From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 9

Here the sportscar example also comes handy to add that this is an ability and as such it has to be developed and learned and trained and practiced: developing a sportscar requires application in both thought and action – it takes engineering, workshop work, track testing, and much practicing into a fine art. You may have heard the most basic fine art of driving being called “dérapage”, “countersteer”, “driving sideways”, “drifting”… this fine art originates from one’s ability to flawlessly confront and thus master throttle and steer, as opposed to the inclination to abandon oneself to reacting and thus end up spinning.

In other words, once again, all one develops and trains is towards what? A shift from effect to cause, from so−called “instinctive”, “natural” reaction to alert and intentional action. Re−acting is being effect: something is cause over us, in that it pushes a button in ourselves – cause – and we jump up on cue – effect – one time or a million times, doesn’t make any difference. Acting is being cause, instead: it is us who observe, decide, act – cause – and every single time there is a factor between the input, the information we observe, and the output, the action we take, and that factor is an active one: us.
And that “every single time” must not be taken lightly. Due to our being quantitative plus impatient, repetition does have a dark side for us, as it can be used to defeat our alertness. A sportscar driver must remain fully alert always – every lap, every curve, every second: every time he takes the same curve, he takes it as if it was the first time, the first curve in the whole universe and history, in a sense, while treasuring every previous experience; nothing mechanical, nothing taken for granted.

This steady alertness is the exact opposite of the aim that every manipulator has in mind for us: we are a resource they want to exploit, so their first target is disengaging our self−control, and their second target is making us controllable by whoever holds the remote control, because their third target is using us, which means let us perform on cue any re−action they deem fit to increase their power and worsen our condition.