A thought for the Mind


Change happens. And while we can't control much of the world changing around us, we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is like trying to push water upstream. Generally we're quick to point to others who resist change. It's much harder to recognize or admit to our own change resistance. Some people call change "progress" and celebrate the improvements that it brings. Others curse those same changes and wish for the good old days. Same changes, different responses. The choice is ours: We can be leaders, or we can be followers. Embrace Change To embrace change, we need to concentrate on five areas.
1. Focus on a vision. Our vision or imagination guides everything we do. Helen Keller once said, "Nothing is more tragic than someone who has sight, but no vision." We can't leave the incredible magnetic power of vision unharnessed. Our thoughts often pull us toward the reasons why we can't succeed rather than the many reasons we can. To increase our effectiveness, we need to consciously attract into our lives what we truly want. We need to ensure the picture of our future is what we prefer, not the dark images of our fears, doubts, and insecurities. Personal, team, or organizational improvement starts with "imagineering."
We find what we focus upon. Whether I think my world is full of richness and opportunity or garbage and despair - I am right. It's exactly like that because that's my point of focus. Our vision is led by a set of core values. Without a strong set of core values, passion is weak and commitment is soft. We're more likely to lead ourselves from the outside in, rather than the inside out. Core values provide a context for continuous growth and development that takes us toward our dreams. Our core values project forward to become our vision. How we see the world is what we project from ourselves.
2. Choose your outlook. We reach another milestone in our growth when we accept responsibility for our emotions. We choose to lose our temper. We choose to become jealous. We choose to harbor hatred. It's much easier to give in to the victimitis virus. It's less painful to believe that anger, jealousy, or bitterness are somebody else's fault or beyond our control. But that makes us prisoners of our destructive emotions. We hold grudges, let resentments build, and become cynical. We stress ourselves out. We stew in our own deadly juices.
Holding on to destructive emotions is slow suicide. Studies show that stress from negative emotions presents a more dangerous risk factor for cancer and heart disease than smoking cigarettes or high cholesterol foods. We must take responsibility for our actions in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible. The only thing we can control is ourselves, so when we choose our thoughts, we are choosing our future.
3. Seek authenticity. To create something we must be something. For example, becoming a parent is easy; being one is tough. We can't teach our kids self-discipline unless we are self-disciplined. We can't help build strong teams unless we are strong team players ourselves. This timeless principle applies to every facet of our lives. We can't help develop a close community if we're not a good neighbor.
We can't enjoy a happy marriage if we're not a loving partner. We won't have a supportive network of friends or colleagues until we're a supportive friend or collaborative colleague. David Whyte writes, "All things change when we do." The big (and often painful) question is:
What do I need to change about me to help change them? Instead of just wishing for a change of circumstance, I may need a change of character. Good intensions are useless if they stop there. One biggest difference between most people and authentic leaders is action. Real leaders make it happen.
4. Commit ourselves with discipline. A key difference between real leaders and those who struggle to get by is self-discipline.
As Confucius wrote, "The nature of people is always the same; it is their habits that separate them."
Successful people have formed the habits of doing those things that most people don't want to do.
Good and bad habits are tiny daily choices that accumulate. Like a child that grows a little each day, our tiny choices accumulate without much notice. By the time we realize we have either a good or a bad habit, the habit has us. Most of our daily choices are made automatically without even thinking about them. To change our habits, we first need to be aware of them. Then we need to work backward from the habit to the daily practices that form it.
To change the habit, we need to change those practices. Still, if discipline is a key to success, the fact is that most people would rather pick the lock. Less successful people can't pass up instant gratification in favor of some prospective benefit. It's much easier to live for the moment and let tomorrow take care of itself. But it takes discipline to forego the immediately pleasurable for an investment in the future.
Discipline means having the vision to see the long-term picture and keep things in balance. A Chinese proverb teaches: "If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow." We all want more patience - and we want it now! Most of us would like to be delivered from temptation, but we'd like it to stay in touch. Discipline is what keeps us going when the excitement of first beginning a task is long past.
5. Continually grow and develop. Most people see others as they are; a leader sees them as they could be. Leaders see beyond the current problems and limitations to help others see their own possibilities. It's a key part of their own growth and development. We continue to grow when we help others grow and develop. The cycle of growth and development has two parts, and the first is our own growth and development, since we can't develop others if our own growth is stunted. These two parts depend upon and support each other. We develop ourselves while we're developing others. By developing others, we develop ourselves. It's a growt h cycle that spirals forever upward.
Another part of the growth process is seeking to be more effective. As the pace of change quickens, it's easier to fall into the trap of confusing "busyness" with effectiveness. Like the wood-cutter who's too busy chopping to stop and sharpen his ax, we get caught up in a frantic pace that may be taking us to the wrong destination. Reflecting on our progress is as rare as a proud man asking for directions. But to be more effective, we need to step back, take time out, and assess our direction. It will help us grow and keep up with change. Making Choices Change forces choices. If we're on the grow, we'll embrace many changes and find the positive in them. It's all in where we choose to put our focus. Even change that hits us in the side of the head as a major crisis can be full of growth opportunities - if we choose to look for them.
Many people who have weathered a serious crisis look back years later and point to that event as a significant turning point. Most would rather not go through that pain again, but it was a key part of their growth. Crisis can be a danger that weakens or destroys us. Or crisis can be a growth opportunity. The choice is ours. Whichever we choose, we're right about that crisis. We make it our reality. The point is, change is life. Successfully dealing with change means choosing to grow and develop continuously. Failing to grow is failing to live.


