I am actually blanking here. Meh.
When it comes to conformity to authority, Milgram rules. Sure, his experiment is usually used as the poster child for how not to conduct an experiment. It’s seen as unethical. But boy, did he reveal what makes people conform to authority.
And one of the principles was a slight increase in intensity. The people (normal people from the street, not just psychology students) did deliver shocks in 15 volts increments. They did not start out with a 450 volt “XXX” setting, they started with 15 volts … and worked their way up from there.
And boy did it work.
And that’s one of the secrets to get obedience to authority. Don’t start with the extreme, instead start small, and work your way up from there. Works very well, including for torture and other … interventions.
And I think we see a similar situation with the Corona regulations at the moment. I did not start out that … strongly. But somehow, now, we have a secular Sharia. We walk around in masks, and as someone once said, without them, we would hardly know that we had a pandemic. It’s not like people are dying the streets. And yeah, Corona is a thing. People do die, but it’s not exactly Ebola either.
Instead, it’s a very severe flu, but not much more than that. But with all the visually impressive dashboards and reports about the figures, we take it more seriously than it actually is.
Don’t get me wrong … it could mutate, even more so, because we delay it’s progression, but overall, yeah. it’s a manufactured crisis.
And it really is time to rethink whether our initial approach is really working.
Good Night, and Good Luck.