ENTRAINMENT & THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALTERNATIVE SELLING

If you see the world as merrily going about its way,
close this email and go about your way.

However, if you find war appalling
and regularly feel fatigued by the news,
this content will both help you have more energy
and make you money.

Warning: Questioning THE SYSTEM and wearing your politics
on your sleeve is dangerous to your status.

Holding an alternative perspective is far more stressful
than most psychologists will admit. Some counselors
and even psychologists will suggest that this stress
is all in your head.

These mental health professionals will point
to depleted energy as a symptom of depression,
often claiming that the root cause is a chemical
imbalance.

1) Stress is not all in your head,
there are physical causes for depleted energy
that will not be cured by chemical balancing;

2) Squelching your authentic perspective may lead
to substantively greater stressors.

Entrainment impacts psychology, generating symptoms
many psychologists mistake as depression.

In 1665, Christian Huygen coined the word “entrainment,”
a word in physics used to describe the phenomena of cyclical
energies recalibrating to fall into rhythm with one another.

Entrainment is not a force of nature like gravity or magnetism,
but the result of energy conservation.

What is Entrainment?
Two systems melding. Ever listen to an electric generator
when a second generator is started-up? At first, the purr
of the first generator is obscured.

Eventually, the oscillation of both generators
will compromise and a new purr is established–
the two generators have entrained to a common rhythm.

Female roommates are known to have their menstrual cycles entrain.

Details you can skip over…
In 1665, Christian Huygen noticed that the clock
in his study ran about a minute slower than the clock
in his living room, every day. He moved the two clocks
side-by-side. When they were side-by-side, the discrepancy
disappeared. They kept the same time. When he separated
the two clocks, the discrepancy reappeared.

Christian Huygen saw that the clocks had formed a compromise.

The clocks together ran at the same time,
but they ran 30 seconds slower than his
pocket watch.

These observations lead to his discovery,
or labeling of entrainment, the tendency
of cyclical objects to meld into a common
rhythm.

What entrainment demonstrates…
Even very subtle cyclical energies have a substantive
impact on their neighboring cyclical energies.

Reverberations from clocks entrain a
nd humans entrain to each other.

“Psychology” is way behind State-of-the-Art
It wasn’t until 1978 that Western medicine
accepted that conscious thought affects biorhythms
when a yogi placed himself naked in a small sealed
Lucite box that was submerged in water for far longer
than he should have had oxygen to breathe. Doctors had
little choice but to concede that the yogi had
intentionally slowed his biorhythm.

We now know that speech patterns affect biorhythms.

You can prove this to yourself by going to your local
alternative bookstore and ask to use their biorhythm
monitor. (Okay, I grew up in California where this is
commonplace. You may not have easy access to a biorhythm
monitor.) Get a read at your normal level. Choose a song
you know by heart and say this song faster than normal
for 30 seconds. Notice the tempo of your biorhythm increase.
Next, say the song slower than normal speech for 30 seconds
and watch the cadence of your biorhythm decrease. Speaking
slower does not always slow one’s biorhythm. Intentionally
speaking slowly with a fast talker will increase your
biorhythm relative to the cadence of slow talking in
the experiment above.

There is evidence of large-scale human entrainment.
The tempo of the American Southern accent is an
amalgamation between the colonial British rhythm
of speaking and the various African rhythms as spoken
by slaves of that era. The Southern accent demonstrates
verbal entrainment. Since speech patterns impact biorhythms,
it appears human biorhythms do entrain.

Entrainment is not a force but a phenomenon.

Entrainment is evidence that energy conservation has occurred.

Resisting entrainment requires more energy than entraining
with the masses. Holding an alternative perspective means
you are processing information in an unconventional manner–
your internal rhythm is different from the reverberations
of those around you. Maintaining an unusual rhythm requires
more energy than entraining with the thoughts of those around you.

But before you flock to the herd, bear this in mind:
Faking entrainment can lead to mental breakdowns.

This was inadvertently discovered by Dr. Saul Asch
in an experiment with such devastating consequences
the United States set up a panel to review
all future psychology experiments on humans.

Dr. Asch had a person come into a test room,
ostensibly to be one of six subjects in an
experiment on eyesight and perception,
but the study was actually designed
to ascertain levels of compliance.
The person was actually the only subject.
The other five people were actors, students
pretending to be subjects. All six were asked
which line was the longest of four projected
on a screen and labeled: A, B, C and D.

