A recipe for brainwashing in America.

[HeXploiT]

It took me awhile to comprehend how to put into words exactly how brainwashing in America works.
I'm going to attempt to explain it here and you can tell me what you think.

First off you start by dumbing down a nation. Take control of the education system and instead of giving children math problems give them "math games" so that they can both learn and stay entertained. Build insecurity in children by drowning them in advertising and useless entertainment that tell them they're not good enough, pretty enough or strong enough. Convince parents that if a child can't sit still there is something wrong with him or her and that they need speed to be made normal. Since more and more children have increasingly lower self-esteem Lower the standards of schoolwork so that all the kids can get good grades. Remove facts from history and teach positive patriotism only. Teach them that there is only good and bad and that if they don't choose good then they are choosing bad. In doing so we remove the childs ability to be objective.
Skip forward years in time.
Planes crash into towers and thousands of people are brutally and senselessly slaughtered.
Play it on the TV again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Pound the pain and suffering into their consciousness.
We know from nazi experiments and other work in the various fields of psychiatry that when an individual undergoes psychological trauma they are especially receptive to manipulation as they are looking for logical answers and therefor a way to escape the confusion and pain.

Now your person is hurting and confused and since you have robbed them of the history of Americas violence and crimes against Arab nations they have no context to put the attacks in. They are now desperately looking for answers.
"Who did this and why would they do such a thing"?
Now strike! Provide them with their needed answer!
The terrorists hate us. They hate our freedom. We are innocent. They are evil and we must destroy them. If you are not with us you are against us.
Then continue to maintain & escalate the fear by constantly warning them of the danger they are in.

You see...there's nothing hocus pocus about it. It's simple psychology, social engineering and the deprivation of relevant facts and information.

There are many other similar recipes and all components are not necessarily needed to achieve said results.

 

[Moonbeam]

To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are. You will never understand brainwashing unless you can see that your deepest motivation is not to know what you feel. If you don't know you feel like the worst in the world, don't expect you won't be manipulated. The truth is where we will not look, into ourselves. Please ignore this message.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are. You will never understand brainwashing unless you can see that your deepest motivation is not to know what you feel. If you don't know you feel like the worst in the world, don't expect you won't be manipulated. The truth is where we will not look, into ourselves. Please ignore this message.

I was lucky enough to be somewhat educated when 9/11 occurred.
I was against the war but only because I didn't see how it might help our situation. Something within me was not comfortable with my understanding. The answers the media gave me sounded good but just didn't quite fit. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole.
I would say that one of the most important things I needed to learn is that everything is not all good or all bad.
FBI agents study serial killers and historians study nazis and similar questions arise. These people were brutal murderers and yet they loved their families and were kind to their friends. How can we possibly understand this duality?
The truth is that humans are not two-dimensional. Even Christ told us to love our enemies because, "do not even evil men love their family"?
All things are not black and white. There is good and bad in everything.
Just because Terrorists are the bad guys does not necessarily mean that we are the good guys and therefor are just in any action we choose to take. It is possible that they are bad...and that we also have acted badly.
It is possible that they act badly because we we acted badly towards them first.

 

[AnnonUSA]

Drink the Kool Aid......

 

[TheEarthWillShake]

edit

 

[Sinsear]

Vote Ron Paul!

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Originally posted by: TheEarthWillShake
edit

Why did you edit? You were exactly right.

 

[Mxylplyx]

My reaction to the attempted brainwashing is to believe in nothing. I dont believe in any politicians. I dont believe in any of the organized religions. I wont get emotional about any of the "hot stories" the entertainment, ie news media is putting in front of my face.

That is why I think it's so pathetic that bigwigs in various interest groups, media board rooms, and political round tables choose the stories that are out there, and all the people here suck them up and frame their daily debate around them. It makes people look like sheep. Every negative story about Bush, Obama, McCain, etc was dug up by someone with an agenda, and people here proudly play along in the never ending gotcha game, when everyone is really supporting the same shit in different shades. I can thank Bush for freeing me from that bullshit, and I'll be damned if that means I'm just going to hop in line behind the other pile of shit that is the democratic party.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

Originally posted by: TheEarthWillShake
edit

Why did you edit? You were exactly right.

Qft. Sing it again Sam! At least the Russians know their world is messed up.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
My reaction to the attempted brainwashing is to believe in nothing. I dont believe in any politicians. I dont believe in any of the organized religions. I wont get emotional about any of the "hot stories" the entertainment, ie news media is putting in front of my face.

That is why I think it's so pathetic that bigwigs in various interest groups, media board rooms, and political round tables choose the stories that are out there, and all the people here suck them up and frame their daily debate around them. It makes people look like sheep. Every negative story about Bush, Obama, McCain, etc was dug up by someone with an agenda, and people here proudly play along in the never ending gotcha game, when everyone is really supporting the same shit in different shades. I can thank Bush for freeing me from that bullshit, and I'll be damned if that means I'm just going to hop in line behind the other pile of shit that is the democratic party.

