you are catching the Bucky virus
7:04 AM PDT, April 26, 2007
THE GREAT PIRATES
Think Piece B23 A recollection of a conversation by Ben Mack Think Piece is a production of Intellishit marketing. If you find this engaging, forward this to friends and look for more editions. THE GREAT PIRATES When I was twelve, R. Buckminster Fuller explained to me: The great pirates, the traders and sea dwellers who needed men organized on land to expedite their trading created monarchies. Pirates were inherently outlaws.  Poker Without Cards: A Consciousness Thriller Pirates lived outside the system. The only laws that could, and did, rule them were natural laws. Pirates battled with one another to see who was going to control the vast sea routes and, eventually, the world. Their battles took place out of sight of land dwellers and the keepers of written history. The losers generally went to the bottom of the sea. Those who stayed on top of the waters, and prospered, did so because of their comprehensive abilities. They were the antithesis of specialists. Pirates were applied scientists. The wider and more long-distanced their anticipatory strategy, the more successful they usually were. Experience proved that multiple ships could outmaneuver one ship. So pirates created navies. Bucky pointed out that historians maintain that countries created navies—only countries had the infrastructure to build and sustain navies. But, that’s what our history tells us. But, history is simply a story agreed upon. Bucky maintained that pirates created countries. Western civilization didn’t just spring up simultaneously along different coasts. Trade prompted the development of countries. People were trading via shipping routes. Businessmen. Pirates. Pirates created foci of power. To consistently sustain a navy, pirates had to control mines, forests, and lands to build the ships and establish the industries essential to building, supplying, and maintaining their navy. The pirates went to the various lands where they either acquired or sold goods, and picked the strongest man there to be the pirate’s local headman. The chosen man became the pirate's general manager of the local realm. If the chosen man in a given land had not already done so, the pirate told him to proclaim himself king. But this king was a stooge to commerce. His sole job was to maintain order on behalf of the pirates. Order was most easily maintained by having the local king proclaim that he was the headman of all men, the god-ordained ruler on earth. The locals weren’t traveling, so they saw no disparity. The pirates gave their stooge-kings secret lines of supplies that provided everything they needed to enforce their sovereign claim. The more massively bejeweled the king's gold crown, and the more visible his court and castle, the less visible was his pirate master. Masters had to sleep occasionally, and therefore found it necessary to surround themselves with super-loyal, muscular, but dumb-as-shit, illiterates, who couldn’t see, nor savvy, their masters' strategies. There was great safety in the stupidity of these henchmen. The great pirates realized that the only people who could possibly contrive to displace them were the truly bright people. Secrecy was the pirate’s strongest defense. If the other powerful pirates didn’t know where you were going, when you’d gone, or when you were coming back, they wouldn’t know how to waylay you. If anyone knew when you were coming home, small-timers could come out in small boats and waylay you in the dark and take you over, just before you got home tiredly after a two-year treasure-harvesting voyage. Hijacking and second-rate piracy became a popular activity around the world's shores and harbors. So, secrecy became the essence of the lives of the successful pirates. That’s why so little is known of these pirates. These great pirates said to all their kings, statesmen who were functionally only lieutenants, "Any time bright young people show up, I'd like to know about it, because we need bright men." So, each time the pirate came into port, the local king would mention that he had some bright, young men whose capabilities and thinking shone out in the community. The great pirates would say to the king, "All right, you summon them and deal with them as follows: As each young man is brought forward you say to him, 'Young man, you are very bright. I'm going to assign you to a great history tutor, and, in due course, if you study well and learn enough, I'm going to make you my Royal Historian, but you've got to pass many examinations given to you by me and your teacher.'" And when the next bright boy was brought before him, the king was to say, "I'm going to make you my Royal Treasurer," and so forth. Then the pirate said to the king, "You will finally say to all of them: 'But each of you must mind your own business or off go your heads. I'm the only one who minds everybody's business.'" And this is the way schools began, as royal tutorial schools. And, it’s the way specialization began. It is our current form of education. Academic education equals specialization. Exclusively, the great pirates retain comprehensive knowledge. Exclusively the great pirates, known today as businessmen, enjoy knowledge of the world through its resources. Bucky emphasized that this is not a metaphor or some kind of syllogism and that he was not being facetious. He held the pirate story as a more accurate history than found in traditional textbooks. This was the beginning of schools and colleges, and the beginning of intellectual specialization. The development of the bright ones into specialists gave the king very great brain power, and made him and his kingdom the most powerful in the land and, therefore, secretly and greatly advantaged his patron pirate in world competition with the other great pirates. The power rested not with the power figureheads, the kings, but with the men behind the kings, the great pirates. Just as today, a corporate president may be the king, but the power is in the hands of the board of directors—the ones never charged with corporate crimes. Bucky saw our current world order as derived from deception and maintained through deception. Bucky’s key criticism of this deception is a perpetuated fallacy of scarcity. Scarcity is required to maintain the tension required for competition. It is intrinsic to the divide and conquer master strategy. However, most people are blind to the connection between competition and the divide and conquer strategy. For practical applications on these theories... please buy  Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don't Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits A Fuller Explanation In 1980, R. Buckminster Fuller spent two days explaining his perception of reality to me and two other kids for Richard Brenneman’s book, Fuller’s Earth: A Day With Bucky And The Kids. Fuller's Earth: A Day With Bucky and the Kids or FULLER'S EARTH A Day with Bucky and the Kids Bucky found us deeply programmed and conditioned by society. He wanted to pursue the origins of specialization into deep history, hoping thereby to correct or eliminate our “normal” concepts. Bucky stated that misconceptions were intentionally perpetuated as a form of control over the masses. That it is naïve to think that certain misconceptions have not been intentionally held in place by local governments. This think piece, The Great Pirates, is an attempt to pass along a little of what he gave me. For a Fuller version of this story, please see Operating Manual Spaceship Earth.  Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth Thank you for consuming this Think Piece. Now, think peace. On marketing...
8:54 AM PDT, April 12, 2007
My name is Ben Mack.
I’m a marketer. I sold a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in Yomega Yo-Yos 1998-2000. That's a lot of yo-yos. May I share with you how I helped Yomega grow from $8,000,000 one year to $120,000,000 the next? We didn't make our ads about the yo-yo. Yes, we had yo-yos in the advertisements, but the ads were about the kids being heroes. The yo-yos with a new automatic clutch allowed kids to be heroic. The kids were shown doing yo-yo tricks that would normally have taken scores of hours or maybe even years to master. How did we take a simple yo-yo, allow it to make kids heroes and turn all this into a quarter-billion-dollar bonanza? We used a powerful technique that has been buried inside the high security walls of the high priced advertising agencies that for the first time you can access and use for your own company--whether you want to make a quarter-billion-dollars or simply double your income from where you are right now, a technique that utilizes Conscious Attraction. This Conscious Attraction technique is so secret most advertising companies never share it directly with their clients no matter how much money they offer to pay. But I don't think that's right, because I think everyone in business should have the opportunity to know about this secret. So, I'm going to share it with you now… this is what unifies a team’s unconscious attraction by aligning everybody to the same business objectives and talking points. The secret is that we built a Legend Platform for the yo-yo company. Conscious Attraction for a team requires aligning perceptions and expectations. A Legend Platform is the most powerful tool a team can use in business to rapidly align your perceptions, expectations and increase your sales. The beautiful part is that learning to build a Legend Platform is easy. Your Legend Platform clarifies your business thinking as it instills confidence. You will be able to concisely communicate your business ideas. You will discard less profitable and irrelevant ideas faster and your communications will have emotional objectives. Advertising, packaging and collateral will all have a unified feel, without all the costly traditional branding. Teammates will know your vision and will see what they can do to help. Employees have a tool that teaches and reinforces best-practices by showing a big picture vision of an optimal product or service experience. Best of all, your Legend Platform is primarily visual so it is easy to pick up and teach. Your Legend Platform works to give you laser clarity to attract the Big Business you’ve been wanting. I teach you how to construct your Legend Platform in my recently published book, Think Two Products Ahead. Marketing is manifestation because focusing on our specific business goals aligns our unconscious mind with our conscious business efforts. Business visualization tools are very rare. Marketing is the legitimate face of magic. Marketing is manifestation. I’ve compiled the very best tools I’ve used for your business magic in this one book… Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don't Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits
Kurt Vonnegut, Genius marketer or Evil sick puppy?
