146 MindWar: On Influencing And Unifying Realities

Please note: This track may include some explicit language. On changing another's perception of reality. This episode goes into the more active side of mind control... as benevolently applied to relationships. Referencing MindWar by Michael Aquino, the work of Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson (Counterinsurgency), and others.

Transcript

Today's episode has presented a bit of a challenge to me on how to present it ethically.

In the past when I've spoken about things like power and influencing people,

Things that could be unethical,

Usually all I say is,

Power is neither good nor bad,

Hopefully use it for good purposes.

That's all I can say,

Right?

And I leave it at that.

But for today's topic,

I felt I needed to explore it and like think about it a little bit more.

Because we're not just talking about how to win friends and influence people,

We are speaking about brainwashing.

In this season,

I should say,

I've been touching on the subject of brainwashing,

Of course,

In the Semantics Consciousness episodes and how we form reality perception.

We had that recent episode on how to resist taming,

How to protect yourself against other people's negative forces.

But to really do this subject justice,

We do need to look at the more active form of the dark arts,

Just like how Harry Potter had to learn about the dark arts at Hogwarts in order to protect himself,

But also use the dark arts at times to counter others.

It can be useful for us as well.

I'm sure many of us can think of situations that we can probably all agree on as ethical uses of influencing other people's reality and influencing is a nice word.

Dominating other people's reality is maybe the more aggressive word,

Such as say,

Convincing a mass of people to choose peace over violence is in a form.

It is transgressive.

I mean,

People are thinking one way and you're getting them to think another way.

But I think in most situations,

Most of us would agree,

Not a bad thing.

Good thing.

You can think of Martin Luther King Jr.

,

Positive situations.

You can think of something like a parent with a small child who wants to eat ice cream for dinner.

I think most of us would agree that that is not a situation where the parent would be doing rights,

With quotes around it,

Rights by allowing the freedom of the child,

The freedom of choice of the child.

That certainly would not lead to the well-being of the child.

But also,

I think most of us would agree that while it might be necessary to force-feed the child healthy food is also maybe not the ideal way.

If the parent could somehow convince the child of their own free will to eat healthy food for dinner,

That would probably be the best,

Right?

It is a dominance of reality,

But it would be a dominance of reality where force is not necessary and instead free will is used.

Of course,

This enters a philosophical thing that I've spoken about in my cult episodes on if you are getting someone to choose something because you made them desire it,

But they wouldn't have desired it otherwise.

That's kind of an ethical gray area that advertising and sales touches on quite a bit.

But there's various situations where I think most of us could agree influencing someone's perceptions can be positive.

Obviously,

There are many gray area situations such as we're going to speak about this in relationships quite a bit.

Many situations where say getting someone to like you when they wouldn't have liked you otherwise maybe is not a good thing depending on what happens from there on.

Convincing your partner in a more formal relationship of seeing the two of you as a together unit rather than separate.

In many cases can be positive,

But we can also think of many cases where that can be used for insidious purposes certainly and so on and so forth.

There are various grays.

There's a spectrum of how we would view this ethically.

But the fact remains that there is no way to speak about the act of influencing or dominating another's reality without acknowledging the fact that it is transgressive.

Even when done with the best of intentions,

Total benevolence for the greater good,

It is still a transgressive act to do something that changes the way someone views stuff.

Be it ideas,

Be it whether they want to buy something,

Be it whether they like you,

Whatever it is.

It is a transgressive act,

Which is why even though I did think of quite a few softer alternate titles to this episode,

I did settle on Mind War partly because some of this episode is influenced by a book called Mind War,

Which was written by a quite controversial individual.

I would say even more than Ted Kaczynski,

Whose ideas we discussed in the fulfillment episode.

This gentleman,

Colonel Michael Aquino,

Who's now deceased,

I would say is even more controversial,

But also has useful and interesting ideas.

Aquino was a colonel in the US Army.

He was a key player in some of the formation of US Army PSYOPs.

There are other alleged things that he's been a part of,

Somehow was involved in MK Ultra potentially,

Although that hasn't been confirmed.

And there's various rumors about some other way more terrible things that he's,

I mean,

Whether or not you think that's terrible.

There's some other things,

Because he was a self-proclaimed Satanist.

Even in the 90s,

He went on Oprah to talk about his religion of Satanism.

And there's various rumors about things he's done.

But his ideas are interesting.

And the fact that he was kind of on the ground floor of US military PSYOPs is very interesting when it comes to what he calls Mind War.

And his idea,

At least in writing,

Which he may or may not have believed,

But one of his ideas was that people have a natural instinct to war.

It's been throughout at least human civilization.

And this is kind of a Satanist idea,

Too,

That our dark impulses are part of us.

They've evolved for a certain reason.

This is actually something I flushed out more in the dark masculine episodes.

So I certainly agree.

His idea was that humans need to do something that resembles war.

It's like we've evolved for it.

So we don't have it.

We create it in some form.

And this is supported by things,

You know,

Ideas like organized sports are kind of a sublimation of pitched battles.

You can think of various things.

You know,

Why are people drawn to car crashes?

Why are we drawn to dramas where things go wrong is because we have this need to deal with problems,

Even though in the 21st centuries in the first world,

We don't have survival problems thrown on us.

We have this need to deal with it and war is one of these instincts,

According to him.

His idea,

Though,

His idea that he presented benevolently in the book Mind War is that if we can learn how to do war,

We being a society,

I guess you speak mostly from the perspective of the U.

S.

Army,

But also for the world,

If we could learn how to do war in a way that affects people's minds,

It doesn't require physical violence.

This is actually for the greater good,

Right?

If we can get out our war instincts through psyops,

Essentially,

Instead of physically invading and fighting with bullets and whatnot,

That's actually better for everyone because the people of the world can get out their war instincts without killing each other.

It's a nice way to put it.

I am actually curious because he died,

I think in 2013 or 2018.

I'm curious what he would think about the way war is done now.

I mean,

Various analysts can point out that we're kind of doing this now if we look at how,

I mean,

These are all rumors in the realm of conspiracy theories.

I'm not going to say what is what,

But I'm sure you've heard of things of how Russia affects U.

S.

Elections and creates divides.

And then there's various forces and politics that do the same thing,

Create changes in public perception and all that stuff,

Right?

Which is kind of a form of warfare without actually killing each other.

And whether or not Aquino himself believed this or actually had benevolent intentions,

We can take this idea and see that it's valid for our own lives,

Right?

Because hopefully no one listening to this is looking to convince the masses of anything,

Certainly not anything negative.

I guess I'm falling back on my old caveat.

I hope you don't use this for negative purposes.

But also,

You know,

This mass stuff,

Unless you maybe have a business where you're going to do a mass advertising campaign or something,

Not really relatable to all of us,

Although it's,

I think,

The best place to look at some of the principles of influence.

Obviously,

If something works on convincing the masses,

It should work on smaller levels.

