"1. He is intolerant and fearful of solitude, physical and mental.
2. He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than any other.
3. He is subject to the passions of the pack in his mob violence and to the passions of the herd in his panic.
4. He is reasonably susceptible to leadership.
5. His relations with his fellows are dependent upon the recognition of him as a member of the herd.
The gregarious tendency, Mr. Trotter believes, is biologically fundamental."
Further in the book, Bernays quotes McDougall's lists of instincts, each with their attendant emotions: fight-fear, repulsion-disgust, curiosity-wonder, pugnacity-anger, self-display-elation, self abasement-subjection, parental love-tenderness.
This looked to me to be a more detailed and refined list of what I had already hypothesized. Bernays and the others are straightforward in talking about herd instincts and how ineffectual facts are for influencing behavior. It comes down to, "tell the truth, and people will fight you," just as many readers, I expect, are right now fighting the ideas I have just written. Considering the fame and documented successes Bernays has for being the Father of Spin, I regarded this as very strong validation of my realization of the non-rational, instinctive nature of humans.
So What?
It is not a pack of sheep dogs guiding the flock; rather, it is a wolf pack.
I quit watching TV a dozen years ago because I realized how effective and pervasive the propaganda is. I quit participating in surveys and opinion polls because I knew these were tools to refine spin and to help guide the herd, just like focus groups had been in earlier, more primitive sociological days. While herd information is still being gathered in all those ways, now the wolf pack has "metadata" from every credit card purchase, phone call and internet search, all used to define the habits of the herd. Stop and think for a second how Facebook is used by the wolf packs and why its owner, Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire. Given enough money to fund think tanks and psyops (psychological operations) programs, the wolf pack can easily guide the sheep herd to the best snacking area. Everything is propaganda. National Geographic's article "The War on Science" was a wonderful example.
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