True personal growth ultimately will lead to fulfillment, and it's my intention with these podcasts to connect more deeply with you. Thank you for joining me, Anne Corbin, and my guests, and welcome to this episode. In the West, we believe that we are free because that's what we are told from infancy. But are you really in charge of your own decision making?
The infamous Nudge unit was introduced by the Conservatives in England in 2010, or perhaps I should say in Britain, and this was during David Cameron's government right at the start when it was still a coalition. It became a policy initiative, but I really don't believe I heard anything about it back then. Interestingly though, the concept was not created by the conservatives.
It actually came from The USA, from a Harvard professor called Cass Sunstein together with Richard Taylor from the University of Chicago. The Nudge unit is all about how the government can manipulate public behavior, steering people to do what they're told without their realizing it. The idea was so successful that it's been adopted in over 200 countries around the world since then, and not only just by governments, but also by other organizations. Organizations.
And it's all based on psy ops, that is psychological operations. I recently saw a very interesting short video on Telegram, which reminded me about all this stuff. You know how everything on there gets shared from somewhere else? So I couldn't trace this one back to its original source and therefore, unfortunately, I can't credit the person who presented it, but his delivery wasn't exactly scintillating. Nevertheless, I'm really interested in psychological type detail.
I call it practical psychology and so I'm going to summarize parts of it here. The more we understand how nudge units operate, the better off we will be. The presenter discussed a key technique that can be summarized by the following acronym, F A T E, which stands for follow, authority, tribe and emotion. So let's break that down.
The idea is that if we're constantly exposed to the same message, especially from people we trust or at least we're familiar with, we will start to believe it just because we've heard it repeatedly. This principle goes way, way back. It was used particularly by Goebbels in the last war.
He was one of Hitler's top henchmen and he's on record in many places for saying, oh just make the lie big, tell it often enough and it will become the truth.' I first recall noticing it without being told at the time of the banking crash in 02/2008, '2 thousand and '9. At that time, the media kept on telling us that inflation was rising, bills were becoming very painful, we'd all have to tighten our belts and all doom and gloom. But it didn't feel like that. We didn't see prices rising.
Customers were still spending money. And people here in England generally just weren't feeling pain. But of course, the effects of the crash did hit, but it felt like the media had already made us feel bad by telling us that things were worse than they really were. It felt like they had talked us into recession.
It's important, I think, to note that the creation of the Nudge unit in 2010 was pretty well kept secret, but by 2020 it was widely known and there was a well publicized article in one of the newspapers, maybe Daily Mail, which is it's not quite a broadsheet and it's not quite a tabloid. It's a mix between the two. And this was when people really started connecting with the Nudge Unit's purpose.
It became so much more visible, and we could see how we were all essentially being terrorized by this new health threat that had suddenly emerged right at the start of twenty twenty. And during those early days of lockdown, we recall being bombarded with the same message how bad things were, how dangerous this infection was going to be and of course, what we were going to be allowed to do and not do. Do you remember that word unprecedented being used constantly, multiple times, daily?
It was used to justify everything that was happening or wasn't happening. And then there were other terms like safe and effective that came a little bit later towards the end of the year or early twenty twenty one. Safe and effective, trust the science, ad nauseam those two phrases. And it was impossible not to notice them because they crept into our daily lives, they got repeated over and over again and of course people thought they were true.
So just to repeat officially, f stands for follow, but personally, you could just as well, I think, replace that f as standing for fear. However, more about that later. And the next word in the acronym is A. The techniques work because we naturally trust authority figures, so watch out for somebody who suddenly didn't have a position and now has one or who's changed their position. It's easy to notice this today because everything is recorded.
When politicians make u turns and change their opinion, it's always possible to bring up footage of them saying the complete opposite in the past. So called experts can repeat the same thing over and over and it gets believed even if their credibility is questionable. Do you remember Professor Neil Ferguson from the London School of Economics. He had a track record even then in 2020 of grossly overstating some risk in the past. I wish I could remember what it was, but I can't currently.
And he came up with wildly inaccurate computer data predicting a totally catastrophic outcome from this dangerous new infection and it never came pass. But based on what he forecast, all these stupid draconian measures were brought in, but it was all part of the plan. Oh, incidentally, with AI technology today, they can even replicate voices, meaning that I could theoretically have an AI generate my podcasts with my voice so you couldn't tell the difference, but it wouldn't be me talking.
