My dad was a fantastic man. He didn’t attain any high ranking position in society or accomplish anything that society lauded. That doesn’t matter because he was a wise and loving father. He had a great mind, the breadth and depth of his knowledge was immense. He understood people and human nature more than any professional psychologist I have ever met. He was secure enough in his strengths – physical, mental, moral and emotional – that he was at liberty to be an extremely gentle man. I am very grateful to have been around him for the years we had together and wish I had been a better “life student” during that time.
One of the many things I learned from Dad was how to best deal with problems. He had a very logical and practical approach to handling problems. You had to start with figuring out what was causing the problem. The “problem” is almost always just a symptom of what is actually going wrong. If you take the time to figure out what was happening that allowed the problem to manifest, you have a place to start looking for the solution to the problem.
Once you have identified the cause(s), then you think about what you can do to change it. Think of all the ways you could affect it and write them down. Look at each action and think about: can this actually be done; can you do this alone or do you need help; what will people’s reactions probably be – consider all possible reactions; how will you respond to these reactions; etc., etc. Think it out thoroughly. Then you take all the potential solutions, choose the best one and have the others as back-up information. This has you prepared for the unexpected (which almost always happens somewhere along the line). Thinking it out ahead of time helps you handle adverse reactions because you aren’t caught by surprise.
Essential to the success of this formula is to have accurate facts and to be willing to see the truth – even when the truth is painful or unpleasant. Even if you hate it, you need to see the truth. There is an old Russian proverb that says, “I would rather be slapped in the face with the truth than kissed on the cheek by a lie.” Not many people think this way but I do. “The truth shall set you free” is true. It frees you to deal with reality instead of the comfortable fictitious world in your mind and dreams.
As many of you know, I have been interested in political goings-on for decades now. I got interested when JFK was running for president and so many strange and untrue things were being said about him, Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church. Most of it was fear-mongering, trying to influence how people would vote in the presidential election that year. That was when I first started to realize how many things we see and hear every day are simply not accurate.
There are many sources of this inaccurate information. Sometimes it is just a person’s perception distorting how they see a situation. Sometimes it is twisted or distorted information being spread by a few for ulterior motives which is then repeated by others not knowing it is wrong. Sometimes it is deliberate outright lies. Pure fiction made up to deceive others. It is my observation that distortion and lies are frequently used to further a “cause” that would not become popular without the lies. In other words, these lies are used to manipulate the people and their reactions so that they will support the “cause”. The people’s emotions are used to get this support.
Most people make decisions based on their emotions. Once you get the people emotionally involved, they act according to what makes them feel better emotionally. By orchestrating others’ emotions, fact-based logical or convincing arguments are not needed to get the support of the majority. Whether their decisions/actions improve a situation or not is often ignored simply because it is more comfortable to feel good about oneself. Many are not even willing to look at the truth because it is too uncomfortable to do so. I don’t know anyone who likes to be wrong or feel they have been duped and manipulated. They refuse to see the truth and therefore are not free to deal with reality.
Although deceit and deception have been going on throughout human history, it rose to new, high levels in the twentieth century. This increase is primarily due to a man named Edward Bernays. Bernays was a pioneer in the fields of public relations and propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, he used psychoanalytical and crowd psychology concepts as he developed his techniques. He has been called both the “father of spin” and the “father of public relations’. Though most people don’t know of him, Life magazine named him one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century.
Bernays was a propagandist and was proud of it. He used his Uncle Sigmund’s insights into the human psyche and motivation to design his PR (public relations) campaigns. He also used psychological techniques to mask the motives of his clients. His deliberate strategy was to keep the public unconscious of the forces he was using to manipulate them and “mold” their minds. He described his technique for controlling the masses as “engineering of consent”. In his book, Propaganda, he wrote, “If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.” Bernays pioneered many of the techniques for achieving this invisibility.
The best known use of Bernays techniques was by Nazi Germany’s Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Hitler’s propaganda machine is well known, so I won’t bother discussing that. However, this example shows clearly show Bernays’ techniques can manipulate people’s behavior. They are dangerous and they are being used every day right here in America as well as elsewhere in the world. …to be continued…
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