Think about your favorite political or social movement. How often have you gotten into heated debates, attended protests, or voted on behalf of this cause? The campaigns you feel the most emotionally connected to are the campaigns with leaders most likely to manipulate your thought processes and drop you down from a Level Two to a Level One. In this episode of Level to Power, we challenge the preconceived notions of trust in authority figures, examine groupthink and herd mentality, and delve into how organizations create moral panic.

Apex Level To Power is a podcast that examines the inner workings of human interactions and teaches you how to succeed within your own interpersonal relationships. Change your level, change your life, change the world.

Episode Highlights:

  • Buying into groupthink
  • Is your trusted guru lying to you?
  • Why even the most genuine leaders lie to their audience
  • Harnessing the stampeding herd
  • Moral panic and firecrackers
  • The five characteristics of moral panic
  • How false facts and moral panic damage legitimate movements
  • Avoiding emotional exploitation

Resources:

Visit Level To Power for episode archives and transcripts

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Quotes/Tweets:

“Never meet your heroes, for you will be disappointed”- Mark

“Our sacred belief systems are built-in emotional triggers”- Mark

“When was the last time a social danger was underplayed? Where there was nobody running around in a panic talking about how the world was going to end in a year unless we fixed it right now?”

TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1: The topic of this podcast is scoundrels and lies, the cashing in on moral panic. The Apex Level To Power Podcast is about showing you the strings of power that surround you, that control you. This episode is going to be more difficult than others because I’m going to ask you to challenge your preconceived notions and have a little healthy skepticism toward your trusted authority figures. When we see the strings that control others, they are obvious. When someone points out the strings that control us, we feel a blind resentment and anger. How dare you question something that I know to be true? On these issues, we drop to a level one, the herd. We go from operating on a conceptual level and we fall to a perceptual level. We lose our cognitive empathy and our ability to see other paradigms and ways of thinking. Your authority figures choose this moment to get you to outsource your thinking.

 

  It doesn’t matter what your tribe is: church or mosque, Democrat or Republican, Labour or Tory, Black Lives Matter, Tea Party, environmentalist, creationist, feminist. It is the unfortunate nature of betrayal that it can only come from those you trust. Therefore, anytime we discuss another group and show the strings of power, you will say, “Of course, they do that.” Anytime we discuss a group that you believe in, your first reaction will be how dare you question my sacred beliefs that I have no rational basis for? We can be empowered in every other area of our life, but we all have this one area, some of us have many, where we turn off our critical analysis and just buy in to group think. This is no accident. All of these groups put huge social pressure on the individual to accept wholesale and, without critical analysis, the entire herd message.

 

  Many of these tribes have at their core a message of truth, which on some forgotten day long ago, you looked into and accepted. Look now how the strings of power have grown around that belief and are being used to control you. Herd expectation is that you receive vibrations of communication from the herd and you pass it on as is and amplify it. Pass on the messages like a good herd member. Don’t analyze it for truth. If you analyze it for truth, you slow down the message and you hurt our ability to stampede.

 

  I had the dubious distinction of telling you that you’re being lied to. The level twos of your trusted tribe made the decision at some point that their message reach was more important than message truth. Turn on the TV. Read a paper. Look at a website. Listen objectively to the messages of your most trusted guru and I assure you that you will find, if you look hard enough, cheap evasions and lies. I turn on the TV. Almost every single pundit or commentator wrap themselves in the flag of truth and point out the lies, and evasions, and fallacies of their enemies. Then the same people in the same broadcast turn around and tell bold-faced falsehoods to their own supporters.

 

  This is happening all around us. We have no choice about that. Your choice is whether to accept it or to push back for truth. Is your movement arguing facts of reality, or are they taking the easy way out with lies to help them in the moment, twisted statistics, twisted facts to garner some headlines and give themselves some momentum? If you are someone who actually cares about facts and the truth of reality, which we at the Apex nation do, then you are left at a loss.

 

  All those right-winger people are so terrible. They are lying to you about this. You know what? If you research it deep enough, they likely are. All those left-wing groups are so terrible. They are lying to you about this. You know what? If you research it deeply enough, they likely are. Never meet your heroes for you will be disappointed.

 

  What is going on here? How do well-meaning people with the facts of reality behind them for their movement win and why do they start selling out? Well, likely everyone starts off with an honest message, a genuine concern and they just want to try to get it heard. They want to talk about what they see as a problem of poverty or high taxes, racial injustice, rape on campus, religious discrimination or any other issue. All of these issues very likely have at their core some legitimate facts behind them. You start off early on wanting to make a difference on these issues that you care about so you compile your facts and your statistics, and you put it out there. Guess what? Other people just don’t care about it as much as you do.

