Ever wonder the magic mix needed to sustain enterprises that never deliver on promises. Countless endeavour over the millennia, some just successful, others hugely so, have come and gone, built entirely on myth, scant to non-existent evidence, hearsay and, of course, outright lies. Why didn’t the masses, for example, of 10th Century Europe, as the feudal enterprise was planting roots and taking away their long entrenched system of group decision making, simply rise up against the relatively small number of thugs turning them into landless peasants? They had bought the church myth that their choice was between order under the feudal system and chaos. They chose order, oppressively brutal and grossly unfair as it was.
Then there is the vast enterprise known as Naturopathic Medicine, central to which is Homeopathy. This is an endeavour buttressed entirely by hope and thriving on willful ignorance. “There is no evidence that homeopathy works – and, given the absurd nature of the proposed mechanism of action, no scientifically plausible reason that it should work.” If you’ve been through the traditional health care grinder and have found no cure for what ails you, desperation and impatience, key ingredients for the purveyors of hope, set in and you’re off to the witch doctor.
Weight control remedies from diets to snake oil, from fitness regimes to group revival meetings and from baseless claims to Weight Watchers funded studies. Imagine the surprise of the Weight Watchers executive when their funded study found that “More people stuck to the Weight Watchers diet, lost more weight and fat mass, and also shaved more off their waist measurements than those assigned to standard care.” You’ve got to wonder about the “standard care” control program, given the repeat, and ongoing business that drives these kinds of weight loss programs, which some have condemned as outright unhealthy. The only effective weight control method is also the hardest and so is not very popular. It is quite simple: Calories in should equal calories out and that means eat as much as you want as long as it all gets used as fuel to run your body. If you buy into the myth that you can eat whatever you want and not exercise then you are what the weight control industry is looking for.
Finally, the most successful, sustained enterprise of them all and the one without even a homeopathic modicum of evidence, religion. I’ve left it for last as it combines all elements of the magic mix for sustainable, successful enterprise: Built entirely on myth, scant to non-existent evidence, hearsay, forlorn hope and, of course, outright lies.
Do normal business enterprises share any of these characteristics and use the same potent mix to buttress their own success and sustenance? The answer, my friends, is yes. The Apple superiority myth; much hope in the lascivious promptings that might beset an otherwise virtuous soul if you drive the right car, vacation in the right place, wear the right clothes; a willingness to believe that Bernie Madoff can deliver superior returns without the least evidence of how he intended to do so; hearsay encourages us to go to see the latest Hollywood offering because your Facebook friends have endorsed it; voting for a government who has lied to you about its policies; and other, too numerous to mention enterprises that use the magic mix to foist frequently unneeded, often dangerous products on unwise consumers.
All this makes me wish there was actually a God who could guide us in our everyday choices to make only the wisest ones. Alas, there is not and we, as humans, will forever remain susceptible to the magic mix, so effectively used to sustain dubious and, sadly, not so dubious enterprise.
