Manipulations and Mind Games:
The Secret Battle to Control How
We Think
By Kingsley
Dennis
Throughout
history the mechanisms of persuasion and influence have always been manipulated
by those in power as a means to maintain authority and legitimacy. In more recent
times the overall manipulation of the mass public mind has become less about
overt spectacles of fear and obedience, and more about subtle forms of media
propaganda. The manufacturing of consent1 is endemic and has
become a pervasive presence within modern societies.
Edward
Bernays,2 who has been called ‘the father of public
relations’, was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and introduced psychological and
psychoanalytical methods into modern propaganda. Bernays considered media
propaganda essential for manipulating public opinion because society, in his
regard, was composed of too many irrational elements (the people) which could
be dangerous to the efficient mechanisms of power (‘democracy’). Within the
context of our modern mass societies, propaganda has morphed into a mechanism
for not only engineering public opinion but also as a means for consolidating
social control.
Modern
programs of social influence could not exist without recent developments in
mass media. Today, it exists as a combination of expertise and knowledge from
technology; sociology; social behaviourism; psychology; communications; and
other scientific techniques. Almost every nation state has made use of a
controlled mainstream media, to various degrees, for the regulation and
influence of its citizenry.
By
way of mainstream media, a nation’s controlling authority is able to exert
psychological influence upon people’s perception of reality. This capacity
works hand-in-hand with the more physical components, such as enforcing the
legal system and national security laws (surveillance and monitoring). State
control, acting as a ‘psychological machine’, instigates specific psychological
manipulations in order to achieve desired goals within its national borders
(and often beyond).
Examples
of these psychological manipulations include the deliberate use of specific
cultural symbols and embedded signifiers that catalyse conditioned reflexes in
the populace. These triggers have included ‘Red’ and ‘Communist’ during the
US’s 1950s McCarthyism; or ‘Muslim Terrorist’ during the recent media-hyped
‘War on Terror’. Targeted reactions can thus be achieved making the populace
open to further manipulation in this state. This is a process of psychic
re-formation that works repeatedly to soften up the people through continued
and extensive exposure to particular stimuli. These are often the subconscious
symbols we live by – artificial signifiers in order to create a compliant
society.
Today’s
media, which includes the dominant presence of advertising, extensively uses
the notion of ‘attractors’ and ‘attractor patterns’ to target audience
consciousness. This type of symbol-manipulation is often referred to in the
business as neuro-marketing. Mainstream media corporations are using the huge
growth in global communications to further shape their science of targeting
human consciousness.
In
the case of neuro-marketing, many advertisers first audience-test their
commercials using brain-scanning techniques in order to know which part of a
person’s brain is being activated by specific strong attractors. For example,
it has been discovered that specific attractors can bypass the logical part of
the brain and impact directly the emotional part. In such cases, as in the film
industry, the advertisers place an award symbol (such as an Oscar or Golden
Globe) which has proven to be an effective ‘strong attractor’ that influences
the emotional part of the brain. The philosophy here is to adjust the level of
consciousness of an advertisement in relation to the measurable level of
consciousness of the consumer.3
Advertisers
are aware that a person’s consciousness passes on messages indirectly to the
body in the form of galvanic skin response, pupil response, electrical nerve
response, etc, and so every element of the screen promotion must elucidate the
correct conscious reception. In order to achieve this correct set of attractor
patterns, all elements are deliberately worked on: the music, the visuals, the
script, the voice. Interesting, symbolic strong attractors that have the most
impact to persuade the audience include visuals such as smiley faces and cute
animals (dogs wagging their tails and kittens purring). In terms of voice, they
include words such as ‘honesty’; ‘integrity’; ‘freedom’; ‘hope and change’;
‘friendship’, etc. For this reason it can be seen how politicians use a great
deal of these attractor-patterns in their speeches and promotional material.4
Other
methods of blatant media coercion include the use of so-called ‘expertism’;
that is, using the expert in the white lab-coat tactic for creating simulacra
of truth. For such propaganda to be effective it cannot be too far off the
truth; in other words, it must have the appearance of reality. Trade,
employment, and financial figures are an example of this when the media
discusses statistics as if they represented the truth. And which members of the
general public have the knowledge or the resources to check and confirm such
figures? Those people that do know are usually those that have a vested
interest in maintaining the illusion, such as traders and financiers. As a
norm, statistics of a negative connotation are usually drawn from the smallest
possible pile. And once a false (or ‘doctored’) claim is disseminated and
accepted by the public, it becomes established and hard to deconstruct or
invalidate (unless persuasive anti-propaganda is just as effective).
