Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 296 Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 12:17 pm Post subject:
A highly relevant piece in understanding our current challenge. Do we have any knowledgeable people on such psychological experimentation?
My own guestimate was that 80-85% of the population were sheeple, so in a way, that's good news.
I used that as a guideline when defending myself at an AGM against a Management Committee that was lying to the membership in order to get me voted off. My target was 10% of the vote, I got 17%, even though it was clear to all that had I been elected I wouldn't have been able to get anything done on the committee (I was a candidate only because of intimidation not to be).
I reckoned that if I could get through to the majority of the goats, then the sheep wouldn't matter too much; I would win through in the end.
On the other hand, a membership association is a bit different from the population as a whole. One would expect a much higher level of people who think for themselves. The Esperanto movement in Britain when I joined in 1962 was very similar to the present truth movement with respect to the types of people in it. However, the goats (in Britain) had constantly been having bad experiences and had been leaving over the past ten to twenty years. That would skew the statistics back towards the sheep.
I was amazed at the extent to which the psychology revealed in this video was evident at that AGM in 2006. I had decided to go into reactive mode, and not to attempt to present any new material other than that necessary to defend myself. The one exception I made to that was just to describe, in one sentence, the fall in membership figures. I said that they had been roughly stable for ten years, then in 1992 they had started to fall in roughly a straight line. A previous secretary who himself had been trying to draw attention to the membership fall in 1999 reacted by saying "No it didn't". I had facts and figures and had just spent a year researching the issue. That guy was clearly in denial.
All the Management Committee had to do was to keep repeating the myth that the membership of all membership associations is falling, and those who wanted to discuss the issue and what to do about it were just blocked.
To overcome this, I think one has to (1) focus attention onto the issue and (2) change the context.
In my case, the Management Committee focused attention on the issue over a period of two years, resulting in a membership which now knows that it doesn't understand what is going on. The campaign stopped when they made a blunder and I could quote their former solicitor to them at the 2008 AGM.
To change the context, just look at parallel situations, especially ones which are acknowledged by respectable people. In my case, I could quote interventions in political parties, and I could compare the Wilson affair with a similar affair at about the same time in London concerning the president of the Universal Esperanto Association.
If there were interventions there, then why should Esperanto be an exception? It's all about an English-only New World Order. Suddenly it's making sense to a lot of people, and I find I still have friends, and all sorts of people are now thanking me.
I think the 9/11 Truth Campaign has been successful in focusing attention onto the issue. The BBC has been marvelous in this respect
In changing the context and presenting respectable people, the film ZERO does a marvelous job, especially if we say that it's created a stir in the European Parliament.
If any of the 3757 people registered with this site are knowledgeable in this area, I would be interested in finding out more on the psychology side.
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