So for this episode,

We are going to look at some principles from five different layers,

If you will,

Or five different lenses.

The first is the impersonal mass level.

So this is taking lessons from psyops,

From propaganda that has worked.

We're going to look at some things that what's called statecraft,

The creation of the abstraction of a nation,

Which were key advancements.

This is actually stuff that we talk about.

I cover the historical part of this more in the History of Man podcast coming soon.

But for most of us,

That's not really relatable,

Right?

We're not going to actually do that,

Hopefully.

So we're going to take a step down,

Take these same principles a step down to the second layer,

Which is the personal group,

Which is,

You know,

Team,

Being a part of a team,

Especially if you're in a leadership position,

Or in a family.

Family is essentially a team where now we're talking about groups that where you actually interact with the people as opposed to,

You know,

A politician speaking to the masses that he'll never directly or he or she will never directly interact with.

The second layer are personal groups where you do actually know people directly.

You engage with your limbic system rather than mythology.

But we're taking a step down to an even more concrete and relatable situation,

Which is that of the formal relationship,

Specifically that of the formal polarized relationship between,

You know,

Look at sexual,

Intimate,

Romantic relationships where polarity exists,

Masculine,

Feminine polarity,

We can call it.

I'm actually going to use different words to describe this,

Not necessarily for the PC police,

Although I hope that my language is more palatable to anyone who would get triggered.

But actually for semantic accuracy,

We're going to break things down into internal functions and external functions.

Basically situations,

When I say formal relationship,

I mean a situation where you have an ongoing relationship with someone,

Could be romantic,

Could be non romantic,

But where there's expectations of seeing each other on an ongoing basis,

Where there's some level of specialization,

Some level of polarity,

And you're close enough that you can hurt each other,

Which is essentially what intimacy is,

Right?

Like we're not talking about your coworker who you just say hello to and bullshit about sports with.

I'm talking about someone who there's enough of a bond between you,

You've let each other in enough that you can do things that hurt each other or really get inside each other's own hearts or minds,

Right?

So mostly going to use examples from the romantic relationship,

Because also,

You know,

Even if,

You know,

I'm sure many people listening are not in romantic relationships,

But will probably be at some point in their lives and have been this layer,

Even though it's the middle of our five layers is probably the easiest to illustrate certain principles in that as opposed to a leader with the masses or even a person in a family.

Here we are talking to entities.

There's a person who is more leading the reality,

You know,

Taking on the more external functions of a couple.

And there's a person who's more following the reality,

Taking on the internal functions of a couple.

And so we'll use this for illustration purposes.

But of course,

Not everyone is in this kind of intimate relationship.

So we're gonna take a little layer down into the informal relationships.

This is stuff like dating,

Where there might be some polarity between you and a person,

Whether it's not necessarily an expectation,

Or ongoing expectation of seeing each other.

So this could be,

Yeah,

More casual relating.

This also applies to sales situations,

Whether selling a product,

But also just kind of convincing someone of something where the relationship is not ongoing necessarily,

Maybe meet someone somewhere,

Whatever,

Socializing,

Things like that.

This would be for situations where roles and expectations are undefined,

But reality influences still possible.

And finally,

We'll take it to the deepest level,

The level that certainly applies to everyone and is the core focus of every subject that I bring up on this podcast,

Which is the self.

Because even within yourself,

And you can take the spiritual idea of your inner masculine and feminine,

If you will,

Or your voluntary and involuntary consciousnesses,

Or however you want to present it,

We do have a part of ourselves that leads and that decides on the framing of reality.

And then there's a part that's more passive or following.

And at least this is one way we can conceptualize our psyche.

And a lot of people,

Especially people who are troubled or prone to dysphoria on some level,

On any level,

We all have moments of anxiety or basically we end in bad.

End up in bad head spaces from time to time.

You could view this as you not leading yourself well into a reality you want to be in.

And of course,

If you want to go up the chain of informal relationships,

Formal relationships,

Groups and then impersonal groups,

It's impossible to lead people well or influence people well on their reality perceptions if your reality is not secure and what you want.

Right?

Yeah,

I mean,

You can't help other people until you help yourselves.

You can't influence other people until you can influence yourself.

The extreme example would be,

I mean,

Not that extreme is as common,

But the person who like gets stuck in negative thoughts on a regular basis and like can't help themselves get out of that head space.

It's kind of challenging for some of a person like that to say,

Help someone else get out of the negative head space if you yourself can't get yourself out of it.

If you yourself are quick to get triggered and put yourself in a mental hole.

So we're going to talk about that because that's the most important thing.

Of course,

It branches out to everything else and,

You know,

It's the most useful perhaps.

Right now you're listening to episode 146,

Mind War,

How to influence others' reality.

I want to start at least exploring,

At least where I landed when it came to the ethical side of this,

Because at least for myself,

I think it's hard to act on these ideas if there's obviously a sense of guilt.

So the one thing that's been helpful for me with the idea of power,

And I grew up with the perception that I think many people have that power is somehow wrong.

Anytime you affect a person's free will,

That's wrong,

I think a lot of children's,

Especially American children's,

Mythologies,

The fiction that we grew up with often is like that.

There's the superhero movies,

There's an evil dictator who maybe isn't like maliciously evil but he wants to take over the world and put everyone under his control,

Sometimes even for what he thinks is benevolent purposes,

Unifying the world.

There's been many super villains that had this kind of belief,

But it's often framed as a negative thing.

So one thing that's helped me with this idea was I had a very brief stint as a dog walker back in Brooklyn.

I didn't actually like dog walking,

But I thought the dog psychology stuff was fascinating,

And the guy,

My friend who owned the dog walking company,

Obviously trained me a little bit in dog stuff.

One of the things that he would often repeat is that learning all of these dominance tactics with dogs isn't obviously for the sake of just dominating your dog to feel good about yourself.

Hopefully no one gets an ego boost from something like that,

But it's actually the purpose is to keep your dog safe,

Especially in a city where there's lots of threats and the dog doesn't understand that because it's a dog.

The best thing you can do for your dog is train it in such a way that you've dominated it so that it always looks to you,

And then you can guide it towards safety and happiness and whatnot.

Now of course,

Even this idea with dogs,

I think most of us can agree again that this is a positive thing,

But there's many situations where the conquering person,

The dominating person might have this as his justification for doing whatever he's doing,

But the receiving people don't want this.

In the intro,

We spoke about a parent and child.

The parent wants to eat ice cream.

Maybe the child doesn't see its reality being dominated as a positive thing.

In fact,

No one wants to have their reality dominated,

At least from an ego perspective.

And then on the mass level scale,

We can think of many situations where overriding a larger entity,

Overriding a smaller entity,

It is an ethical gray.

If you look at various wars of independence,

The American Revolution,

Was it good for the American colonies to separate from the British?

It kind of depends on what side you're on.

Was it good for the Confederacy to try to secede from the Union?

