Leave to Reason: Persuasion

Caveat emptor: PERSUASION OR MANIPULATION?

 

Approximate Reading Time: 25 minutes

 

Dedicated to our son Neo; Welcome to this world son, despite its atrocities it really is a beautiful world. We hope we can teach you as God would wish us to.

 

Discernment

1 Kings 3:9 - Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

Have you watched the movie 'Jobs'?  Steve Jobs passed on last year, this year the Mac is twenty years old, the iMac sold over 3 million pieces and its successors the iPod and iPad have both surpassed that. Last year Apple conquered Coca-Cola's dominance as the world's most valuable brand as ranked by Forbes; The apple brand is estimated to be worth 104.3 Billion Dollars (Note I said the 'Brand' – not the company) The world shall celebrate Steve Job's innovative genius for a long time; like in my previous essay "One Man", Steve ranks high among the people that most changed the world. But here's something you rarely get to hear; whereas Steve and his clique of nerds worked secretively to develop Apple's many revolutionary products, what never was secretive about Apple was that during the late 1980s and early 1990s it was a marketing executive from Pepsi, John Sculley, who turned Apple into the biggest single computer company in the world, with $11 billion in annual sales. Sculley marketed Apple like crazy, boosting the advertising budget from $15 million to $100 million. Ask marketers and advertising experts why Mac users are so loyal, and they all cite the same reason - Apple's brand.

"People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company, it was the marketing company of the decade."

John Sculley quoted in the Guardian newspaper in 1997.

Marketer Marc Gobe, author of Emotional Branding, agrees with Sculley;

"Apple's brand is the key to its survival. It's got nothing to do with innovative products like the iMac or the iPod. Without the brand, Apple would be dead, absolutely, completely. The brand is all they've got. The power of their branding is all that keeps them alive. It's got nothing to do with products."

Gobe argues that it was Apple's branding strategy that solely saved the company from its financial tailspin during the mid-1990s when the company looked in danger of going out of business. At the time, its products were lackluster, it's branding a mess. Until the company decided to abandon the old rainbow-hued Apple logo in favor of a minimalist monochrome one, gave its computers a funky, colorful look, and streamlined the messages in its advertising. "It did wonders," Gobe said. Are you hearing this? That a multi billion dollar company was saved from eminent collapse not by the introduction of a new range of 'innovative & practical' products but by just changing its logo and tag line? No real change done, instead choosing to spend over a billion dollars to alter the perceptions of people. Apple spent over 2.5 billion dollars in advertising in 2013.

Take a glimpse at the true power of instilling impressions:

After the American Civil war, a pharmacist called John Pemberton was eager to get something that could make him a commercial success. The locals called him 'Doc'. He invented many drugs but usually, everything he made failed in pharmacies, none of them ever made any money. He was so frustrated that in 1886 he finally gave up trying to make drugs & moved to Atlanta to try his hand at the beverage market. This is where and when coca-cola was born. Coke products can now be found in over 200 countries worldwide; with consumers downing more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings each day (read a third of the world's population drinks a coke product every day). The company markets nearly 500 brands and more than 3,000 beverage products around the world. But like Steve Jobs, Pemberton was just the inventor, the success of coke lay in the hands of other individuals, matter of fact Pemberton died in August of 1888. And to make matters worse, Coke did not do so well in its first year so Doc Pemberton never saw the commercial success he had been seeking. Pemberton had no idea how to advertise. This is where Frank Robinson came in. He registered Coca-Cola's formula with the patent office, and he designed the logo. He also wrote the slogan, "The Pause That Refreshes." After Pemberton's death, a man named Asa Griggs Candler rescued the business. In 1891, he became the sole owner of Coca-Cola. It was when Candler took over that one of the most innovative marketing techniques was invented. He hired traveling salesmen to pass out coupons for a free Coke. His goal was for people to try the drink, like it, and buy it later on, In addition to the coupons, Candler also decided to spread the word of Coca-Cola by plastering logos on calendars, posters, notebooks and bookmarks to reach customers on a large stage.

That kind of branding had never been seen before; it was one step in making Coca-Cola a national brand, rather than just a regional brand. It is Candler who turned Coke into the most recognizable brand of the 20^th Century and up to today. The brand 'Coca-Cola' is now worth 54.9 Billion dollars, after apple and Microsoft (56.7 Billion) and was only overtaken by the other two in 2013. What does it take to achieve this?  Coke for instance, spent 3.342 billion dollars in advertising in 2013.

