Self-defense training
The Tesla skeptic 'Elon Says' has a tremendous talent for summing up a situation in a few words.

His latest pithy proverb:

This is Musk's key insight: Unfinished projects are more valuable than finished projects, because they can be hyped endlessly.

This is also the key insight of all modern racketeers, from politics to cults to drug sellers to media.

It's a basic part of our neural wiring. When we are involved in solving a problem or planning a decision, we're in ANTICIPATION mode. ANTICIPATION occupies far more mental energy and emotion than COMPLETION. If a racketeer wants his product or story or drug or politician to occupy more brain space, he needs to keep it floating in ANTICIPATION.

Elon uses Github Syndrome expertly to keep his cultists in permanent ANTICIPATION mode. First you put down your deposit, then you eagerly await delivery. After delivery, completion is indefinitely postponed by daily "improvements" which never actually improve the car. Each "improvement" triggers your desire for the next "improvement". Just like Elon's own favorite drug, meth.

Understanding this process can help you to defeat it, both in your internal thinking and in your responses to scammers. You can distinguish between REAL problems that need time to develop a solution, versus FAKE problems resulting from bad memories or preconceptions or inputs from racketeers.

If your ponderation is part of a meaningful solution process, give it time but don't let it stretch out. Apply the solution and move on. If a REAL future event is causing anxiety, TAKE CONTROL. Make it happen now, or guarantee that it can't happen. If a FAKE future event is causing anxiety, TAKE CONTROL. Turn off the media input that is injecting the anticipation.

Predictably, nobody offers us any assistance in DEFENDING ourselves against this form of manipulation. Everybody is working for the rackets.

Labels: defensible times

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