 

  In the push and pull of political debate, there is only so many things the public can focus on in their minds. In this mad scrum, there is a huge amount of voices all shouting to be heard. What do you do? Well, either you take the slow and steady route and you work for change with the truth of reality, with facts, with truth, or you give your issue steroids with distorted data, and wild lies, and obfuscations.

 

  I’ll let you guess which choice most leaders make and that is to cash in. We have been failed by our intelligentsia. Taking no sides of any issue, how can the following be true? Let me just pull randomly from today’s headlines. The NRA doesn’t see a way that we can enact some reasonable gun control and still allow their members to shoot firearms. Are they interested in truth? Are they interested in power? Leading Black intellectuals in America argue that to be racist is okay as long as you are Black. Are they interested in truth or interested in power? Religious leaders oppose gay marriage. Some argue it’s a slippery slope because maybe people can marry dogs and cats one day. Is that because they’re interested in truth or interested in power?

 

  Now, all of these people and groups will argue that we live in an adversarial system like the courts. They need to argue one side so completely that the other side can act as a counter. That is exactly the problem. Like in court, neither side really gets to care about the truth. Only that they’ll do whatever it takes to win. We the public are judge and jury in the court of public opinion. It’s time we demanded better from our supposed leaders than the outright lies they tell us to get us to stampede.

 

  I am sure they’re telling themselves, “Look, sure I’m lying a bit for a good headline, but it’s all for a good cause.” What they’re trying to do is create a herd stampede. You want the entire herd to stampede in the direction and the timing you choose because that is how you harness herd power. Guess what? In a legitimate emergency, lies are not necessary. The herd will stampede on its own. When you wish to force an artificial stampede for your own purposes, stampede the herds of the voting booth so they can vote on a certain issue in the way you want them to, stampede the herd to show up with pitchforks and attack the castle, stampede a herd to show up and do a massive protest to influence politicians, stampede the herd to boycott a given business to punish them for some behavior, all of these causes require you to harness the power of the herd.

 

  How do you cause a herd stampede without a threat to the herd? You can’t. Try approaching 1,000 real cattle and shouting and yelling at them to get them to stampede. They won’t. Try a single gunshot. You might startle a few cattle nearby but you’re not going to stampede the entire herd. It might take a canon. It might take a bombardment to get the rest of the herd moving. That is what you need to do if you’re going to create a movement that you’re going to try to become a leader of. You need to create a moral panic.

 

  If the herd is honestly in dire jeopardy, you can rise as the leader of the herd, make meaning of it and show them the way. If there is some danger to the herd, but it’s not that dire and not that important, but you wish to make it seem like it is, to stampede the herd as if the danger was real, then you need to create a moral panic.

 

  Let’s discuss mechanics of stampeding a herd so you can recognize when it is happening to you. Every group has something sacred. Moral panic almost always involves the violation of some sacred belief. Safety of the children is a common one. Think of the children unless we do X. The next generation will be lost. Our women will be compromised is another one. Our women will be taken as trophies to the conquering armies of our enemies.

 

  The idea is you have to tap into a body already in motion, potential emotional energy. This is like the principles involved in judo. In judo, it is much easier to take somebody else’s energy, a body already in motion and direct it where you want to go. It takes much less of your own energy that way. If a body is at rest, forcing that body into motion and then directing it takes a lot more energy. Our sacred belief systems are built-in emotional triggers. They’re stored up emotional energy. They are potential emotional energy and a moral panic attempts to tap into those and create a herd stampede for the benefit of a few people who are called moral entrepreneurs. If I had to assign a term for these people, I’d call them firecrackers trying to fake gunshots and fake canon fire in order to create a trumped-up manufactured threat to the herd.

 

  Let’s talk a bit more about a moral panic. A moral panic is a feeling of fear amongst a group of people that threatens their tribe. The Dictionary of Sociology defines moral panic as the process of arousing social concern over an issue, usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media. The media are key players in provoking moral indignation even when they do not appear to be consciously engaged in any kind of moral crusade or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts in some cases … In some cases, simply reporting the facts without proper context is enough to generate anxiety and panic.

 

  Stanley Cohen in a well-known book called “Folk Devils and Moral Panics,” says that a moral panic occurs when a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerge to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. Those who start a panic and point out a fear to social or cultural norms have been named by researchers as moral entrepreneurs while people who supposedly threaten the social order, the dangers of the herd, are described as folk devils. Moral entrepreneurs are encouraged to participate and to gin up this panic for some sort of payoff. Maybe it’s an emotional payoff because they feel their cause is finally getting the recognition that it deserves, or they’re increasing their own power, and recognition, and status within their herd or tribe. Likely, it’s a combination of those two things.

 

  There are some famous examples of moral panic like in the ’80s when parents panicked that the game Dungeons & Dragons would cause their teens to commit suicide. In almost every decade, parents panic at some point that their kid’s music is a corrupting influence. As a matter of fact, Tipper Gore in the 1980s, Al Gore’s wife, led a crusade against explicit lyrics that would wear away at the moral fiber of our youth. In the ’70s, people worried that playing records backwards might have subliminal messages from the devil. Yes, that’s true. You can look it up. These are just some easy examples from our history of moral panic. There’s many, many other smaller ones we can look at. In a few minutes, we’ll talk about some current ones.

 

  First, let’s talk about the definition of moral panic. Socialist Erich Goode argues there are five characteristics that constitute a moral panic: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility. Concern means that you’ve gotten a herd alerted to a danger, real or imagined. Hostility means you basically said to a herd, “Those people over there are evil and are going to harm us. They’re going to harm our herd norm and our way of life.” Disproportionality is we need to take these actions, which are widely disproprotional to the actual danger represented by that group. The volatility is because we’re dealing in half truths, and lies, and trumped-up statistics, these movements tend to sweep in quickly. People are panicked. After a time, they realize the world hasn’t ended and they fade away until the next panic. One must have concern within a tribe that another tribe is a danger. There must be hostility between the two tribes that the moral entrepreneur can exploit for their purposes.

 

  The remedy that they’re proposing must be extremely disproportionate to the actual danger. The moral entrepreneurs must be very vocal and the folk devil group must be weak and disorganized so that the moral entrepreneur can gain traction and make the folk devil group appear much more dangerous than it actually is.

 

  Socialist Erich Goode argues there are five characteristics that constitute a moral panic: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility. Concern means there must be belief in a tribe that another group is going to have a negative impact on their herd norm.

 

  Two, hostility must either exist or be created between these two groups so we can divide them into us and them. The leader of the us is the moral entrepreneur trying to create division. Them are the folk devils who are supposed to represent some great danger.

 

  Consensus means that within the tribe, there has to be enough belief that this folk devil group poses a real threat. During this period of time, the moral entrepreneur must be very vocal and the folk devil group must be weak and disorganized so the moral entrepreneur can gain traction and make the folk devil group appear much more dangerous than they actually are because they’re not organized enough to defend themselves.

 

  The fourth characteristic is disproportionality. This means that the action recommended by the moral entrepreneur is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group. Remember, it would not be a moral panic if we had a legitimate remedy to a legitimate threat. The whole point of a moral panic is that we are panicked way out of proportion to the actual threat that exists.

 

  The last characteristic is volatility. Moral panics are very volatile. They tend to rise very quickly and they also tend to disappear quickly as individuals look into it, time passes, the world has not collapsed yet and everyone realizes that, A, they’ve been lied to and, B, there’s nothing to panic about here. The media decides there are other more interesting narratives they can be pushing and everything dies down quite quickly.

 

  The issue is that leaders of legitimate movements who feel they’re not getting enough attention to their cause follow the same model as a moral panic. They intentionally gin up the danger by distorting facts, by propagating falsehoods in order to raise the level of danger so they can be heard in the den of competing issues that people are trying to engage. Unfortunately, this quickly becomes a race to the bottom. Let’s say, for instance, we have one group concerned with the homeless. We have one group concerned with terrorism, another with poverty, another with racial injustice, another with freedom of religion. Each of these wants to be the top priority in the new cycle. They also want to be the top priority for government action. Well, each of these has huge incentives to gin up fake controversy so their issue gets heard.

 

  This is the exact equivalent of playing a sport where everyone else is using steroids and you’re not. If everyone else ignores the rules and uses steroids, you will be out competed. In this case, the steroids are the false facts and distorted statistics that you have ginned up to make your issue seem more important than it is. “What’s the problem with this?” you might ask. This is how things are done. Well, the problem is false facts are a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of your movement.

 

  For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Damocles was a man who told his king he thought he was lucky to have all of his wealth and luxurious life. The king said to Damocles, “If you think I’m so lucky, why don’t you try to be king for a day?” They agreed. Damocles sat on the throne and the feast began until he noticed a sharp sword hanging over his head that was suspended from the ceiling by a single horsehair. “This,” the king explained to Damocles, “is what the life of a ruler is really like. Yes, there is luxury but always a hair away from being overthrown, or poisoned, or killed, or beaten at war and invaded. This is actually the life of the king is like.” Damocles, alarmed, quickly revised his idea of what it was to have a good life, and he asked to be excused and returned to his poorer but safer life.

