The Power of Persuasion
How We're Bought and Sold
Chapter One
The Illusion of Invulnerability
Or, How Can Everyone Be Less Gullible
Than Everyone Else?
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist ...
-General John B. Sedgwick (Union army Civil War officer's last words,
uttered during the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864)
It was January 1984 and I was on the lookout for Big Brother. Being
a social psychologist-one who researches mind control, no less-I'd
been pumping up for George Orwell's banner year for some time. In a
few weeks, I would be offering a special course called "The Social Psychology
of 1984." That morning, I'd been preparing my outline.
I wanted my students to become familiar with the despots. How
might unwitting victims defend against tyrants like O'Brien, the party
spokesperson in 1984, who tells us, "You are imagining that there is
something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do
and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely
malleable"? Grr!
We would hunt down Big Brothers. I reread the opening page of
Orwell's novel:
It was a bright c ... read full excerpt from The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold ebook
