In most cities you come across these people in the streets, protestors, those trying to stop you for a moment, wanting you to sign a petition, to inform you on a certain subject or whatever it is they want.
Today I had a conversation with one of those “obama-nazi protesting” persons (if you could call them that) whom you see in the streets protesting against obama and talking about the whole “obama deception” thing
The guy was an educated individual, possibly mid 20’s and looks like your average college student. We agreed on many theoretical ideas about open mindedness and society being stuck in a culture of narrow mindedness.
I wanted to help him because he seemed like a smart guy, with good intentions and I do believe that people should be more aware of what is going on in politics (myself included). So, to help him, I said that if he wants to attract more people to his “kiosk”, he should get some people to pretend to be talking to him or to simply be paying attention to him because “If others are doing it, then it must be right”, the concept of social proof, popularized by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence.
To this, he completely resented my proposal and thought the idea was blasphemous, fake and manipulative.
So, I said, aren’t the people you’re fighting against doing the same?
Naturally he said that he didn’t want to lower himself to use the same “evil” tools as his opponents. Essentially he believed he was better than that. (in this context I would admit he’s right, but that’s because I posed the wrong question and set the wrong frame. Essentially what I should have asked him what his goal was (which is to inform people on this subject), and how could he accomplish it, since pretty much 99.9% of people simply walked passed him thinking he’s a nut job of some sort, which I mentioned to him, though he doesn’t care).
ANYWAYS.
To illustrate the point, I had a perfect example from the book I’m currently reading; Exploiting Chaos by Jeremy Gutsche.
I opened up the book and as soon as he saw the title, he moaned: “exploiting chaos, oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me”.
Im not.
I find the page im looking for.
an excerpt from the book:
“To scare people into driving slower, cardboard cutouts [of children] were placed dangerously close to the road.”

This is actually the same image thats in the book, where you can see the fake child pretty damn close to the road.
Thus, because of the stimulus of the fake child, drivers would slow down in residential neighbourhoods.
It’s a tool to condition. Sure its not a real child, but what if it was? That’s the whole point, no?
Again, he completely resented the idea and told me that that was equivalent to reducing humans to dogs.
(In the grand scheme of things, personally, I don’t think humans are much more important than dogs (or who knows))
He said he believes in authenticity (which I agreed with him). But, If people aren’t stopping by, then no one is going to get informed. That’s hiss loss (perhaps all our losses?) and people will continue living their lives as is.
Humans are not so different than dogs. Sometimes all it takes is a little reinforcer.
He says that people should think for themselves and should stop acting like “sheep”. Naturally, I think we are all sheep in one way or an other, there's no way we can be innovators in every domain (thats pretty much impossible to do in this day & age). The thing to do, is to condition ourselves properly, so that they have the right ideals from the start. What if we were to condition society to lead or to think for themselves? Or for everyone actively participate in politics? What if taking initiative was the norm? What if all rules and barriers were removed? Apparently people drive better without lines on the ground, so who knows?
Its up to you to find out, the tools are out there!