Filtering reality from perception

Perception is reality and the truth, negotiable. If you can make people believe something, it becomes a fact. As human beings, we are not obtuse, but we are open to suggestion and we absorb information selectively.

We come into conversations as the sum of our past experiences, biases and prejudices. This is the reason an identical situation, presented to two different people can result in completely different interpretations.

It was political strategist Lee Atwater who, in the 1980s, coined the phrase on perception being reality in politics. In the past, I have written about the role of spin and PR (public relations) during the election season. In fact, I read that in the United States, PR has won the elections since 1960.

I’m not sure whether this was being stated in a conspiracy theory sort of way but I do recall instances referred to that appeared to support this conclusion. I refer to the US elections because it is the most recent – and for many, unpleasant - surprise that we have been dealt with.

The presidency, the protests and the shock waves are still reverberating internationally. Far too many people have an opinion to air, most of who are not doing it to open dialogue or begin healing but to lay public claim to ideas.

While I have no interest in adding to the already intense debate, conversation and analysis, I think that we can learn a lot from what on the surface appears to be unprecedented error in judgement.

From the British vote that led to Brexit, the United States election to our very own failures in leadership that have now resulted in vast dissatisfaction amidst ceaseless scandals, there is one aspect I find encouraging. We are now, instead of assuming our judgement infallible and our perceptions as reality, more open to the possibility of getting it wrong. We are now more cognisant of the fact that to be used as pawns in a game we never had the intention of playing, all the spin machine needs to do is re-shape the narrative. Or we are at the very least, getting there.

Spin in politics has its origins in how the human brain works. A study by a think tank found that from 1960 to 2015, Americans looked for candidates that felt ‘presidential’, a term I deem to be extremely nebulous and indefensible.

Presidential means candidates with experience were valued, mistakes were punished and political incorrectness caused disqualification. With these as the parameters within which electability was measured, politicians became predictable and boring, after all they were reading from the same script and the electorate less able to connect with them. At the same time, citizen trust in politicians continued to fall with less than 15 per cent of people professing to trust their political leadership.

When what we are familiar with ceases to work, leading to a loss of trust, human beings have a knee-jerk attraction towards what can be equated to the pendulum effect. Simply explained, make a choice that is diametrically opposite to the choices you have made in the past if you truly want to see a difference in the desired results.

In the Brexit and American vote, the victors ran their campaigns on significantly inflammatory issues – immigration and its relation to the economy, immigration and its relation to national security – among others.

Issues that grab the media’s headlines and national attention, polarising issues that cause divisiveness and create strong camps for and against with few grey areas. These kinds of issues are tangible. The immigrant you meet every day on the street is responsible for the fact that you do not have a job, that your economic prospects are so depressed. The narrative is re-written, it is more relatable, you can see and touch the cause of your woes. Perception has become reality.

Closer to home, this is what we did – we swung a pendulum in some of our voting choices – taking a bet on people who were not career politicians but technocrats, believing that they would be the best choice for our country. And look where it got us.

And the PR machine is at it again. Are your economic prospects worse than ever? Then you, my friend, must be on your own because if the statistics are to be believed, Kenya’s economy is growing, doing business in the country is easier and there’s an abundance of jobs.

While current spin is out to convince you that despite all the manufacturing companies shutting down the core of their Kenyan operations and the financial and technology firms downsizing on local jobs, we are still growing because hey, see all the malls and real estate developments.

And maybe the spin is neglecting to tell you this but I gladly will. The reason why certain sectors are growing exponentially is because there are very few places you can launder mind-boggling amounts of stolen funds with a minimal paper trail. Don’t believe the spin. It would be nice to, for once in 2017, not have Kenya become a cautionary tale.