About being conscripted
By: Anne Mccrossan
Tags: Politics, Leadership, Ethics, Culture, Philosophy

Rounding up prisoners of war. A still image from the film‘Nazis: A warning from History’.

Some people are beginning to speculate that, depending on how the current occupier of the White House wants to play it, the draining of the swamp, the breaking down of the state, the Executively-ordered removal of oversight, the fuzzying of governance and all that’s happening today could be followed by a chapter of war.

I want to speculate for a moment and think about what kind of war it could be.

America has a population of 318 million people according to Google. That’s a huge marching force. But of course, people aren’t sent to war today as they were when there was Conscription.

And people aren’t physically armed and dispatched to new territories to fight, as they have been in every century before this one.



It’s fascinating to consider how obsolete a way of doing things that has become. Business models have evolved. The costs of funding boots on the ground and the munitions to fight land wars are prohibitive. Today, there’s a different operating model.

While there are fights about borders, Putin asserts that Russia is everywhere and hacking allegations imply such a thing.

The fight today is digital, intangible, virtual.

A fight for the dominant narrative as much as for things.



It’s a fight about making ideas and spreading them, influencing what happens next, changing the facts.



It is a fight about facts — my facts, your facts, alternative facts.

And to that fight, I would say, we are all conscripted.

When soundbites are repeated endlessly, over and over again, they become a form of programming, Edward Bernays knew this a hundred years ago.

Recent election campaigns have asked people to take a leap into the unknown and have been successful. They have been triggered by soundbites. The choices they have offered have been built on repetitive mantras, vague future promises, unclear goals. There are no clear articulations of values or purposes. And yet, they have managed to look attractive.

In the face of fear and the absence of hard facts and verifiable data, it seems we have leapt, over the top, into a new era.



With the web, we are conscripted to the way this works. With the web as our primary source of information, our digital selves absorb a form of programming; soft programming, delivered by retina, taking place within our skulls.

I think the battle is inside us now. In figuring out where we really want to go; which stars and goals we want to point our compass towards, and how we get there as a future world, connected digitally. The fight is about how we do it for ourselves and who we do it with.



Like many others, I wonder if we are truly the masters behind the next thing we click on as much as we think we are, and if choices beyond those we see are hidden to us. And I know I will probably never truly know the answer to that question. We are, in that sense, existentially ‘post-truth’. Our web histories are too complex to comprehend, and choices too complicated to navigate without a deep mindfulness. And that’s something a lot of people don’t have the time for, while we race to keep up with the machines.

Choices made in danger tend to polarize around ‘go big or go home’… go for the daring way forward or stay as you are. Be volatile or be unchanging. Both are unstable and ineffective as places to build and grow from.

They say the death of a partner, moving house and starting a new relationship are three of the most stressful things that can happen to someone. One could argue that moving into a connected world, getting hooked up to technology, the loss of old lifestyles and things we took for granted, offer a parallel to all three of them.

Conscription or Jihadism

I have spent some time thinking about two choices that seem to be part of the global currency du jour. Bitcoin may change this, and I hope it does, but for now there seems to be a pendulum forming between conscription or jihadism.

Almost in response to the silent spread of a vaguely forming crisis, human behaviour globally seems to be stuck between some weird behavioural choices. These include jihadist terror responses, blowing things up, falling into the unknown, falling over the edges of cliffs, or falling into line.

Joining up around the world through technology, getting wired up to gadgets, agreeing to ongoing operational contracts between ourselves and our network providers, all represent new ingredients in the human condition; they add up to an existentialist human crisis in a real sense.

This is a combination of danger and opportunity, a point in time that calls most particularly for collective dialogue and an increased development of self agency.

With organisations I work with, I see how combining people skills and technology develops a higher, more conscious understanding of the best opportunities available. At the same time, it increases intelligence about possible ways to go after those opportunities.



Respectful, open narratives and collaborative, community-oriented network opportunities mean that making purposed-based choices based on values and open data could be a way forward.

Not divisionalized ‘us and them’, collective.

Understanding the line.

Speaking personally, I think we must accept the digital component of who we are now, and accelerate consciousness on our terms, by being active. By resisting.

The alternative is conscription.