The Mind Manipulators

Joseph L.Genebo

All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.

Most of us like to think that our own minds and thought processes are impenetrable. We like to think that other people can be manipulated, but not us. We believe that our opinions, values, ideas and beliefs are totally autonomous. Of course, we might be persuaded by the odd advertisement, but it’s others that are weak minded and easily swayed.

Many authors have explored the techniques of mass mind manipulation. Vance Packard's 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, studied the psychological tactics used by the American advertising industry in its drive to advance consumerism. Almost half a century on from Packard, this article examines how techniques of mass mind manipulation have evolved and investigates some of the hidden persuaders of the new millennium.

At the dawn of the 21st century, our emotional and mental integrity are continually challenged and manipulated by governments and corporations. The physical body is enshrined and protected by lawmakers, but there are few safeguards against mind pollution. Mind manipulation is used for a variety of purposes from inducing us to purchase consumer products to swaying our political opinions. The manipulation is subtle, covert and insidious. The tactics used often appeal to basic human instincts - hunger, thirst and sex; they are based upon the premise that material presented will not be rationally examined or subjected to logical analysis. Propaganda, images, cliches, and jingles just wash over us, engulfing our mind, body and spirit, expressing powerful meanings indirectly and simply.


TV BRAIN DRAIN

One of the principal tools in the mind manipulation arsenal is television, the cultural arm of the established industrial order. Television, the drug of the nation, maintains, stabilises and reinforces ideas, attitudes and behaviours through its programming and advertising. When we watch TV, the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out. This allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and non critically, to function unimpeded. While the negative impacts of particular television progrrns and advertisements are well known, the overall long term effects of watching television are equally as dangerous.

Television programming influences viewers' ideas of what the everyday world is really like.
Research conducted in the 1960's by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg Schcol of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that television has protracted effects which are gradual and indirect, but cumulative and significant.
Gerbner (2) found that heavy watching of television cultivated attitudes that were more consistent with the world of television programmes than with the everyday world. For example, television watchers had general mindsets about violence, resulting from an overrepresentation of violence on television. Heavy television viewers tended to develop a “mean world syndrome”, believing that the world was a nastier place than light television viewers. Gerbaer also discovered that television watching cultivated a symbolic message about law and order, (3) with the action-adventure genre reinforcing a faith in law and order, the status quo and social justice (the baddies always get their just desserts).

Before the television, there was conversation around the dinner table or the fireplace. Today this has been replaced with microwaved meals (in)digested in front of the box or the flat screen. Alone or in company, conversation and communication has been reduced to stultifying ‘grabs’ during ad breaks. Technology now stands between us and each other, between people and the natural world. We know our virtual “Neighbours” on television better than our real neighbours next door. As communities and extended family structures decay, the isolated individual becomes easy prey for the mind manipulators. As cathode ray reality becomes genuine reality, public opinion becomes homogenised and mainstreamed, widespread apathy and indifference prevail.

This mainstreaming of opinion is evident in nightly news bulletins, which have become a source of entertainment first and information second. Local television stations all report the same news simultaneously, even using the same footage. Despite the similarities, each claims to be ‘the best’, ‘the latest’ or ‘the most up to date’. In reality, they are hardly different and it is difficult for the public to distinguish one from the other. Commenting on this subtle mind manipulation phenomena, former CIA agent Philip Agee, in his book On the Run, observes: “Television news is show business, designed to entertain and intentionally or not, programmed to keep people ignorant.”

With the advent of ‘reality’ television, the boundaries between the real world and the virtual world have been inextricably blurred by the mind manipulators. The most obvious and obnoxious example of this is the ‘Big Brother’ television show, which draws its title directly from George Orwell's classic novel 1984. Big Brother viewers tune in to see the participants manipulate their housemates, or to find out if any are having sex and with whom. Interest in such prurient details is fuelled by newspapers and radio stations, which devote lengthy discussions to the highlights of each show and run campaigns to ditch certain individuals.



Quite apart from the crass marketing opportunities presented by Big Brother, the program has had another more subtle and nauseating effect: the manipulation of language. In the wake of the programme, searching the Internet for "Big Brother" will turn up thousands of links to the “Big Brother” TV show. Anyone looking for references to surveillance or the totalitarian state will immediately be confronted with the ‘reality’ television phenomenon. The television show has changed the meaning of Big Brother for an entire generation. Big Brother has become an entertaining spectacle, no longer an abhorrent icon of the totalitarian state. Surveillance cameras and microphones have become ‘cool’ tools and Big Brother’s ‘victims’ have become celebrities and prizewinners. The implication is that we should be willing to give up privacy for any amount of fame and fortune. 

