Step One to Manipulation - It's a Zero-Sum Game
Convince someone that they are in a constant battle for limited resources, and you control them.
If we break down a variety of beliefs that people hold about others I suspect at the bottom of the pile we will often find a strong belief that life is a zero-sum game.
What do I mean by that?
Let’s look historically at the Nativist movement in the US prior to the Civil War, and continuing on to today. The belief, of course, is that immigrants, specifically whatever immigrant group you want to target at the time, are “stealing our jobs”.
That’s the simple version. As the years have gone on it’s spread into things like drawing people away from our religious beliefs, or our tax money going to support immigrants, or that tax money not being used for something else that we think is more important, or that immigrants are just criminals out to steal our stuff or take our lives.
These stories are spread by leaders and media who want us to vote for them or buy their papers and watch their broadcasts. Again, their bottom line is to sell you something. They may also believe some of these things, but mostly they are trying to make a profit. Do you know why so many of these outlets focus on all of the things you should be afraid of? Because it sells. They know a story about how something or someone is out to get you or, especially, your kids, is an incredible way to hit you right in your instinctual weak spot.
We are all hard-wired through centuries of evolution to pay extra attention to anything that could be a danger to us. We can’t ignore it until we feel safe again. Marketers, politicians and con artists all know this.
This means that anyone trying to get your attention and sell you something is not going to talk to you about how most of life is not actually a zero-sum game. There is no set number of jobs in the US. It is constantly growing, which is what you want it to do. In order to sell more widgets you need more people with the money to buy widgets. In order for them to buy your widgets they need jobs. The more people who buy your widgets the more jobs you need to fill. See how it’s kind of circular? That’s Capitalism at work. That’s an economy that is growing. One person getting a job doesn’t meant there is no longer one for you.
But, when you believe that what you have is in danger of being taken, you pay attention to that risk. When someone says illegals are crossing the border and committing a crime your natural reaction is to fear that. When someone suggests the government or elites are trying to trim the population in order to get more that suggests that you see the world as a giant battle for resources. Suggesting that Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates is pushing vaccines to kill off millions of people so they can have more stuff ignores the thing I just wrote about. Bezos needs Amazon to make more stuff and sell more stuff in order for him to make more money. Having fewer people in the world doesn’t really get him there. It makes Amazon less money. The Gates Foundation needs more people to make donations, not fewer.
The story many of us believe, however, is that as these people get “more” there is less for the rest of us, and if we weren’t here to have some, they would just have more of the big resource pie that we are all fighting over.
That’s just silly.
We have been encouraged to think of the world in such a way by people who understand human nature. If we see others as competitors for a limited resource we will live in fear of those people. When we live in fear of other people it’s easy to convince us that those other people are evil, or sub-human, or unethical.
Once you’re convinced of that, the rest is a piece of cake. You’re one of us, not one of them. They are dangerous. They are trying to hurt you. They are the thing holding you back from being successful. They have secrets and conspiracies. They control the media. They control everything and they must be fought in whatever way is necessary.
No one actually has that level of control and another group’s success doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with yours.
You’ve fallen for a logical fallacy. You might also believe that, without immigrants or elites who cheat the system the world would be fair to you. That’s also a fallacy. The world isn’t fair. Bad things happen for no reason at all. (Hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) or just because another human being decided to do something unfair. (Murderers, thieves, rapists, etc.)
We can do everything we can to create fair opportunities for everyone and the world would still be unfair. Maybe if we could see other people who are not like us as fellow human beings instead of competitors we could do a better job of including as many people as possible in our group successes but the world would still be unfair.
There will also always be someone willing to take advantage of that unfairness through manipulation too. We should never forget that too.