The Soft Control Human Hack of the Private Market Rise of “Chip Culture”

Have you ever heard of the ‘Standing in Waiting Room” experiment? If you haven’t, here’s the video of what I’m talking about, though I’ll also give you a brief summary of the video:

In this video, the test subject does not know that everyone in the doctor’s waiting room, except for her, is in on an experiment. At the sound of a tone, everyone in the waiting room stands up, waits, then sits back down.

The woman in the video at first is confused by this action, but, after a little time, she also stands up like everyone else. One by one, everyone else in the room is called back to see the doctor until it just this one woman, alone.

The tone goes off and, what do you know, she stands up, even though no one else is in the room. Then, more people start to show up. This time, these folks are not in on the experiment.

The woman, with others in the room who are not in on the experiment (in other words, they’re not going to stand at the sound of the tone), continues to stand up at the sound of the tone.

The people that have come in, after a little time, follow her example. They all stand up at the tone, wait, and then sit down. What’s more, after the woman herself is called in, the other people continue to stand up at the tone.

Social conformity is a powerful influencer. It is so powerful that even if an act, like standing up at the sound of a tone, gives no understood benefit, might even seem nonsensical, if enough people around you are doing it, you are highly likely to do it as well.

Stay with the thoughts presented above as I cover a news item that many of you may have already heard of. This is a story about microchipping humans, but it’s being done by a private company.

Three Squares Market, or 32M, has made headlines with its recent decision to offer voluntary, company-paid chipping of its employees. They even held a “Chip Party” where the employees who volunteered came to get the procedure done. They even handed out t-shirts to employees that said “I Got Chipped.”

The company is located in River Falls, Wisconsin. It said it offered the chips to employees to allow them to “open doors, log onto computers or buy breakroom snacks by simply waving their hand.”

The VP of Sales at 32M, Melissa Timmins, is quoted in an article at the Chicago Tribune as saying about her decision to get the implant, “I planned for the worst and it wasn’t bad at all,” said Timmins, who received a microchip in her left hand on Monday. “Just a little prick.”

The article offers a counter from a marketing executive, Katie Langer, who had health concerns about a foreign object being in her body, but she was fine overall with the chip concept.

The company stated that 41 out of its 85 employees have agreed to have the procedure done. This effort by 32M is the first of its kind in the US, but it is hardly new in Europe, where the practice is becoming increasingly widespread.

Now, that figure, that 41 out of 85 employees figure, might seem a little encouraging to you if you already see the potential pitfalls of the emergence of a “chip” culture. But, let’s remember that this figure is merely the initial offering of the chip.

In a sense, if you watch the video I inserted above, this is the woman in the waiting room, still a little unsure, but standing for the first time. Give the power of social conformity a chance to work its magic at this company and I am sure, within a year, the number of employees who sign up for the program will rise to 70 or more.

Let’s go back in brief time to a hacking story. This hack took place in Mid-May of this year. It was a ransomware attack that affected corporations, and some major government computer systems, mostly in Europe. Some of the biggest networks affected included the British Healthcare System and Merck Incorporated. Many of these networks are STILL recovering.

The bug in the system was called “Wannacry,” and it has since been revealed that this bug exploited a security vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that the US Government was fully aware of, but did nothing to notify Windows about. Their reasoning was that they could one day exploit the security vulnerability for their own end.

But, it gets worse. Not only did the US Government identify the security vulnerability, but they wrote the hack that was later used by another party (still unknown). That hack was leaked, but not publicly.

Wikileaks has begun releasing CIA hacks in an effort to help networks safeguard against future exploits, including the now infamous CIA-created hack, Athena.

Now, take into account the type of spying the NSA and other agencies have recently been exposed engaging in, spying that involved being able to track user data in cell phones, browsing history, even tracking your travel history through software in your car.

Companies appear more than willing, for the most part, to go along with government, in part, I believe, because so much of the success of their company (and the hindering of competition) relies on favorable regulations, government contracts, and even subsidies from the government. If you don’t want to play nice with the NSA, maybe congress won’t play so nice with you anymore.

Let’s add another element. What if the government actually wrote in code to assure they had backdoors into whatever system they want to have access to and “asked” the company to put that in to the product the company then sells you?

Would you find that so hard to believe that any government, that THIS government would do such a thing, and that any company, a company that, as I pointed out above, relies on the ‘good graces’ of the Federal government would not make such a move?

