Cultural Engineering

Soft Cultural Engineering

Soft cultural engineering takes its form in words, songs, art and music of all kinds, newsletters, speeches and circulars. In all these ways difficulties are identified and ideas/aspirations raised as to how they can be solved. Values are changed. The ground is prepared for the eventual nitty gritty of hard cultural engineering when the rules and systems underlying new institutions are finally laid down. We can look at various forms of soft cultural engineering in more detail.

Ritual, ceremony and magic

Ritual, ceremony and magic (including prayer and gods) Powerful art, ritual and rhetoric can progressively change people's values and beliefs. Starhawk wrote about Magic, Sex and politics – the golf game incident – the magic of cosmology, relativity and quantum theory. Religions and fascist dictators have used ritual and ceremony very effectively.

Experiential change

Experiential change – actually being exposed to different ways of doing and being. This can happen through acts of nature – climate change for example or loss of topsoil. It can happen when Management Consultants conduct workshops and team building exercises. Humans are remarkable quick to adapt and this has been an important evolutionary advantage.

Example

It can happened by example. After the fall of the roman empire the early celtic christians promoted their way of life and beliefs very effectively by creating monasteries all over Europe. Their beautiful buildings, music, gardens, and many technical advances were a powerful promotional tool for their evangelical objectives. As yet we have not seen anything like ecosteries being created by the post consumer or environmental movements. Cultural change can be effectively promoted through practical example.

Martyrdom

Martyrdom is probably the single most powerful tool of the soft cultural engineer. This has been amply demonstrated throughout human history yet governments and leaders of all types seem constantly to forget this as they persecute or extravagantly punish those whose actions they dislike. (US drone attacks in Pakistan are a perfect example of unwitting cultural engineering – hugely benefitting the islamic extremists. Just as Rome helped the Christians by throwing them to the lions, so the US are giving massive help to their enemies – quite bizarre but then the excitement of short term political gain cannot be ignored!)

Pearce was the classic exponent of the power of martyrdom. In the late 19th century he wrote at length about his belief that it would only be through martyrdom that the Irish could rid themselves of British rule. He even founded his own school where he promoted this teaching. So he had a ready band of followers ready to stage the symbolic Easter uprising of 1916. Winston Churchill who was then Britain's Commonwealth Secretary duly ordered the leaders to be executed and Pearce's plans were completed. The popular explosion of feeling against these executions became an irresistible springboard for Irish home rule.

Charismatic leadership

Actions and statements by celebrities are particularly powerful in this regard – whether the celebrities are monarchs, footballers or pop stars. Turn ups on trouser bottoms appeared after King Edward rolled up his trousers so they would not get wet at the Windsor races!

Corporations will pay big money for a new Chief Executive when they believe his (or her) charismatic leadership can boost corporate culture in beneficial ways. There are many examples of soft cultural engineering being attempted in this way through product endorsements.

Non-violent/symbolic direct action

Michael Davitt was the Irishman who first pioneered the successful use of well organised non-violent action as a tool for cultural engineering. After an early life of running guns for irish rebels he came to see that violence would always be met by greater violence from the occupying power. His answer was to raise money to build up a fund which could be used to keep workers alive if they withdrew their labour from bad landowners. The englishman Colonel Boycott was his first target – forced to give up his estate because nobody would work for him. Hence the boycott has become a common tool of the would-be cultural engineer.

Well organised non-violent action can create huge pressure for cultural change and Gandhi showed later with his campaign to free India.

Clothing and visible signs

Many of us remember how the tiniest signals in dress gave powerful indications of group status at school (or in the army). Prefects might be allowed to wear different coloured ties or high achievers in sport or music particular badges or ties. This is highly developed in the army where medals, badges, stripes, stars and dress have created a highly sophisticated cultural and social language.

We humans are incredibly sensitive to small visible signals because of our highly developed capacity to read emotions from minute facial movements.

The formal business suit is an important cultural institution in corporate life.

Icons and memes

Today with the almost universal availability of the internet we have new forms of soft cultural engineering in the form of memes. These images and words now spread rapidly across the globe via smart phones, You tube, Tumblr and Reddit. Each image carries with it a bundle of messages and values and its popularity is an indication of its relevance and power.

Just like Institutions, these memes evolve through natural selection. In this sense we could regard a meme as the simplest form of Institution.

Icons are the bread and butter of the advertising industry. They include brands, trademarks and such things as car radiator grills! Icons are small signals which carry a large cultural message – for example the swastika or ban the bomb symbol.

