Entrepreneur Geek

Big Lie Repeated Audaciously becomes Truth

Hitler, for good or bad, changed the world history. Some of the things going around me, just reminded me of Dr.
Joseph Goebbels – Adolf Hitler’s public relations / marketing / propaganda man.

What’s most remembered of Goebbels is his explanation of Britain’s Big Lie theory (which was adopted by Hitler / Goebbels very well). Quoting:

That is of course rather painful for those involved. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

So a big lie + repetition + audacity will soon become truth! People won’t care to find the truth, they will just listen to the big lie, and blinded by it, soon they will start believing that’s the real truth.

If you look at it, what were the primary rules of Hitler?

• Never allow the public to cool off
• Never admit a fault or wrong
• Never concede that there may be some good in your enemy
• Never leave room for alternatives
• Never accept blame
• Concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong
• People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

The mentality of people is such that they will believe a big lie sooner than they would believe the truth. Malintentioned people use this to their advantage. They skew the facts and present only portions of it to public, omitting the original context and adding their own “big lie” context to it.

Some people realize this is so ridiculous, since they know the original facts. But the number of such people is generally less. And the propaganda man walks away to his advantage fooling everyone. By the time people realize the truth, it’s too late for them.

Have you ever experienced this happening? With you?

How would you fight it?

• Would you start countering every big lie?
• Would you keep quiet and wait?
• Would you expose the big lie?

(Image courtesy: notionscapital)

For more such cartoons, visit BrainStuck.com

I love National Geographic photographs. Sujeet linked to a Nat Geo photo on a tweet today, and that led me to setting up National Geographic Photo of the Day as my Mac desktop wallpaper using an Automator action.

Interested? Here are some notes:

• Nat Geo offers free Windows and Mac screensaver applications of their best Photo of the Day. If you want a screensaver and not a desktop wallpaper, that’s your best bet!
• This work on Mac. Haven’t searched for Windows / Linux alternatives yet.
• Download the NPODWallpaper Automator script by Maxwell Duncan.
• When unzipped and installed, it will create an Automator application in your Applications folder.
• Double click and run it. Status messages will be shown in top menu bar.
• If all went well, your wallpaper would have changed. Hit F11 to quickly verify.
• If you are happy, setup an iCal event to run the script everyday. That will give you the latest POD from NatGeo automatically!
• Sweet, uh!

I still remember the sweet old Webshots days! Beautiful wallpapers are always refreshing! May be time to try out their beta mac application!

Unicode characters and webservices always create one or the other problem for me Working on PlannerX backend was not any different. Spent some good hours fixing Unicode / UTF-8 related issues.

And while I was searching for some solutions, I found an excellent “PHP UTF-8 Cheat Sheet” by Nick Nettleton of DropSend. I highly recommend it if you are going to do anything with PHP and Unicode!

And BTW, don’t use Base64 encoding with UTF-8. It will not work!

These are hard times. We have had to take some real tough decisions. Here’s something Ami shared with me. A message from Robin Sharma.

We are in some harsh times. Many of us are going through real pain.

But here’s the thing: pain isn’t bad. It just feels bad.

I’ve had some deeply painful times in my life. Yes, felt miserable as I navigated the suffering. But when it ended (and it ALWAYS does), I was left as a better man. Stronger, more creative, simpler, kinder. Better. By far.

What I’ve come to realize is that pain is a doorway. If you have the courage to just be with it versus numbing out and escaping from it, it will bring you giant gifts. It will evoke greater leadership within you. It will show you a lot more of who you are. It will deepen you. And it will remind you that life – and whatever you have in this moment – is a blessing. And a very big one indeed.

Another recommended reading – Rules for going through tough times – another Robin Sharma excerpt I posted 3.5 years ago!