Heh. Yeah, just about every tyrant (and shady salesperson) in history has always used aspects of our primitive emotional response system to get us to do things we later regret. Timeshares are notorious for burdening people with things they regret for many years. It's not always the case, but usually.
My hope is we can all learn to inoculate ourselves from our irrational, emotional, primitive triggers. When we can master ourselves, then we can master our life and environment. Instead of centrally controlling the masses and pointing them towards doing some good in the world, how fantastic would it be if everyone independently worked towards a better outcome for everyone? Nash equilibrium type stuff.
That would be truly beautiful. That would involve the most advanced parts of our evolutionary path.
Have you been watching the news lately? I don't see this happening any time soon but it would be nice, wouldn't it?
This is the best we can do on a personal level and there are, thankfully, many of us around the world doing just that. Perhaps we'll reach a tipping point one day that will change the world.
I don’t generally watch the news. Why would I? The current form of mainstream media news is specifically designed to tap into the primitive emotional response. It’s not journalism anymore. It’s entertainment which thrives on logical fallacies, fear, and emotional manipulation. Every once in a while I’ll catch the news while in a hotel lobby and think, “To people actually buy this shit?” I can almost count logically fallacies by the minute. It’s ridiculous.
Turning off the news and learning logical fallacies is step one. Reading books like Thinking, Fast and Slow and Predictibly Irrational helps as well.
When you move to Puerto Rico it will become even clearer how the US media pitches complete BS and amazingly people buy into it.