You Got Trouble, My Friend

Yes indeed.  You read me right, you got trouble.  The planet’s is getting hotter, kids are getting fatter, and the politicians are getting corrupter. The savings are gone, the terrorists are coming, kids are having sex, crime is on the rise, and smokers are still smoking.  But have no fear.  I have the solution.

No.  Not really.  I don’t have the solution.  But sure as hell someone does and all he wants from you is your support – and your money.

In the musical "The Music Man", Professor Harold Hill is a travelling salesman/con artist who goes from town to town convincing the people of the town to start a boy’s band, but alas after they pay for the instruments he skips town with the cash and they are left with instruments no one can play.

In the town of River City, he decides to use the moral angle.  Through the song, “You Got Trouble” he demonstrates the declining morals in the community brought on by the new pool hall in town.  With cries of protecting the children he makes his sale.

The key to persuasion in any form, be it selling products, theories, ideas, or ideologies, is to convince the potential buyer that there is trouble.  You’re too fat.  You have wrinkles.  Kids are starving in Africa.  Greenhouse gases are warming the Earth.  Morals are in decline.  You can’t find a girlfriend and the Jewish bankers are destroying Germany.

Once you have identified the problem, then its time to “push the bruise”.  Demonstrate how the problem is hurting them or may hurt them in the future.  Obesity is a serious health epidemic.  It’s important to have a youthful appearance.  Look at these films of starving Africans.  Ocean levels will rise twenty feet.  Declining morals destroy society.  You are lonely.

Now you offer a solution.  Only your miracle cure, public policy, election to office, self-help manual or training course will solve the problem and improve the life of not only yourself but the world.  This is finished with the close.  Act now or be damned.

When I took a speech course in university we had an assignment to do a persuasive speech.  I found this method outlined above to be too heavy handed.  It was so obvious a ploy that any fool could see through it and therefore not be persuaded.  I decided to take my own approach.

I chose to lead my audience step by step to where I wanted them.  I convinced them of a chain of facts which led like bread crumbs to the conclusion I wanted them to make.  The instructor was not impressed and gave me a low mark for not following the format.  Years later, an attorney friend told me that I had, in fact, done the kind of persuasion speech he had learned in law school.  I felt vindicated and proud of my own righteousness.  Now I see that I was wrong.

When I look around I see this pattern everywhere.  It’s called SHINE. 

Situation – What is the current situation?

Hurt – What is the issue or pain involved?

Impact – Pushing that bruise.  What will happen if you do not act?

Next Step – What do you need to do next?

Encourage – So let’s fix this thing together.

We are all salesmen in the marketplace of values but we are also customers.  When outlining the situation, the salesman uses frame control.  He frames reality to show it to you as he wants you to see it.  In frame control, generally the person with the most confidence in their version of reality will create the dominant frame.

What he is framing here is the problem.  Therefore it is up to you, as the customer, to determine whether or this frame is valid or not.  The problem is in the salesman’s interest.  He needs there to be a problem.  Without a problem or need, then he cannot sell the solution.

Let’s look at the politician as salesman.  Politicians need problems so that they can convince the public to support their political agenda and of course keep them in power.  But what happens when the problem is solved?  Then the politician becomes unnecessary.  So it is in his interest to create the appearance of working towards solving the problem but not actually solving anything.  He says that he failed because he needs more power, so the people give him more power in hopes that he will solve the problem.  The result is more power for him and unsolved problems for everyone else.

A snake-oil salesmen is selling a tonic that will grant long-life and perfect health.  Unfortunately, he can never have repeat customers unless the tonic needs to be consumed on a regular basis.  That is how governments work.  Politicians need regular and on-going support from their customers in order to solve problems that will never be solved.  They offer treatments instead of cures.

Some problems are real.  Some problems are illusions.  Some problems can be solved.  Some problems must be accepted and endured. Some problems you choose and others not.  Some problems you create and others not.  Some problems are born of need and others want.   The wise customer can discern which is which.  All of them are born of perception.  The trick is aligning your perception of reality to the facts of reality.