8:51 AM PDT, April 12, 2007
"I still believe that peace and plenty and
happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) Then I shall join your follishness! Ben, I have some difficult news to share. Kurt Vonnegut passed away yesterday. When the attending doctor was asked of what he died by an idiotic reporter that hadn't read the hospital's press release, the doctor said: "He was 84 and he smoked." - Dr. William Fink, Kane Hospital, NYC "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Join me today in smoking a cigarette to honor an evocative man, a humanist and a damn good writer. "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. On memetics... "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Breakfast of Champions (this link is an ad from our sponsor) http://ThinkTwoProductsAhead.com/mf "Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Vonnegut was full of piss and vinegar... "Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for the flying-saucer people to find, was this: WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP Only he didn't say 'doggone.'" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Hocus Pocus a neopsychedelic quote... "What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Blue Beard "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat's Cradle (this link is an ad from our sponsor) http://ThinkTwoProductsAhead.com/mf "Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. = > In 2004, I wrote Vonnegut <= I wrote to tell him I used his character Howard Campbell in my novel Poker Without Cards. Poker Without Cards: A Consciousness Thriller Kurt replied... "Ben Mack, since you don't have the guts to be a homosexual, and you want to hurt your parents, I'm glad that you are writing." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr Classic. Thank you Kurt. I found this very funny, especially since I knew his joke... ...a joke Vonnegut used to close his talks on college campuses... "If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr Here's a lesser used quote of his I cherish... "Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr Kurt Vonnegut passed away yesterday. Did you notice above when I typed... (this link is an ad from our sponsor) http://ThinkTwoProductsAhead.com/mf That's because I want you to click on the link and learn how to sell. I need your help popularizing important ideas like drinkable water... "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (Learn the tricks used to maximize your efforts so you can dedicate your energy to helping where you see need Please click on the link and learn the strategy Mike Filsaime wishes he could take back, and have kept to himself... http://ThinkTwoProductsAhead.com/mf ) => On damn good writing... "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." 2nd lesson... "I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex." On history... "1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them." "The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were." Google (mack great pirates) "Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything." "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." "During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice." "Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful." Why did I ASK if Kurt Vonnegut was a genius marketer? Because who else besides, besides perhaps Einstein and Buckminster Fuller can make such sweeping indictment of a lack of love and still sell millions of dollars in books each year? think about iT Kurt, thank you for your foolishness. Ben think => Ben Mack p.s. Vonnegut on President W. Bush... "How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." a young man on acid realized
9:44 PM PDT, April 1, 2007, updated at 9:46 PM PDT, April 1, 2007
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imaginations of ourselves...  What Would Bill Hicks Say?
Afraid to sell? Ashamed of marketing?
9:40 PM PDT, April 1, 2007
http://RealWorldBranding23.com
There is a there there.
9:32 PM PDT, April 1, 2007
There is a there there . com
There isatherethere . com http://thereisatherethere.com/  This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming (2nd Digital Edition) Thereisatherethere Talent Zoo=> The Ol' Zeigarnik Effect
9:14 PM PDT, April 1, 2007
The Zeigarnik Effect is said
to be the most powerful tool of direct response marketing, advertising engineered to elicit an immediate response. Advertising has ONE major temp agency...> Talent Zoo <...... Each week Talent Zoo has a guest columnist. This week it is me, Ben Mack. See the TOP article on the page please... "The Ol' Zeigarnik Effect" by Ben Mack Does Using The Word 'Propaganda' Help Corporations?
4:29 PM PDT, March 29, 2007
Ben Mack, a former Senior Vice President of BBDO, Brand Strategy Director on Cingular. At 12, Ben and two other children interviewed R. Buckminster Fuller for three-days for Fuller’s Earth: A Day With Bucky And The Kids.
