Manipulation of Everydayness and the "Invisible World"
An investigation into consciousness control mechanisms through semantic constructions and invisible ontologies
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1. Introduction
A person with an ordinary worldview, immersed in what is happening, persistently fails to notice that what is "present" does not exist without their thinking, without their consciousness.
That which is "not yet distinguished" is always the inclusion of their thinking (consciousness), or the interpretation of what is happening through their mentality. Whatever mentality emerges, so too will be the interpretation of what is happening—and, consequently, what happens thereafter.
If the everyday level—the world of objects rendered visible through words—can, to some extent, be interpreted and ordered through object-oriented thinking, then everything lying beyond the horizon of what is visible to the eyes already requires a doctrine, a theory, or a concept—that is, semantic visibility. Moreover—and this remains unknown to ordinary consciousness—even ordinary visibility itself is visible only through concepts, through categorical meaning.
Here, endless horizons for manipulation open before those who possess neither an innate intuition for such "priestly thinking" nor the intellectual skills it requires. These skills make it possible to distinguish theories that become a means of grasping—or inventing—what is happening.
2. The Absence of Direct Visibility
At first glance, most people appear to live within the boundaries of an ordinary worldview ("direct visibility"). Yet this "visibility" is always conditioned by another form of visibility—a particular invisible world of meaning—which presupposes the introduction of:
- Scientific positivism, or its intensified form, scientism, which promotes various forms of conceptual simplification;
- The concept of morality, which provides ready-made patterns of behavior and established notions of human relationships;
- Conceptions of an "invisible happening"—the activity, conflicts, and friendships among entities that cannot be observed within ordinary experience; that is, various extra-empirical ontologies.
3. The Meaning of What Is Happening
Patterns, connections, and conceptual constructions belonging to the order of meaning can be presented to ordinary thinking as "the meaning of what is happening." This makes it possible to control the consciousness of the ordinary majority.
The paradox—and, in a certain sense, the irony—is that such controlled ordinary consciousness always regards itself as independent, guided solely by "practical thinking."
Forms of manipulation arising from human limitations include:
- Manipulation through the absence of professional knowledge — making it possible to mislead people within a particular field of activity.
- Age-related manipulation — arising from the fact that, at certain stages of life, the understanding of many questions remains insufficient and develops only through experience.
- Informational limitation — the gap between those who possess insider knowledge and those who are not involved in what is happening.
- Manipulation through spatial or temporal displacement — exploiting events that have occurred, or are occurring, at a distance in space or time.
4. The Highest Form of Manipulation
The highest form of manipulation is semantic manipulation, in which the consciousness of the ordinary individual is controlled through a complex system of meanings. By changing these meanings, one can transform the entire consciousness of those who are subject to them, yet fail to realize that their very presence is always an act of thinking—including embodied thinking.
Translation Notice
The present English text is the Author's Revised English Translation (2026) of the original Russian essay. It supersedes the earlier English version by providing a more conceptually precise and terminologically consistent translation that reflects the author's current philosophical vocabulary and the conceptual framework developed in subsequent publications on Rusnak Link.
For readers interested in the evolution of the translation, the Earlier Literary Translation (2025) has been retained as Appendix A. While preserving the central philosophical ideas of the original, it adopts a freer literary style intended to improve readability for English-speaking audiences.
Earlier Literary Translation:
Rusnak, A. (2025). Manipulation of Everydayness — the Invisible World. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17265376
Unless otherwise indicated, citations to the English version of this essay should refer to the Author's Revised English Translation (2026).
References / Bibliography
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