They know you better than you know yourself

What are we willing to accept as the “new normal” post-COVID? Our recent history post-9/11 might give us some insight.

We declared a “war on terror” that by its parameters was to be never-ending, and we are on the way there.

Think about it: you still take your shoes and belt off at the airport.

Whatever good that does, right?

But you still do it.

Because you’ve been conditioned to do it.

That it’s for your own good.

So analog, this level of control.

9/11 was pre-social media, which is hard to fathom, that there was an era pre-social media, but Facebook didn’t come along until 2004, Twitter until 2006.

Smartphones as we know them now weren’t even a distant cousin of what we know now until 2007.

The architects of the “war on terror” couldn’t have fathomed having the kinds of controls that the similarly minded of today have at their fingertips.

One way to look at our addiction to our devices is that it’s conditioned us in a way similar to how we blindly act in airports.

Think about the apps you use regularly: social media, weather, your favorite sports app.

They all ask to use your location, to allow what are called cookies, all to be able to better give you the information you want as quickly and painlessly as possible.

They know where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going.

They know what you read, what you’ve searched for.

They know you better than you know yourself.

You’ve blindly allowed them to.

Now that states are rolling out COVID tracing apps, you’re going to download one, because you’re told that you need to.

They’re not making you, same as they don’t make you do anything.

You don’t need apps. You don’t need a smartphone.

You don’t need to take your shoes and belt off at the airport.

You don’t have to fly. You could drive, take a train, stay at home.

We acquiesce to a lot in the name of security, in the spirit of expediency, now in the interest of health and well-being.

We’re told those things, anyway.

You don’t want to believe that it’s being done in the service of something sinister, and if pressed, I’d say I don’t believe there to be ill will on the part of some overlord set behind some plot to use all the data that we allow to be collected against us.

It’s inescapable, though, that it wouldn’t be hard at all to almost literally flip a switch and turn things in a different direction.

And that’s not the scary part.

The scary part is: you wouldn’t even necessarily know.

Story by Chris Graham