Was it good for the Union to say,

No,

You have to be a part of us?

And they fought and essentially dominated the reality there.

Was that positive?

Well,

It depends on a lot of things,

Right?

I don't think we can all agree.

And you can look at various situations like that.

Had Quebec successfully gained independence from Canada when that initiative was going on a decade ago or so?

Another ethical gray is,

You know,

There's Catalonia and Spain.

There's probably,

You know,

Tens or maybe hundreds of examples going on now that I'm unaware of.

These are gray areas.

However,

The main goal of all mind war is to dominate or override a reality for the purpose of unity.

This in itself,

You know,

Again,

Is not like you can make an ethical black and white here.

I mean,

Hitler very successfully unified the German people during the rise of the Third Reich.

Maybe not the best example.

But then there's other situations where people,

You know,

Some of the conquering heroes of different cultures,

Like Cyrus the Great in Persia,

Genghis Khan,

You know,

A lot of people are proud to perhaps have descended from these peoples,

Even though most of us were,

You know,

Most of the people were actually conquered,

Right?

You know,

Many people who now see that are now ethnically Persian descend from peoples that Cyrus the Great conquered.

I mean,

Same thing,

You know,

With Genghis Khan is a better example.

Genghis Khan we speak about a lot in the History of Man podcast.

He wiped out entire ethnicities.

There's peoples cultures that we don't know anything about today,

Because Genghis Khan literally wiped out their entire culture,

Killed all the men,

Claimed all the women and assimilated them.

And one in eight Asian men who descend from Genghis Khan as estimated,

You know,

They descend from Genghis Khan because he killed their,

What would have been their male ancestors and perhaps raped or claimed,

Abducted a female ancestor.

So you know,

There's many situations where you can't really claim positivity or negativity.

However,

When exercising mind war,

I think when looking at this from the best ethical view that we can,

Especially when it comes to more personal relationships is that the enemy in a mind war is not the other person,

Right?

It's not so that you can certainly not punish them or claim them as property.

I mean,

At least this is the way I would like to go about it,

Like everyone to go about it,

Is that the enemy in mind war is the idea of separateness.

In morality and ethics aside,

This is actually the most practical way to look at it.

To bring this to like the romantic relationship level,

And this is kind of the,

You know,

Kind of obvious relationship advice or cliche relationship advice.

But if you're arguing with your partner over who is right and therefore who is wrong,

You're both arguing to lose,

Right?

That's not,

Nobody wins.

Even if you can out logic your partner and prove that she or he was an idiot and you're the genius,

The relationship is failing,

Right?

Whereas if conflict does arise and I think,

You know,

If you are the one setting the frame of the,

The frame of reality for the relationship,

Your war should be against,

And assuming you want the relationship to work,

Right?

Your war is against any ideas within your partner and within yourself that sees you,

The both of you as separate or perhaps even antagonistic elements.

Whereas the goal,

The condition of victory,

Let's say in a romantic relationship,

Is to defeat or conquer the separateness,

The separateness beliefs,

The defense mechanisms as we spoke about in the high polarity principles episode.

You're conquering those bad ideas in your partner's head but also your head that see the two of you as antagonistic or conflicting or separate.

And the conditions of this victory are where you see yourself as a harmonious,

Unified unit.

Similar to how conquering nations that did well in assimilating the peoples,

You know,

If you look at the Roman Empire,

Genghis Khan also did this well.

And perhaps every conqueror that was eventually celebrated by its culture probably did as well,

Where maybe they used force,

Maybe they conquered,

Maybe they killed some people along the way.

But what made later generations cherish them is that they formed integration where now the conquered people saw themselves as part of the greater whole.

Like in the Roman Empire,

At least when on its rise,

A couple generations after their tribe was conquered,

Maybe those people actually saw themselves as Roman.

And they saw,

While their maybe grandparents' generation saw the Romans as conquerors,

The grandchildren maybe saw the Romans as liberators,

Or people who brought them culture,

For instance.

In my own family,

My mom's family is Filipino,

And I had my 23andMe genetic testing done.

So my father's side,

Pure Sri Lankan all the way down,

Like a full 50%.

On my mother's side,

It was like 49.

5% Filipino,

0.

5,

Or maybe it's less than that,

0.

3 Western European from Spain.

So this is like Spain occupied the Philippines for some time.

And I looked at it and was like,

Oh,

Okay,

Well,

This is some conquistador blood that's in me.

Okay,

That's cool.

And then I was like,

Wait,

Is that cool?

Because chances are that conquistador again killed some of my male ancestors and more than likely raped female ancestors.

And that's why I have some Spanish blood,

Let's say.

But then,

You know,

It's something I heard from my mom growing up,

Where she would always say that every Filipino wants to go to two places.

They want to go to Spain or they want to go to America,

Which are the two occupying forces of the Philippines,

Which you'd think would be,

You know,

Things that Filipinos would resent.

And so for many generations of occupation and dominance of culture,

Dominance of reality,

It's kind of like this cultural Stockholm syndrome that you see amongst conquered peoples where they,

At least as some generations go by,

They revere and look up to the conqueror's culture.

And you can see this where I am now in Thailand,

And I've seen this in other countries that had some,

Thailand itself wasn't conquered by the British,

But had some level of European occupation.

Even the beauty standards,

And this is something that kind of upsets me from a male self-esteem psychology perspective that there's so many beauty products here in Thailand for men to lighten their skin,

And there's kind of like this very Anglo standard of beauty.

Like everyone wants to be whiter,

Thai people want to be whiter,

They want to look more white,

They want to look more European.

Especially with the male stuff,

That kind of bugs me,

The male beauty product industry in Thailand specifically to make guys,

Anyway that's a whole other thing about male vanity and trying to look like something else and whatnot,

Of course affects women too.

Because one of the other psy-op sources that I'm drawing from comes from a British intelligence officer named Sir Robert Grainger-Kerr-Thompson.

He was a key player,

And he's also someone we speak about in the History of Man podcast,

When we speak about guerrilla warfare.

He's one of the first Western officers to create manuals for counter-insurgency.

So like,

Essentially what we're talking about,

Psy-ops,

Countering specifically for the rise of communism and other fighters,

Because at this period after World War II,

Western powers had to learn how to fight not in conventional ways,

Because the only opposition of course wouldn't try to meet them in conventional warfare,

But through winning hearts and minds.

So one of his rules,

Which might seem obvious now,

But back then when all the superpowers of the world were used to fighting these meat-grinder style wars that had evolved in World War II,

It was a new idea to present that one of the key principles of counter-insurgency was recognizing that people was the key,

Not territory.

Winning a war against insurgents or guerrilla fighters,

It didn't really matter,

Not that it didn't matter at all,

But the goal wasn't winning territory,

The way that in a conventional war that's seen as progress,

Right?

You're moving the lines.

In a guerrilla war,

It actually didn't really matter so much.

What mattered was how many people were on board with your ideology.