Accepted Forms of ‘Individualism’
Modern
societies are set-up to accommodate and appeal to not only the mass collective
but also to individualism.
But the forms that accepted ‘individualism’ takes are often a sheath to hide
the workings of a mass psyche. It is the ‘allowed liberty’ that is provided to
the modern person in pursuit of material gains as long as they remain within the
parameters of their established society. Liberty, then, is an expression of
mobility within a pre-described system: it does not denote liberty external
to the system.
Examples
are the rock clichés that the mainstream media love to promote and adorn their
front pages. Notables are the raging antics of destroying hotel rooms and
throwing televisions out of the window, behaviour that later morphed into
copycat corporate rock PR. In essence, such ‘rebels’ are allowed, and even
encouraged, because their antics sell records. Rebelliousness in these forms is
thus another contribution to a consumerist society, albeit through a different
manner. And today there are many forms in which individualism is allowed to
manifest as long as it plays within a pre-described system.
Another
form of individualism is corporate-media centralisation masquerading as
diversity and choice. The display of diversity in the information coming from
the mainstream media gives the illusion of independent reportage and news. Yet
mainstream media, if it is not government owned, is likely to be owned by a
corporate conglomerate, often with high-level state relations. An individual is
generally attracted to a particular newspaper that reflects their views,
beliefs, lifestyles, etc, without suspecting these are all diversified
patterned behaviour within the system. The mainstream media caters for these
needs by operating a variety of newspapers that support these mythical
standpoints, whether they be politically left, right, left/right of centre,
liberal, independent, this, that, or any other of the positions available for
the ‘diversity within the unity’ of the mass mind.
Concentration of Media Ownership
It
is somewhat worrying to learn that most Western media organisations are owned
by only a handful of giant corporations: News Corp; Viacom; Time-Warner; Disney;
Vivendi Universal, and Bertelsmann. For example, Disney (The Walt Disney
Company) is the largest entertainment and media multinational in the world.
Disney owns the TV networks ABC (USA), Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E, and the
History Channel, as well as publishing, merchandising, and theatre
subsidiaries. They also own Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures,
Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Dimension, and Buena Vista International,
as well as 11 theme parks around the world.
News
Corp comes in next as the world’s second largest media multinational with an
incredible range of TV and satellite channels, magazine and newspaper holdings,
record companies and publishing companies based worldwide, with a strong
presence in Asian markets. Similarly, Time-Warner owns more than 50 magazines;
a film studio as well as various film distributers; more than 40 music labels
(including Warner Bros, Atlantic, and Elektra); and several TV networks (such
as HBO, Cartoon Network, and CNN).
Viacom
owns TV networks CBS, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount
Pictures, and nearly 2,000 cinema screens, as part of their media empire.
Likewise, Vivendi Universal owns 27% of US music sales via labels such as
Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Island, Def Jam, MCA, Mercury, Motown and
Universal. They also own Universal Studios, Studio Canal, Polygram Films,
Canal+, and numerous Internet and mobile phone companies. Then there is
Bertelsmann which, as a global media corporation, runs Europe’s second largest
TV, radio and production company (the RTL Group) with 45 TV stations and 32
radio channels; Europe’s largest printing and publishing firm (Gruner &
Jahr); the world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher
(Random House); the world’s largest book and music club group (Direct Group);
and an international media and communications service provider (Arvato AG).
In
terms of mainstream news reporting it is always important to check the source
when reading a news item, i.e. is it of an independent source or is it
‘according to a government source’, etc. The mainstream media is largely fed
via global news wire services, the two largest being Reuters (now Thomson
Reuters) and Associated Press. The Rothschild banking family bought Reuters
around 1895 and in 1988 Reuters bought 44% of Associated Press. This again
constitutes a centralisation of news information, as well as the various
well-established political press offices. When such sources (especially PR offices)
disseminate information as ‘truthful news’, it is doing nothing more than was
parodied in Orwell’s 1984 as Newspeak.
Each
day the mainstream media offers a kaleidoscopic view of the world – tragedies,
disasters, coups, and politics flash before the eyes like a glitterball. As a
result the viewer rarely has the chance to focus on one issue, and generally
remembers very little. Nor is there the need to remember a specific event as
the next day it is likely to be replaced by the next item of news. In this way
the average viewer is granted their ‘nourishment’ and feeling of ‘open news’
whilst at the same time being denied any real depth of knowledge. In such
media-saturated environments people are provided with a conversation space or
talking point amongst friends and work colleagues; or as a buffer zone to cover
up the embarrassment of a non-communicative family. And if all hell breaks
loose at work, at least you have Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead waiting
for you on the home screen!
