13. Freedom of coercion, manipulation

                Before moving on to the concept of the so-called scientific communism of Karl Marx, to its implementation in Russia by the Bolsheviks headed by Lenin, it is necessary to consider the importance of freedom for a person  in the light of ideas not of philosophy, but of sociobiology.
                Freedom can be represented as a natural state of the external environment, coercion as an open restriction of human freedom, his natural rights by governing structures, and manipulation as a hidden restriction of freedom.
                In society, it always takes some kind of coercion, in a mild or not so form, to ensure its integrity.
Restriction of freedom can be seen as payment for the effectiveness of progress from savagery to civilization.
             At the same time, each time it is necessary to check whether this fee is too high in a particular case and whether the declared efficiency is really such, whether we are not being deceived again.

                There are two ways to govern in a structured human community. Direct violence or manipulation of consciousness. Violence is an overt influence, and manipulations are an effect hidden from the object of influence. Both methods are carried out by numerous social institutions of the state.
                Violence is characteristic of a totalitarian state, but even there it is used, although widely, but limited. Violence is characterized by the fact that human behavior in a totalitarian society is determined not by its internal regulatory systems, but by external factors. Of course, breathing, digestion of food, thinking occur under the action of internal regulators, but they are also under pressure from external conditions.
                Violence can be thought of as a system of limiting flags set in the field of possible freedom. Of course, in a social society, flags are always displayed - these are laws, moral norms adopted in society. But the difference between a totalitarian society and a conditionally free one is in the number of flags and in the size of the zone allowed for possible use. To make the comparison more accurate, instead of flags, you can represent live barbed wire.
                Slaves, as well as prisoners of the GULAG, have the greatest restrictions on freedom, but life takes place there as a result of self-organization processes, which in these conditions create a bizarre morality, and their own laws, called concepts there. Some people adapt to these conditions of existence, others die prematurely, unable to adapt to inhuman conditions. In the human mentality, as in any properties of the organism, there is a norm of variability, beyond which this property cannot go, and the organism cannot adapt when external requirements exceed the limits of possible variability.
                The great physicist L. Landau, after suffering a car accident, lived for another 6 years, but as those around him believed he lost the ability to understand the subtle issues of theoretical physics, turning from a genius into an ordinary physicist. But perhaps, as he himself said, the fact is that the pains that tormented him constantly demotivated his mind. The external environment has changed and the results of the work of the mind have changed. Those around them believed that the efficiency of the mind had changed, but the direction of its work had changed.
                The mentality of slaves and prisoners is specific and does not promote creative activity in the sense that free people understand it. Prisoners may be smart and energetic, but their efforts will be aimed at obtaining some preferences for themselves. Gulag slaves can only be used as a mechanical force. The creation of the so-called sharashkas described by Solzhenitsyn "In the First Circle", where qualified specialists worked, is not capable of causing a flourishing of innovations, the same as in Silicon Valley.

                The second way to manage large societies is to create technologies for manipulating people's consciousness. We must understand that manipulations cannot be recognized as absolutely harmful, sometimes they are necessary.
                Manipulation is the impact on the perception and behavior of people through covert tactics to achieve their own goals. Manipulation changes the perception of environmental conditions for a person or group of people, creating a simulation of the environment. As a result, manipulation is capable of creating cultural adaptations to something that actually does not exist.  Manipulation sometimes forces people to fight the "windmills" of Cervantes.
                Ideology is created as a result of long-term coexistence of a system of manipulations that helps society to exist as a whole. Religions, like learning, are a system of manipulation, since they are not based on experience, but sometimes play a positive role for people.

                Manipulations, as a way of influencing others, are also found in biological evolution. For example, sacculina, having penetrated inside a decapod crab in the form of cells, grows there, like a tree, and changes the sexual identity of the crab, its hormonal background, thus manipulating its behavior. The male crab begins to take care of the eggs of the sacculina parasite, as the female crab takes care of its own, scattering them into the bottom current. More details about symbionts are described in Ch. nine.
                Let's try to answer 2 questions. How does this method differ from the first, not in technology, but in application results?
The second question - is it possible to do without manipulation?
                To the second question, we will immediately answer that it is impossible. If we look at the definition of manipulation, as we understand it, then education and training are suitable for this definition. And how can a person be without it? Everyone cannot understand everything. Therefore, you have to believe in many things, and this is already an opportunity to manipulate our consciousness. Democracy cannot be total. It is possible to solve some important issues in a democratic way, and this already requires a lot of resources. But it will not be possible to resolve many issues in referendums. After all, people do not have the necessary qualifications, information, and the desire to resolve issues that do not relate to them personally. So you can't do without manipulation here either.
                Education and upbringing have to be recognized as manipulations, but very useful for the individual. The definition of manipulation says that manipulation is performed to achieve the manipulator's own goals. But these goals of the teacher coincide (so it is customary to think) with the strategic goals of the student and manipulations only straighten the way to achieve the goal of learning. Otherwise, without the use of manipulations, it would be impossible to master the required amount of knowledge. Teachers are not inclined to believe that they are manipulating the minds of students. But it is so.
                In teaching, the student believes in some truths through the authority of the teacher. The authority of an adult is genetically based in the form of instincts. Raising a child, we take responsibility for assimilating the basic principles of being.
                If a student has learned 3 Newton's laws in the classroom, this does not mean that he has come such a long way as Newton, and is equal to him in understanding the problem. Shortening the path, and a radical one, became possible only with the help of the manipulation technique invented by teachers.


