“If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.”
– Elon Musk: entrepreneur, spacefarer, and annoyer of the Woke. (Quoted by Yaron Brook here.)
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 14th, 2022 |
 19 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom.
The SAGE committee has that as Standard Operating Procedure #1
Lest we forget, openly minuted by the SAG committee meeting March 2020
“Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures”
Produced by the Nudge Unit, not the medical sub-committee.
A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened. … The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. … Use media to increase sense of personal threat.
How SAGE and the UK media created fear in the British public
https://evidencenotfear.com/how-sage-and-uk-media-created-fear-in-the-british-public/
Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/06/is-the-coronavirus-scare-a-psychological-operation/
This SOP has (let’s be honest) been brilliantly successful. Not least because of the SAGE behavioural unit (psychologists) careful mapping of the predominant types of personality in the UK (and elsewhere), and how to tailor the threat to the type of personality.
As with most social media, “bread and circuses” is a crude but accurate guideline for the most frequently-occurring type of personality. Social creatures, happy to doze in front of the TV. Most often watching things happen, or wondering what happened, but not making things happen.
For want of a name, let’s call them the Sheeple. They are easy to scare, and easy to herd; trusting in the benevolence of their shepherd, even when being herded into a lorry for a one-way trip to an abattoir.
Important note:
This is not the kind of person who would frequent strange websites like this one, where questions are asked and comfortable assumptions are challenged.
I met a man on Saturday who believes it all.
Lockdowns – “saved lives”.
Masks – good idea.
Government spending – not high enough, “cuts” are harming people.
And-so-on.
He was intelligent and highly educated – so clearly the Behaviour Modification teams (“Nudge Units”) and the mainstream media, are earning their salt.
As for opponents of ever bigger government and international governance (Chancellor Merkel was a hero of the man) – we are ists and phobes.
So, again, the education system and mainstream media do have an effect.
The swimming pool at the gym is roped off into three 5 metre wide lanes, fast, medium and slow. At the head of each lane there is a board that instructs swimmers to swim in either a clockwise or anti clockwise direction, swim up one side, move across at the end, swim back down the other side. This works quite well but can be a little awkward when people swim at different paces. So, when there are only two or three swimmers in the lane, we often come to an agreement just to swim back and forth in parallel, that way it doesn’t matter if some are faster or slower, we can keep out of each other’s way. However, there are some swimmers who insist on swimming in circles even when there are only two in the lane, some even when they are the only person in the lane. It says so on the sign you see.
In my life I’ve found that predictability approximates security, and Freedom is chaotic. I also have found that security is, at best, a comforting illusion, and at worst, a terrible millstone about your neck dragging you down.
some even when they are the only person in the lane
For socially-oriented (herd) people, the desire to conform can be overwhelmingly strong. Even when there’s no-one else (or nothing) to conform with. If one was unkind enough to mention this to such a person, they would probably get quite distressed and try insulting you in various ways. Like, don’t you know there’s a war on? Or, you must be a ultra-right-wing person that should be cancelled immediately.
OR they will combine to remove you. Ten men acting together can make a hundred thousand tremble apart. The problem of power and the problem of freedom lies in combination. In the real world, power is not a Lord Voldemort who has within himself the power to compel others; power is a Putin who has part-found, part-built-up an organisation and society that enforces his will even if many (or indeed most) of its members would rather not, and which is good at breaking up rival combinations.
There is also bureaucracy: the rule of nobody. (From memory of a discussion of some woke folly)
Well, yes, they are behavioural psychologists and gaslighting is their go to tool of choice.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the behavior of people in the swimming pool but here is one more observation. The pool is mostly quiet. There are no swimmers in the fast lane. I am swimming alone in the medium lane. The slow lane is packed. Non of the people who consider themselves to be slow swimmers will stray out of the slow lane even if the rest of the pool is almost empty.
That’s because the fast swimmers are dicks, and will berate and ridicule any slow swimmers who might be in “their” lane when they arrive.
Everyone wants to be loved, and no one wants to be ridiculed. This is the main protection offered by herd membership – arbitrary standards that allow you to always know your place. The only cost of that membership is suspending judgment and agreeing to weird rules, like wearing Shriners’ hats.
If you vigorously agree that morbidly fat people are lovely and healthy, your herd will love you and not ridicule you, so you do it even though you know it’s not true, because being an outlier is death to a herd animal.
Musk could as well have said “If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to safety and security.”
Paul M
Any money you like, this person works in the public sector
Russell Brand in fine form:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKnGxdb4Nf0
I commend it to the house.
dgm – an arts project coordinator, but I am no position to judge him. I am a politician – the lowest form of human life.
Rudolph Hucker – the WEF used to call this idea “digital I.D.” – then with Covid its name got changed to “vaccine passport”, soon the name will be changed back to “digital I.D.”.
Yesterday was ‘mask freedom day’ here in France.
At the supermarket – ALL staff were masked (Management decision?) ; 50 – 60 % of shoppers were masked. One couple – she was masked, he was not.
“That’s because the fast swimmers are dicks, and will berate and ridicule any slow swimmers who might be in “their” lane when they arrive.”
Not in this case. I’ve never seen any examples of dickish behaviour, pretty much all of the swimmers there are polite and considerate. Maybe it’s because it’s a private gym, you get a better class of swimmers there?
It takes a while but the numbers gradually come down. In the UK supermarkets it’s around 25% now I would say at a guess. At the gym there is an occasional lone mask wearer and I still see the odd one outside with no one anywhere near them or in their cars. There are still a lot to be seen on public transport, I don’t know whether they are still asking people to wear them.
Or, as your own observations seem to support, a more rules-oriented, group-compliant class of swimmer?
Yes, they are. Most bus and train companies are still asking people to wear masks during their journeys.
JohnM – yes it is very depressing.
I kind of feel sorry for him that his ex has apparently dumped him for a man who pretends to be a woman. But then I remember the names Musk gave his kids and remember he’s a complete fruit loop.