Gobe, in his book tells how brands have established deep, lasting bonds with their customers. Apple, of course, is the archetypal emotional brand. It's not just intimate with its customers; it is loved. And Apple, Microsoft and Coca-Cola are not even the top spenders when it comes to advertising; Gillette whose brand equity is ranked 23^rd spent 9.3Billion dollars (that's like Kenya's budget), Pampers with is ranked 52^nd spent 9.3billion, L'Oreal & Lancôme spent 8.7 billion each, Toyota whose brand is ranked 14^th spent 4 billion, Samsung ranked 9^th spent 4.4 billion, Louis Vuitton ranked 10^th spent 4.2 billion and so on. Common knowledge assumes that brands are about using imagination, design and innovation to meet practical needs. Well to a certain extent that's true, but for real commerce intents, brands are really about influencing people's perceptions. The real value of a brand is not to be found on the product, it is by and large ONLY in the mind of the consumer, and companies are willing to spend crazy money to reach that mind.

 

Are you surprised? Don't be, do you know what is as old as humanity itself? It's persuasion. It is embedded right there with the rest of human history. Man has been persuading man since the beginning of creation. The earliest record of wiles in the Bible is by the serpent to Eve, then it was Eve to Adam, and once it began there was no putting an end to it. In as long as there will be haves and have-nots, guile shall remain entwined in all human existence. Those that don't have seek; and there can be none who has it all, we all want one thing or another. It's only through persuasion that we get want we want. We learn it early, it's probably inborn; immediately a child is born persuasion is the first thing it does – howling for its mother's tit and attention. It's the first lesson we learn in this atrocious world; how to get what we want, and we continue learning it for the rest of our lives. Man must have learnt persuasion long before he even developed language, for even primeval man partook courtship. Women were seducing men long before they wore the skimpiest of loin cloths. The art of seduction has been perfected over millions of years. And with the preamble of trading, persuasion became second nature. Now we are bombarded with a barrage of sales pitches every second of every waking moment, from billboards, to internet ads to television advertisements. Sales people will pursue you to your home, on your phone and to your work place. Billions of dollars are spent in the advertising industry; by multi-billion dollar multinationals, by politicians, and the list goes on. We spend lots more trying to learn how to be better persuaders; how to achieve want we want in life, to package ourselves better by going to school and so on. Volumes of books have been written on how to be a better sales person, how to be successful, how to be effective and gain power, how to live happier; left, right and centre someone is keen on teaching us how to be persuasive and get want we want.

 

And as man gets more and more convincing, the world is increasingly becoming more illusionists; we are bombarded with tons of carefully thought-out, sophisticated and slick snippets of information aimed only at changing our opinions on one thing or the other. We are not only being influenced in our individual capacities, but the exactitude of manipulation has moved a notch higher with all sorts of proponents of all manners of courses, mislaid or defensible, scramble to line up a pack of corrupted adherents; from terrorists, to crusaders against global warming, to premier league fanatics; all out to advance their course, monetary or otherwise, by winning our commiseration. We are like a damned flock of sheep reigned in by a pack of contending wolfs. The fact of the matter is that in today's world, the socio-political and economic powers that be, propped up by the so-called dominant opinion and supported by an increasingly powerful media create situations of social and cultural challenge that forces us all to take a position.

 

Pitiable though is that few of us adhere to a free and an unassailable judgment when faced with these challenges; how many are able to see these as unforeseen opportunities for reawakening one's own conscience and to contribute to the good of the nation, of the world? Assailed with tens of construals about a thousand things, how can one judge without being hostage to clichés, and a slave of a manipulative power? Everyday we are provoked by our impact with reality, which makes us ask questions and becomes a problem, for we cannot arrive at the answers conscientiously. How is a judgment born? And if it is, is it a free and right judgment? Is it a personal judgment? Is it devoid of any manipulation? Perhaps we should be asking ourselves whether persuasion is really a good thing; after-all persuasion is about changing people's minds. There is an ethical debate in there; the question of whether we should tell people how to persuade others? Is persuasion a loaded gun? If you gave a gun to someone, they will kill people; so should we teach persuasion? When does persuasion turn into manipulation? The problem is that we all have guns; in the most subtle ways, since birth, we all have the aptitude to persuade. Some of us are more nimble-fingered about it, and many of us do a good imitation of a bull in a China shop. The unskilled person who persuades by shouting and other forms of coercion can do more lasting damage than the person who persuades subtly. Many arguments seem to suggest that persuasion is a bad thing; persuasion is akin to violence, to ignorance, to senselessness, but are there not innumerable times where changing another person's mind is a good thing? Can't good persuasion as matter of fact deter violence? Consider a parent who persuades their child, or a policeman who avoids an incident with an angry mob. Isn't changing minds at the core of many good intentioned vocations?