                MANIPULATION OR  VIOLENCE?


         Direct violence cuts off the mechanisms of human adaptive regulation developed as a result of cultural evolution, which leads to a sequential cascade of unfavorable biochemical metamorphoses. Direct violence, limiting a person's freedom, oppresses his psyche, reduces activity, because the mechanisms of internal regulation developed in the course of evolution do not have the ability to work.
         For example. If you pinch some of the arteries, then certain parts of the body that were supplied with blood by the arteries become numb. With prolonged clamping, tissue death can occur.
           Similarly, with external restrictions on freedom, some regulatory circuits die off. A living organism or its parts, unlike engineering systems, cannot be shut down for a long time for modernization or repair. All parts of the body must remain alive at all times. Restrictions of freedom with the help of violence can be seen as cutting off fragments of a living system. The consequences will be appropriate.

            After serving a sentence, it is not easy for a prisoner to join the normal process of life. If the entire nation for a long time is under control with elements of totalitarianism, then its average mentality changes and when the regime falls as a result of the revolution, a big problem arises to take the right path leading to civilization. Restrictions of freedom gradually turn a person into a slave, he turns out to be excluded from the civilization process, returns to the primitive state that took place thousands of years ago.
             This was the case in the USSR, after the collapse of the empire and the fall of the communist regime, when at the helm of the new Russia were taken by citizens who thought little about the country and dreamed of building their own well-being. The strongest pressure on the authorities in the 90s began to be exerted by the unexpectedly appeared bandits, oligarchs and bankers. A large group of people in government positions (officials) who did not manage to get rich were frantically looking for opportunities to trade in their powers.
            There was no way out on the right path with democratic procedures, with the division of the branches of power.
         Democratic development requires a large number of intelligent and appropriately motivated people in governing structures who can implement sound policies. They must have a homogeneous mentality motivated by the interests of the whole society. Handsome Jews Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Smolensky and others are wonderful people in themselves, but not sufficiently integrated into the main nation, finding themselves close to the power, and some in power, pursued their own narrower interests.
              Consciousness   manipulation does not require limiting flags set by an external agent. The consequence of manipulation is that a person begins to limit himself in certain aspects of activity and even thinking. This does not depress the psyche to the same extent as external coercion, it is more easily tolerated, it looks for a person as a natural adaptation to a changed environment. In fact, it was not the environment that changed, but its perception by a person as a result of the manipulation of his consciousness.
                For example, any religion is a belief, a certain ideology that motivates a person to act in one way or another. But religion, faith, these are eternal values, like genes in genetics, but you need to manage every day and every day you need to invent new topics for manipulation.
                For these purposes, the ruling elite uses the media, professional propagandists, and attracts media people to participate in manipulation.
The regular propagandists of our television Soloviev, Skabeyeva, Kiselev and others receive substantial remuneration for their work, which provides them with the opportunity to buy real estate and foreign citizenship in the West, and teach children abroad. Why do N. Valuev and other athletes sit in the Duma? So that ordinary people know that here is a simple guy Kolya Valuev in the Duma cares about them and voted correctly in the elections.
                Political strategists (another kind of manipulators) figure out how to attract voters to their side. How to show people with insignificant results of governing the country that in some sense we are again "ahead of the whole planet." Their hard job is to convince everyone that Putinism is our best choice, that there is nothing else equivalent around.
                It turns out almost as in Mayakovsky, the propagandist of communist initiatives of the twenties of the last century, in his famous slogan: "Nowhere but in Mosselprom." There was such a union of state enterprises from 1922 to 1937.


                METHODS  OF  MANIPULATION.

             In a social society, there are many ways to manipulate. The choice of method depends on:
1. The environment in which manipulation is required.
2. Material capabilities of the manipulator (person or organization conducting the procedure)
3. Ingenuity and his experience in such procedures.