So it's more of an abstract way of looking at progress in a war of like,

Do people believe in your cause or not?

It doesn't really matter how much physical land you carry,

As was demonstrated in,

Say,

The Vietnam War.

So the analogy to say a relationship between you and someone you're close with,

It's not about the territory,

I guess you would say,

It would be like who is right,

Right?

It's not about proving who is right or who is wrong.

It's about whether or not you've won the person to your side.

I mean,

There's like the Abraham Lincoln quotes that encapsulates mind war,

Which is,

I destroy my enemies by making them my friends,

Right?

That's kind of the goal.

And again,

People want to be a part of some group reality,

As we've spoken about in the social constructions of reality episodes.

The feeling of isolation or the perception that you are alone in your perceptions,

That you're the only one who sees the world a certain way,

That in itself makes a person feel crazy,

Even if they're right,

Even if they're otherwise sane.

It's like one of the worst feelings of isolation.

The stuff you talk about,

That they speak about in the 12-step program,

Something that drives people to behaviors that are harmful come from the perception of isolation.

I actually just recommended this to a guy who's working on changing his life,

And he's working really hard and frustrated at times that he seems to keep backsliding into his old negative thought patterns and stuff.

And he's doing a lot of things,

You know,

He's putting out a lot of effort,

Right?

It's not like he's slacking.

One of the things that would make his life a lot easier,

I suggested to him,

Was being around more people that validate the reality he wants to be a part of.

Because he works on his own,

You know,

He's in an area where basically he has a kind of isolated life.

So he's just working,

It's just very,

It's hard to overcome that inertia in isolation.

Whereas just being around people,

As we spoke about in a recent episode,

You've heard I'm sure before,

The idea that your income is the average of the five people you spend time with,

It's a lot easier to perceive a certain thing as normal when the people around you perceive it as normal,

Whether it's making a certain amount of money or behaving a certain way,

Or thinking negatively or positively.

People want to be a part of things.

Hopefully,

I mean,

Because otherwise it's kind of like you're floating around in space without anything to ground you.

Other people is what ground you into reality,

Perceptions,

Perceptions of normal.

So again,

I mean,

The last thing I'll say on the ethical piece is you are doing a great service to people by hopefully guiding them towards a benevolent or more useful or positive reality.

And the one tactical thing I'll say on this,

Which probably applies the most to formal relationships,

But actually,

I mean,

Actually any group dynamic too,

I think is something I'm going to try to remember as a parent and with any group or anything is that anytime there is a conflict or you're dealing with the perception of separateness between yourself and someone,

Regardless of the situation,

Regardless of the rights and the wrongs,

You always have a choice between resentment or agency.

Some would frame this as resent,

Choosing resentment and forgiveness,

But I think that's actually not the most accurate way to place it.

It's not about feeling good or anything moral even.

It's like if you choose resentments,

Even if whether or not the resentment is justified,

It's totally independent of the rightness and the wrongness.

When you choose resentments,

You're choosing separateness.

When you choose agency,

As we spoke about in the magician archetype episode,

You're choosing the possibility of togetherness.

So even if the person,

Your friend,

Your lover,

Whoever did something,

You at least have to be,

That is maybe unforgivable or something that you really can't be cool with,

You should at least be honest with yourself that if you're choosing resentful thoughts,

If you're choosing to blame the other person for whatever,

You are choosing the road of you guys being less together.

Within a romantic relationship,

You're basically choosing to break up eventually,

Which is just to be acknowledged to yourself.

Maybe you do want to break up eventually,

But for someone who wants to stay together with their partner and they're actively choosing to resent their partner,

Well,

That's actually just a contradiction.

When coaching people about whether or not they should stay in a relationship,

As I spoke about with Jeff who was on the podcast a few months ago,

You should at least be clear with the conditions of certain results.

It's actually insane.

It's nonsensical to choose resentments while wanting to stay together.

They don't actually align.

Whereas if you do want to stay together,

If that's the choice you've made regardless of the rightness and wrongness of the situation,

If you're choosing agency,

Which means choosing to move you collectively towards togetherness,

It does start with yourself of like,

Okay,

Regardless of the situation,

Regardless of my perceived,

My perception of the wrongdoing of the other person,

Let's say,

I'm choosing the belief that I have a way to basically recreate harmony and prevent this from happening in the future,

Which starts with you yourself choosing to not be separate and choosing the reality of harmony.

So this choice of agency,

Agency towards harmony,

By basically choosing the belief that you can lead the group or the separate people to a unified consciousness,

A unified identity,

If you will.

I hope this choice,

Of course,

One,

Steers people away from Machiavellianism because of the second reason,

Two,

That is actually the more practical thing,

Which also leads us to the next section of our episode here,

Moving towards tactical things.

So in Greek oratory,

There are three forms of persuasion.

There's logos,

Which is the rational argument as in logic.

There is pathos,

The emotional appeal,

Path as in empathy,

Means emotion.

And then there's ethos,

Which is character.

So the next piece is understanding that a lot of what gives a person the confidence to surrender to your perceptions,

Even before we talk about the perceptions or how you would mold someone's perceptions,

One of the most important things is that they respect who you are.

They respect your character.

If a person doesn't,

Even if they like you,

Even if they like your ideas,

This is something that exists beneath our consciousness.

This is closer to dog brain stuff.

If someone,

Even if they totally are on board with your ideas,

If they don't trust you,

If they don't have confidence in you,

If their dog brain doesn't look up to your dog brain as something that can lead them towards security due to your character,

They're going to have a hard time actually buying into your reality,

Even if you convince them.

Even if your logic is airtight,

It's going to be very hard.

So a prerequisite,

If you've decided that you're in a situation where you want to influence someone's reality,

The first prerequisite,

Or maybe I should say the second thing after choosing agency over resentment,

Is to ensure that you have a respectable character.

You need to be respected for who you are before anything you try to do to convince someone will take any effect.

Now one thing I found particularly interesting about Colonel Aquino's take on psyops is that,

As I mentioned,

He was a Satanist,

So did various occult things,

And he likened,

And actually he inserted a lot of his,

Call it his religious philosophy into his psyops manual.

I don't know if he did that in the original army documents.

He wrote in 1980,

But he certainly did it in the one he published for the public,

Mind War.

And he speaks about magic.

Similar to the way I spoke about magic in,

Or spellcasting as a metaphor in the High Polarity Principles episode,

Like love being a spell,

Like a kind of shared delusion,

Which I think is positive,

Of course,

In most cases,

Or in some cases,

I should say.

He goes into how,

What he calls a mind warrior.

He labels the person who does mind war,

Which we'll talk about labeling in a moment.

He says that the mind warrior is essentially doing magic on the population that he's doing mind war on,

The population that he's trying to unify into his reality,

Which I guess from the perspective of the US Army would be,

Say,

Convincing insurgents to live by American values and at least be at peace with the United States,

If not join the United States,

Or I guess NATO is like an extension,

Or join the Western world,

As opposed to combat the Western world.

