Changing Minds

Choose the propaganda in which you'd like to swim.

On a substack I follow, the writer was bemoaning the common observation that it is impossible to debate a wokieⁱ. I agree. Their emotional depiction of an issue makes rational debate difficult as spearing that cherry tomato in your salad dish.

My substack author gave the common answer: that we all must argue and present our points more accurately and even more forcefully than ever if we can hope to change the situation. But our situation, which began these thoughts, is that this solution doesn’t work. Trying to solve a problem by doing more of the same is the definition of a neurosis. The publishing world is already drowning in the productions of well meaning pundits manufacturing irrefutable, tightly knit arguments right down to their pencil nubbins and its all like water off a duck, (as they say), to a wokie. Indeed, these mentals seem impregnable as a Death Star.

Google supports me:

“How to change someone’s mind: Forget facts. (my italics)

The first step toward actually listening to each other and finding some common ground sounds unlikely. But hear me out. You need to forget about facts (for the purposes of initially engaging those you disagree with anyway). As tempting as it feels when you think you have reality on your side, reciting a list of studies and statistics is incredibly unlikely to change anyone’s mind.” https://entrylevelrebel.medium.com/how-to-actually-change-someones-mind-ask-them-this-1-question-5cd66e53b023

But people do change their minds. Marxists, Democrats, even scientists can change their minds. Thomas Sowell, a leading Black Conservative intellectual began his college career as a Marxist. Ronald Reagan changed his politics from Democrat to Republican.

“Science writer Elizabeth Kolbert wrote an excellent, in-depth article about exactly why this is for The New Yorker. But here’s the bottom line: People generally put their affiliation with their group and their sense of themselves as competent and good ahead of rationality. No one (or close to no one) wants to feel out of step with those around them or like they’ve been a fool. If facts point toward those conclusions, they generally just ignore those facts. “ https://entrylevelrebel.medium.com/how-to-actually-change-someones-mind-ask-them-this-1-question-5cd66e53b023

But people do change their minds for as many reasons, I would guess, as they can have for doing anything, such “as staying in step with those around them”. Some change their minds because something has enlisted their imagination. Debra Halber writes in “Changing Minds” that, “When it comes to changing minds, perception fights facts.” https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/changing-minds

“Howard Gardner, PhD ’71,” she notes, “wrote the book on how to change minds, but he acknowledges that minds are not always easy—or even possible—to change.” “To change minds, you have to have a different arsenal than you did back in the seemingly simple days where there was one nightly newscast and one newspaper that everybody read,” he [Gardner] says. “And we didn’t have social media. Gardner observes that, depending on which news outlets or alternative information sources they follow, people are not on the same page about what constitutes reality. He says, “I can’t think of a bigger problem.”

Indeed Debra Halber asks in the same article, “What would it take to change the minds of those who support a particular political view? And how to sway those who believe—in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary—that climate change is a hoax?”

Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it? Because it is now quite plain that Climate Change is a hoax. And that the financiers of that movement like Bill Gates are jumping ship now that the AI boom looks to be shackled by the lack of sufficient energy to meet the power demands.

Halber goes on to declare that “He [Gardner] identifies “six Rs” that can shift people’s thinking: resources, reason, research, resonance, representational re-description, and real-world events. Incorporating input from experts, stories, graphics, and ideas framed to resonate with particular audiences are all ways, Gardner posits, to change minds.” But it would seem that each one of these ways has been used by the Climate Change crowd to manipulate minds.

It would seem to me that we are currently in the rubber room of argument, wherein each party, even if they are reasonable, doubts the credibility of the other’s sources of information. Nothing has a sure foundation, so that nothing has a sure punch. We live in a culture of overly propagandized information and lies. And how does one tell a fact from manipulation, or fiction? And if one enters into a dialogue, there seems no escape from the fusillade of propaganda a person is subjected to.

Because of all this I would suggest that instead of trying to escape propaganda, we should accept that we are being manipulated by propaganda all of the time – that we are so awash in propaganda that like fish in the water, we take no note but accept it. And perhaps we might more effectively change minds by strategically realizing that people and groups are often unwilling to change their minds in face of conflicting facts until they have another platform to move to which is more in accordance with the conflicting facts.

