Political science revisited. The basics of mass manipulation.
(This is the second publication on the science of mass manipultion. The first contained the sources and history and can be found HERE (click).)In Randy Newman's time, we took politics with irony. Perhaps, everyone has been too naive. The bad guys seem to be getting the upper hand.
My conclusion from perusing the history of despots through the ages, is.
The people who lie with every word,
make sure they are well heard.
The
people who want to do you in,
say they are helping you to win.
No doubt, you will know examples of this yourself.
The only safguard we have is this:
You verify something by observation. Observation is done by perception and then trying to figure out what you have actually perceived. There are probably over 50 types of perception, not just the 5 you hear of day and night (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). The better your general education, the better you can observe. You have to know quite a lot in order to be able to figure out what you perceive.
Mass manipulation is possible for several reasons that often are not even understood by the mass manipulator himself. But the manipulator knows one thing for certain, and it is this:
In the human mind, any lie will be considered true if repeated often and long enough.
If coming from multiple sources, a lie becomes a truth more quickly.
I say "lie" because talking in extremes gives clarity, and it also makes you remember it with greater ease but this principle of the human mind goes for any type of message of course. Mothers know that.
By the way, this is how advertising works. You can say anything and if the consumer is exposed to it often enough, he or she will internalise it and act upon it. I have been in advertising and public relations for decades and have done all this myself.
Let's continue to investigate what happens to a lie.
The lie does not really become a truth, obviously, i.e. not if you define 'truth' as "what is actual". But it will become a truth in the belief system of the person, let's call him "victim" for clarity's sake. Once that has happened, the victim has become a dedicated follower of the liar and will insist the lie that was given to him and that he believes in now, is 'true' and 'real', because nobody likes being wrong and the human mind is geared to think it is being right. In itself this need not be a problem for people may play any game with themselves they like, as far as I am concerned. The problem for scientific and objective observation arises when actuality gets covered under a fire blanket stack of lies.
The stack of lies comes about because a manipulator feels compelled to continue to fabricate stories in order to keep his first lie in place. In the course of time circumstances change, and a lie is liable to become either exposed as a lie or is liable to simply disappear from a victim's radar screen (attention), both of which would nullify the manipulation efforts. This means a liar not only has to continue to repeat his original lie but also has to put one lie on top of the other in order to corroborate (substantiate / make more real and believable) the first lie.
A lie become strong, i.e. believable, if it can be associated with an observable fact. A lie about immigration becomes a fact by putting a picture next to it that seems to prove the validity or 'truth' of the lie. This makes the victim think he has seen it with his own eyes. In this day and age of digital picture manipulation, putting pictures or videos next to the lie has become the easiest thing in the world. Whether the picture is real or has anything to do with the lie is irrelevant, it only needs to suggest it does.
The whole set of facts, lies and stories is called 'the narrative'. We see this happen in philosophy, in politics, in medicine, even in science and theistic religions. Look at the fabulous gold painted triptychs of the Middle Ages, 'proving' the Roman Catholic faith. No citizen or peasant had ever seen such splendour, "Yes, that's what heaven and the glory of God must be like."
The end result is always a complex of interwoven lies, often mountain high, that is difficult to disentangle. A whole world is created in which the victim can live happily ever after in his misconception that his belief systems constitute the real world. And then, soon enough, the manipulator will believe his own lies, too.
In Chapter 14, The Impossibility of truth, of my 2019 book Predicting Donald Trump, Understanding a Stable Genius (so far 90% accurate), it is explained in detail what truth actually is and from that one can see how a truth can be created out of thin air. For this reason, I prefer to talk about 'actuality' instead of truth. Actuality is then defined as what existed before someone had put a spin (frame / positioning / propaganda / evaluation / lie) on it.
It is really hard to see what is actual, what is 'truth' and what is 'spin'. All we tend to be presented with, day and night, is spin by some spin doctor. Spin is interpretation and evaluation of an actuality.
The spinned interpretation of an actuality makes it difficult to perceive for yourself what is actual in an objective way, and the evaluation influences or hampers the evaluation you should do yourself. Even more confusing is when different channels put a different spin on the same actuality. Compare a panel of talking heads interpreting Donald Trump's antics on Fox News and on MSNBC. It is like you are watching broadcasts from two different planets.
The basic line for manipulation is very simple: say what the victim wants to hear, promise him what he wants, and say that in exchange for his support he will get what he is being promised.
And you always need to use the words that the victim uses. The wordings are found by interviews on the street or by focus groups (round table talk with people in a controlled fashion). It works best if the content of the message suggests to assuage the victim's visceral fears (gut feelings of terror). In the latter part of a blog of 2018 I give an example of how just three bigwigs from Westminster in 2014 sufficed to manipulate the Scottish vote from about 60% for leaving the UK to 60% for staying in the UK. It is a simple but precise technique. Etonians and political science Oxfordians know all about it. Read about it HERE.