The first several times, the actors would all say
that the correct line was the longest. Then, the actors
would say the second-to-longest was the longest.

The point of the experiment was to determine
incidence of compliance and seek any commonalities.

Among those people who complied erroneously
with the group, meaning that they would agree
with the group instead of saying that the correct line
was longer; about a quarter of this group had a mental breakdown
in the next 12 months.

As Dr. Asch inadvertently proved, stating things differently
than how you see them is dangerous to your health,
provided you aren’t in a totalitarian government.

The truth of the matter is that working
in a corporation is akin to being
in a totalitarian state. Just as in a monarchy,
limited good can come from questioning the reality
of your boss, manager or any overlord.

Low energy may be a symptom of clinical depression,
it may also be a symptom of fatigue from the extra energy
required for alternative thinking, from NOT entraining
with the herd.

To stave off negative psychological ramifications,
one needs to distinguish between what you hold as true
and what you say for work and self-preservation.
While somebody is neurotic to the extent they cannot say
what they mean and mean what they say, ignoring the real
power of overlords is hazardous to your status. Instead,
develop your own culture of support outside of your network
of work contacts. Many people have found such support through
local chapters of the Joseph Campbell Society,
Alcoholics Anonymous, Landmark Education among many other
non-religious organizations.

Discretion…The Better Half of Valor
In most cases, it is financially prudent
to get your psychological entrainment
from people completely separate from your work.
You met your colleagues through your
paycheck delivery mechanism–your colleagues are
part of your paycheck delivery mechanism.
They may be well intended, however, chances are
that they will become an Agent Smith if their
paycheck delivery mechanism is jeopardized.
More pathetically, if they are being ousted,
they may grasp for entrainment partners and
inadvertently take you down with them.
You need a way to separate your business-self
from your authentic self.

You need an avatar. An avatar is simply a different identity.

Online I go by Howard Campbell for the majority
of my counter-cultural work. For moderating focus groups,
conducting consumer research, I go by Ben Mack.

I have separate email addresses for each name. T
his is basic business…Proctor & Gamble had 6 (six)
leading brands of laundry soap.

Acting on your authentic voice will reenergize you.
Acting on your authentic voice means writing
from your heart. Cutting and pasting your own words
is fine, but cutting and pasting an entire email
from somebody else is not authentic self expression.

So, you want to make money on this?
Great! I want you to also. Because if you make money
on this it means you are likely to keep doing it.
If more and more people act on their authentic voices,
I hold that the world will be a saner place and more
humane. I hope you will help prove me right.

Money is Money. We need money to operate. The first way
to make money is to save money. Nothing pays dividends
like restraint of pen and mouth.

=> First, DON’T SULLY YOUR MAIN PAYCHECK DELIVERY MECHANISM
with your politics.

=> Second, practice resisting the pressures of advertising
and mass persuasion. Consciously buy less.

=> Third, buy local. By keeping money nearby, you increase
your likelihood of bumping into this money again.
Local can be physical proximity or psychographic proximity.

BIG Corporations don’t spend money in our circles.

But you want to make money, create new streams of income!
Guess what, the alternative market is growing faster
than any other market. Can you use the techniques
of direct response to make money while promoting
a counter-cultural perspective? YES!

When you can articulate your authentic voice you validate others
who feel the same way, giving them solace.

Would you pay $20 to learn
how to save $1,200 in heating bills
over the next three years?
If energy conservation is an expression
of your authentic voice this is a viable business
possibility for you.

Would you pay $20 to learn how to reduce pollution
by more than you would if you switched to a hybrid automobile?

How about 10 ways? I know that going vegetarian 1 day a week
reduces pollution by about as much as switching to a hybrid car,
I bet you could come up with 9 other ways and package this
as a pamphlet for which folks would pay $20.

Me? I’m trying to get famous. By sharing my ideas,
mostly for free. I give away my novel Poker Without Cards which shares many ideas like this in the form of a thriller.
I’m attempting to replicate Buckminster Fuller’s Experiment
with the Universe.

In the meantime, if you like these ideas and want more…
THE BLACK BOOK Volume IV is part of the series available here:
BLACK BOOK Volume IV

- by Ben Mack
Author of Think Two Products Ahead,
Poker Without Cards & (IndependenceDay2007 dot com)