Give without expecting anything in return.”

Give without expecting anything in return.”

Once Krishna and Arjuna were walking towards a village. Arjuna was pestering Krishna, asking him why Karna should be considered an unparalleled Donor & not him?

Krishna turned two mountains into gold.

Then said, “Arjuna, distribute these two gold mountains among villagers, but you must donate every bit of it “.

Arjuna went into the village and proclaimed he was going to donate gold to every villager, and asked them to gather near the mountain. 

The villagers sang his praises and Arjuna walked towards the hills with a huffed up the chest.

For two days and two nights, Arjuna shovelled gold from the mountain and donated to each villager. The mountains did not diminish in the slightest. 

Most villagers came back and stood in the queue within minutes. Now Arjuna was exhausted, told Krishna he couldn’t go on any longer without rest.

Then Krishna called Karna and told him to donate every bit of the two gold mountains. 

Karna called the villagers, and said “Those two Gold mountains are yours. ” and walked away.

Arjuna sat dumbfounded. Why hadn’t this thought occurred to him? 

Social Influence, the art of making people do what you want.

Social Influence consists of producing an image of reality that looks real.

It is part of the daily life of civilizations where systems of power, conflicts of interest, power relations, are omnipresent.

Social Influence develops from self-awareness, language, and the hierarchy of society that produces a lot of interactions and that everyone wants to take advantage of.

Social Influence can be achieved by regularly using various means of psychological pressure such as

Fear,
Hope,
Guilt, etc.

This yields very interesting results on the human psyche.

If you are smart enough to understand humans as "machines", or as pre-programmed automates,

That means that you have a better understanding of reality than 99% of the human population.

Humans, tend to react a certain way in certain situations, thus in predictable patterns.

By controlling the information (controlling the input), you can predict, and a fortiori, decide on the reactions of a given human being.

This is the base of any human interaction.

With this understanding, you can change the output (the reaction), and change how people act.

The reason why this scheme takes a central position in Social Influence is that it is important for your subject to believe that his actions are furthering his own interests.

Why would they take those actions otherwise?

Your strategic objective as a social influencer is to

Control the flow of information in such a way that your subject's reaction should lead to actions that further your own interests.

Your main problem, given that social influence, lies in the condition of no coercion, is to be discovered.

Do not abuse social influence techniques, and maintain plausible deniability if your machinations ever come to be found.