How intelligent are you? The Grasshopper answered that question for me the other day. He said, “You’re intelligent enough to recognize intelligence.”

I took that to mean recognizing it in someone else. If I see a commentator on TV, or hear one of their guests speak, I have enough intelligence to recognize if they’re smart or not. Some of the guests are quite educated and put that fact to good use when they express their point of view. Even if I don’t agree with their slant on an issue, I can’t call them dumb.

Some guests, though, are crazy – crazy like a fox. These folks are quite intelligent but pander for a living. They’re usually politicians. And like all good politicians, they know what the hot button issues are for the base of their voters and they tailor their remarks to that group. They’re intelligent enough to know that a section of their voters aren’t educated enough to recognize pandering, so they spread it around with a firehose.

They don’t care if others recognize their pandering ways or even call them out on it. They’re smart enough to know that it works on the people they’re trying to influence.

Many advertisers are geniuses when it comes to pandering. They pander and prey on peoples’ fears and frustrations and then come to the rescue with the solution – their product or service. Recently, I was watching a video of Nancy Wolfson, a famous, advertising voice coach, and she said this to her audience: “The main objective of advertising is to make people feel bad enough about themselves so they buy crap they don’t need.” Her tongue was somewhat in her cheek but she wasn’t far off from the truth. Which brings to mind a well known oxymoron: Truth in Advertising.

Pandering is what I refer to as “Bad Hypnosis.” For a fuller explanation of what Bad Hypnosis is, go to the link in the description and watch my short video called “Bad Hypnosis.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMguY58YJo

In a nutshell, Bad Hypnosis is any suggestion that, if taken to heart, will lead you to an un-resourceful frame of mind. The video will walk you through a short mental exercise you can do to protect yourself from the universal scourge of intelligent pandering, or bad hypnosis.

The goal here is simple: to become intelligent enough to recognize pandering and neutralize it before it sucks you into crap you don’t need.

All the best,

John

Hear the recorded version below.