The Big Grip. Sunset Provisions or Group Perpetuation. Edwin Bernays Laughs

The Big Grip: A Group Ensconced
Becomes a Group Perpetual

The Ghost of Bernays.
His Persuasion Model for Emergency Use - WWI
Becomes our Daily National Marketing Goals Model
.

Do we want eternal life. For groups. How do they organize. How do they use those circumstances to perpetuate themselves, perhaps for totally different reasons from those that gave rise to the group. How do they get that Big Grip on us.

Look back at the Woodrow Wilson WWI Committee for Public Information for some guidance. That effort developed propaganda methods for use in emergency, during and for wartime, and - surprise - the techniques were not set aside afterwards.

The techniques to persuade people fast were taken fast to Madison Avenue by Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud. The techniques of propaganda became an ordinary marketing tool - a means to shaping the democracy by selling ideas, products, attitudes.

Listen to Bernays himself in 1928, discussing propaganda:

• "It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind," wrote Bernays.
  

• "It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace."
  

See Post-War Propaganda at ://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ww1.postwar.html/.

How does this apply to us - the fact that if something works in one setting, people seek to apply it to another, regardless of emergency, merit, the original circumstances that made the tactic appropriate there. Groups behaving badly go down a long and winding road. Go back to the Beatles lyrics for that, at ://lyrics.rare-lyrics.com/B/Beatles/The-Long-And-Winding-Road.html/.

A. How Groups Get Going and Stay Going

1. Any group is subject to dynamics. No group stays the same. See Group Dynamics at ://www.managementhelp.org/grp_skll/theory/theory.htm/.

So there should be no surprise that groups respond to propaganda. Or persuasion management, a slightly less sinister-sounding term. But the real problems start later.

2. One summary is this --

2.1 That Groups follow a sequence -a) see a need, b) organize to meet it, and c) then do it.

2.2. The problem arises if they do not then disband, or do some kind of total overhaul to see where the need is now.

3. How to create an antidote to any group's perpetuation? That takes education, and grit because people become attached. The process of winding down requires

• a refocus on the foundations of the group to begin with ("foundationalism"),
  
• deconstruction - identifying components of the group that have evolved, and doing away with many -
  
• dissent, where people stand up and disagree and demand; and
  
• a broad-based ethical orienetation so that motives are not misunderstood. The dissenters must not profit themselves from the demise of the earlier group.

4. Study how groups form, if we are to unform them later.

Lay it out: This sequence is important if we are to tame the group drive to perpetuate itself.

B. Lay out and memorize the process, and apply to a group near you

Is this how a group gets going -

(1) Group states goal for common good.

(2) Group engages in publicity, persuasion.
Financial backing: nothing without cash.
Elect or draft a board or other heads.

(3) Culture develops.
Vocabulary, customs, learn the buzz.
A habitat, like coral, grows around.
Make rules, procedures, exclusivity.

(4) Perks accumulate for leadership.
Status to authority. Special credence to their words.

(5) Now comes secrecy, restrictions on information.
Filters and force fields enforce status of some.
Goals modify, in practice if not in words.

(6) Job done.

(7) Adjourn - hah.
Not a chance.

(8) The Super Step Eight Perpetuate.

(9) Regroup to benefit the incumbents.

(10) Now inculcate. Reframe. Set agenda
That may or may not match first texts or thoughts.
Impose by propaganda. Who questions?

Accelerate. Turn on outsiders. Blame.
Distract. And punish those who disagree.

Supremacism for the group's precepts.
Force. Little left of first common good.
Entrenchment of the Group, finding force works.
Cruel act to one, numbs to the others.

C. What to do to DeGroup a Group

1. Deconstruct the purpose. See ://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Deconstruction.html/">Deconstruction, a premise among many. Document the reasons for being.

2. Check foundations. See ://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Foundationalism/ Document the reasons for being yet another time. This is the purpose of the group. Hold them to it.

3. Then, hold fast. Groups bent on perpetuating themselves discard the original purpose.

Nin, Croatia, Bishop Gregor of Nin, 900's

See Gregor of Nin, the Bishop in the 900's who used the local language for services. This threatened Rome - and their desired monopoly on scriptural interpretation and cohesion. So, out with the local language.

Should the "Church" have disbanded once the persecutions ended? Let the people re-form?

Perhaps. It needed that early cleaning house, different leaders for different needs, regroup - back to foundations, foundationalist analysis - we never did it and look at us now.
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* See Croatia Road Ways