And he speaks about magic in a very rational way,

Which I like.

And this is actually an element in Satanism,

And something that I think Satanism,

Even though it's a fringe religion,

Has,

As I mentioned in other episodes,

Really greatly influenced the self-help world.

I spoke about this in the Do Without Wilt episode.

But essentially,

In Satanism,

In the Satanic Bible,

They describe processes of lesser magic versus greater magic.

And a lot of these terms,

They sound very far out,

But they define them in grounded ways that make sense to someone who's into psychology.

Lesser magic is any.

.

.

I mean,

Magic is considered any influence on people where they have a real effect,

But they don't necessarily see the cause and effect.

So he actually doesn't make any separation between occult rituals and stage magic.

To him,

It's the same thing.

It's actually,

Whether you're leading a religious ceremony or enacting a propaganda campaign or pulling rabbits out of a hat,

You're doing the same type of thing of misdirection or direction of attention in order to get a new perception,

Right?

Like a good stage magician,

Even though we all know there's a trick,

Right?

We all know there's a trick,

But with a good stage magician,

We still enter a state of wonder of like,

Yeah,

How the hell did he make that thing disappear?

Or how the hell did he make the ace of clubs card appear on his chest before?

I mean,

All those things,

Right?

That's what defines a good stage magic trick.

He would say that it's the same thing for an occultist who says leading a group through some hypnotic ceremony to change their behavior,

Hopefully for the better,

Right?

Like it's essentially what even right-hand path religions do as well.

I mean,

This might be lost in modern day Christianity,

But one of the purposes of going to church every Sunday or going to temple every Friday or whatever the ritual is,

Is it's an opportunity to essentially be re-hypnotized into a certain way.

Assuming benevolent intentions on the part of the clergy,

You know,

You go to Sunday,

You go to church on Sunday,

You read some things,

You sing some hymns,

And ideally on Monday or the rest of the day,

You actually feel better.

You're a better person,

You're more secure,

You're more involved in your community.

That's the hopeful idea,

The positive effect of what is essentially a greater magic ceremony,

Right?

It's an opportunity where you go through a ritual and the ritual puts you into a light trance and the light trance incepts suggestions into your head.

Be your brother's keeper,

Let's say,

Is a good one.

And it's just in your behaviors.

It's a weekly programming and reprogramming against all the other sins that you might or sinful hypnotic suggestions that you might be bombarded with during the week in a perfect church situation that those are kind of cleaned out of your head.

Oh,

And the separation between lesser magic and greater magic.

Lesser magic is anything that convinces you in the moment of doing something or changes your behavior in a moment where it's more informal and you don't really notice it's happening.

So one of the examples given in the Satanic Bible is makeup.

That's a simple thing.

Most women's makeup is there to simulate orgasm,

You know,

Redder lips,

Rouge cheeks,

Darker eyelids is basically to simulate a woman being aroused,

Which on some subconscious level arouses men and it draws the attention of everyone,

Men,

Women.

There's a lot of anthropological,

Sexual anthropological evidence that one of the reasons why both men and women pay attention to women when it comes to sexuality,

Which is why we all appreciate a good looking woman on a magazine more than a man,

Even if you date men,

Is that women have more of a role in inspiring the rest of the tribe to all procreate at the same time,

Which is why women tend to vocalize and then women also tend to get aroused when hearing the vocalizations of other women.

One hypothesis is that the idea is that all of the women in a given tribe would get pregnant at the same time so they'd be all synced up and have babies at the same time and can share nursing duties,

Things like that.

So something as simple as,

I guess,

Artificial shows of arousal,

Which is what women's makeup does,

Is meant to slightly change the behavior of anyone who looks at them,

Right?

A woman wearing eyeshadow and lipstick,

It just draws your attention more than a woman not wearing makeup,

Usually.

Greater magic,

On the other hand,

Is where the environment is more controlled.

So rituals are an example of greater magic,

Where the magician or the mind warrior or the person affecting the reality of others is controlling the entire experience.

Typically,

There's many people going through something at the same time,

Which heightens the experience.

So one of the major principles of both mind war and magic,

According to Aquino,

And you see this in Cialdini's Elements of Persuasion as well,

Is there has to be something that establishes the magician,

In this case,

Or mind warrior or experimenter,

As a dominant role.

There has to be a dominant relationship.

So this is known as the lab coat effect in psychology.

Like you see someone wearing a lab coat,

You know,

You show up to an office or something,

You show up for a psychology survey,

And the person administering the survey is wearing a lab coat,

You automatically feel more,

It's natural to feel that they're an authority figure,

Right?

Even if,

You know,

I mean,

Anybody can put on a lab coat,

Right?

It doesn't mean that they're a doctor,

It doesn't mean they're intelligent,

You know,

They could be,

You know,

A minimum wage person just handing out surveys,

But if they're wearing a lab coat,

You trust them more.

I actually have a friend in Chiang Mai who,

He does commercials,

He's an actor who does commercials for various Asian companies,

Mostly China,

And he'll just push,

You know,

He'll talk in front of a green screen about some nonsense product or whatever,

And very often they have him wearing a lab coat,

Right?

And sometimes it doesn't even make sense why he's wearing a lab coat,

But it's there.

It's like,

Oh,

A white guy wearing a lab coat,

Talking about this thing,

This health supplement,

Oh,

It must be legit.

Now,

How does this apply to you?

I'm certainly not going to suggest that you walk around wearing a lab coat to convince people of your ideas or any false credibility indicator,

Right?

That would probably be impractical in real life and also crosses some ethical lines.

But credibility indicators,

Ethos,

Does matter.

It does matter in team situations,

It matters obviously on the impersonal mass level.

I mean,

Many politicians throughout history established their credibility through their actions,

Right?

Typically through war.

You look at the Roman Republic and later empire,

The people that rose up in the ranks prior to Caesar taking control,

Even with Caesar.

I mean,

One of the things that gave him credibility was his exploits in war.

And we spoke about this even in the five stages of the male psyche episode.

More is a metaphor,

But what establishes someone's right to rule as a king,

With quotes around it,

Is his warrior phase,

What he accomplished.

So on a personal level,

Let's use relationships as an example,

No tactic or no leading can work.

Let's use man-woman example,

Right?

If you're a man who dates women,

Your woman is not going to follow anything,

Even if she thinks you're a great person and you're smart and whatever,

She doesn't respect your character.

This is one of the things that in John Gottman,

The relationship,

I guess he's a psychologist,

He's done various studies.

If you read the book Blink,

He's mentioned,

And he could tell when newlyweds would break up within the next three years based on whether they,

If he caught them giving looks of contempt to each other,

Even while they're newly married,

Even when they seem to be very in love,

If they had looks of contempt for each other,

They almost always would break up.

And he doesn't gender it in his studies,

But I would speculate that the biggest indicator is the woman looking at the man with contempt because,

I'll talk about this in a moment,

But insofar as the masculine person in a relationship is the reality setter,

He's the one who provides security and setting the reality,

Setting the frame is part of security.

I spoke about this more in the polarity principles episode and how intersectional dynamics come from reproductive instincts,

Whether or not you actually want to have a baby.

Women,

Neurotypical women,

Feel better when they can surrender to someone,

Be around someone who they respect and trust can keep her safe for the simple reason that if she has his child,

She'll be in the most vulnerable state possible,

Physically and emotionally.

So she needs a strong man.

And I even speculate that when you hear of people,

I don't know if I should say this is a flat out statement,

But it's something that I speculate on,

That when couples who are otherwise healthy are having trouble conceiving,

I have noticed,

This is completely anecdotal,

I have noticed it does seem to trouble couples where the woman doesn't really respect the man more.

I know,

I mean,

I hope I don't insult anyone with that because there's a million factors,

But it's something I've noticed,

It's something I've noticed,

Whereas like these high polarity relationships where the woman really looks up to the man,

There seems to be very little issue.

So how does one establish ethos?

How does one actually earn the respect of someone?

Because respect is actually a subconscious thing.

I mean,

You can show courtesy and kindness to people and you can show respect to people and just be nice to everyone as a choice,

But the feeling of respect is something that is not a rational choice.

You either respect someone or you don't,

And no matter how much you try to decide one way or another,

It is a subconscious process and what allows you to feel respect or not.

Because when it comes to reality setting,

As I just mentioned,

Reality setting,

When someone surrenders to another person's reality or perceptions or sense of what is,

It comes from the desire for security.

It's a primal instinct of the chief of the tribe who we defer to for decisions for all of us.

We trust because we trust that his judgment will lead us to safety and happiness better than other people and maybe better than our own,

Speaking of each individual in the tribe.

With this,

The most important thing is emotional security tied to this,

Right?

A man,

A person,

I'll use the man-woman example,

But this could be in any configuration,

In any situation where there's someone deferring to another's perceptions.

If the man is insecure in himself and that's apparent in his actions,

If he's often waffling,

If he's easily swayed by other people,

That actually has other people lose confidence in him,

Right?

Because no one wants to entrust their reality perceptions and therefore the directions of their lives if we're going back to the hunter-gatherer instinct,

If you follow,

I mean,

You move together with the tribe,

Which is directed by the chief.

If the chief is very unsure of himself or the chief is easily convinced by other things or is constantly waffling,

And this is one of the reasons why we hate flip-floppers in politics,

Even though in many situations in the modern day,

It's kind of a show of rationality when a politician changes an opinion based on new information,

But the public hates that.

Social security is the most important thing and for a long time,

Long before I became a parent or even thought of it as myself,

The one thing I was sure about or what makes a parent a good parent in the sense of raising a happy and healthy child is being secure.

If you look into attachment theory and the kind of imprint you give a child when the child is young or the way a parent gets a child,

Most of this I thought about through coaching people.

When I took a more Freudian take in coaching and I would listen to all these people talk about how their parents messed them up,

I was like,

Man,

Because you hear enough stories,

You're like,

Well,

Obviously neglectful parents mess people up or mean parents mess people up.

You can say that's from insecurity.

Why would you do anything malicious to a child?

But then also very often,

Very well-meaning parents mess people up too,

Like the helicopter parents or the enmeshing mom or something like that,

Right?

It's almost independent of the parent's intention on whether or not they raise a happy,

Secure child because what really matters is that the parent is secure.

The secure parents,

Whether their personality is more hands-on or hands-off,

Tends to interact with the child in a way that promotes the child's security.

So this is almost like a sub-tactical thing.

This is in the realm of ethos in the mind war book.

Aquino goes into some stuff that some like tactical things that I think are – they seem very pseudo-scientific.

Like he gives a lot of ammunition for conspiracy theorists because he speaks about how supposedly the US Army has used things like EMF radiation or it's like the 5G conspiracy stuff to basically affect the moods and perceptions of populations.

He made this claim.

I don't know what to make of it.

Among other things,

He basically talks about how electromagnetic radiation at sub-perceptible levels can affect people's consciousnesses.

But he speaks about an idea that we know is true – entrainment,

Which is like the sinking up of different fields.

And whether you take it metaphorically or literally,

In the book he speaks about how the human body has various fields and it matches with other people and other things that also have fields.

Now,

We're entering the realm of mysticism and pseudoscience,

So you can take this as a metaphor if you want.

But I have thought about this now as a new parent.

My child is just a couple of weeks old,

Obviously too small to understand anything I could say or perceive anything consciously that I do.

But I have noticed,

Because she's had moments where she's at ease and moments that she's not at ease,

And maybe they're completely random,

But as far as I'm trying to do the best for her,

I have thought about this idea of entrainment between people,

Or like the limbic resonance,

That we would assume that even at her level of perception there is some effect,

Right?

I was thinking about,

Because I just learned this recently,

How a newborn's eyes,

Obviously newborns can see,

But they can't see everything that we can see.

Their visual distance is,

I think,

Only 30 centimeters for the first weeks of life,

And they can only see things that are still and have high contrast.

So there's a lot of baby toys that are black and white,

Almost Rorschach-looking things,

Because that's something the baby eye can focus on,

Whereas a natural painting or real life is kind of hard to focus on at that age.

And it made me think,

If all five of her senses are limited this way,

Then it's kind of like a blind person who focuses more on what she can perceive,

And certainly she can perceive things like my heart rate,

My breathing,

My level of tension if I'm holding her.

And if she's only paying attention to like 10%,

Or able to perceive 10% of what an adult perceives,

Then of course,

Of course,

If my breathing and my heart rate,

Basically if I'm in a state of anxiety or super ungrounded,

Of course it's going to have an effect on her,

Because my breathing is like a huge part of the total things that she can perceive.

So of course it's going to affect whether she feels at ease or not,

Even if she doesn't know what those things mean.

So you can take it metaphorically or literally,

But it seems that if you are in any way in some sort of authority position in relation to other people,

Or a totally informal thing,

Like the man in a relationship is not the official leader,

And it's not like he's always going to be leading.

A parent and a small child is more of an official position,

But in a lot of peer groups,

Even ones where there's like an official manager,

Very often anybody can lead the reality.

And actually in many cases,

A lot of what we're talking about here certainly applies in a follower position,

Especially if you've ever been in a position where you're on a team,

There's a leader,

The leader means well and you support the leader's vision,

But maybe his ethos is not very strong,

Or his ability to persuade the group is not very strong.

So that's something that makes a great follower,

Essentially being able to lead everyone else into the leader's vision.

Again,

Take it literally or metaphorically,

But in any position,

One would assume then that your state affects the state of other people.

If you are ungrounded,

People are not going to feel so calm around you.

