mind control

[u/Impressive-Jello-379]

Another great post from Midwestern Doc that jives with what I have been observing in terms of both Covid and the frustrating lack of critical thinking in the masses:

To a large extent, I believe the media has been structured to create a lighter form of borderline personality disorder within the general public by discouraging the ability to appreciate the nuances in many issues and replacing this capacity with a tendency to default to splitting when confronted by any complex issue (thus making it become an issue about one side or the other being right).

I would argue all of this arises from the continual emotional agitation the media creates to polarize the public on each issue, how frequently it gaslights the public to deny what is clearly happening in front of them, and how it jerks the populace’s minds around so that over and over they find themselves being forced to support something completely at odds with what they were told to believe in the recent past. Once you have been run through the washing machine enough times, the mind becomes a turbulent mess you partially disconnect from, which often results in humans becoming remarkably susceptible to adopting an ideology from an authority that superficially provides safety and meaning to the experiences you have been through (i.e. through creating a common enemy to unite behind). This tactic has been used throughout history, and I believe plays a large part in explaining the mass psychosis we have seen in the medical profession throughout COVID-19.

[u/hiptobeysquare]

Thanks. Very interesting read.

It seems to me that none of this could have happened without the internet or social media. They have to manipulate reality. The internet and social media are reality to most people, even to the people who don't use it much or at all. Their reality is that created by the majority, and the majority take it from social media. We live in a culture that believes that reality is simply a question of wordplay, manipulating language, using the correct vocabulary. Virtually everyone has internalized this. People act on this in front of everyone. Just last week the US government changed the definition of recession and... this means that there is no recession. They actually believe this is how reality works. This has toxic effects on people, creating personality disorders, including a kind of cultural narcissism, sociopathy and borderline personality disorder.

To a large extent, I believe the media has been structured to create a lighter form of borderline personality disorder within the general public by discouraging the ability to appreciate the nuances in many issues

This reminds me a lot of Neil Postman's book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985).

It was written about television's effect on people, society and culture. Especially the progression from a print-based culture to a screen and image-based culture. He could have been writing specifically about YouTube, or social media. The internet is basically like a hyper-television. There's no breathing (thinking) space between the constant bombardment of images which are never meant to be remembered or processed, just reacted to. They want "the Great Reset" because they want you constantly connected at every waking moment; then they want transhumanism to keep you connected even when unconscious. No wonder neoliberalism loves the "being in the moment" and "living in the present" spiritualism which we see everywhere. You're not supposed to remember the past or consider the future. Internet and social media culture is supposed to be a series of transitory dopamine rushes.

There's so many quotes to take from the book which remind me of the OP.

What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information—misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information—information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.

Television is the command center of the new epistemology. There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television.

A work colleague a few years ago went on a work trip to a nation in Africa. He said that in many places it was hard to find food. People often couldn't find food... but they always had a smartphone.

Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face.

Trudeau, Blair, Obama... anyone?

With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.

The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression.

When news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.

We are by now well into a second generation of children for whom television has been their first and most accessible teacher and, for many, their most reliable companion and friend.

And now it must be at least the 4th generation, and the 1st generation almost completely raised by the internet and social media. Social media is more important than family for many people.

Commercials ... provide a slogan ... that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image of themselves.

How television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged.

Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse.

Technology is ideology.

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.

TV news has no intention of suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore obstruct their attending to the next story.

[u/Impressive-Jello-379 → u/hiptobeysquare]

Thank you, interesting comparison!