by Tom Baugh
When the phone rings, do something different than what you normally do. If you normally rush to answer it, let it go to voicemail. Or, if you normally let it go to voicemail, answer the call.
Take a different route to work.
Watch a totally different television program than you normally do.
Listen to something your boss/spouse/customer said, and jump on filling that need like a wild mongoose.
Watch a dozen or so reports by John Stossel. Choose any from since about 1990. During his early career he was a die-hard collectivist. He is feeling much better now.
OK, those shouldn't be that hard, and really don't affect anyone else all that much, at least not in a negative way. Time for more of a challenge:
When a stranger greets you, perhaps as a cashier in a store, look them in the eye, but say not one thing, keeping your expression blank.
Look a stranger in the eye, with a curious detached expression, as one might examine a new species, until they look away.
Watch every single episode of Penn and Teller's "B.S." series. If you get angry or upset during any of them, ask yourself why. And then prove them wrong. If you can.
If contacted by a telemarketer, tell them you need their credit card number. If they ask why, keep repeating the question until they hang up.
If contacted by a telemarketer, engage them in a conversation as if you are a therapist hired to solve their personal issues until they hang up.
Telemarketers make this too easy. Pretend you work for the CIA and ask them, in your best fighter pilot voice, for their access code. When they don't know what you mean, tell them "The lock for today is Purple. What is your access code?" As they stammer and ask questions, ignore them and repeat the demand in a cool level voice. After a few such demands, ask them their name and how they got this number. No matter what they say, pretend to badly cover the mouthpiece and say "Brisbane, this is Badger Six, we have a Level Three violation on my line. Trace and lock." Wait a few moments and then ask, "got it?" Pause again, and say "got it now?, uhhh, roger, execute Tango Bravo Nine." Then hang up.
Sell a telemarketer on getting a copy of this book so that they can improve their own lives and not have to work as a telemarketer.
Since those were with strangers, and really didn't harm anyone, other than perhaps their feelings, they still shouldn't have been that hard. But, by now you will probably be feeling some tugs of guilt that you aren't fitting into your role in society. This is a good thing.
Now for some harder ones; these require you to risk conspicuousness in front of people you know. The fact that they make you feel supremely uncomfortable in your conspicuousness is exactly the point:
When prompted to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a crowd, omit the word "indivisible." Don't rush right through it, but instead pause the requisite amount of time, as in "under God, ..., with liberty and justice for all." Do this until someone notices the gap, and then defend yourself against charges of being a secessionist and blatant racist. Ignore the racism charge, and then engage them in a discussion of what is bad about secessionism.
Expand the previous exercise by emphasizing the word "ALL" at the end. If you are a white male, and anyone hears you, ignore their horrified expression, and then ask yourself why they would be shocked. Then apply your knowledge of individualism versus the collective and answer this question for yourself. Again, defend yourself against charges of racism, which should be patently absurd given your emphasis. Any other category of reader making this emphasis will simply be accepted as making a progressive social statement.
If you are a white person, imagine a minority making a similar emphasis. Ask yourself whether you feel included or excluded in the word. Analyze whether you feel a pang of guilt when they do, and what purpose this feeling which has been implanted in you serves for the collective. Ask yourself why you have been made to feel like even this exercise is divisive, instead of inclusive.
If you are a minority making this emphasis around white people, ask yourself if their positive reaction to your doing this is genuine. Or, are they instead pandering to what they think you, and the collective, want to hear, instead of seeing you as a person with a mind of your own? If this discussion starts, engage them as to how much they think "all" means you instead of them.
When you see a news story about a killing or a paternal child abduction or some other similar tragedy, try to think about a reasonable possible motivation the accused has. Attempt to project yourself into their own state of mind. And then decide how, and why, you would make different decisions to cause a different outcome.
When you see one of the news stories I mentioned above, imagine instead that the accused did nothing of the sort. Instead, imagine that the story is merely a cover for some meaningless lack of compliance which was the actual offense.
Imagine you are a fiction writer. Ask yourself, in some horrific dystopian alternate universe, how traffic billboards or Amber alerts or cell-phone tracking could be used to help round up the politically indiscreet. What plot line could you weave around this?
In church, as the collective, I mean congregation, is led to kneel in prayer, pause just a fraction of a moment before complying. Note the wave of unease which percolates around you.
Don't bow your head for a group prayer. Notice how the guy in the front talking starts looking at you as he makes sure everyone is being good little boys and girls, his own head unbowed. I believe God will forgive you for this experiment, He hears your heart no matter what position your body is in. He might even be proud of you for getting in more direct touch with Him.
Put nothing in the collection plate. Feel the wave of unease become a tsunami.
Sitting in a parking lot, open your windows and crank some music anachronistic for your station in life.
Tell a charity collector that you think charity is evil, but offer yard-work to their destitute in question as a way of helping them pay their bills.
Defend someone's reputation to your closest friends as they gossip about that person.
Ask a door-to-door evangelist about their position on blood sacrifice of innocents.
If you live in a nice subdivision, leave your trash can outside for a week straight.
Also in a nice subdivision, get someone you know to leave the worst beater of a car, or mud-coated monster truck, in your driveway for a few days.
Nice subdivisions, like telemarketers, make this too easy. Get a couple of relatives or friends, man and woman, to hang out in your front yard on a weekend on a couple of lawn chairs and play cards all day. Both in cutoff jeans with lots of stringies, both in flip flops, he in a dirty white wife-beater, she in a halter-top and curlers and lots of hot makeup. Have them drink beer from a well-stocked cooler and whoop with laughter from time to time, but ignore passerby. Go about your normal activities as if you haven't even noticed anything unusual.
For a week, when you get your mail from the box, leave the box door hanging open.
Pretend you are an intelligence analyst for a day. Analyze each news story you hear with scepticism, and try to detect the back story of compliance with an agenda to destroy individualism and promote collectivism.
Pick a non-perishable food item you enjoy, and then buy a year's supply of this. Put nothing else in your cart, and offer no explanations. This is best done if the item selected is generally regarded as bad for you.
Walk right past a Girl Scout table without even engaging in conversation, eye contact, or polite exchange of pleasantries.
If approached by a homeless person, tell him to "get a job." Yes, we've all heard the song. How dare you defy it? You are supposed to want to prove that you are better than that.
Wear a Husqvarna® or Stihl® shirt to an environmental rally. Better, see if you can get a stack of promotional materials from either, or both, to hand out there. If challenged about your insensitivity, patiently and softly explain that both of these are made by eco-friendly countries in the European Union, and notice how resistance melts.
Attend an educators' conference and introduce yourself as a principal of a homeschool.
Ignore someone's pet.
If some idiot with an impossibly large dog on a leash lets it threaten you as the animal pulls them, typically her, toward you, ignore the person. Instead, lean into the dog and growl and bark menacingly at it. Form a clear image in your mind, spurting blood included, of turning the dog inside out. OK, I lied in the foreword. My bad. Technically, though, I didn't describe the spurting blood, I merely mentioned it. Hey, this is a work of fiction anyway, so cut me some slack. Anywho, play back this image in your mind rapidly over and over while growl-barking and staring through its eyes into its soul. If you do this right, with sufficient belief in your mind that this is actually happening, it will sense your intentions and back away. It might even whimper. Notice how the person will not apologize for their dog menacing you. Instead, watch them become hostile that you frightened their "puppy", or more nauseatingly, their "baby." In reality, you will have just scared the crap out of them because they had expected to feel instead a surge of power from their baby inflicting fear in you.
Be prepared to raise bail money if you try that last one, which shows where you, or your small children or pregnant women who may be with you at the time, rank against dogs in the eyes of the collective. Even that radical radio talk show host who inspired me years ago has this particular fetish against the rights of persons versus animals.
If you can complete all of these, pat yourself on the back. I estimate that 99.9% of people can't. You probably can't even imagine yourself doing these exercises without feeling a deep sense of unease merely at the reading. But on reflection, not one of these indicates you are a bad person, but you are made to feel as if you are, simply to get you to comply. Such is the depth of your programming.
Don't just read these exercises, actually do them. Remember, this book is just for fun. Don't actually do anything I suggest, but if you do, remember, I warned you. Don't blame me for the consequences of what the monkeys will do when they tear into you.
Doing these exercises is much harder than simply understanding the intellectual content. If you can't do them, then put this book down now and read no further. At this point you should be able to recognize the compliance patterns, and begin to invent more exercises of your own. But be prepared to lose most of the friends you have worked so hard to impress. If you follow that path, you will suffer this loss for nothing more than empowering your own sense of individual worth.
The next step in learning how to think is to understand how great ideas flow from fuzziness. Although a lot of the advice I give to my clients has been applicable to the world of engineering or product design, these ideas apply to entrepreneurs of all kinds. As a disclaimer, I can only really describe to you how my mind works. I am sure licensed professionals of all sorts will disagree with just about everything I am about to tell you.
To have great ideas, in addition to understanding how the creative process itself works, you must have two sets of knowledge, education and experience. In all fairness, for years I had only subconsciously understood the necessity of balancing each of these. I first began to be aware of the explicit distinction between these two sets of knowledge after hearing a lecture by Dr. Paul Dobransky, M.D. Although Dr. Paul specializes in the psychology of relationships and self-esteem, this one idea applies nicely to learning how to think, also.
By the way, if you feel self-conscious about just about anything, I highly recommend you get some of Dr. Paul's materials. His MindOSTM ideas are really eye-opening, and help build a vocabulary about mental concepts which most of us understand intuitively at some level. From my perspective, his ideas are helpful in teaching you how to deprogram yourself from a lot of negativity which has been implanted in you by the collective to make you easier to control. I feel that the purpose of this programming is to allow monkeys to extract unearned value from you.
As Dr. Paul describes, education is about book-learning, while experience is about learning while doing. In one of his lectures he mentions that activities such as watching movies or reading books, even this one, are a form of a shortcut to experience. His reasoning is that you can borrow someone else's experience, in a limited and highly filtered sense, from these activities. But, there is no substitute for actual hands-on experience for most useful skills. To be able to make the best of both of these kinds of knowledge, it is essential that they be in balance.
