There are people who make money at our expense, they go to make up the 20 percent of the population that holds 80 percent of the world’s wealth. Have you ever wondered how they make so much money? The answer is very simple: Through social control.
In order to make a lot of money these limited groups of very powerful wealthy entrepreneurs need a large mass of people to consume; the secret lies in convincing us to consume what they want, when they want and at their price. If they can do that, that’s how rivers of money will enter their pockets.
If you were a sheep farmer, and you had to lead the flock, would you rather have smart, resourceful sheep who take the initiative and are not afraid of the dog, or animals with limited brain function who do exactly as you say and fear your stick? In everyday life, even for humans, the situation is the same; let us summarize in ten points the methods that are implemented in order to keep us in the state of passive unthinking consumers, the techniques of social control.
The strategy of distraction
It basically consists of diverting the public’s attention away from the important problems and major changes imposed on us by politics and economic powers by inundating us with constant distractions and an avalanche of meaningless information. This strategy is also essential to keep the public from taking an interest in science, psychology or economics, subjects through which they could emancipate themselves. Keeping us all occupied in useless things, leaving us no time to think.
Create problems and then offer solutions.
This method is also known as “problem-reaction-solution.” It consists of creating a problem that triggers a certain reaction from the masses in order to trigger in people the need for a solution. For example, letting violence escalate in cities, or riding on the back of attacks, so that people easily demand or accept new security laws and policies at the expense of freedom. The same goes for economic crises, which are deliberately ignored until the social condition of citizens forces them to accept tax increases or dismantling of public services.
The strategy of gradualism.
To make people accept the unacceptable and maintain social control, it is sufficient to introduce changes gradually, arriving very slowly at the predetermined goal. This is how the radically new socioeconomic conditions were imposed between the 1980s and 1990s: Privatization, precarity, unemployment, wages that no longer guaranteed decent incomes, a series of changes that would have caused a tremendous revolution if they had been applied at once.
The strategy of deferral in social control.
In order to gain acceptance of an unpopular decision, it is necessary to present it as “painful but necessary,” gaining public acceptance immediately, but for future implementation. It is indeed much easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate one, first because the effort is not immediate, and second because the masses have a tendency to naively hope that things will be better tomorrow and perhaps the sacrifice could be avoided.
This gives more time for people to get used to it, prepare for change, and to accept it with resignation when the time comes.
Address the audience as children.
If one addresses a person with language and a message suitable for a twelve-year-old, there is a good chance that he or she will respond to the message with a reaction devoid of critical sense; in this way it is possible to make people assimilate better the messages and ideas, for example, those that are disseminated through advertising. The more you try to deceive those in front of you, the more you use a childish tone, arguments, speeches, characters and intonations that you would adopt in a speech to a “mental deficient,” in this way social control is guaranteed.
Use the emotional aspect much more than reflection.
Exploiting emotion is the best method to cause a mental short circuit in one’s interlocutor and prevent him from applying a rational analysis of what is happening. If something is presented to us in an emotional way, suggestive and provoking emotions in us, we tend not to analyze it from a rational point of view. ‘The use of the emotional register allows us to open the gateway to the unconscious and silently inject ideas, desires and fears into us in order to preserve social control and induce very specific behaviors.
Keeping us in ignorance and mediocrity.
It is very important to keep people in a state of widespread ignorance, so that they are incapable of understanding the technologies and strategies that are used for their own control, preserving them in their state of slavery. “The quality of education given to the lower classes must be mediocre, so that the intellectual distance between the poor classes and the ruling class remains impossible to bridge.”
Stimulate the public to be complacent with mediocrity.
Pushing the mass to believe that it is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and ignorant and at the same time inducing them to mock those who focus on intellect and mental development instead. Being part of the ignorant mass should be “normal,” and those who come out of it should be labeled by everyone as “the different one,” so as to cause the group to remain in a constant state of mediocrity, preventing them from emancipating themselves.
Reinforcing self-blame.
Making the individual believe that it is only he or she who is guilty of his or her misfortune and social status, due to his or her insufficient intelligence and poor abilities; in this way, the individual instead of rebelling against the system devalues and blames himself or herself, inducing a depressive state whose effect is to prevent him or her from taking action to get out of his or her unhappy condition–and without action there is no revolution. Making people believe that they are incapable of doing something is best way to prevent them from raising their cultural and psychological inferiority status and to ensure their social control.
Know individuals better than they know themselves.
The powerful small group that dominates holds the knowledge and technologies to analyze and predict people’s reactions so as to unconsciously induce them to apply predetermined choices and decisions. These people constantly invest in market research and companies that produce statistics on trends, behaviors, and reactions, for the dual purpose of proposing products that we will surely buy and monitoring whether the strategies they are implementing are working. This means that the system is capable of exercising greater social control and great power over individuals, greater than the individual himself is capable of exercising over himself.
Circumventing Social Control
Being aware of how the system is constantly trying to condition our choices in order to control us allows us to act differently from the masses and evade the dictatorship of modern slavery, a silent war that goes on every day between those who have become aware of the state of affairs, and those who try to beat them back into the herd.
Expanding one’s culture, not believing everything we are told, delving deeper into the news, living soberly, self-convincing oneself that we are capable of doing anything, seeking only the essentials, are the weapons we have at our disposal, powerful weapons that can nullify all forms of social control; in short, “being the black sheep.”