Mxylplyx, you are probably safer that way but...have you ever heard of Ron Paul?

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are. You will never understand brainwashing unless you can see that your deepest motivation is not to know what you feel. If you don't know you feel like the worst in the world, don't expect you won't be manipulated. The truth is where we will not look, into ourselves. Please ignore this message.

I was lucky enough to be somewhat educated when 9/11 occurred.
I was against the war but only because I didn't see how it might help our situation. Something within me was not comfortable with my understanding. The answers the media gave me sounded good but just didn't quite fit. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole.
I would say that one of the most important things I needed to learn is that everything is not all good or all bad.
FBI agents study serial killers and historians study nazis and similar questions arise. These people were brutal murderers and yet they loved their families and were kind to their friends. How can we possibly understand this duality?
The truth is that humans are not two-dimensional. Even Christ told us to love our enemies because, "do not even evil men love their family"?
All things are not black and white. There is good and bad in everything.
Just because Terrorists are the bad guys does not necessarily mean that we are the good guys and therefor are just in any action we choose to take. It is possible that they are bad...and that we also have acted badly.
It is possible that they act badly because we we acted badly towards them first.

I disagree with nothing you said except maybe the part about serial killers. I suspect at least a portion of them may not actually be human, that there may be an organic incapacity to feel empathy.

I suspect that most people are profoundly brainwashed and don't even know it and that would include me.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
My reaction to the attempted brainwashing is to believe in nothing. I dont believe in any politicians. I dont believe in any of the organized religions. I wont get emotional about any of the "hot stories" the entertainment, ie news media is putting in front of my face.

That is why I think it's so pathetic that bigwigs in various interest groups, media board rooms, and political round tables choose the stories that are out there, and all the people here suck them up and frame their daily debate around them. It makes people look like sheep. Every negative story about Bush, Obama, McCain, etc was dug up by someone with an agenda, and people here proudly play along in the never ending gotcha game, when everyone is really supporting the same shit in different shades. I can thank Bush for freeing me from that bullshit, and I'll be damned if that means I'm just going to hop in line behind the other pile of shit that is the democratic party.

You probably think of yourself as intelligent, but if a child in play raises a stick to a dog that has been beaten again and again, do you think what happens is reason? Your behavior is reactive and you're effectively brain washed.

Imagine if you were a sincere person. You might know instinctively who else is and who isn't. Your opinion would be grounded in understanding, not because you're gun shy.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are. You will never understand brainwashing unless you can see that your deepest motivation is not to know what you feel. If you don't know you feel like the worst in the world, don't expect you won't be manipulated. The truth is where we will not look, into ourselves. Please ignore this message.

I was lucky enough to be somewhat educated when 9/11 occurred.
I was against the war but only because I didn't see how it might help our situation. Something within me was not comfortable with my understanding. The answers the media gave me sounded good but just didn't quite fit. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole.
I would say that one of the most important things I needed to learn is that everything is not all good or all bad.
FBI agents study serial killers and historians study nazis and similar questions arise. These people were brutal murderers and yet they loved their families and were kind to their friends. How can we possibly understand this duality?
The truth is that humans are not two-dimensional. Even Christ told us to love our enemies because, "do not even evil men love their family"?
All things are not black and white. There is good and bad in everything.
Just because Terrorists are the bad guys does not necessarily mean that we are the good guys and therefor are just in any action we choose to take. It is possible that they are bad...and that we also have acted badly.
It is possible that they act badly because we we acted badly towards them first.

I disagree with nothing you said except maybe the part about serial killers. I suspect at least a portion of them may not actually be human, that there may be an organic incapacity to feel empathy.

I suspect that most people are profoundly brainwashed and don't even know it and that would include me.

I actually disagree. I have had some unique experiences with "insane" people over the years and I hold the firm belief that most serial killers allow themselves to get where they are. I have seen what violence and pornography can do to people. It's a dangerous slope. Ted Bundy said that allowing himself to use Pornography freely made him what he was and I believe him. I also believe that most serial killers are more sane than the alcoholic down the street who has been driven crazy by an insane world. The thing is that there is pleasure in all that sick stuff. Just like there is pleasure in theft and physical abuse(fighting) and other crimes there is pleasure even in murder. I believe those people choose to go that route. This is exactly why many of them sound so logical & sane. Because they are sane. They are in control yet have chosen by their own free will to go down that horrid path.

 

[sandorski]

My Brain feels clean!

 

[1prophet]

The best brainwashing money can buy, using a persons own hidden primitive selfish desires to control them.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings profoundly. His influence on the 20th century is widely regarded as massive. The documentary describes the impact of Freud's theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their "engineering of consent".

Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is often seen as the "father of the public relations industry". Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as well as Wilhelm Reich, one of the main opponents of Freud's theories.

Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.

The business and, increasingly, the political world uses PR to read and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population. He cites a Wall Street banker as saying "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs."

 

[gentobu]

PSYCH 105: Brainwashing and Conspiracy - A U.S. Government Approach.

 

[IronWing]

We brainwash ourselves constantly in order to function in a society. We turn convention into reality. It shocks us to discover that conventions can be abolished with the slightest shift in perspective.

 

[SandEagle]

i have a dirty mind, so a little brain washing may be a good thing

 

[Craig234]

You ask how brainwashing works, when you can see thousands of posts here by people who are brainwashed who are unable or unwilling to listen to corrections?

I think your version of brainwashing is for the most part two orders of magnitude too high on the conspiracy scale, but yet I also think that many don't appreciate the level of conspiracy that *does* exists in *some* propaganda in the US.

I and others I've talked to can often feel like the foreign press can be a 'breath of fresh air' - that you often don't see the forest for the trees in the US media coverage, how stiflingly narrow it is until you experience another type.

You can go back to Plato's Republic for the idea of why societies are better off, at least in the people with power's view, when the people with power use convenient myths for the public to keep them in line. Like pretty much every controversial issue, they have more of a point than you might think. I'm more on the side that the good of free information far outweighs the good of the Republic's system, but it's good to understand the other side too.

A book I very much recommend for insight on how the 'brainwashing' more really works and is largely not intentional but inherent in our modern society, see Walter Lippman's "Public Opinion".

Since you are about 99% likely not to do so, let me see if I can find an excerpt to give you the idea why I say that.

People differ widely in their susceptibility to ideas. There are some
in whom the idea of a starving child in Russia is practically as vivid
as a starving child within sight. There are others who are almost
incapable of being excited by a distant idea. There are many
gradations between. And there are people who are insensitive to facts,
and aroused only by ideas. But though the emotion is aroused by the
idea, we are unable to satisfy the emotion by acting ourselves upon
the scene itself. The idea of the starving Russian child evokes a
desire to feed the child. But the person so aroused cannot feed it. He
can only give money to an impersonal organization, or to a
personification which he calls Mr. Hoover. His money does not reach
that child. It goes to a general pool from which a mass of children
are fed. And so just as the idea is second hand, so are the effects of
the action second hand. The cognition is indirect, the conation is
indirect, only the effect is immediate. Of the three parts of the
process, the stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the response
reaches somewhere out of sight, only the emotion exists entirely
within the person. Of the child's hunger he has only an idea, of the
child's relief he has only an idea, but of his own desire to help he
has a real experience. It is the central fact of the business, the
emotion within himself, which is first hand.

Within limits that vary, the emotion is transferable both as regards
stimulus and response. Therefore, if among a number of people,
possessing various tendencies to respond, you can find a stimulus
which will arouse the same emotion in many of them, you can substitute
it for the original stimuli. If, for example, one man dislikes the
League, another hates Mr. Wilson, and a third fears labor, you may be
able to unite them if you can find some symbol which is the antithesis
of what they all hate. Suppose that symbol is Americanism. The first
man may read it as meaning the preservation of American isolation, or
as he may call it, independence; the second as the rejection of a
politician who clashes with his idea of what an American president
should be, the third as a call to resist revolution. The symbol in
itself signifies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be
associated with almost anything. And because of that it can become the
common bond of common feelings, even though those feelings were
originally attached to disparate ideas.

When political parties or newspapers declare for Americanism,
Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity, they hope to
amalgamate the emotion of conflicting factions which would surely
divide, if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to discuss a
specific program. For when a coalition around the symbol has been
effected, feeling flows toward conformity under the symbol rather than
toward critical scrutiny of the measures. It is, I think, convenient
and technically correct to call multiple phrases like these symbolic.
They do not stand for specific ideas, but for a sort of truce or
junction between ideas. They are like a strategic railroad center
where many roads converge regardless of their ultimate origin or their
ultimate destination. But he who captures the symbols by which public
feeling is for the moment contained, controls by that much the
approaches of public policy. And as long as a particular symbol has
the power of coalition, ambitious factions will fight for possession.
Think, for example, of Lincoln's name or of Roosevelt's. A leader or
an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is master
of the current situation. There are limits, of course. Too violent
abuse of the actualities which groups of people think the symbol
represents, or too great resistance in the name of that symbol to new
purposes, will, so to speak, burst the symbol.

 

[dsity]

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are. You will never understand brainwashing unless you can see that your deepest motivation is not to know what you feel. If you don't know you feel like the worst in the world, don't expect you won't be manipulated. The truth is where we will not look, into ourselves. Please ignore this message.

