effect" . The Streisand Effect is an attempt to suppress information's spread in the public domain that actually has the opposite effect and causes the information to be spread more widely. It refers to an incident in which Barbra Streisand's attempts to fight for privacy of her personal information resulted in less privacy ultimately, but the effect is more often used to refer to information that the public has a legitimate interest in knowing. If, every time we wanted to talk about such an incident, we had to talk about "that thing where the information you're trying to suppress actually gets boosted by by your attempts at suppression" or some other clumsy many-syllabled phrase like that, we'd all be tongue-tied trying to express follow-on concepts, but if we can say something like "I think we should harness and amplify the Streisand Effect to fight censorship by publicizing stories about official attempts to censor and encouraging followers to boost the censored info", then we have increased the power and utility of our language.
I would like to see Eric's "Anti-Interesting Story" idea be included in a book on a Pattern Language for the domain of Second-Order Journalism and Cryptopolitics or whatever we want to call the domain now being intensely discussed by Eric, Chris and a constellation of other influencers in the space of figuring out what's wrong with the world and how to fix it.
I might like to contribute my own term of art "Academic Lynching" as a pattern language element to describe what happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen College. Some might say that's already covered with the new verb "Wakefielded" signifying when an academic or doctor loses their job, status, licensing or publication standings due to official retaliation for "heretical" ideas and speech.
If this article serves a purpose, it would be a call for action and authorship for people to propose new terms of art for a Pattern Language in our somewhat nebulously defined domain of fixing pressing world problems. Perhaps we could start with comments on this article for both proposed terms and contacts interested in participating? And, yes, I suppose I would volunteer to compile and lead in the editing of such a book.
One fun way to start thinking more deeply about pattern languages is to watch the Star Trek TNG episode, "Darmok"5, in which the Enterprise's universal translators fail to work with an intelligent culture they make first contact with. It turns out their problem is the new species speaks entirely in imagery or allusions to cultural stories that are illustrative of the dynamics of the situation at hand. So, when Darmok, the leader of the first contact species, says "Temba, his arms wide", the crew of the Enterprise is unable to understand, not because the words don't translate, but because they don't know the cultural story about Temba that is being referred to. In the story, Darmok sacrifices his life to try to bridge the communication gap because achieving communication between his species and the Federation is so important to him. The lesson, perhaps, is that if we get pattern languages right, maybe such sacrifices and losses will become fewer and further between.
This article is itself, ironically enough, an example of a term of art in a pattern language, because "pattern language" itself is a potent and briefly phrased concept that connotes a tool-maker's approach to language. In a brighter future when we say, "Hey-- what you just said is important and should be included in our Pattern Language for planet saving (or whatever)", everyone will know immediately what is meant by the phrase "pattern language".
We are a community of truth-seeking people who have glimpsed behind The Wizard of Oz’s curtain and seen some of the mechanisms by which the public are misled and manipulated by media, politicians and other official authorities who struggle to maintain their power and privilege through narrative control. We have our work cut out for us if we truly want to end such abuses. A Pattern Language enriches our ability to convey the complexity of what we’ve learned and to inoculate the public against diseases in the playbook of propagandists serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful instead of the public interest.
Notable Terms for a Pattern Language in the Domain of the MIC-Blob Complex
Academic Lynching / “Wakefielded” — This is a “Shoot the Messenger” tactic related to the logical ad hominem fallacy in which a researcher (usually in academia) who publishes conclusions that undermine the interests of powerful institutions or individuals is stripped of their reputation, employment and professional licensing in order to marginalize and discredit them and raise doubts about their work as well as fear among other researchers who might otherwise follow their example. Victims of academic lynching often see their research de-funded (loss of grants), employment terminated (or tenure denied), papers retracted and professional licensing rescinded in this pattern which is similar to whistleblower retaliation.
Anti-Interesting Story — (coined by Eric Weinstein) A potentially ground-breaking news story that is conspicuously ignored by professional journalists, often indicating tacit fear of retaliation, (See “Whistleblower Retaliation” and “Academic Lynching”)
Blob (Katamari Damacy?) — Since President Eisenhower coined the term “Military Industrial Complex” in his farewell speech6 in 1960, many have become aware that the systemic problem he named actually spans even more societal institutions including Congress, mass media, international finance (see John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”), academia and more. Eventually the list became too long and quickly evolving to be captured in an inclusive phrase or acronym and now “Blob” is suggested. Personally, I’m partial to the term “Katamari Damacy”7 after a video game in which a sticky ball rolls and accumlates everything in its path like a monstrous snowball.
