Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same As Controlling the World

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This is Essay #9 in the series Truth Be Told.

The core dynamic of this era is the notion that controlling the narrative controls the world, as persuading the populace to believe something is true controls their convictions which then control their behaviors. Centralized powers discovered the potential for narrative control to control the world in the 20th century, as mass communications enabled centralized control of what is presented as true and important.

Propaganda has an ugly tone, so now we say narrative control, which is of course a comically obvious propaganda technique. We call propaganda designed to financially benefit a private entity marketing, a key component in what I call privatized totalitarianism: establish a monopoly that controls a key mass communication technology–a social media platform, search, smart phones, etc.–and voila, privatized totalitarianism controls the medium which controls the message.

Controlling what the populace believes to be true appears to control the world, but Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same As Controlling the World. This is becoming increasingly clear as the status quo narratives–everything’s going great, AI will deliver super-abundance to everyone, inflation is low, etc.–are now so detached from what we experience that they are inducing mass psychosis.

The incentive is obvious: persuade the populace to accept an arrangement that enriches and empowers those in control, and you no longer have to deliver authentic Progress or Prosperity, you only need to deliver artifice: fake statistics, fake claims presented as certainties, a ceaselessly promoted narrative in which everything is fake.

But narrative control doesn’t actually control the world. A rancher told us the cost of fodder has doubled in the past year. That’s the real world of weather and the cost of energy. Telling us that inflation is only 3.6% while healthcare premiums go up 13% a year, insurance costs triple and beef is now a luxury item is a parody of factual reporting.

The Pendulum of History has reached an extreme of artifice and narrative control that will break the status quo as the gulf between the fake and the real widens to the point the bridge connecting them collapses.

The social control of replacing authenticity with artifice will backfire and the pendulum will swing back to punishing self-serving artifice rather than rewarding it.

Yes, yes, I know this is “impossible.” Those wielding the machinery of social control have god-like powers that will never diminish, they will only increase, etc. But everything is fake and mass psychosis are not stable arrangements. Artifice is self-liquidating.

The pendulum has reached an extreme of parody that cannot be pushed any further, and as the real world intrudes, all the narrative control in the world won’t actually control the real world.

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Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2026/11/controlling-narrative-is-not-same-as.html