Of course, the victim seldom if ever gets the promises fullfilled. Oftentimes, the manipulator, e.g. a CEO, blames the lack of fullfilment on unforeseen circumstances or, better still, someone else and tells the victim that if only he would support him (vote for him, give him his money, time, or effort) one more time, he will deliver on his promise in spite of everything. And then, more often than not, the victim gets betrayed another time once more. And so it goes on and on and on and on and on, for eons.
After a while, the victim gets suspicious of people who promise him something. On the other hand, what alternative does the victim have but hope for the best? That's the real problem the victim has. He does not see any alternative and the manipulator makes sure that the education of the victim is such that he won't be able to conceive of any alternative. For history shows, that any good alternative may lead to insurrection, revolution, or at least sedition. In the so-called civilized West, this deprivation of alternatives is done by biased or bad schooling, misinformation campaigns (to feed the victim with false data), disinformation campaigns (to distract the victim from observation), and straight shooting propaganda (scaring people and making promises in very simple language, e.g. "We will build the wall!", "Let's take back control!"). This works very well. 99% of immigrants into the USA come through border check stations, and the UK had never lost control (and did not pay anywhere near £350 million a week, if anything at all, even) but facts don't matter in this trade. Most people will believe anything as long as the basic principles of manipulation, as told above, are applied. The old Romans knew their stuff cold: mundus vult decipi, the world wants to be deceived. Why? Because it is bad and could have been so much better if only ...... When Pandora opened her box, many terrible demons escaped but she managed to keep 'hope' with her.
This deception is what is being done to us, 24/7/365. But the worst thing of it all is that when the victim is offered a genuine, viable and decent alternative by someone else, he has grown so suspicious that he won't even bother to inspect the offer, let alone take up the offer. As of this writing, this refusal to inspect a better offer can be observed on a massive scale in the USA where people have been led to believe that free universal healthcare for $120 a month per person is a bad thing and that having to pay an insurance premium starting at $650 a month per person and still having to take another $20,000 mortgage to pay for hospitalization is a good thing. The way this manipulation has been effected was exactly as described above, it took some doing but it worked. And now pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies in the USA make countless billions of surplus profit causing their shareholders to have great fun while the population suffers. If you are not rich or fully covered by your employer, you better not get ill in the USA.
And this is how a manipulator stays in power. Simple, straightforward, effective, and, fortunately, always observable.
So there it is: the basics of mass manipulation.
The scientific sources of knowhow of mass manipulation I mention in another blog of mine that you can find HERE.
Amsterdam, 24 February, 2020.
The only safguard we have is this:
Never believe anything anyone says until you have verified it yourself.
You verify something by observation. Observation is done by perception and then trying to figure out what you have actually perceived. There are probably over 50 types of perception, not just the 5 you hear of day and night (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). The better your general education, the better you can observe. You have to know quite a lot in order to be able to figure out what you perceive.
Mass manipulation is possible for several reasons that often are not even understood by the mass manipulator himself. But the manipulator knows one thing for certain, and it is this:
In the human mind, any lie will be considered true if repeated often and long enough.
If coming from multiple sources, a lie becomes a truth more quickly.
I say "lie" because talking in extremes gives clarity, and it also makes you remember it with greater ease but this principle of the human mind goes for any type of message of course. Mothers know that.
By the way, this is how advertising works. You can say anything and if the consumer is exposed to it often enough, he or she will internalise it and act upon it. I have been in advertising and public relations for decades and have done all this myself.
Let's continue to investigate what happens to a lie.
The lie does not really become a truth, obviously, i.e. not if you define 'truth' as "what is actual". But it will become a truth in the belief system of the person, let's call him "victim" for clarity's sake. Once that has happened, the victim has become a dedicated follower of the liar and will insist the lie that was given to him and that he believes in now, is 'true' and 'real', because nobody likes being wrong and the human mind is geared to think it is being right. In itself this need not be a problem for people may play any game with themselves they like, as far as I am concerned. The problem for scientific and objective observation arises when actuality gets covered under a fire blanket stack of lies.The stack of lies comes about because a manipulator feels compelled to continue to fabricate stories in order to keep his first lie in place. In the course of time circumstances change, and a lie is liable to become either exposed as a lie or is liable to simply disappear from a victim's radar screen (attention), both of which would nullify the manipulation efforts. This means a liar not only has to continue to repeat his original lie but also has to put one lie on top of the other in order to corroborate (substantiate / make more real and believable) the first lie.