The greatest trick of the 20th century was the branding of propaganda. Marketing is propaganda. Positioning propaganda as distinct from other forms of marketing is state-of-the-art persuasion. The definition of Propaganda varies greatly by source. The Catholic Church coined the word “propaganda” in 1622 within the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, which was commissioned by Pope Gregory XV. One of Pope Gregory’s accountants came to the conclusion that it was more cost effective to teach Catholicism than to invade and force conversion. The accountant had the insight to recognize that a territory could be acquired less expensively by converting people’s minds. It might take more time, but if you convert the minds, the bodies will follow. And, converting minds is less expensive than physically enforcing new sovereignty. The word propaganda has radically changed during the 20th Century. In the Introduction to the re-release of Edward Barnays’ Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller explains, “Prior to World War One, the word propaganda was little-used in English, except by certain social activists, and close observers of the Vatican; and, back then, propaganda tended not to be the damning term we know today.” Many people see propaganda as marketing. Many Americans are waking up from a propaganda-induced coma yelling things like, “They lied! They packaged a lie and they sold it to me.” Great. Many of these same folks then rant about the evils of propaganda. Their anger is long overdue. But, bashing propaganda strengthens the control of the world’s greatest oppressor, our present form of world government, Corporatocracy. The division between government and corporations is blurry at best and illusory at worst. Evidence of corporate influence on government continues to mount. Corporate contributions to politicians is regularly reported. The payouts appear to extend beyond campaign contributions: the ’05 Halloween issue of The New Yorker James Surowiecki reported that the average portfolio of a Senator grew twelve percent annually, four-times the growth of money managers described as genius for their performance during the same period. The deepest division between government and corporations is in the minds of consumers holding a distinction between propaganda and marketing. Statements defining marketing as propaganda are regularly dismissed as “merely semantics.” This perspective either ignores the meaning of the word semantics or how marketing works. Semantic adj: of or relating to the study of meaning and changes of meaning; “semantic analysis” (WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University) Influencing meaning and changes in meaning is the goal of marketing. Behaviors are changed by altering perceptions. When we see things differently we act differently. Beliefs, attitudes and constructions of categories are the primary levers of shifting perception. Marketing manipulates the meaning of symbols, images and associations. Marketing affects changes in meaning or it’s not good marketing. Marketing is applied semantics, either actively changing perceptions or staving-off potential changes. In business, semantic analysis is often called consumer research, a $100,000,000,000/year business. That expenditure does not include the trillions of dollars required to leverage the insights garnered through consumer research. The business community is obliterating the distinctions between propaganda and marketing. Paul B. Farrell of Investor’s Business Daily warns, “Wall Street’s ‘Fabulous Brainwashing, Mind-Control, Propaganda & Hype Machine’ is in full swing. Call it the ‘Brainwashing Machine’ for short. And you’re the target. They want your money.” (Wall Street’s ‘Brainwashing Machine’; October 31, 2005) Farrell is pointing out that businesses will communicate anything to help the big players make more money. Farrell is calling business communications propaganda. In America’s spreading economy, money makes right. Isn’t that the goal of spreading Capitalism? Let the market correct itself. Money will dictate who gets what. Money is the essence that bonds propaganda and marketing. When you influence people, you redirect the flow of money. It is less expensive to market an idea to a population than to take the region by force. Unless we can create a mutually exclusive distinction, distinguishing propaganda from marketing is like holding a distinction between drugs and alcohol, it’s a semantic distinction. There are billions of dollars to be lost if alcohol is lumped in with drugs, and there are trillions of dollars to be lost if Corporatocracy is held accountable for crimes against humanity. Semantics is the heart of marketing. While semantics is the analyses of change in meaning, marketing is about controlling the change. Meaning is not limited to words, but words are a common way we discuss meaning. Wittgenstein asserts he can only know things for which he has a word: “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosopher (1889 – 1951) But, language works the other way, too. Having two words can blind people from seeing that separate labels represent the same idea. Distinguishing drugs and alcohol is an obvious example. A subtle example can be found in mathematics: elliptic curves and modular forms. Having two separate labels so blinded the mathematical community that the original conjecture by Taniyama and Shimura was universally ridiculed by the their professional community, compelling Taniyama to commit suicide. Why is this important? Because, math is supposed to be immune to psychological tricks and politicking. Because, suicide is only a particular of the stakes of this discussion. Genocide is the real stake of this of this game. Propaganda is the feel-good pill of a fascist agenda, the opiate of the masses. Propaganda is what facilitates fascist citizens to believe they’re supporting what’s good and right. The keystone of manufacturing these beliefs is in controlling meaning. Words become the crux of this control. “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” Philip K. Dick, Novelist (1928-1982) This is a war for reality. Consensus reality is held in place by the masses. The commonly used words and their common meanings have great impact. Monitoring these meanings, and affecting the change of these meanings, is the dynamic implicit in Lippman’s phrase, “manufacturing consent.” Who will help us fight propaganda? Corporations. Corporations are not only willing to help us fight propaganda, if we reach a critical mass they’ll flame the passions of the fight. As they market the need to fight propaganda, they’ll sell us all the equipment we need. As they investigate our fight against propaganda, they monitor and affect its usage. Are we still going to call it Instant Messanger?
