The things that bind

25 March 2018

I find myself unable to avoid pervading thoughts around disinformation (so-called fake news), duplicity, and artificial market sentiment, that ultimately prevent true customer and investor engagement.

Taking the latter first - artificial market sentiment - let's tread back a little into political history - mainly during the 1970s - when the then Soviet Union decided to adopt a programme of social destabilisation, using the precepts of hyper-realism and disinformation. The programme was designed to regulate the behaviour and thoughts of that nation’s population, based on an intended foundation of chaotic information.

So why is this relevant now?

During the early 70s, when the now US president, Donald Trump, faced a mountain of debt and difficulties, he sought to mitigate the chaos found within his corporation books and, allegedly, simultaneously begun to cherish the value of disinformation as he saw it.

President Trump has now adopted - even as the wider financial universe it seems is focused elsewhere - the refined and fine tuned use of disinformation leading to a perception of economic confusion, with things promised but not delivered; rejected and re-promised, along with the sort of conviction and steadfastness that was once reserved for the honourable.

The general moral apathy, found primarily amongst western populations, the investment in a myriad of disparate interest groups, and the ironic embracing of Orwell's ‘Prole’ mentality by too many, have all led to the opening of chasms between the moral and the reprehensible: the unifiers and the destabilisers. This disruption doesn’t just impact societal lives - it has the potential to bring about the sort of chaos in markets that won’t easily be unravelled, being founded on illogical contrivance and well-tailored incoherence.

For those investors and market players who have been focused elsewhere, the advice now would be to firmly re-focus. 

And, as for the earlier mentioned duplicity... where declarations such as ‘trust me’ and ‘honestly’, and concepts of honour have been degraded by those who may never really have understood their meaning, the most I can say is - 'these are the notions that define character, that determine the strength of integrity and also expose the weak. These are the things that bind'.

Ingrid Smith is a UK based senior content strategist, storyteller & mentor