Imagine that tomorrow the theory of man-made global warming is proven beyond any doubt to be false.  Can you imagine the affects of that?  Billions of dollars world-wide will be lost, not to mention all the jobs, from politicians and bureaucrats to scientists and environmental reporters.  We have invested ourselves in a problem that may or may not even exist and this perceived problem has become integral to the global economy and power structure.

The proponents of the theory of man-made global warming adhere to the Precautionary Principle.  This basically states, “better safe than sorry”.  It is better to act now on the possibility of it being true than wait for the evidence, because by then it might be too late if it is true.  So you act on a problem without conclusive evidence that there is a problem.  The Precautionary Principle seems reasonable, but it can be used to perpetuate a nonexistent problem to empower those salesmen with a vested interest in the problem.

We live in a marketplace of values and the marketplace is driven by real or imagined problems both great and small.  We need our problems. As Agent Smith observed in "The Matrix":

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

I think that most adults are savvy enough to recognise a false problem in media advertising, but not so much when it comes from the news, special interest groups, or politicians, perhaps because that requires a far more critical and sceptical approach.

All organizations, like businesses, require monetary power derived from their customers to survive.  Churches need their tithes.  Community organizers need their funding.  Unions need their dues. Politicians need their donations. All these resources come from people “buying” the problem that the organization is selling.  Without the problem the organizations lose their raison d’être.

So it is important for the consumer to decide the validity of the problem.  For example, there is a group in America called Focus on the Family which can be classed as a fundamentalist Christian organization.  They recent came out against the problem in America of gambling and they want laws passed to prohibit it.  According to their spokesman, 15 million Americans are gambling addicts.  Assuming that is correct, that is 5% of the US population.  Is this problem a national concern warranting laws against the other 95% of the population who do not have a problem or is it important to focus on the 15 million people who actual have a problem?

Mass legislation is like trying to kill a mosquito with a shotgun.  You might hit the mosquito, but you will certainly hit everyone else in the room.  And yet this is the approach that these problem solvers have consistently taken since at least Prohibition in the 1920’s.

Of course if you deny the problem the true believers will see you as part of the problem.  This can be solved by silencing you.  You deny man-made climate change because you are in with the big corporations.  You are against welfare because you are a racist.  You are an idiot if you do not accept our solution to the problem.  You see, true believers have deep feelings for their problem and they tend to get angry when you deny them their problem.

Remember the E in SHINE?  Encourage – we can fix this.  The salesman is providing the course of action and by including the customer so that he feels part of the solution.  The ploy here is that perhaps the customer is convinced that there is a problem but not convinced to buy from that salesman.  Maybe he can reach a better solution at the shop across the street. So convince the customer that we, together, will solve this and not you the customer.

So the true believers have to sell both the problem and their solution to the problem.  If anyone disagrees with the proposed solution, then they are lumped in with the deniers and silenced in the same manner.

I am not a very good salesman.  Like in my failed persuasive speech in university, I present facts and expect my listener or reader to take the next logical step.  Instead they come away with, “that was interesting”, and then move on.  I may write of issues and moral outrages, but they are not felt by my readers as problems, therefore there is no cause to act and there are very few customers at my stall.

I engage in what is called passive selling.  I pile up the product and people will buy it if they like it.  There is no problem here for the customer so there is no persuasion at work.  If you already agree with me, then you will support me.  My competition on the other hand is far more aggressive in their sales.

Not only do they engage in pushing the bruise, they also do publicity stunts designed to draw attention to their product.  These are more commonly known as protests.  No matter what you are selling, the goal is to increase your customer base.  This is true if you are selling toothpaste, Christianity, a senator, or global warming.  More customers translate into more social influence and more money to be used to further increase your customers and your power to accomplish your goals.  Do you think we would care about global warming if was still represented by a handful of hippies on a street corner?

As a preacher of the gospel of the Romantic, I now find myself asking myself “What problem am I selling and how can I better sell it?”  Of course I am actually selling the solution to the problem, but first I need to convince others of the problem.

The problem is the false problems and the Nanny State that they spawn.  The problem is the loss of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love as meaningful and socially relevant concepts.  The problem is the decline of Reason.  The problem is the rise of mediocrity. The problem is the developing slave mentality in people.  The problem is the de-valuing of values.  The problem is the potential fall of Western Civilization to the barbarians.  The problem is you and the problem is me.  We are also the solution.