Use this example before in other episodes on how one of the reasons why we all cringe when we see someone very nervous in a public speaking setting,

Even though most of us get nervous when publicly speaking,

But we just don't want to look at it because it makes us feel,

If someone's on stage and we're paying attention to that person,

That person by the nature of that relationship of audience and stage member affects us.

Whereas we all love when someone's confident on stage because they make us feel good,

Right?

It's an asymmetrical relationship where the person on stage affects the emotions of the audience more than the other way around.

So last idea on,

Or really last two ideas on ethos.

Okay,

You're not going to walk around with a lab coat or some sort of artificial credibility indicator,

But you can work on your emotional security and that always eventually gets recognized even if your security comes off in a quiet way.

It might not be super noticeable,

But I would argue that people do notice.

The idea that my buddy Brian Bijin shares in Fearless Man on dating skills essentially,

Which seems kind of mystical to some people when you compare Brian's work to say that of like a pickup coach where he trains guys to focus on being grounded with the assumption that even though people don't think about like,

Oh,

This person is this percent grounded and this person is this percent,

But women pick up on this.

People pick up on it.

There's a calmness that you get to feel when you're around someone who's grounded and secure because this quality of security or groundedness does affect your actions.

Obviously if you're really good at relaxing,

But when a stressful moment occurs,

You get all wound up and weird.

That's where people end up taking actions that then are unattractive,

Whether on a sexual level or unattractive of,

Oh,

I respect that person.

I want to follow him.

Growing up in the friend group that I had,

There's this one guy,

We're still friends.

For some reason,

More than anybody else that I grew up with,

He just grew up really secure.

He just didn't have a lot of the kind of normal teenage insecurities people had.

Even as an adult,

He just kind of was always sure of himself.

Later as young adults,

After college,

The same group of friends would hang out.

People started calling him.

Some of the guys were like,

Man,

We all follow him all the time.

He's not the loudest guy.

He's not what you would call a dominant personality,

But he's always chill,

He's always relaxed,

And always sure of himself.

In a minor group of decisions or major things,

He's kind of a person that everyone would turn to just because he was so secure in himself.

At the time,

I was maybe 21,

I was really into this side of psychology.

I was like,

What is it?

I was looking at it very mechanically.

I was like,

Is he doing this?

Is it the amount of humor he uses?

I was looking at it very superficially.

Now I see,

He was just a very secure person who was always sure of himself.

Actually,

We used to make fun of him in high school and middle school because he was always sure that he could do things that he couldn't do,

Like in sports.

Sometimes he would get flattened because he was overconfident,

But he never did it in a way that he was putting people down because he was just secure in himself.

He just had this very strong belief that he could do things even when he couldn't sometimes,

But never bled out in the insecure way of putting people down or anything.

It just made people trust him and want to follow him,

Even in a very informal social group.

When bids for attention between two people are accepted a lot,

You basically merge your reality,

You're perceiving things the same,

And you're connected and you're unified.

Again,

If you are the person who's taking it upon yourself to control the frame of the relationship,

Then it's on you to ensure that you guys have the same perceptions,

Which doesn't mean that it's always you overriding what she thinks.

That wouldn't be good leadership either.

But it's finding what you think is the best thing for the two of you to perceive about small things,

About big things,

And ensuring that you both perceive it.

Which sometimes actually might mean that you go back or you soften your stance.

It's not like in order to be the dominant one in a relationship,

It doesn't mean that your reality is black and her reality is white and then her reality has to become black.

Like it could be gray.

It could be maybe a little bit more dark gray.

This is something that both Aquino mentions,

But also Sir Robert Granger,

Kurt Thompson.

I always forget what order his names are in.

I've said it wrong before.

One of his principles of counterinsurgency is assimilation into the culture.

This is one of the things that even though there are a lot of mistakes,

I don't know if I should make,

Even though there's a lot of mistakes made in the US occupation of Afghanistan,

Something that did seem to work in terms of the culture is having mixed units of American and local forces.

This is something,

Even though a lot of the analyses of why the US occupation failed is a lack of cultural sensitivity and a lack of cultural awareness,

The things that did seem to work well were essentially adopting elements of the other person's culture too.

Someone who did this really well is Alexander the Great.

Even though he was conquering everyone on behalf of Macedonia and the Greek cities,

He did make many efforts to not only preserve the cultures of the conquered people,

Be it the Egyptians or the Persians,

But also have his Greek men assimilate with them.

He encouraged his soldiers to take on foreign wives and do these group ceremonies,

Like really create synergy and a unity of people.

It didn't last very long after his death,

But it was a good initiative.

It was a unifying initiative.

And compared to others who had large,

Basically other conquerors who didn't do that,

They had a lot more rebellion to deal with.

Genghis Khan is known to have done this well as well,

Where he allowed for religious freedom,

Which was kind of a new idea in that era,

In the 1200s,

Of a conqueror.

He allowed,

He preserved a lot of elements of the cultures that he conquered.

However,

He ensured that everyone,

At least in the beginning of his conquest,

Ensured that they all saw themselves as Mongols.

It didn't matter if you're a Christian Mongol or a Buddhist Mongol or an animist Mongol,

A Mongol who's ethnically Chinese or something else,

But once you were in the Mongol nation,

It was important to see yourself as a Mongol.

And he did this through various ways,

Which I talk about in the History of Man podcast.

So we're going to end the episode here with a couple tactical bullet points to ground some of the theory we've spoken about.

One thing in line with what we've been talking about is that the idea of economy of force,

Which is another one of the principles from Sir Thompson in counterinsurgency,

And it's the basic idea that any time there is a physical battle in a mind war,

That physical battle,

Regardless of the outcome of the battle,

Is going to be counterproductive to the efforts of the mind war,

Right?

Remember,

It's unity.

So where does this come in in a relationship?

Well,

Anytime you fight or have to be aggressive,

Sometimes that is necessary in a loving relationship.

Sometimes you do need to let some heat out in order to make things real,

Hopefully leads to makeup,

Sex and whatnot.

But you must know that every time things are made antagonistic,

Anytime force is used,

Not physical force,

But like anger,

Aggression,

Words shared that are not feel good words,

There is a cost,

Right?

Every battle has some,

Has casualties.

So recognizing that it should always be a last resort.

And now this might seem like an obvious relationship thing.

Don't rush to fighting.

But I think strategically,

It's good to look at it as an element of strategy,

In that it is something as a last resort that is supposed to be there,

But used sparingly,

Right?

Like it's kind of hard to,

What's it called?

Like a big gun diplomacy.

It's kind of difficult to engage in peaceful diplomacy when you don't have anything to back it up,

Right?

If the person knows that they can get away with anything,

Maybe they don't have such an incentive,

Especially when they're upset or uncomfortable,

Maybe they don't have such a big incentive to go the diplomatic route.

The relationship doesn't mean like,

If your partner knows that you don't actually back up anything,

If when,

If she does go against something you said there are no consequences,

I mean,

There's a loss of respect there.

And like sometimes you do need to,

You know,

Sometimes it is important to raise your voice and lay down the law and call things out.

But it should always be done in a way of like,

You're ripping the bandaid off,

You're aggressively attacking the real enemy,

Which is the idea of separateness,

Not the other person,

I will say again.

You're attacking that idea of separateness,

Maybe with some aggression,

But the point is to basically nip it in the bud,

Prevent it from being a long,

Drawn out conflict,

Which means being quick to make up,

Which comes down to a very simple tactical principle,

Which is reward the behavior you want and punish the behavior you don't,

With an emphasis on rewarding the behavior you want.

I mean,

Punishment is in the lines of force too,

Right?

Like how could you possibly punish someone without doing something that makes them feel bad,

Whether it's through anger or the cold shoulder or whatever,

Right?

Or anything,

You know,

Any unpleasant behavior.

It's not the direction you want to go in,

Because there's cost,

There's casualties.

Whereas the more that you can reward the thing you want,

The more you're just aligning incentives,

Like you're aligning what feels good to them with what feels good to you.

An idea that Aquino shares is that the loss of religion in our society,

I mean,

We live in a rationalistic society,

Not a religious one anymore.

One of the losses of religion being a normal thing and everyone believing in God is that many people have been left with uncertainty.

Because even if you're a rationalist and the creation myths and,

You know,

The myths of almost all religions are not accurate,

They don't actually describe reality,

They do give people a lot of certainty.

And Aquino argues that in this atheistic age that we're in,

People are extra susceptible to things because they don't have a certain framework of which to make meaning,

Which makes people even more eager.

And I think one of the reasons why cults can exist is that people are looking for that tribal experience where they're with a small group with direct connection to the leader,

With a leader that they trust and respect and has the ethos that has,

That want to follow that person,

And that leader is very sure of the direction.

They can diagnose the problems of the group and has a framework for changing.

The benevolent leader,

And this is purely a parenting theory,

We'll see if it's true in my life,

But I do think the basis of reality that is most important for any leader,

And I think especially parents,

To assert is that we are all okay.

Reality in total is okay.

And you hear this in parenting advice,

But also leadership advice and relationship advice is to separate the unwanted action from the person,

Right?

And it's a thing typical to children,

And actually this extends into adult life.

I've coached many people with this same,

I think actually most people have some feeling of like if they've done something not good,

Then they're a bad person,

Which is a semantically inaccurate way to look at things,

But it's important to be able to,

I think as a leader,

To assert the reality that we are all okay.

Everything is okay.

There's some things to be corrected,

But yeah,

I do think this is something that the masculine in a relationship sets.

This is,

Aside from being a dominant frame,

This is a frame that someone would want to be inside of.

And as far as calling out truth in a way that doesn't create antagonism,

One of the best elements is humor,

Right?

To tease someone about something.

Humor allows you to call out things that are true in a way that is still palatable,

Like the spoonful of sugar idea,

Something I use a lot in my relationship.

Teasing a liar,

I mean,

Just for fun and just,

I mean,

I think it sub-communicates that I'm really paying attention to her and her idiosyncrasies,

But even when something is not great,

It's like a great way to bring attention to something without making it antagonistic,

Because what humor sub-communicates is,

Hey,

We're still in this together.

I can call out this thing because it's true.

Maybe there's some unwanted thing that happens or happened,

But by bringing it up in a funny way,

A funny way,

I mean,

There is a way to make jokes at a person's expense,

But to do it in a teasing way where we can laugh at something together,

It reasserts that we're still a unit.

We're still a survival unit together.

We're still unified.

We're just doing some housekeeping here.

Because with all reality dominance,

Attempts,

Tactics,

Strategies,

Well,

Actually,

I'll say this as another tactical thing,

Is especially in moments where maybe there is some contention between perceptions.

Let's say you're battling against someone's perception of separateness or someone's anti-something conditioning,

You know,

In dating,

There might be like anti-masculinity conditioning in someone or whatever.

I mean,

It's a million examples.

You could think of many.

This is actually a quote from,

Shit,

I always mix up Buckminster Fuller and Bertrand Russell.

I forget which one said this.

I think it was Fuller.

That you can't eliminate a system,

But you can make a system obsolete by introducing a new one.

And this is a separate idea,

But related,

That the best systems that make another system obsolete are the ones that can include the other.

So on a propaganda level or on that level,

You can see this in how religions sometimes syncretize other elements of other religions.

So the Romans did this when they would conquer a people that also had a pagan polytheistic religion.

They would syncretize their gods and say,

Oh yeah,

Freya,

That's your love goddess,

She's actually the same person as Venus.

So you can just use the word Venus.

They're interchangeable,

Right?

It was a way of merging cultures and essentially creating a bigger framework that includes the other framework.

So it doesn't have to disqualify it,

So you're not forcing someone to change their opinion.

You're just being like,

Oh yeah,

That thing still exists,

But it's a part of a bigger thing that maybe you didn't see.

You didn't see the whole elephant,

Perhaps.

You know,

Islam still maintained Jesus in the religion as a prophet.

They didn't say he's the son of God,

But they included him still,

And they didn't deny him.

One salesy example that I have,

I shared this in an article that I wrote for Better Humans on how to get people to join your cults.

And I gave this principle,

And the example was,

It was when I worked for OneTaste.

Obviously,

You know,

They taught relationship skills from a more feminine perspective,

From the position of empathy,

Rather than say what like a typical male dating coach would teach on a tactical level.

And a lot of times there'd be these very left-brained guys who just didn't understand how you could possibly be seductive or attractive to women without that Machiavellian edge.

Very often I wouldn't deny his,

I wouldn't try to counter his beliefs directly,

Because that would cause defensiveness,

And that would reassert otherness,

And I was trying to recruit him,

Right?

I would acknowledge his perceptions.

Oh yeah,

You're right,

Women are this way,

And yeah,

This is,

Yeah,

This is,

You know,

I'd agree with whatever his thing was,

But then I would offer him a greater explanation as to why women behave in a certain way.

It's like,

Oh yeah,

If you only knew how intuition works,

Then it wouldn't seem so random,

And women wouldn't seem so crazy.

And then since I wasn't denying anything,

I was basically expanding the reality,

Which fit his perception.

So he didn't feel like I was calling him crazy,

I was just saying,

Oh,

There's actually something outside of what you haven't seen yet,

Which is different.

And I enrolled a lot of would-be pickup guys into this matriarchal cult that way.

So that was Mind War.

I realized,

Especially,

I mean,

Not only through recording this,

This is a little bit of a longer episode,

But in this research,

This is probably not going to be my only episode on this.

I know I stayed,

I mean,

I say I often do more on principles than on tactics.

So I probably will do more on the active brainwashing,

Maybe some more on the dark arts.

But that's it for now.

See you next time.

Bye.

I'm coming from Brooklyn,

Straight to you.