 

The debate on the morals of teaching persuasion to some extent depends on our beliefs about people; if you believe we are plainly self-seeking and will use persuasion to harm others, then you will quite naturally consider teaching persuasion to be unethical. Call it naivety, and yes, time and again the world has demonstrated a deep desire to believe that deep down, all men are reasonable – not so different from us – at its own peril:

Neville chamberlain for instance, saw a fundamentally good man in Adolf Hitler, Yitzhak Rabin and bill Clinton were convinced that Arafat, despite all his rhetoric to the contrary, in his heart, wanted to live harmoniously alongside Jews; this 'naïve' view was shared by the Nobel committee members who gave Arafat a peace prize, the world put up with Saddam Hussein for decades: but are these exceptions enough to send persuasion to the dumps? The real difference lies in intent: most intent is positive, or at least neutral. When we persuade, when we seek to change the minds of others, we seldom intend to harm them. Even the myriad of companies bombarding us with witty sales lines ultimately seek to enhance our lives. Bottom line is that if you care about the other person, that in itself is guidance enough in persuasion, and if you don't, then more often than not persuasion will be used to cause harm.

 

There's thus bound to be patchy instances of bad intentioned manipulation, we can't avoid that, those who persuade unethically will always find a way, whatever way, but they too face reality's wrath soon or later. Sociology propagates an ideology referred to as the betrayal response; simply put – friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. Many Machiavellian leaders attest to this; they end up being deposed by those they have hurt; those who live by the gun die by the gun. Many wise sayings, and real life examples, point in this direction; Saddam Hussein stands as an extremity; he got the hang Hitler chose not to wait - he ended it himself. Even more subtly the principle still holds; the iron lady, Margaret Thatcher for instance;

she had very clear beliefs about what needed to be done, and arguably did a lot of good for her nation and people, but in doing so she caused a betrayal response in other people who had their own way of getting their own back – sir Geoffrey Howe's elegant and incisive 'broken cricket bat' speech was the beginning of the end of her reign. If you seek to harm others, or even passively allow them to be harmed, then you will eventually reap what you sow. there is also a self-response; people have multiple personalities; if you harm others then your internal conscience will punish you. Many despots and murderers lead miserable, self-recriminating lives as their inner selves remind them every day of what they have done.  What I find most ironic; the world will find both extremities of persuasion in religion; those with purest of intents (peacemakers) and those with fatalistic intents (terrorists). Only intent makes the separation between persuasion and manipulation.

 

Devotion by the masses - sounds a little like religion? Gobe argued that, in some cases, branding has become as powerful as religion. I think that it's sensible that we do a little comparison; Branding has achieved a loyalty of 1.8 billion people daily for Coke for instance, and that's really impressive; in comparison 3.5 billion people are followers of Christ today? Does Christ persuade you or does he manipulate you? What convinces people to believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Ask around the Christian community (and look at the products 'marketed' at churches) and you might settle on a few familiar answers: powerful, eloquent sermons and persuasive arguments for Christianity; Active church programs and youth ministries; Masterful Gospel presentations and debating skills; Well-written Bible studies and testimonies; Iron-clad knowledge of the use of both the mainstream and social media; Branded church merchandise. I am not saying these are bad things. In fact, they're all really good things for the Gospel of Christ which must adapt itself to the changing times. But when the apostle Paul (whose main charge by Christ was to spread the gospel to the gentiles) recounted his evangelism strategy to the ancient church in Corinth, he describes an almost counter-intuitive approach:

1 Corinthians 2When I came to you, brothers, announcing the testimony of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. For I didn't think it was a good idea to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a powerful demonstration by the Spirit, so that your faith might not be based on men's wisdom but on God's power.