A lie become strong, i.e. believable, if it can be associated with an observable fact. A lie about immigration becomes a fact by putting a picture next to it that seems to prove the validity or 'truth' of the lie. This makes the victim think he has seen it with his own eyes. In this day and age of digital picture manipulation, putting pictures or videos next to the lie has become the easiest thing in the world. Whether the picture is real or has anything to do with the lie is irrelevant, it only needs to suggest it does.The whole set of facts, lies and stories is called 'the narrative'. We see this happen in philosophy, in politics, in medicine, even in science and theistic religions. Look at the fabulous gold painted triptychs of the Middle Ages, 'proving' the Roman Catholic faith. No citizen or peasant had ever seen such splendour, "Yes, that's what heaven and the glory of God must be like."
The end result is always a complex of interwoven lies, often mountain high, that is difficult to disentangle. A whole world is created in which the victim can live happily ever after in his misconception that his belief systems constitute the real world. And then, soon enough, the manipulator will believe his own lies, too.
In Chapter 14, The Impossibility of truth, of my 2019 book Predicting Donald Trump, Understanding a Stable Genius (so far 90% accurate), it is explained in detail what truth actually is and from that one can see how a truth can be created out of thin air. For this reason, I prefer to talk about 'actuality' instead of truth. Actuality is then defined as what existed before someone had put a spin (frame / positioning / propaganda / evaluation / lie) on it.It is really hard to see what is actual, what is 'truth' and what is 'spin'. All we tend to be presented with, day and night, is spin by some spin doctor. Spin is interpretation and evaluation of an actuality.
The spinned interpretation of an actuality makes it difficult to perceive for yourself what is actual in an objective way, and the evaluation influences or hampers the evaluation you should do yourself. Even more confusing is when different channels put a different spin on the same actuality. Compare a panel of talking heads interpreting Donald Trump's antics on Fox News and on MSNBC. It is like you are watching broadcasts from two different planets.
The basic line for manipulation is very simple: say what the victim wants to hear, promise him what he wants, and say that in exchange for his support he will get what he is being promised.
And you always need to use the words that the victim uses. The wordings are found by interviews on the street or by focus groups (round table talk with people in a controlled fashion). It works best if the content of the message suggests to assuage the victim's visceral fears (gut feelings of terror). In the latter part of a blog of 2018 I give an example of how just three bigwigs from Westminster in 2014 sufficed to manipulate the Scottish vote from about 60% for leaving the UK to 60% for staying in the UK. It is a simple but precise technique. Etonians and political science Oxfordians know all about it. Read about it HERE.
Of course, the victim seldom if ever gets the promises fullfilled. Oftentimes, the manipulator, e.g. a CEO, blames the lack of fullfilment on unforeseen circumstances or, better still, someone else and tells the victim that if only he would support him (vote for him, give him his money, time, or effort) one more time, he will deliver on his promise in spite of everything. And then, more often than not, the victim gets betrayed another time once more. And so it goes on and on and on and on and on, for eons.
After a while, the victim gets suspicious of people who promise him something. On the other hand, what alternative does the victim have but hope for the best? That's the real problem the victim has. He does not see any alternative and the manipulator makes sure that the education of the victim is such that he won't be able to conceive of any alternative. For history shows, that any good alternative may lead to insurrection, revolution, or at least sedition. In the so-called civilized West, this deprivation of alternatives is done by biased or bad schooling, misinformation campaigns (to feed the victim with false data), disinformation campaigns (to distract the victim from observation), and straight shooting propaganda (scaring people and making promises in very simple language, e.g. "We will build the wall!", "Let's take back control!"). This works very well. 99% of immigrants into the USA come through border check stations, and the UK had never lost control (and did not pay anywhere near £350 million a week, if anything at all, even) but facts don't matter in this trade. Most people will believe anything as long as the basic principles of manipulation, as told above, are applied. The old Romans knew their stuff cold: mundus vult decipi, the world wants to be deceived. Why? Because it is bad and could have been so much better if only ...... When Pandora opened her box, many terrible demons escaped but she managed to keep 'hope' with her.This deception is what is being done to us, 24/7/365. But the worst thing of it all is that when the victim is offered a genuine, viable and decent alternative by someone else, he has grown so suspicious that he won't even bother to inspect the offer, let alone take up the offer. As of this writing, this refusal to inspect a better offer can be observed on a massive scale in the USA where people have been led to believe that free universal healthcare for $120 a month per person is a bad thing and that having to pay an insurance premium starting at $650 a month per person and still having to take another $20,000 mortgage to pay for hospitalization is a good thing. The way this manipulation has been effected was exactly as described above, it took some doing but it worked. And now pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies in the USA make countless billions of surplus profit causing their shareholders to have great fun while the population suffers. If you are not rich or fully covered by your employer, you better not get ill in the USA.
And this is how a manipulator stays in power. Simple, straightforward, effective, and, fortunately, always observable.
So there it is: the basics of mass manipulation.
The scientific sources of knowhow of mass manipulation I mention in another blog of mine that you can find HERE.
Amsterdam, 24 February, 2020.
Illustration courtesy of Shadow Figures, Wales. www.shadowfigures.co.uk/.
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