Someone who has a lot of book knowledge but no practical experience seems off-balance. Similarly, someone with a lot of practical experience but no reference to what others have discovered before seems almost naively helpless. Either extreme is bad, which is why I have encouraged you to teach yourself, if you have to, certain foundation subjects. I now encourage you to get out and live a lot of different experiences, and read a lot of books like mine where people relate their own real-life mistakes and experiences.
If you sit behind a desk all day, find some way to get out and operate a backhoe for a while. If you run a backhoe all day, find some way to teach yourself something like HTML. Get on the web and learn about how plutonium-238 is made and what it is good for. Get a night job for a while in a restaurant. Buy a junker of a used car, repair it, and sell it. See if you can go on a ride-along with an HVAC repairman for a day. Paint a couple of rooms in your house floor to ceiling, even the trim. Take an adult education class and learn about welding, or political science. Take your kids on a tour of a factory or a farm. Push your boundaries, and talk to everyone you run across during this time. More importantly, ask questions and really listen to the answers.
I challenge you to drive down a road and truly have an appreciation for how that nice grassy slope down to the storm drain got there. Or for what it took for that billboard to wind up perched on top of that post, or how that steak got to the meat market. Or what nonsense a used-car salesman or real estate agent has to deal with. Or why electricity comes spurting out of your wall. When you can fully appreciate these things, then you'll be ready to proceed.
Throughout this chapter I am going to speak about your conscious mind and your subconscious mind as independent portions of your self which work together to solve problems. These problem-solving skills also interact to get you through the day safely and put a smile on your face. Professionals in the field will probably give you different definitions for what these two parts are, but to be clear for this discussion I will define them now.
When I say conscious mind, I mean that part of you which is reading this right now. This mind is logical and process-oriented. It makes plans such as "I am going to go somewhere to get something that I need." The skills exercised by your conscious mind, sometimes called your "left brain", involve objective thinking such as algebraic manipulation or factual understanding. This mind is trained predominantly by education.
On the other hand, when I say subconscious mind, I mean that part of you which has been jolted by some of what you have read. The subconscious mind is best at connecting the dots of a problem, or of understanding an underlying theme, or of recognizing threats, even if those threats are only to your world-view. It doesn't make detailed plans, but instead makes you feel as if you need to go get something. The skills exercised by your subconscious mind, sometimes called your "right brain", involve subjective thinking such as pattern recognition or understanding the whole of something. This mind is trained predominantly by experience. Compared to your conscious mind, your subconscious mind is much, much faster at recognizing an unfolding situation, as well as having the ability to connect seemingly unrelated details and reach a conclusion.
Note that in this definition of the subconscious mind I do not mean the autonomic functions of regulating heartbeat or breathing. The subconscious mind may send signals to those functions to serve its purposes, but the functions themselves are merely an organic/chemical mechanism of your body. The subconscious mind as I intend here sits above and controls those functions.
Nor does the subconsc
ious mind in this model simply serve as a storehouse for forgotten memories or traumatic experiences, although it could, if you let it. An upstairs room in your house might collect the stuff which seemed too good to throw away, but not important enough to use. Similarly, the subconscious mind could collect the cruff of your experiences if you let it. Or, just like that junk room, you could clean it up, sweep out the cobwebs, and put it to good use. But then you might discover that it is your favorite room in the house. Much of this chapter will deal with what you might then use that room for.
As with many things in life, satisfaction comes from placing things in the proper balance. Men are accused of using predominately their conscious minds, and shutting off their subconscious, or, thinking instead of feeling. This may be true to some extent, and it is important to balance both by accessing the vast reservoir of energy which your subconscious can provide you. Women, if they have managed to get this far in the book without throwing it against the wall, are now rejoicing.
Hold on, ladies. The flip side of this balancing act is that women, who rely heavily on their subconscious minds, should also be open to becoming more logical and objective, instead of crying at every commercial of flycaked starving children which comes your way. For every step of "getting in touch with your feelings" that you expect a man to make, be just as willing to get "out of touch with your feelings" yourself. Viewed this way, it is probably best just to let him be himself. Better yet, ladies, keep trying to change him, because I know you can't resist making the effort, but just accept it as a good thing when he doesn't. You wouldn't like him very much anymore if he did, anyway.
The plot now thickens. Fans of Dr. Paul will note that I am about to blend two of his axes together. For purposes of understanding self-esteem, he is correct to keep them separate, but for my purposes here it makes sense to combine them. Both models work, but for different purposes.
Popular culture would lead you to believe that left-brain conscious stuff is more male, while right-brain subconscious stuff is more female. If you view the conscious/subconscious split from the perspective of a woman, this may be true. In this case, a feminist assigns all of the conscious stuff to guys, and blames them, and conscious thinking, for the evils of the world. Why? Because this assertion absolves them from any responsibility for problems. But, given an objective analysis vis-a-vis our nation, of course, our problems can be shown to stem more from feeling than from thinking. Or, at least from manipulating feelings in others to incite them to act in destructive ways. And yet feeling, we are led to believe, stems more from the subconscious rather than the conscious. An outside observer might then reason that our world has too little male influence, rather than too much.
