Coercion is something that is imposed on us, making us think
that whoever is doing the coercing is looking out for our best interest, whether
it be our parents, bosses, or authorities. Douglas Rushkoff explains in “Coercion: Why We
Listen to What ‘They’ Say” that we have people trying to influence what we do,
buy and believe everywhere.
One point he does make is that most of us can tell when we
are being influenced. We get this feeling of paranoia that we aren’t making the
decision on our own free will and we can then block out the point the coercer
is trying to make. However, as it becomes easier to recognize the techniques of
coercion, new techniques are being developed. “Every effort we make to regain
authority over our actions is met by an even greater effort to usurp it,”
Rushkoff states.
But I am not totally convinced that the advertisers and
publicity people have my generation completely influenced to what they want us
to do, buy or believe. We were raised in the age where we have ads and people
trying to tell us what we need to do constantly coming our way. Our minds
trained us to ignore most of what we come into contact with when it comes to
coercion.
Don’t get me wrong though, Rushkoff did a very good job of
using the techniques that he was describing throughout the text seemingly
unnoticed to get his point across to the reader. He mixed humor in with the terrifying
“they” to ease our thoughts just enough to send us into his next rant. He gave
us rhetorical questions to make us feel like we were actually participating and
using our own free will to agree with what he was saying. Then he made it
personal. He asked us to think about the authorities in our own life so we
could identify with the threats he was feeling.
I then understood what his point of the whole piece was. It was
to realize that once you put yourself in the situation the authority is
describing, that is when you are most susceptible of coercion.
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