What is a truth, but a lie agreed upon.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher
There are three grades of truths:
Absolute Truths, Earth revolves around the Sun
Subjective Truths, like
- my religion is the best religion
- Vegetarian food is good
- No, Meat is good
- Business is better than job
- No, Job is safer than business
- Looks matter
- No, looks don’t matter
- Marriage completes your life
- Marriage domesticates your life
- Kids are a blessing
- Kids are good, only of they belong to others
And then there are abject lies, which are believed by masses as truths.
You’ve heard of this story, “The Gullible Man With A Goat And Three Thugs”. For the uninitiated, it goes like this…
There was a simpleton who bought a goat from the market. He was carrying it on his shoulder on his way back to his home. Three thugs saw him and planned to dupe him off his goat. The first thief accosted the man and said, “Why are you carrying an ugly dog on your shoulder?” The man, a bit perplexed by the remarks, chose to continue walking. After some time, the second thief bumped into him and repeated the remarks, “Where are you taking this ugly dog on your shoulder”” The gullible man got really befuddled. As you can guess, soon he met the third thief, who repeated the remarks. By now, the nincompoop started believing that all this while, he was carrying a dog on his shoulder; it just seemed to resemble a goat! He threw down the goat and walked away. Later in the day, the thugs had a feast!
This allegory gets played out in our lives everyday. We have a tendency to fall for stories & narratives.
There are two big factors that make you fall for such stories:
- Emotions – Our deep, hidden basic & atavistic human emotions like sex, fear etc are used by corporations and politicians to generate profits & political mileage respectively. When they show you an advertisement of a milk supplement for you child, they show them scoring a goal, or coming first in a race, or solving a maths puzzle, they are choosing to give you a story. When a journalist is covering Mumbai rains, she shows you the lowest areas in the town. When a magazine talks about a famine, it invariably shows you an image of a child suffering from malnutrition.
“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”
-Daniel Kahneman
- Repetition – The mere act of repeating a false narrative makes it believable. You can witness this, for example, in the way Dictators extend their rule, by building a narrative around how great & generous they are. The posters of the Dictator are omnipresent in the town. The national mass media channels keep singing songs in his praise. Wherever a common man goes, he is bombarded by the narrative praising the Dictator.
“A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Even democratically elected political leaders use Propaganda for their election. Large corporations use this for their brand building. Religious Leaders use it to drill down their prescribed way of life. Terrorist organisations use this to brainwash innocent teenagers. There is this
However, the impact of this transcends far beyond corporations, politicians, religious leaders and terrorists.. This phenomenon impacts our quotidian day to day life. Here’s how…
Amongst all the people we encounter – spouse, kids, parents, colleagues, friends, relatives – the person we talk to the most is….ourselves (did you guessed it right!). Hence, the person who plays the biggest role in shaping our lives is no one else but, ourselves! And what do we tell ourselves? Sample this…
- I’m an idiot
- I can’t do anything
- Nobody like me
- They’re laughing at me
- I have stage phobia
- I”ll get sacked, because I deserve to be
- She’s going to dump me; I’m not good enough
Such repeated judgements, play a havoc with our self image, because like that gullible man with the goat, we start believing in our repeated self-deprecating judgements. What probably starts as a cursory remark, turns into a belief. This in turn affects our actions leading to turning those beliefs into reality. This is a vicious loop.
However, you can turn this phenomenon on its head and use this to your advantage. While, you get dragged into bad behaviour on its own, you have to make conscious & consistent efforts to do the reverse – to get into a positive behavioural virtuous loop.
The central idea that runs through both of these loops is that our opinions about self, even if wrong, repeated over & over materialise into reality. The key difference however is that the former is a spontaneous effect, while the latter takes a conscious effort.
A Key concept in the positive feedback loop is Autosuggestion. It is a psychological trick we play with our gullible inner self, guiding our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. These guided beliefs in turn affects our behaviour – habits and response to external stimuli. This in turn, eventually, starts showing in results. You start pulling yourself out of your failures and emerging as a winner!
To further understand the power of autosuggestion watch this fascinating Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy – Fake it Till You Make It
Two key Takeaways
One. Identify situations when you are being tricked into the Gullible Man with the Goat – a political or a corporate propaganda, a religious fanaticism, a stock market bubble, condescending tone of the Boss, or simply your own Self Deprecation!
Two. Use autosuggestion to fool yourself in developing useful beliefs, which will further propel yourself into useful behaviour and fruitful outcomes!