Your brain has a pecking order.
And you’re not at the top of it.
Evolution built your brain from the bottom up.
The simplest, most primitive parts came first.
The complex, sophisticated parts came later.
But the pecking order runs backwards.
The oldest, simplest parts of your brain have the most power.
The newest, most complex parts have the least.
It’s like a company where the newest executive must get approval from the oldest janitor.
The oldest parts of your brain respond without asking.
They are fast, crude, and in charge.
They scan for danger, food, sex, power.
Whatever kept your ancestors alive long enough to reproduce.
If something triggers those systems, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the brain thinks.
The primitive layers act first and ask no questions.
Later came the emotional systems.
They deal in memory, mood, intuition.
They shape how things feel, how they’re remembered.
How badly you want to move toward or away.
They tilt the entire field of perception.
Last to arrive is the part we identify with most: the rational brain.
Language, planning, logic, abstract thought.
This is the layer we polish and present to the world.
But it’s more like a PR team.
Making up reasons for whatever the committee has already decided.
Modern research confirms it.
We make a decision first and then come to know of it consciously up to 10 seconds later.
The conscious mind is not the initiator.
It’s the explainer.
It’s the analyst brought in after the fact to justify what’s already in motion.
Which means influence doesn’t start with facts, and it doesn’t start with reason.
It starts with friction in the lower brain.
With perceived threat or advantage.
With emotional tension.
With stakes.
If the message doesn’t register there, it won’t register at all.
Because the conscious mind doesn’t open the door.
It just writes the caption after the picture’s already been taken.
Speak directly to the primitive brain that holds the most power.
Even in great storytelling, the real craft lies in engineering the words so they land as if the listener perceived it all themselves.
The brain resists what feels external, but it embraces what feels perceived.
That’s when persuasion truly works.
Not when it sounds convincing.
But when it feels like instinct and self sourced.
The primitive brain is king maker for the pursuer.
So pipe down from your rationalism at times
It never changed your life nor will you convince anyone else to do anything using it
Persuade the lower brain and win.
Impact where the power resides.
Explains why the juvenile and the primitive is what wins a lot of times in this world.
The crude, the loud, the exaggerated, the meme that makes no sense but hits something underneath.
Because the primitive brain doesn’t need coherence—it needs a signal.
The rawer it is, the faster it registers.
Sophistication is often a handicap in persuasion.
The more refined your argument, the more likely it’s aimed at the high brain
The part of the brain with the least power.
When you try to convince through reason alone
You’re speaking to a committee that doesn’t even have voting rights. i.e The high brain
This is why you see people moved by the simple, the ridiculous, the primal, the blunt.
Because influence isn’t distributed by merit.
It’s granted by instinct.
If you want to persuade, stop aiming for the top floor.
Follow the sequence the brain actually runs on
Trigger the primitive and rationalize after fact.
Be their brain for them.
Say the thing their instincts are already scanning for.
Make them feel what they didn’t know they were feeling.
Then offer the rational so they can explain it to themselves.
Do the deciding, the feeling, and the justifying for them
Deliver the offer just seconds after their lower brains thinks it needs it
Justify it after the green light from the lower brain is received
Walk them down the whole cognitive process.
A surrogate consciousness.
If you win over the dumbest and most primal form of a man.
You win over him in all states.
This is the Pareto principle of persuasion.
Eighty percent of conversion happens in the lower brain.
The rest is just commentary.
Let your method fall to the level of the lower brain
Abandon the high brain as a sort of defunct segment.
Being snobby and non aligned to your target never made a good businessman.
Dumb down your communication
Talk to the gut, not the brain.
Use words a 5-year-old or a caveman gets.
Trigger primal needs: sex, safety, status, fear, tribe.
Don’t describe what it does.
Show what they gain or lose.
End with certainty
No “could,” “might,” or “should.”