 

  Well, all these movements look at the prestige, and power, and momentum of other movements and say, “We would like that.” Many of them embrace the steroids of false facts and ginned up statistics, and they do indeed get the momentum they were looking for, but these are a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads because, now, the moment someone actually looks into your movement, you actually have the national attention. People start looking at your facts. Half of them make no objective sense. Any support you would have had for your movement from clear thinking reasoning people disappears. It’s a self-defeating process. Once the movement goes down this road, they’re trapped.

 

  What can they do if they know half of their facts are distorted? Well, now they must shout down objective debate. These movements, when they started off, welcomed objective debate. They wanted people analyzing their facts, analyzing their statistics, understanding what their point was. Well, now they get objective attention which exposes them as frauds. What can they do? Now, they must shout down reasoned debate. What do they do if they’re losing momentum? Raise the stakes, up the ante, lie more in order to gain converts based upon emotion. Remember, how we said 50% of women were raped on campus? No, it was 80% of women raped on campus. No, we just made that up. By the way, we redefined rape, different than the words ever been used before. Don’t worry about that. This is a real problem we want you to pay attention to. When is the last time you remember a social danger that was underplayed where there was nobody running around in a panic talking about how the world was going to end in a year unless we fix it right now?

 

  What are the consequences of this human tendency to begin a legitimate movement, embrace a huge amount of falsehood to get additional momentum? The national consensus investigates. Many are disappointed by what they see as frivolous and false information so the legacy of the cycle of legitimate issue, moral panic, ramped up falsehoods and then being debunked only results in greater division between all the parties. Everyone trust each other less. Everyone hates each other more and the cycle continues, continues and continues. Once a cycle has played out, trust has gone down. Given enough time to forget, people are even more willing to believe in the next round of even greater lies.

 

  I’m not sure if anyone remembers but an easy of example of this would be Al Gore’s global warming crisis predictions in 2008. Global warming may or not be a legitimate phenomena that we all need to be very concerned about but Al Gore in 2008 ran around in hysteria predicting the North Pole ice cap would be ice-free in five years. This is in 2008. It wasn’t just him. The media joined in this frenzy. The BBC in the UK had articles titled Arctic Summers Ice-free by 2013 and many other media outlets did the same. All that hype made Al Gore very, very wealthy, hundreds of millions of dollars. As the moral entrepreneur of that herd stampede, Al Gore cashed in huge.

 

  Damage has now been done to that movement because Al Gore threatening very, very drastic changes to our economy that had to be taken or else there will be dire consequences in five years. It’s now been eight years and none of it has come to pass. He has made himself very wealthy but now the issue of global warming is a much higher barrier to cross, to get reasoned people to be concerned about it because we’ve already been lied to once.

 

  Probably worth pointing out that the Gore family has a dubious distinction of appearing in multiple moral panics: Tipper Gore in the ’80s around rock and roll and Al Gore in 2008 around global warming. This is a family who knows how to embrace being a moral entrepreneur and causing a moral panic.

 

  Now, Al Gore is an obvious example but there are moral entrepreneurs across the political spectrum who are cashing in on moral panic. They are using the power of the herd to gin up controversy, harness emotion and lead it in a certain direction. You, as an empowered individual, as a student of human power dynamics, have to start seeing the strings of control that control others around you, but more importantly, that can control you. You need to start off by looking at what are the issues that you have the most emotional energy about.

 

  Are you an environmentalist? Are you passionate about the environment? Then moral entrepreneurs will be looking to exploit that to get your vote, your money, your time, your effort enrolled into their cause. Are you a member of a religious organization? You need to look very carefully at the strings of control that exist within your religious group. Look for the issues that you feel most passionate about and see how people are recruiting you, and your time, and your money, and your effort into causes that they create. Are you a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Tea Party or a Black Lives Matter supporter? Look at your leaders. Look at the issues that you feel most passionate about. Look for the strings of power that are being used to control you.

 

  If you’re being asked to show up, you’re being asked to march, you’re being asked to vote, you’re being asked to donate money, you’re being asked to raise people up on social media, the moral entrepreneurs to the top of the pyramid, ask yourself how this is actually going to help you. How is this helping you? Are they doing more damage to your cause than good by ginning up statistics, falsifying facts to get greater and greater momentum for their cause just to enrich themselves but ultimately hurt their cause in the long run?

 

  If you found value in today’s episode, please like, subscribe, post a review. You change your level. You change your life. You change the world. Welcome to Apex Level To Power.

 

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