I was lucky enough to be somewhat educated when 9/11 occurred.
I was against the war but only because I didn't see how it might help our situation. Something within me was not comfortable with my understanding. The answers the media gave me sounded good but just didn't quite fit. It was like putting a square peg in a round hole.
I would say that one of the most important things I needed to learn is that everything is not all good or all bad.
FBI agents study serial killers and historians study nazis and similar questions arise. These people were brutal murderers and yet they loved their families and were kind to their friends. How can we possibly understand this duality?
The truth is that humans are not two-dimensional. Even Christ told us to love our enemies because, "do not even evil men love their family"?
All things are not black and white. There is good and bad in everything.
Just because Terrorists are the bad guys does not necessarily mean that we are the good guys and therefor are just in any action we choose to take. It is possible that they are bad...and that we also have acted badly.
It is possible that they act badly because we we acted badly towards them first.

I disagree with nothing you said except maybe the part about serial killers. I suspect at least a portion of them may not actually be human, that there may be an organic incapacity to feel empathy.

I suspect that most people are profoundly brainwashed and don't even know it and that would include me.

I actually disagree. I have had some unique experiences with "insane" people over the years and I hold the firm belief that most serial killers allow themselves to get where they are. I have seen what violence and pornography can do to people. It's a dangerous slope. <Ted Bundy said that allowing himself to use Pornography freely made him what he was and I believe him. I also believe that most serial killers are more sane than the alcoholic down the street who has been driven crazy by an insane world. The thing is that there is pleasure in all that sick stuff. Just like there is pleasure in theft and physical abuse(fighting) and other crimes there is pleasure even in murder. I believe those people choose to go that route. This is exactly why many of them sound so logical & sane. Because they are sane. They are in control yet have chosen by their own free will to go down that horrid path.

BRAINWASH! it was violent pornography...what made him what he was. I firmly believe if porn....made him into a serial killer...he had a weak mind.

 

[StageLeft]

I agree with your first post and it's pretty good. However, who is the conductor here? It seems to me humanity. Nobody is really orchestrating this. It just happens as it always has when people get together.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Oh it's being orchestrated. "Century of the Self" exposes exactly why, how, and by whom. Everyone in this country should watch this documentary. It's on google videos and that's probably the only way anyone will ever see it.

 

[OokiiNeko]

About friggin time someone posted something intelligent.

Follow your logic through and you will soon realize that a surprising amount of history, as taught to us in school, is suspect.

To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are.

I would say turning off the television, for good, would take care of the bulk of brainwashing. Though what has already been piped into our brains would take a long while to get out.

Imagine if you were a sincere person. You might know instinctively who else is and who isn't.

Phrase it another way. Do the people who are full of shit, meaning they will parrot the catchphrase of the day while ready to fvck anyone over if it gets them the least little bit ahead, instinctively sense each other and support each other? I have seen it happen many times. I am not talking about the run of the mill P&N full-of-shitters, I am talking about the sold their soul to the devil types.

To understand brainwashing you have to be free of it. Guess what your chances of that are.

To go further on this, I have enjoyed watching CSI on DVD, but damn, they use that "What are you worried about if you have nothing to hide", line when taking a DNA swab with wishy washy consent EVERY episode. I wonder if people who watch it on TV catch that when seeing it one episode per week vice six commercial free episodes a week.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I agree with your first post and it's pretty good. However, who is the conductor here? It seems to me humanity. Nobody is really orchestrating this. It just happens as it always has when people get together.

You can listen to John Perkins talk on Democracy Now(forward 12:00 minutes)
about his work as an "economic hit man" to hear how much of the private sector plays into the power structure. My point for posting this is that it adds to the complexity. Adding this to the picture the web of deceit, level of control, covertness, sheer amount of intricacy and complexity...it's almost as if some great thinking plotting monster were behind the scenes pulling the strings.
Who can believe such things? Yet they are happening and the more you understand them I think the more difficult it is to believe that people could do all this without many generations sitting in a room together and drawing this out. It does seem rather impossible.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: Perry404

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I agree with your first post and it's pretty good. However, who is the conductor here? It seems to me humanity. Nobody is really orchestrating this. It just happens as it always has when people get together.

You can listen to John Perkins talk on Democracy Now(forward 12:00 minutes)
about his work as an "economic hit man" to hear how much of the private sector plays into the power structure. My point for posting this is that it adds to the complexity. Adding this to the picture the web of deceit, level of control, covertness, sheer amount of intricacy and complexity...it's almost as if some great thinking plotting monster were behind the scenes pulling the strings.
Who can believe such things? Yet they are happening and the more you understand them I think the more difficult it is to believe that people could do all this without many generations sitting in a room together and drawing this out. It does seem rather impossible.

I started reading John Perkins' book. I really wanted to believe it. However, there is just too much John Perkins in it to be plausible.