                Any method of manipulation necessarily boils down to a certain temporary change in the mentality of people, so that they, with this changed mentality, consider the policy (economic, demographic and any other) pursued by the existing elite as necessary and expedient. So the people approve and support, and the elite continues to consider themselves the highest caste, modern boyars.
   Generally speaking, manipulations often change not the basic mentality, but only a part of it, formed by simulations of manipulators.
                For example, when you put on glasses with color filters, the colors of the surrounding objects seem to change. The colors naturally remained the same, their perception changed. Among these objects to which the gaze is directed, there is one for the sake of which the manipulation was performed. He used to look unattractive. But he looks great with glasses. The manipulator invites you to conclude that this color of the object can be approved.
                The recipient agrees, not realizing that he is looking at reality through a filter. The task of the manipulator in this case is to construct the necessary filter and push it up imperceptibly and unobtrusively, like thimbles in the market, on the eyes of a person or a group of people.
          Such manipulations change the mentality (phenotype) without changing the basic set of MEMs. This mechanism resembles the mechanism of epigenetic inheritance, when inherited traits are changed not due to changes in the genome, but due to the fact that some genes stop reading, for example, due to DNA methylation. Methyl groups that stick to chromosomes make it difficult to read some genes, which changes the way proteins are formed. The external environment thus influences the inheritance processes.
          But this type of manipulation is reversible. It is worth removing the filter and the mentality will return with some time lag to the previous value. To prevent this from happening, the media continue to repeat attempts at manipulation in different keys every day.
                And then, when the media stop pouring oil on the politics of the elite, for a long time some people will remember it as bright and correct. She becomes an archetype, as Jung liked to say. Some people even today talk about the wise leader of the past, Stalin. Everything inhuman, terrible that he did is forgotten by them and only the bright is remembered. This is the property of memory. But we must also remember the price.
               In the process of serious manipulations, calculated for a long time, it is important that the ideas that need to be introduced into the recipient's brain, which could previously be in consciousness, penetrate deeper, sink into the subconscious, become part of his personality, part of his new mentality. Some measures are needed so that the corrective glasses do not accidentally fly off the nose, revealing the true picture. However, if after a while the glasses fall, then it may be too late to punish someone and change something.
                The most important weapon of the Bolsheviks in 1917 was shameless manipulation of the consciousness of peasants and proletarians. They promised in slogans: "The land to the peasants, factories to the workers, power to the Soviets, the future will be determined by the Constituent Assembly." None of what was promised was done.
               The peasants, who made up 80% of the population, were shown a big proletarian fist. Land was given to them for a short time, allowing the expropriation of land from the landowners, they were given foreign land, and after a while the peasants were herded into collective farms, socializing the land and at the same time the peasant cattle, acting by proletarian compulsion, dictatorship.
                In the constituent assembly, the Bolsheviks were in the minority, so it was closed, barely allowing it to open. Everything has already been decided without a constituent assembly. The Bolsheviks did not trivially engage in electoral fraud. The sailor "Zheleznyak", girded with a machine-gun belt, entered the meeting room and ordered everyone to disperse because "Guard was tired." And whoever had questions about legitimacy, the Cheka promptly resolved these issues.
                The initial manipulations gave the Bolsheviks time to create institutions of coercion, suppress the discontent of the masses, create labor armies, and form by conscription the largest Red Army in Europe.
               Further, the country was governed by terror. The peasants were made serfs, deprived of their passports, and the great construction projects were entrusted to the slaves of the GULAG. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat in action.
                It must be understood that constant manipulations change the consciousness of the manipulators themselves. Quite intelligent and gentle in character, one of the main ideologists of the Bolsheviks N. Bukharin wrote in 1920 in his book intended for future managers: “Proletarian compulsion in all its forms, from executions to labor service, is, paradoxically sounds like a method of developing communist humanity from the human material of the capitalist era. "
                In those years, the mistaken person was usually not fired, but subjected to "re-education." For the first time, Khrushchev's dismissal from a leading post, without re-education, happened in 1964 only under Brezhnev.
       But in March 1938 N. Bukharin, who had stumbled somewhere in front of Stalin, "underwent re-education" by shooting. He was not rehabilitated in 1956, although it was clear that he was a communist, and he remained an "enemy of the people" until 1988. Too many famous names that participated in his conviction, signatories to the Mikoyan commission, were still alive in 1956.
                The offensive of civilization on an archaic society should not be understood as its total superiority, superiority in every aspect. We can only speak of superiority on average, if we average on a sufficiently large scale.
                In our memory, episodes of the happy past are preserved, and from here an extrapolation is sometimes made to the entire past era, and it suddenly begins to seem to someone like a lost paradise. But we must understand that this feeling arises due to the selective properties of our memory. People who lived in the era of Stalinism, even the most successful, can only deeply sympathize.
                The current Russian government has inherited ways to achieve results through manipulation, coercion, without democracy and self-government, causing economic stagnation in a country with a rich resource base. The elite will hold on to power until the situation becomes unbearable for the citizens and it (the elite) is expelled in disgrace. But then it will be impossible to carry out meaningful reforms and the country will again find itself on some random path, on a street that “does not lead to the Temple”.