Facebook and Google seem very powerful, but they live about a week from total ruin all the time. They know the cost of leaving social networks individually is high, but en masse, becomes next to nothing. Windows could be replaced with something better written. The US government would fall to a general revolt in a matter of days. It wouldn’t take a total defection or a general revolt to change everything, because corporations and governments would rather bend to demands than die. These entities do everything they can get away with — but we’ve forgotten that we’re the ones that are letting them get away with things.

Quinn Norton
May 20, 2014
Everything Is Broken
[This appears to be true. I suspect part of it is because most people want to belong to a social group. They want to be “normal” and liked and “supported”. If you take someone out of their social support group they loose their confidence. Making someone an outcast, for many people, is a terrible punishment. “Public opinion” matters because we evolved in an environment where shared values and group support gave us an advantage. Those shared values could contain some great falsities—a rain dance doesn’t change the weather, sacrificing a young girl to a “volcano god” doesn’t appease it, and the Final Solution to the “Jewish problem” didn’t make the world a better place. But a common belief that they could change the unchangeable and improve society by murdering millions probably improved morale, gave them a sense of accomplishment, and increased the productivity of the group.

Belonging to “the tribe” is important at a very deep level. This knowledge gives us power to take down powerful forces. But to be effective you can’t just make large numbers of people outcasts. You have to replace their existing “tribe” with another tribe. Religious cults recruit social outcasts and fulfill this basic need and they will believe the craziest things. Democrats recruit a groups of that believe such crazy things as a people can tax their way to prosperity, the government can control prices with no ill effects, or people and even states cannot afford health insurance but taxing people and filtering the money through the federal government will result in plenty of money. This coalition works and is powerful despite the crazy beliefs for the same reason the rain dancing and sacrificing to the volcano gods work. We have can’t just mock them and make them outcasts. They will further insolate themselves from the truth.

I appears to me that all political parties have their share of crazy beliefs and do their share of rain dancing, appeasing non-existent gods, and murdering innocent people. Don’t align yourself with political parties and leaders any more than you have to. Align yourself with the truth and work to make social outcasts of those who promote falsity. Yes, I know truth is very hard to discern but as long as you don’t get emotionally involved with the answers you find along the way you can work your way closer with very little backsliding.—Joe]