Many people who espouse liberty will declare that this is a private company and no one is being coerced to do anything they don’t want to do. Yes, this is true, the microchipping effort here is not being done by the government, and it is not being done against anyone’s will.

The types of influence being used here are two-fold, demonstrable and social. They are demonstrable in that it can immediately be shown that having a microchip in your hand will bring more convenience. You will be able to enter the building easier, buy food easier, etc.

They are social in that the company is creating an environment that lifts up those who choose to chip (throwing them a party, giving them ‘cool’ shirts) and the people affected by these two influencers, demonstrable and social, will also now enhance the social influence even more, through the phenomenon known as social conformity.

This is, as the article title suggests, soft control being executed. This is not to say the company 32M is in on this soft control conspiracy. This is not even to say, necessarily, that the chip maker is even in on this soft control conspiracy.

Whether they are or are not in on the ‘conspiracy,’ it matters little to me. IF neither the company offering the chips or the company making the chips are in on the soft control conspiracy, I have LITTLE doubt that the Federal government will be looking earnestly at the results of this social experiment in America.

The opportunities down the road for the Federal government are multiple, from being able to exploit the software of the chips to track our lives, our health, to moving us, nudging us towards digital, traceable, government-controllable currency. The opportunities for not just this government but other governments to exploit this human hack (as I’m calling it) for greater human management are many, some of which I am sure I cannot even imagine until the Chip Culture begins to more fully emerge.

To be sure, we are already up to our eyes in using trackable technologies that the government can exploit. Chip Culture just enhances that trackability and creates more vulnerabilities, makes humans themselves directly ‘hackable.’

I remember seeing a video by Stefan Molyneux a few years ago called “The Story of Your Enslavement.” It described the evolution of human control or, as Molyneux labeled it, “human farming.”

In the evolutionary process of “human farming,” more direct force was applied. You can argue that under such ‘human farm managers’ as Stalin and Mao that the height of farming by hard force had been reached, with both engaging in campaigns of terror designed to create absolute fear not only of the ‘human farm managers,’ but of their family, friends, neighbors, any one of whom might be an informant of the state.

That method, the method of hard force, proved to be costly to the managers, and it also proved to significantly impede the productivity and ingenuity of the farm animals, the humans.

What human farm managers like the leadership in the United States of America developed was soft force, control through reward and removal of reward, control through social pressure, control through a satiation of fear (through a promise of security) that was often artificially created by the human farm managers themselves.

This is what I see emerging in this Chip Culture Experiment, as I am calling it, currently being run, intentionally or not, by this Wisconsin company, as well as the company that makes the chips.

To be sure, I’m no luddite. I embrace technology and, certainly, I can see usefulness in chip technology, even for humans, in the ‘right’ place and context. But that context, that place, cannot exist wherever the government is aware of what’s going on and wherever the companies offering the chips and the companies making the chips rely in any way on the good graces of government to prop them up, or at least not hinder them any more than they already are.

Should Chip Culture spread, as it appears to be doing in Europe, soon we will see more and more companies, especially larger ones, adopting this technology. It is almost always in the interest of the employer to have methods of managing their resources (in this case, human ones) so they can become more cost efficient. Whether they are part of the soft force conspiracy or not, they have many practical, profit-making reasons to choose the Chip Culture.

Unless and until these companies experience a significant negative market reaction for choosing Chip Culture, I see no reason why they won’t choose this path. And, as for humans, such as we are today, here in America, whether we are a product of ‘state’ conditioning or biology, or some combination of the two, I see no reason whatsoever to assume that most, overwhelmingly most, people will not choose convenience, reward, and social approval at the sacrifice of potential preservations of liberty.

Unfortunately, for those of us who do value our liberty above convenience, reward, and social approval, the decisions of our neighbors, our friends, our family members, our co-workers, will affect our own power to pursue our own personal liberty.

As for 32M, I don’t even know what business they engage in, but whatever it is, I’m not interested in what they’re selling. It’s a small token resistance against what I see as the rise of the soft control human hack, Chip Culture. But, if I’m right, and more and more companies adopt this Chip Culture, the cost to ‘resist’ will become increasingly high and people like me, people like many of you, will have to turn increasingly to ‘under the radar’ solutions to meet our preferences.