Beware! Your Identity and Personality Are Being Targeted by Invaders

My Dear Friends,

For this, the third issue of our bulletin we thought we’d look into this question posted in the comments section by our friend Esra: “Influencers, industries and society are trying to fit everyone into a certain mould. How do we disrupt this game and set our own rules?”

Living in the 21st century involves a process of trying to exist within a giant perception-management system. Society, industries and popular culture strive to cram us into a certain mould. Although we may feel free, most of the control is actually in the hands of perception-hunters. Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously said 

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” 

300 years later the chains of the 21st century may be more subtle, but they enchain us no less strongly.

When I ask myself what real freedom is, the thing that comes to mind is extracting oneself from a script written by others, to write our own story. Because in this world our wallets, our attention, our perceptions are all targeted by someone. Most commercial structures are dedicated to getting us to choose their products and make a profit. Their primary goal is not the individual's benefit; this is at best a secondary objective. Likewise, political power centres manage our perceptions to win our favour, gain votes and maintain their power.

Perception management has become so sophisticated that unless we are vigilant, we may find ourselves in the position of a pawn being pushed around.

Let’s give examples from the healthcare sector, of which TheLifeCo is a part. Health campaigns sometimes foster fear by oversimplifying information and data or exaggerating certain harms; others finance research designed to argue that the real cause of obesity is not sugar but inactivity. Certain structures seize our perception by announcing distorted results exaggerating the effectiveness of drugs while downplaying their side effects.

In short, a celebrity or a large institution may at any moment seek to attract our attention with impressive messages and flashy words. The question is, how do we disrupt this game and set our own rules?