Songs, poems, prayers and creeds

Religions have always been expert at using these approaches to create a closely bonded culture of religious feeling and community. When people sing or play music together they do develop strong community feelings. Various attempts have been made in the corporate world to duplicate this type of process. There are corporate mission statements, creeds, and even songs. Some businesses make space for communal activity. The conscious business movement encourages meditation.

Sometimes cultural engineering through song may be quite a subtle process yet still defy all direct practical measures to resist it. Pop music was, for example, a huge force which promoted western values inside the iron curtain and no amount of restrictions could stop it.

The case of Kerry Packer and his attempt to introduce of new forms of cricket also shows how huge amounts of promotional money and lobbying proved almost useless in changing the established culture of test cricket. It was only when Packer commissioned a pop song (as a last resort) that he catalysed a landslide of public support for his new ideas.

Games and support group action

Humans are good at learning new forms of behaviour through playing games especially when this requires co-ordinating action with others. Jane McGonegal has written extensively about this and now uses games to effect change in corporate behaviours. Internet games and the huge attraction of virtual realities are creating new ways of behaving within a whole new cultural environment.

In the world of the internet we are already seeing important new institutions. We have tweets, facebook, and tumblr. We have memes, Youtube and digital currencies. We have massively popular co-operative internet gaming. Many young people have at least 2 different personalities – their real persona and their internet avatar. Increasingly it is more comfortable and rewarding for people to spend as much time developing their internet persona as they do their real face to face relationships.

Note that it has always been a part of the Gaia hypothesis that the Earth will continue to evolve as a viable cosmic life form through the development of a nervous system analogous to the human body. In this model the Earth is like a seed as it uses up huge stores of resources (particularly fossil fuels) to transform itself from one state to another. 10,000 million individual cells begin to organise themselves not through the crude mechanisms of economics but in a more sophisticated way using the fully developed institutions of the internet. As we reach a point where the majority of human basic needs (food, shelter and vibrant life support systems) are met then the all encompassing dynamic of money and competition will be replaced by a new set of motivating factors. For example peer group status, service to the community, giving help to the environment, number of friends and so on.

False flag activities

There is a long history of intrigue and deception involving false flag actions as a powerful means of influencing public opinion and changing values. Corporations have blamed competitors for damaging incidents initiated by themselves. Governments have started wars by setting up stage managed incidents which place blame on the enemies they wish to attack. The Nazi party famously burned down the Reichstag and found an unemployed communist Polish worker still in the building. They were soon voted into power. Prior to invading Poland they dressed up prisoners as German soldiers and had them shot by the gestapo. Photos of the incident were published and the shootings blamed on Poland.

The american CIA has a long and murky history of trying to set up false flag events to provide cover for US aggression. Security services everywhere have a big incentive to use agent provocateurs or allow minor incidents so that they receive more legal and financial power.

Propaganda

By publishing selected elements of the truth or lies that cannot be disproved, propaganda is used by governments and corporations to cloak their less pleasant activities. The Nazi party was the first really successful proponent of modern news media as a vehicle for propaganda. Today the advertising industry has taken the process to much greater degrees of sophistication. Within corporations we often see the use of corporate newsletters spreading propaganda to highlight desirable practices and so on.

Hard Cultural Engineering

Hard Cultural engineering takes place when the detailed rules for new patterns of behaviour are actually codified and made concrete. Soft cultural engineering does not of itself create new institutions although the change in values it encourages may be a necessary condition for their success. The institutions themselves must ultimately depend on hard cultural engineering. This applies equally to working practices, tax systems, election systems, money systems, land ownership and so on. Somebody has to get out the wet towels and use their brains, inspiration and experience to design and codify the new rules (and laws) which will form the foundation of the new institutions.

Examples of Hard Cultural Engineering needed for comfortable survival:

• To survive comfortably on planet Earth we now need a new non-debt based money system with greater functionality.
• We need a system for legitimising and choosing leaders which is fit for purpose.
• We need to build on wiki protocols and crowd wisdom to redefine democracy.
• We need to replace economics as the dominant institution for allocating resources.
• We need to cure ourselves of addiction to consumerism.
• We need to find a new spirituality which takes the up to date scientific understanding of reality as its starting point.
• We need to understand the importance of diversity as nature's way of achieving stability and anti-fragility (to use Nassim Taleb's term).
• We need new measurements of success which are not based on money or material possessions.

We can only make these changes through mechanisms of cultural engineering. Without them all talk of sustainability is just wishful thinking.