However, we do speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. On the contrary, we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written:

What eye did not see and ear did not hear, and what never entered the human mind—God prepared this for those who love Him.

Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God …. …. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

The truth of our Lord Jesus Christ is only availed in spirit; no witty marketing gimmicks can reveal these truths. Yes, the unbeliever needs to be reached where he is and in a manner he understands, it needs to be conceivable, but the truth of Christ in His full grace is not easily conceivable, it was not plausible or credible to those that crucified him – his own, how conceivable can it be to us who never saw him. In the essay  'One man, just a man…….' We arrived at the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth was more than just a mere mortal, he had certain abilities about himself; He could do what was practically impossible, yet He both predicted and elected to die on the cross. Was this His way of persuading you? Could Christ's ultimate persuasion lie in the revelation of the Cross and His resurrection?

Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?

This is perhaps the most important question in the history of the human race. The eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ actually spoke and acted like they believed he physically rose from the dead after his crucifixion. If they were wrong then Christianity has been founded upon a lie. It would be the greatest single act of deception and mass manipulation ever pulled off on earth. But if they were right, such a miracle would substantiate all Jesus said about God, himself, and us. But must we take the resurrection of Jesus Christ by faith alone, or is there solid historical evidence? Let's try to critically examine the MOST fantastic claim ever made – The resurrection of Jesus Christ. We all wonder what will happen to us after we die. Is death the end of all consciousness? Jesus made this startling claim: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again." According to those closest to him, Jesus then demonstrated his power over death by rising from the dead after being crucified and buried for three days. But some people have no hope of life after death. The atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote;

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my own ego will survive."

Russell obviously didn't believe Jesus' words. Jesus' followers wrote that he appeared alive to them after his crucifixion and burial. They claim not only to have seen him but also to have eaten with him, touched him, and spent 40 days with him. So could this have been simply a story that grew over time, or is it based upon solid evidence? If Jesus did rise from the dead, it would validate everything he said about himself, about the meaning of life, and about our destiny after death. He alone would have the answers to what life is about and what is facing us after we die. Theologian R. C. Sproul puts it this way:

The claim of resurrection is vital to Christianity. If Christ has been raised from the dead by God, then He has the credentials and certification that no other religious leader possesses. Buddha is dead. Mohammad is dead. Moses is dead. Confucius is dead. But, according to Christianity, Christ is alive.

Many skeptics have attempted to disprove the resurrection. Josh McDowell was one such skeptic who spent more than seven hundred hours researching the evidence for the resurrection. McDowell stated this regarding the importance of the resurrection:

I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men,

OR it is the most fantastic fact of history. McDowell later retracted his views and wrote his classic work, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, documenting what he discovered. So, is Jesus' resurrection a fantastic fact or a vicious myth? To find out, we need to look at the evidence of history and draw our own conclusions.

Self-Prophecy

In advance of his death, Jesus told his disciples that he would be betrayed, arrested, and crucified and that he would come back to life three days later. That's a strange plan! What was behind it? Jesus was no entertainer willing to perform for others on demand; instead, he promised that his death and resurrection would prove to people (if their minds and hearts were open) that he was indeed the Messiah. Bible scholar Wilbur Smith remarked about Jesus:

"When he said that He himself would rise again from the dead, the third day after He was crucified, He said something that only a fool would dare say, if He expected longer the devotion of any disciples – unless He was sure He was going to rise. No founder of any world religion known to men ever dared say a thing like that."

In other words, since Jesus had clearly told his disciples that he would rise again after his death, failure to keep that promise would expose him as a fraud. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. How did Jesus die before he (if he really did die) rose again?

A Horrific Death And Then . . . ?