And while I wouldn't be happy with that because I like to do my talking myself, it's more than just a possibility, I would just need to locate and invest in the relevant software. Next, the T in Fate stands for tribe because humans are social creatures. We don't like to stand out from the crowd. We would much rather be part of the group. We like to agree with others and have them agree with us. And this is why polarization works so well.
Just look at how different groups are pitted against each other. Men against women, young versus old, black against white of course. Consider how religions have caused countless wars throughout history and even nowadays. Consider football rivalries. For example, here in The UK, it's absolute madness. But it's a brilliant example of tribalism. The passion can get so intense at these matches that violence can break out. Over a football match.
But oh yes, if you attend one of those big matches at the stadiums in London, they're attended by police in protective gear and helmets. They might carry guns, I don't know. I've seen them in airports carrying guns. British police never used to carry guns. They didn't use to dress aggressively but they do now. Oh, and these police that patrol the football grounds, they're on horseback. They are not messing about. Sorry, slight digression about police and football.
I'm talking about divide and conquer. This technique worked superbly well for the Romans probably before, but definitely ever since. Today, they set woke against awakened or us against them wherever possible. And people can get so blinded by their political parties and allegiances that they lose sight of everything else. Terms like patriots as against traitors, scientific as against deniers, they're all ways to split people apart.
And finally, the e in fate stands for emotion, and this is where fear comes in. Watch out for messages that trigger any kind of strong emotion. Compassion and fear are the main ones. Fear is such a powerful motivator. When the media wants to stir up a response, they will always tap into emotions. Watch any of those news programs on television, if you still watch TV.
They've been trained, these journalists, to always go for an individual who's experiencing the suffering that the general news article is about. Say for example the awful situation in Gaza, they won't tell you about what's happening generally so much as what has just happened to an individual who sadly has lost a limb or a parent or some other terrible thing. Also, for example, during the early days of lockdown, panic buying became a real issue and it was whipped up by the media.
They showed us pictures of empty shelves, which only fuelled the panic and supermarkets began to run out of items like toilet paper, pasta, breakfast cereal, even wine. This was rationed in the early days because I heard somewhere that a particular large supermarket was rationing wine. So I thought, oh, I'd better get a couple of bottles just in case. Don't know how long this lockdown is going to last.
We imagined about three weeks, two to three weeks, was it fourteen days that they told us just to begin with, to ease us into it gradually? Anyway, when I showed up at the till with my three bottles, I was only allowed to purchase two of them because their forecasts had been wrong and the wine was going down even faster than expected. In addition, they use crisis actors in the media.
For example, you might see somebody in an ambulance or being escorted by police in a crowd and then you see the same face again in a different scenario a couple or three weeks later. These actors are used to provoke emotional reactions. I've seen footage of demonstrations where the same person appears in different footage, whether video footage or images, still photos, often taken years apart, even in different countries.
But they are they're not things that I've identified personally somebody with a telegram account or some kind of social media account keeps tabs on these things and notices and publishes what they've come across. As humans, our behaviour is actually driven by a need to notice changes in our environment. Our ancient survival instincts will kick in this happens. So when something dramatic happens in the media, we need to ask ourselves why now? What's behind this?
Is there an election coming up or a referendum, for example? Timing is everything. Occasionally, these events, which might look like coincidences, are way too convenient to be genuine. I've also noticed how video views on platforms such as YouTube can be manipulated. Have you ever seen a video that has thousands of views but was only released within the last hour? When that happens, they quote its time since release in minutes and it's had thousands of views? I don't think so.
Just doesn't make sense unless those views have been purchased in advance. Do you remember that phrase, it's a good day to bury bad news? That came from the nine eleven events in 02/2001, and it was said by Joe Moore from the UK Labor Party, and it was referring to the timing of the nine eleven attacks, which conveniently overshadowed other major US news, like a $2,300,000,000,000 sum just mislaid, lost by the Pentagon. This announcement was supposed to be made on September.
At least that was the plan we're now told. And if it was announced, I don't think anyone was interested. Repetition plays a huge role in how we form our opinions. If the same stories keep getting pushed by the media, it's super important to question why and who is behind these narratives. What is their agenda? Keep up with the questions and be aware of these manipulation tactics. Watch out for orchestrated attacks on people rather than their arguments.
Are you being nudged to identify with a particular group or bandwagon? Are emotional triggers being used to control your behaviour? All of this can be part of an intentional and planned strategy to influence us at the very least and to control how we think and how we act in the long run. You can set yourself up to win at the game of life. Become familiar with the laws of the universe. You have infinite potential. You can influence reality.
Quantum growth and connection explores success strategies, power principles, relationship rescue, and the quantum field.