Reframing Perception-Space (P-Space): A Quick Overview of a Unifying Concept

by Colonel Michael McKim, USAFR (ret.) (Everything here is the view of the author with no implied endorsement by any government agency.) Perception-space or P-space - the whole thing: every thought, opinion, belief, sensory input, mental model, mental organization, relationship set, logic rule set, psychological "baggage," act of awareness, etc. Notus - the portion of all-p-spaces which is not us. This could include opponents, adversaries, enemies, friends, competitors, and all the other labels and groupings. Reframing P-Space (RPS) - the process of actively or passively altering the p-space of others (or self). A simple example would be turning over the picture used in psychology classes, which looks like a happy person one way, but a sad person when inverted. The orientation you use when presenting it to others would be an example of reframing their p-space. You physically altered nothing, but you completely altered their perception of the picture. Reframing Elements (REs) - any action or mental, physical, timing, or other entity which can impact upon the p-space of an individual or group (the question still exists whether p-spaces can themselves have p-spaces and whether they can have a reactive nature which would give results similar to those of a self-aware responding entity). Time descriptor - the characteristic of REs that relates to the chronological location of the primary-impact consequence. Time-negative (T-) REs impact first on the past, in essence changing history. An example would be the altering in a p-space of the belief that a past victory was actually a defeat and that an ally was actually an enemy. The owner(s) of that p-space would then have entirely different political and psychological baggage when coming to a bargaining table or when being approached with a proposal for alignment. For all intents and purposes, history (the past) was changed. Time-zero (T0) REs have primary effect "now" or continually. Time-positive (T+) REs have primary effect in the "future" - real or perceived. And the perceived future can be even more influential than the real one if it causes changes in the attitudes and actions of "now" (such as the aversion toward taking certain actions because of the belief in the "future" that would be caused). P-time , imparted by RPS, could be (relative to "real" time) discontinuous, slower, faster, or shifted (such as making things seem more recent than they really are). Temporal "waves" of REs would include the reinforcing effects (or amplification) of time-negative effects generating time-zero effects which cause new or increased time-negative effects [or any other combo of REs with T-, T0, or T+ effects]. A properly conceived RE would cause a "standing wave" or stable effect. This type of effect could be bounced between current, past, and future states of a p-space without generating any noticeable incongruities which would reduce or cancel its effect (ex., a notus spots the "fact" that just doesn't jive with the other "facts."). A well conceived RE with a standing wave

characteristic might exist indefinitely as "truth" - eventually even for the originator of the RE. To combat this, you'd develop... RE-nets , established "fixed" elements of your p-space against which events could be bounced to see if there is a discord, which would be a clue that an RE had been introduced into your system and had wrought a change. Exact nature of these to be determined. Just one of the outcomes of reframing p-space (RPS) could be the changing of a notus behavior. Other outcomes could include the redirecting of attention, creation of blind spots, creation of preferences/prejudices, creation of fear, altering of mental processes/models, altering of relationships with others (or with self), .... Information warfare, psychological warfare, attrition warfare, Warden's 5 rings -- all would be subsets of RPS. Where Warden shows the advantages of 3-D over 2-D warfare, with some elements of 4-D (ex. time compression due to speed), RPS offers the possibility of all-D warfare -- changing the past, the present, the future, relations, abstract, concrete, ... everything. A bridge believed to be destroyed, or felt to be unable to hold the tanks, can be just as "gone from the war" as a bridge destroyed by bombs. Generating the firm belief that your base is at visibility zero for miles in every direction, can be just as effective an air defense against a visibility-based opponent as if you had perfect Patriot missiles ringing you. There is only one perfect target for RPS ... the p-space of the ones who control or influence the country, forces, economy, situation, or other entity you want changed. Since in every instance of war, there is first a time of not-war, then for every case there exists a p-space scenario where no war occurs. Thus every situation has the potential for using RPS to achieve the prevention of war and casualties, while at the same time adjusting the notus p-space to better suit us. The discernment of that required p-space is what must be studied and cultivated. In some cases, the RPS may need to be done on us, instead of on notus.