Captured Agency — A government agency that has, through financial incentives and revolving-doors with industry become so heavily influenced and controlled by the industries it was originally designed to regulate that it is no longer capable of serving the public interest.
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender roles) — A typical rhetorical device employed by abusers when an attempt is made to hold them accountable for their abuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO. Example: Israel-Palestine propaganda playbook. https://www.instagram.com/zirafamedia/p/DB2CFEoukRt/?img_index=1
Invisible Hero Neutralization Mythology — A type of conspiracy theory in which unidentified and unconfirmable “white hats” are secretly working behind the scenes to arrest all the bad guys, right injustices, fix economic/monetary systems, etc. with an expected completion date in a near-term of about six months. The expected completion date is always moved out to fit the reality that no results are ever achieved. Often the expected results are vague enough that unpredictable events can be re-purposed as indications that the white hats are busily making progress. The mythology serves to neutralize opposition to the status quo by convincing the gullible that their problems will be solved by others so they don’t have to do anything. QAnon is the classic example.
Limited Hang-Out — When an official explanation of an apparent conspiracy becomes so untenable in the face of emerging contradictory facts that officials are losing control of the narrative, they will often modify the explanation to include the bare minimum of facts necessary to remain relevant or marginally in control of the narrative again. For example, “Perhaps the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, but (classified) evidence indicates Russia was behind it and we don’t want to trigger WWIII do we? So, we stick to the Lee Harvey Oswald Lone Gunman fiction— for peace!”
Manufacturing Consent — A term coined by Noam Chomsky in his book by that title in which he describes a system of narrative control that undermines democracy, creating consent (if not actual support) for wars and economic inequality.
Problem-Reaction-Solution — A play from the ruling class’s playbook that seeks to implement their agenda (Solution) by inventing or exploiting and then hyping a real or perceived Problem to get a desired Reaction from the public. For example, the “cap and trade” approach to global warming is just a massive giveaway of the value of the earth’s clean air to existing polluters without any compensation to humanity as a whole (arguably the impacted owners of the atmosphere)
Patsy (Fall Guy)— A mostly innocent human asset forced to solely take the blame for a conspiracy, such as Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK assassination
Revolving Door — Professionals often switch jobs in their careers, sometimes moving between large private-sector industries and public-sector agencies building up personal networks of associates and blurred allegiances such that their ability to regulate industry in the public interest is compromised by their allegiance to industry or their desire for a private-sector payoff after they leave the public agency.
Smart Mob Censorship — When social media and e-mail providers rely on user reports of inappropriate content to de-boost or spam-file content, it creates a mechanism that can be exploited by zealous antagonists of otherwise legitimate content to marginalize political messages they disagree with.
Streisand Effect8 — Sometimes attempts to suppress or limit the spread of information has the opposite effect and increases the spread of information in the end. Censorship can backfire. In some cases it might compare to the child psychology story of “Don’t put beans in your ears” (an old school story about kids doing something that would never have occurred to them if they hadn’t been told not to do it).
Whistleblower Retaliation — (See also Academic Lynching) Usually applicable to industry insiders who reveal their employers’ wrongdoing (sometimes violating NDA’s) or government employees who violate secrecy protocols to expose government wrongdoing, whistleblower retaliation is any kind of punishment leveled at an individual as a consequence of their outspokenness— job termination, fines, imprisonment, intimidation, theft, vandalism or murder.
(The above terms are just a beginning list to “seed” further discussions in development of a book-length glossary/dictionary with examples. Other related terms and definitions are welcomed in the comments below)
Eric Weinstein on X (Twitter): @EricRWeinstein
Chris Williamson on X (Twitter): @ChrisWillx
“A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander https://a.co/d/1UWDRFH
Star Trek TNG episode “Darmok” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
President Eisenhower’s farewell speech and the “Military Industrial Complex” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address
Streisand Effect, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
How about "Fauci-fied evidence:" When an agency or individual with inordinate power distributes taxpayer funds to create alleged “scientific evidence” that benefits specific corporate interests rather than the presumed beneficiaries of the supposed research.