Human Cohort Conversion / Recruitment Guide

Converting vast numbers of passive opinionated (read: checked out) persons is most effectively accomplished with low cost/low effort activities that basically become contagious and do the work for you.

This is a symptom of a primary problem facing ‘changemakers’ in modern societies. The systems that pervade over those societies are highly organized, and ever-more efficient at implementing this.

Facebook is an example of these processes in action.

The people objecting to them are nearly completely disorganized, ineffective, and prone to emotions instead of tactical opportunism.

One comparison would be a trained military unit fighting some nearly unconscious drunk people.

Without organizational intelligence, all engagements fail. If that was even the actual goal.

. . .

In ascending order of cost and effectiveness… one can frame the following methods:

1. Appeal to fear, outrage and prejudice. This is effectively ‘magic’ for converting isolated or passive populations. Cheap, ancient, utterly effective.

2. Recruit / convert via sophistry. Also, cheap and effective. Primary method of various political systems, tabloids, and fake religions. One simply lies in a poetic, passionate or ‘smart-seeming’ way. Or all three.

3. Logical argument. Expensive, tends to be primarily useful in small groups that are not passive in relation to the matters under the microscope.

4. Metaphor, demonstration, and data.

5. Take the person/people into a situation where the features of the matter of concern are blatantly obvious, extreme, and resist abstract interpretation.

The 5th kind penetrates deep, transforms people at an enaction level, is more compelling than all the others combined, but is expensive, and requires direct participation.

Note that any combination of these can be used, adapted to purposes at hand, and customized at will.