Beyond Everything

It has been clear for years that the UK Nudge Unit is only one aspect of official attempts to mould public behaviour via behavioural psychology. Even at the time of it’s formation, the basic idea of moulding behaviour via this kind of mass therapy cannot have been new to many senior officials. Nor to many international bureaucrats.

For example, Klaus Schwab founded the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 1971, the same year that American psychologist B. F. Skinner published his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

 

Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a 1971 book by American psychologist B. F. Skinner. Skinner argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as "dignity") hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society.


A few decades later we have the notorious "You'll own nothing and be happy”, also associated with the WEF via its originator Ida Auken.


"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (alternatively "you'll own nothing and be happy") is a phrase originating in a 2016 video by the World Economic Forum (WEF), summarising an essay written by Danish politician Ida Auken. The phrase has been used by critics who accuse the WEF of desiring restrictions on ownership of private property.


There are numerous indications that influential people in the developed world have similar views on the general direction of modern government. That direction is relentlessly top-down because a government rationale based on moulding public behaviour cannot be anything but top-down.

Like hordes of amateur psychologists let loose in a humongous asylum, officials and major political actors do not require input from the inmates – or voters as we used to call them. Democracy has faded into the pages of history, to be replaced by weird totalitarian therapy.