The
mainstream media and entertainment industry also manipulate viewers’ emotions
through the continual images of sexual arousal to the point whereby many of us
are desensitised and more accepting of sexual misconduct. The media of escapism
allows us to live out our fantasies in what is considered a less harmful way.
It provides us with an external platform on which to project our wishful
desires. It is supposed to placate us, to make us forget the drudgery of our
humdrum lives. There are also those few who are motivated to mimic the acts
seen in the media, whether through violence or sexual perversion. No doubt the
few who do indulge are considered worth the trade-off against the millions who
are mollified and happily passive in front of the screen.
The
creative capacity of human imagination is being substituted for a ready-made
set of imaginative programming. We don’t need to imagine for ourselves when the
whole stage-show is presented to us in magnificent Technicolour and
computer-generated imagery (CGI). We have our tickets into the ‘flight into
unreality’.
Arrested Development
Another
more worrying possibility is that television can act as a factor in causing
arrested development within younger children, thus resulting in a later generation of
less neurologically developed adults. Child researcher Joseph Chilton Pearce
has published findings that indicate how television prevents the higher brain
in children from developing as television engages solely with the lower (aka
reptilian) brain. If the higher brain is not activated sufficiently through
external stimulation – which it rarely is via child institutions – then at age
11 the brain begins to destroy many of its unused neurons. This can lead to a
permanent condition of arrested development, according to Chilton Pearce. What
this points to is a serious lack of proper stimulants for many children in
overly institutionalised and controlled social environments. Also, our brains
do not fully mature until we are around age twenty-five, which explains the
early targeting of children through advertisers and conditioning institutions.
Recent
disclosures have described how large food corporations are targeting children
through what has now been dubbed ‘advergames’ – free games to download onto
smartphones and tablets that contain subtle advertisements for high-sugar
products.5 A report commissioned by the Family and Parenting
Institute, published in 2012, suggested that children’s brains process advergames
in a different way from how they would process traditional adverts; that is, on
a more subconscious and emotional level. In this context many children do not
understand that such games are actually very sophisticated adverts and so have
no conscious ‘cognitive defence’ to the food product marketing.
This
is no longer a one-way game, and the media landscape is undergoing a
significant transition. What has changed the playing field of the media over
recent years has been the rise of distributed and decentralised global
communications between individuals. The Internet in particular, as well as
other forms of social and community media, has spurred the growth of
individuals seeking to verify information for their own selves. Independent
media, such as is now coming of age via the Internet, has served to
counter-neutralise some of the overwhelming persuasive power of mainstream
media. This has helped to shift some people away from the propaganda that was
previously virtually unchallenged. This bottom-up media revolution has
seriously compromised the conditioning techniques used by governments and
corporations alike. A major example of this citizen media revolution was seen
during the Arab Spring, circa 2011, where civil resistance was effectively
organised through social media networks. There are, as would be expected, now
concerted efforts underway to censor the Internet and other social media
networks in various nation states, as well as on a global level.
It
is therefore imperative that our independent media be protected; our social
networks of free speech preserved; and our right to seek and speak the truth
defended. Manipulating and messing with our minds has no place in a truly
democratic and egalitarian future.
You
can explore these subjects further by reading Kingsley Dennis’s book The Struggle for Your
Mind: Conscious Evolution and the Battle to Control How We Think (Inner Traditions,
2012), a revolutionary call to overthrow society’s mental controls and expand
consciousness for the greater good of humanity. Available from all good
bookstores and online retailers.
Check
out Kingsley Dennis’s follow up article “Winning the War of Minds & the
Battle to Control How We Think” in New
Dawn 145.
Footnotes
3.
This idea, as well as neuro-marketing, was given to me in personal correspondence
by Darryl Howard, who sent me his research ‘Advertising in the New Paradigm’
(Darryl Howard & Associates).
4.
Anyone wishing to know more on this subject should investigate Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP).
5.
‘Food giants target children with addictive “advergames”,’ www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-giants-target-children-with-addictive-advergames-9222302.html
The above article appeared in New
Dawn No. 144 (May-June 2014).
© New Dawn Magazine and the respective
author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.
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From New Dawn @ http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/manipulations-mind-games-the-secret-battle-to-control-how-we-think
For more information about mind control see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/mind%20control
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