As Jesus predicted, he was betrayed by one of his own disciples, Judas Iscariot, and was arrested. In a mock trial under the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, he was convicted of treason and condemned to die on a wooden cross. Prior to being nailed to the cross, Jesus was brutally beaten with a Roman cat-o'-nine-tails, a whip with bits of bone and metal that would rip flesh. He was punched repeatedly, kicked, and spat upon. Then, using mallets, the Roman executioners pounded the heavy wrought-iron nails into Jesus' wrists and feet. Finally they dropped the cross in a hole in the ground between two other crosses bearing convicted thieves. Jesus hung there for approximately six hours. Then, at 3:00 in the afternoon – that is, at exactly the same time the Passover lamb was being sacrificed as a sin offering (a little symbolism there, you think?) – Jesus cried out, "It is finished" (in Aramaic), and died. Suddenly the sky went dark and an earthquake shook the land. An even greater darkness of depression annihilated the dreams of those who had become infatuated with his charisma and joyful vitality. Pilate wanted verification that Jesus was dead before allowing his crucified body to be buried. So a Roman guard thrust a spear into Jesus' side. Once his death was certified by the guards, Jesus' body was then taken down from the cross and buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Roman guards next sealed the tomb, and secured it with a 24-hour watch. Meanwhile, Jesus' disciples were in shock. Psychologist . J. N. D Anderson explains how devastated and confused they were after Jesus' death on the cross.

"They no longer had confidence that Jesus had been sent by God. They also had been taught that God would not let his Messiah suffer death. So they dispersed. The Jesus movement was all but stopped in its tracks."

All hope was vanquished. Rome and the Jewish leaders had prevailed – or so it seemed

Then Something Happened….

But it wasn't the end. The Jesus movement did not disappear (obviously), and in fact Christianity exists today as the world's largest religion. Therefore, we've got to know what happened after Jesus' body was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb. Anderson cites the startling events that occurred three days after Jesus' death:

"Shortly after Jesus was executed, his followers were suddenly galvanized from a baffled and cowering group into people whose message about a living Jesus and a coming kingdom, preached at the risk of their lives, eventually changed an empire. Something must have happened …"

But exactly what? A fact of history that has stumped historians, psychologists, and skeptics alike is that these eleven former cowards were suddenly willing to suffer humiliation, torture, and even death. All but one of Jesus' disciples were slain as martyrs. Would they have done so much for a lie? Anderson wrote,

"Think of the psychological absurdity of picturing a little band of defeated cowards cowering in an upper room one day and a few days later transformed into a company that no persecution could silence – and then attempting to attribute this dramatic change to nothing more convincing than a miserable fabrication … That simply wouldn't make sense."

That's the question we have to answer with an investigation into the facts. There are only five plausible explanations for Jesus' alleged resurrection, as portrayed in the New Testament:

1.        Jesus didn't really die on the cross; 'The dead do not bleed; The swoon theory argues that Jesus bled blood and water when he was pierced with a spear – was he really dead?

2.        The "resurrection" was a conspiracy; Many Jews and Romans of the time and now argue that the body of Jesus was stolen from the tomb.

3.        The disciples were hallucinating; what do psychiatrists have to say about group hallucinations?

4.        The account is a legendary myth; from history how long do myths take to emerge, can it happen shortly after the actual occurrences?

 

The four options above would rank Christianity higher than Apple or Coke interms of effectiveness in building mass equity and devotion; making Sculley or Candler look like chimps doing a tap dance when ranked against Christ. The other option would be:

5.        It really happened.

 

Let's work our way through these options and see which one best fits the facts in our next Essay.  Bottom line? Be warned, practically everything you see, read or hear in today's world (& especially on this blog) is meant to influence your mind or opinion in one way or another, but most pertinent is that you wouldn't know a loaded gun unless you have seen one; like I have attempted to do time and again in this blog, teaching persuasion helps one to form a cognizant judgment. You learn to identify situations where others are trying to persuade you. It may not be a bad a thing to be persuaded (especially for Christ), but then again it might not be such a good thing to be manipulated; with knowledge you can engage in intelligent decision-making. A pervasive system of communication that is impersonal towards each of these tenets that I try to impart notwithstanding, the drama of living, seeking and eventually knowing is what enables us blind men to see, to see the unseeable, to see a victory in due course, a victory of preferences that has ALREADY been aroused before us, it is elusive, but YES we feel it, and our freedom is called. So we know, and thus we choose, or do we? See also "A choiceless, effortless world…

 

References:

The World's Most Valuable Brands – Forbes  2013

Emotional Branding – Marc Gobe, 2010

The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict - Josh McDowell, 1999

Therefore Stand - Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, 1945

The Evidence for the  Resurrection - J. N. D Anderson, 1950