Thinking for Yourself (1 February 2010)
The recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to spend freely to influence political campaigns has produced a spate of articles bemoaning the possibility that corporations will use that power to control the political process. The principal fear is that corporations will tell political candidates how to vote if they want to have corporate support or avoid corporate opposition. The reasoning of the Supreme Court (by a 5-4 majority view) was that citizens can make up their minds after hearing all voices, even if some of those voices are louder (because of dollars spent) than others.
The question for me in all this has to do with how much people—you, me, and our neighbors down the block—are influenced by advertising. I don't know about you, but I rarely pay attention to the ads that I see on TV. One of my theories, in fact, is that the quality of a product or service is inversely proportional to the frequency of TV advertising for it. My own biases aside, advertising is Big Business, and it would not have gotten that way had it not been able to demonstrate results. The "father" (or perhaps "grandfather") of modern advertising was Edward Bernays, whose 1928 publication, Propaganda encouraged advertisers to take advantage of what he called the "herd instinct" in humans, our inherent desire to go along with the crowd. He didn't know it at the time, but humans have a special brain structure called mirror neurons that encourage the herd instinct. It isn't so much "The Devil made me do it" as it is "My neighbors made me do it."
Recent history, and I'm thinking about what is usually called "Health Care Reform" and other aspects of the political process, has shown that public opinion (not yours or mine, of course, but the opinions of others) has been swayed back and forth as quickly and as easily as a metronome marks 3/4 time. Public opinion keeps time with the advertising rather than with the "facts." Part of the reason for this is that the facts haven't always been clear, primarily because the voices advocating looking at them were drowned out by fear-based advertising. We are told to beware of "government death panels" making decisions about "pulling the plug on granny" instead of hearing about opportunities to discuss such end-of-life decisions as whether we want to keep granny on a heart-lung machine and tube feeding her for as long as possible, or to let her transition naturally when her body ceases to function.
One of the most famous quotations to come out of Nazi Germany was Joseph Goebbels' “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Two of the arguments against health care reform were that the U.S. had the best health care system in the world and, if we changed it, we would end up with a government-run program that would be no better than U.S. postal delivery. The irony is that the U.S. is toward the bottom of the rankings for health care when it comes to outcomes and expenses, but we actually have the best postal delivery service in the world. The same people who thought of health care reform as "socialist," a government take-over of medical services, are perfectly content driving on government "run" roads, sending their kids to government "run" schools, and applying for and using government-run Medicare when they reach 65.
Those familiar with NLP and/or hypnosis understand the power of suggestion. Since the days of Bernays, the goal of advertising has been to have individuals NOT think for themselves. The goal of advertising has been to influence thinking in the desired direction. In this, political advertising, whether by groups of individuals or by corporate entities, is no different from advertising for products and services. When XYZ runs ads for its products, we understand that the purpose is to sell more product. If and when XYZ runs ads for, say, John Smith for U.S. Senate, will we know what kind of benefit XYZ expects to receive when Smith wins the election? [Note: XYZ and John Smith are hypothetical entities, and no resemblance to entities living or dead is intended or implied.]
As Richard Bandler has said, "Hypnosis isn't the exception, it's the rule." It isn't so much whether you are in trance as it is a matter of which trance you're in. I like to think of myself as being in an "I think for myself" trance rather than being in someone else's trance. And then I start thinking about the possibility that the most powerful trance of all is the "You're thinking for yourself" trance, even while you're being persuaded to try a different brand of beer or toothpaste: "Why buy the same old brand again? Think for yourself. Try Brand XYZ for a change. Change your beer. Change your toothpaste. Change your life. Have more fun, and make new friends...."
One thing you really can do to protect yourself against undue influence is simply pay attention and ask yourself about the message behind the message. If you think the way "they" want you to think, who stands to gain? "They" want you to think that you will gain or (what can often be a more powerful thought) avoid loss. Check for the facts. If you are to benefit, why would "they" be spending their advertising budgets promoting your welfare. Now that's a trance to avoid.
For more information about what Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders, see Dan Vergano's article in USA TODAY, 22 January 2010.