“It’s like Indiana Jones in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark — where he tries to switch the golden idol with a bag of sand — when we take away their Scientistic Metaphysics we have to replace it with something of equal weight or else they will come after us with poison arrows and try to kill us. - Toby Rogers, “We Need a New Metaphysics”

Rather than try to escape the world of propaganda, a better strategy might be to consider all of our perceptions as propaganda, and to follow the best of these.

But what about the relative power of varying propaganda? One person telling you that 2 plus 2 = 5 might not be very effective in changing your mind. However, an intimidating crowd insisting that 2 plus 2 = 5 might indeed change the minds of many, who formerly held that 2 plus 2 = 4 And then, for the holdouts, constant reiteration of this lie can cause them not to so much change their minds but it can cause them to alter their answer, like someone in Galileo’s position who knew 2 plus 2 = 4. But they go along with 2 plus 2 = 5 and recite it as the Church deems necessary. What more is needed for effective propaganda?

If all is propaganda and we are formed by this propaganda, it would seem to me that the solution to our problem of successfully navigating life is to choose the most powerful, reliable and efficacious propaganda. That is, what is the most powerful and efficacious propaganda available to all? Let’s choose that.

I’ll lay my cards on the table.

Reality is the ultimate propaganda. As a re-iterative message it is uncompromising. It always says the same thing. It is available to all. And it is the most efficacious of all. No propaganda might tell the truth, but the propaganda of reality will surely teach you how to blend and swim in its waters. Whatever the truth of the matter, if you can harmonize with reality you will be safe in reality. And reality is durable. You, or the entire nation, might insist that 2 plus 2 = 5 for say the duration of some Orwellian regime, but a rock will remain a rock throughout all eternity. There is no contest. Like Saint Paul’s Catholic Church, reality is the propaganda a stable society is built upon.

And there are many proven successes credited to this stepping-across-rocks-to-ford-a-stream method of changing minds. Of the many of the substack writers I follow, Matt Talbi, and Naomi Wolf partly embrace conservatives after encountering the censorship of the Democrats, and Toby Rogers who writes about medical issues did likewise following the Covid crisis. All it took for Thomas Sowell to change from a Marxist to staunch conservative was a stint in government following college working for the Labor Department. Our own son marked the day he became a Conservative as being when he saw the income deducted from his first paycheck. All of these people were converted by the persuasive force of reality. As a common example, being broke will do this. They embraced reality to gain a firmer footing in an area which concerned them, and from this new platform their willingness to listen to other conservative perspectives flowed.

So, to change minds I think it would be a good idea to anchor the conversation in an area of the respondent’s experience where they touch and manipulate reality. As Robert Conquest noted, “Everyone is a conservative about what he knows best.” (What greater compliment is there to pay, or inducement to offer one’s faith, by the way?)

Incidentally, Robert Conquest was once a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until his immersion in the reality of the Soviet Union and penning a widely read, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s (1968).

As a parting cap, it has been said that it is nearly impossible to change a person’s mind when their livelihood depends upon their thinking otherwise. In my most recent issue of Newsmax, in an article titled, “America / Federal Salaries Out of Control” it is noted that “nearly 70,000 federal employees make over $200,000./year.”

“There are 31,450 federal workers who earn more than every single governor in the 50 U S States.” “Today scores of federal employees earn more than the President whose salary caps out at $400,000.”

“In 2024,… 84% of federal government employees/’ donations went to Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Asked if he believes political self-interest plays a role in salary hikes, (Stephen) Moore (economist) describes well-paid federal employees as “the base of the Democratic Party”.

“There is no greater indicator of whether someone is Democrat or Republican than whether they work for the government,” he [Moore] tells Newsmax. “So yes, that’s their base.”

And they will argue their points fiercely.

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i Wokie is a term I use to denote someone of the woke persuasion and not to be confused with the wookiee, a Star Wars woolly character of extreme size.

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This essay was first published in a slightly altered form in the Iconoclast. Carl Nelson‘s latest book of poetry titled, Strays, Misfits, Renegades, and Maverick Poems (with additional Verses on Monetizations), has just been published. To have a look at this and more of his work please visit Magic Bean Books.

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