4:26 PM PDT, March 29, 2007
Have you Googled "23911420"?
Bashing propaganda is akin to demonizing street drugs, gerrymandering the mental landscape to favor corporate products. Are street drugs evil, worse than what is for sale at grocery stores? It is difficult to prove, but illegal drugs do less harm to society than alcohol and tobacco. So, what is the difference? Illegal drugs are sold by pirates, moneymakers outside of the official control of government and taxation. Propaganda is employed by governments to garner consensus while advertising is the marketing of corporations, to make money? This is a vacuous distinction. This distinction ignores the impact that corporations have on what we traditionally call a government. Moreover, this distinction ignores that governments are incorporated. Generally, the American public won’t call product advertising propaganda even when the advert lies about itself or a competitive product. The word propaganda is reserved for “political” communications, and this selective use reinforces a mental distinction between companies and governments, a distinction that is questionable given their intimate relationship and revolving-door staffing. Propaganda is a tool. Propaganda is a weapon in the war for reality, but holding propaganda as inherently evil is like saying that TNT is evil. TNT and Propaganda are both strong forces. They can be used to construct or destroy. Many times, something needs to be destroyed before something new can be built. Maintaining a mental distinction between corporations and governments is a valuable tool. There are three primary faces of corporations: governments, churches and companies. There are plenty of ancillary faces: non-profits, cities, NPOs among others. One type of corporation can quote the other as if they were distinct institutions, creating an echo chamber where one voice appears as a chorus of consensus, a concert performed by mass media. Propaganda is the marketing of an engineered reality. Relegating the word “propaganda” to the subset of corporations called government fuels the engine of Corporatocracy. Edward Bernays’ 1928 seminal work entitled Propaganda binds all social endeavors with propaganda, “Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” If propaganda is any intentionally persuasive communication, then all marketing is propaganda. Those who control the media have a great deal to lose if mass media is suddenly perceived as a propaganda mechanism. Their preemptive strike was to label mass media as liberal and opposing big business. Mass media requires sponsorship, usually in the form of advertisements. The only mass media today without corporate or government sponsorships is the occasional website. This is a political issue. Sustaining a distinction between politics and business requires continual marketing. Like every political issue, today, the preliminary skirmishes will be fought with images and ideas on the battlefield for your mind known as television.
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Bio
I was born in New York city and my parent moved four times before I was six. Each time I found them. I grew up in Los Angeles where I spent most Sundays at The Magic Castle learning from masters of theatrical magic. The Academy of Magical Arts graced me with an Award of Merit when I was 19, making me the youngest recipient in the history of that award. I attended UCLA off and on and was eventually graduated from Bennington College. I studied applied memetics and semantics through consumer research and advertising.
The American Marketing Association gave me an Edison Award for my work on The Michael Jordan Cologne and an Effie for my strategy on Yomega Yo Yos spinergy campaign that catapulted Yomega from an $8mm a year company to over a $100mm a year product line. Currently, I help small to medium business owners better leverage their relationships with customers and prospects. Some clients call what I do magic.
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