Right now, in Beijing, there is a pudgy guy named Xu Xiaodong who trains mixed martial arts.
Around 2017, Xu started talking shit about kung fu. Not smart. There was immediate blowback. Kung fu masters from all around China threatened to knock him out and break his arms.
But Xu accepted their challenge. He started fighting these masters on the regular. He won each match easily. 17 of them in a row.
It all came to a head in 2018 when Xu faced wing chun master Ding Hao. The fight was broadcast live to millions.
In the first round, Xu knocked the wing chun master down six times. The fight was stopped and declared a draw. The wing chun master complained later that the studio didn’t give him enough rice to eat, and said that Xu was lucky to get away without getting knocked out.
But I’m not here to rag on kung fu. I just wanna point out a fundamental human truth:
Proof and desire are mutually reinforcing.
All around the world — and in China in particular — there are crazy levels of belief in the mystical powers of kung fu and its variants.
It’s not just what people see in movies and on TV. Real life practitioners of kung fu experience it first hand when they train with a true kung fu master. It’s only when the master has to fight an outsider, who is not invested in the kung fu belief structure, that the weaknesses of kung fu become apparent.
My point being:
If you have enough desire, even the flimsiest proof will work. That’s true of people practicing kung fu… and it’s true of people reading your copy. To make a carrot look like a hot dog, simply amp up somebody’s hunger.
By the way, I discovered the crazy story of Xu Xiaodong in a fascinating video titled The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts.
The video shows Xu’s pummeling of the wing chun master. But it’s worth watching from beginning to end — both because it’s entertaining, and because it offers some direct illustrations of powerful persuasion techniques. If you wanna take a look, here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbSCEhmjJA
Around 2017, Xu started talking shit about kung fu. Not smart. There was immediate blowback. Kung fu masters from all around China threatened to knock him out and break his arms.
But Xu accepted their challenge. He started fighting these masters on the regular. He won each match easily. 17 of them in a row.
It all came to a head in 2018 when Xu faced wing chun master Ding Hao. The fight was broadcast live to millions.
In the first round, Xu knocked the wing chun master down six times. The fight was stopped and declared a draw. The wing chun master complained later that the studio didn’t give him enough rice to eat, and said that Xu was lucky to get away without getting knocked out.
But I’m not here to rag on kung fu. I just wanna point out a fundamental human truth:
Proof and desire are mutually reinforcing.
All around the world — and in China in particular — there are crazy levels of belief in the mystical powers of kung fu and its variants.
It’s not just what people see in movies and on TV. Real life practitioners of kung fu experience it first hand when they train with a true kung fu master. It’s only when the master has to fight an outsider, who is not invested in the kung fu belief structure, that the weaknesses of kung fu become apparent.
My point being:
If you have enough desire, even the flimsiest proof will work. That’s true of people practicing kung fu… and it’s true of people reading your copy. To make a carrot look like a hot dog, simply amp up somebody’s hunger.
By the way, I discovered the crazy story of Xu Xiaodong in a fascinating video titled The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts.
The video shows Xu’s pummeling of the wing chun master. But it’s worth watching from beginning to end — both because it’s entertaining, and because it offers some direct illustrations of powerful persuasion techniques. If you wanna take a look, here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbSCEhmjJA