A Cunning Plan

How to subvert communication in eight easy steps

What would you do if you wanted to destroy the interpersonal communication power of the most powerful global communication technology ever created (i.e. the Internet)?

Now that translation powers are a fully integrated part of the internet, you wouldn’t be able to use different human languages to limit its powers of communication.

• Since the Internet is essentially a vast ocean of speech, I suspect you’d begin by making smaller mass communication platforms within it. But make the accepted content as short as possible, so that little nuance or context is available.

• You’d want to get people posting personal and opinion content, with as little reference to research and prior wisdom as possible. This would get them socialized away from several thousand years of properly studied communication (books) that refer back to previously accumulated wisdom.

• You’d make it as public as possible so that an individual who wants to be credible and taken seriously would be required to use their real name. Now, their ego would be on the line in front of the “whole world” if they’re wrong.

• Then you’d make sure that people who don’t care about personal credibility but only want to criticize can hide behind anonymous accounts and take potshots at others without regard for the long-established norms of civility and competency in public discourse.

• Next, create a system where the most attention-grabbing content gets rewarded and continues to grab more and more attention: a “rich-get-richer” type of system.

• In fact, to make it even more confusing, throw in some bots that aren’t human, but that initially appear to be, to interact negatively with human-created content.

• Once you’ve socialized people to accept the idea that bot accounts exist, create generative AI bots that appear and sound much more human so that it becomes nearly impossible to tell if content is created by human or machine.

• This would create the perfect scenario where people would post increasingly extreme content, with little nuance, context or received wisdom—and then put them into a double-bind where they would have to defend their egos using the same limited, unnuanced formats. Where they also won’t know who they’re speaking to, or who is speaking to them.

Congratulations! By the time you’re done, the Internet will have become almost useless as a tool of true human communication.

And the real world as a bonus

Certainly, real human connection and empathy will be severely limited. You will have succeeded in getting people to see each other as not fully human. In fact, they’ll be viewing and experiencing each other more as machines. Which is great, because pretty soon the plan is to flood not only the Internet, but the whole world with machine-beings. You’ve gotten the world ready for what’s coming.

Now, what could have once been the most powerful communication tool on the planet has been subverted. Growth in real wisdom, wholeness and true knowledge on it will be limited. The ability of groups to organize on a vast scale will be restrained because people of like mind won’t be able to have public conversations without being constantly trolled by those who want to disagree.

And if you’re lucky, by the time you’re done, you’ll have been able to modify communication in the real world as well. The new online culture you’ve created will have bled over into everyday discourse. People will have become isolated in their houses, trying to “save the world” by arguing online. They’ll view each other with more suspicion and less compassion. They’ll look and smile less at each other.¹ They’ll spend less time connecting with neighbours out-of-doors or helping others. To avoid conflict, they’ll begin to drop subtle hints or questions when they meet people in person, in effect using secret codes to better place others into the artificial “camps” they’ve encountered online.

Congrats! As a bonus, you’ve created an “us/them” world devoid of compassion and the ability to communicate or innovate.

Gee, what kind of forces would want to subvert communication like this?

No. Don’t respond with, “Well, that’s what God did at Babel.” It’s not the same. And on some level, we did this one to ourselves.

Seriously, what kind of forces would want to do this? Don’t say the name of your favorite “them”—that “enemy” group that you want to blame every bad thing in the world on.

Think about it. Who or what would want to do this?

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That’s why I write about principalities and powers. Sure, some human conspiracies are true, no doubt. But if we can open our minds to the possibility of a spiritual realm, we’ll see that we’re being influenced by spiritual forces. That’s the real conspiracy behind the conspiracies. Don’t get conned. Don’t get sucked into fighting other people. That’s not the real battle.

And if you’re not equipped to battle against spiritual forces you can’t see, consider getting equipped.

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Photo: Meg Mittelstedt

A Personal Note to Missives Subscribers

First of all, a big welcome to all new Missives from the Edge subscribers! And a very big thank you indeed to

Paul Kingsnorth

for both subscribing to Missives and recommending it on his

The Abbey of Misrule

. (Your championing of Missives buoys the spirit, Paul! Sincere thanks.)

I’ve had a flood of new subscribers—which is both encouraging and slightly daunting as I think about my initial “big plans” for Missives. Nonetheless, it is incredibly gratifying to discover that there are a lot of people who think that this is a worthwhile conversation. To all the new subscribers who read through several posts this past week—as well as my initial and “About” posts—to get a sense of what may be coming—my sincere appreciation.

To those of you who have been subscribers for several months, a word about scope is due. Those initial posts describe a pretty broad vision of what I hope to accomplish here:

We’ll talk about what it means to tend a place, what it means to resist the Machine, and what it means to embody the King as a beggar in a society on the edge of disintegration. I hope we will find examples of modern saints quietly living as reflections of Jesus. I’ll be searching for examples of a living faith, for those rebuilding in the midst of the rubble, and also for stories of those Christ-curious who are perhaps waking up to the realization that ancient Christianity is the way forward for society.

In actuality, I’ve found myself apprehended by this series on “Thinking About the Machine” much more than I initially anticipated—“captured” by the subject matter and thus reluctant to move on to additional topics I’ve planned. I will be getting to some of the other content, I promise—just perhaps a bit more slowly than anticipated. Ultimately, the frequency of my ability to publish here will be directly determined by the support of you, my readers.

I’m in this for the long haul. My hope is to be able to spend a much higher percentage of my time writing for Missives, as I have a lot of worthwhile content that I’d like to be able to put out. I hope (both in content and method) to counter the online tendencies I’ve described in the “Cunning Plan” piece above, as well as to break some new ground. Ultimately, I want to be writing about solutions more than diagnosing problems (though the two often go hand in hand).

All this does require a significant commitment of time to accomplish, however, so I hope you’ll consider making a pledge to support this endeavour. Sometime in the near future, I will be opening this publication to a patronage-style, paid subscription model. My posts will remain open to all, but be supported by the contributions of readers like you who value what I’m doing.

If you’ve found that the work I do here has been helpful to you in some way, please let me know that by pledging your paid support. It means the world to know that readers value what I write and want to see more of it.

Another way to back what I do here is to send Missives to friends.

And If you’re reading Missives from the Edge for the first time, please subscribe!

Thanks for joining the conversation!

Your voice is needed, and we’d love to hear it in the comments below. However, if you choose to abandon the voice of love in your comments, remember that you are abandoning all of your beneficial power.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe, alone having the ability to create change for the better. Indeed, it is the only force that ever has.

1. “A smile is the beginning of love.” —Mother Teresa