 

THE VIRTUAL
POLITICIAN

As real-life experiences are replaced by the mediated
experiences of reality and fantasy, gained via television viewing, it becomes
easy for politicians and market researchers to rely on a base of predetermined
mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers. As the mass mind
takes shape, its participants act according to media-derived impulses, believing
them to be their own personal choices arising out of their own desires and
needs. The passing spectacle of politics, for example, becomes a stage-managed
event, the domain of polished performers and public relations (propaganda) gurus
-- the era of the virtual politician. 
>
Televised parliamentary debates
and door stop interviews have turned political representatives into colour
coordinated fashion statements, more concerned with image than intellect and
substantial debates. When they're not providing glib, pre-scripted comments via
door stop interviews, national leaders languish in front of the teleprompter, a
device that gives any politician, regardless of talent, the gift of the gab. The
use of teleprompters must surely constitute a fraudulent manipulation of public
opinion. Mounted beside the lens of a TV camera or in front of a podium, the
teleprompter allows the politician to read speeches prepared by staff writers
and PR experts, while appearing to speak ~ The teleprompter has enabled every
word, every dramatic pause and even facial expressions, to be crafted for
maximum effectiveness. Politicians can appear to speak knowledgeably in public,
when in reality they may be ill informed and hopeless at putting across a
particular point of view. 

Teleprompters are only part of managing the
modem political image. Politicians regularly attend media ‘school’, coaching
seminars, and training, where they learn how to defray journalists questions –
“well, that's not the point”; how to ‘talk’ to the cameras and how to project
their voice. There are even sessions on power dressing. Others have their
‘colours’ done to ensure that their designer wardrobes match their hair and skin
colour. And in a world where appearance can mean the difference between winning
and losing a marginal seat, or even leading the country, politicians of both
sexes undergo cosmetic surgery in a futile attempt to meet the glamorous
Hollywood standards that ‘society’ demands.

CREATING INSECURITIES

The underlying assumption about human psychology is that the public must be manipulated for its own good. Many advertising strategies involve covert methods to trick the consumer into believing their lives are incomplete and deficient without the promoted product; only through purchasing the commodity will the consumer's life be 'whole' or 'better' again. Mind manipulation feeds upon itself Advertising agencies know that unhappy and worried people are likely to buy more consumer goods in order to feel better, to fill the void created by their dull, robotic lives. This phenomena is known as ‘retail therapy’, and is epitomised by the popular maximum 'when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping'.

Many advertisements send the message 'you're not good enough' unless you drink the right soft drink, buy a new car, use the perfect shampoo or stock up on scented toilet paper. Other messages subconsciously prey upon guilt, anxieties or hostilities. Many people, hundreds of times a day, are hearing or reading subliminally that they're not good enough. This continual suggestion is a major cause of stress, and certainly the cause of much dissatisfaction, anxiety and even illness.

Suggestibility exists constantly within our psyches, determining our state of being, our consciousness and our relationship to ourselves and the world around us. While the power of suggestion is generally exercised unconsciously in our day to day existence, it is exploited deliberately and ruthlessly in the world of advertising. The medical industry, for example, does not want people who would buy and consume according to their own requirements. Rather, they want sheep to buy on suggestion. Many advertisements offer cures for a debilitating array of ills from headaches and backache to constipation, prostate problems and premenstrual tension. The sheer ubiquity of such promised cures convinces us, if only by suggestion, that we must need them, and that we must or should be suffering from the afflictions that they claim to alleviate.

MANUFACTURING THE EXPERTS

Advertisers frequently make banal appeals based upon the stratification of society, invoking authority, intellect or prestige to sell products. Television and print media advertisements for pain relievers, toothpaste, washing powder and even pet food feature (usually men) in white coats discussing products which have been scientifically formulated, university or laboratory tested and clinically proven. The psychology behind these claims works not only to reassure the consumer that the product will do the job, but also to imply that the product is in some way supenor to its competitors - because science has deemed it so.

The reality is that these third parties are usually anything but unbiased and impartial. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make consumers believe what they have to say. In some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their esteemed “opinions.”

When the US Justice Department launched its antitrust investigations into the Microsoft Corporation in 1998, Microsoft's public relations firm countered with a plan to plant pro-Microsoft articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces all across America, crafted by professional media handlers but meant to be perceived as off-the cuff, heartfelt testimonials by ‘people out there.’ In another example, a tobacco company secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of US$156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals during the 1990's. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received US$20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal. The scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing. Institutional endorsement is another mind manipulation tactic used by the advertising fraternity. An example cited by Baigent and Leigh(6) is the company that deluged American hospitals with supplies of its painkiller at dramatically reduced price - so reduced that the product was virtually given away. Not surprisingly, hospitals began to, use it more frequently than other brands. This enabled the company to advertise its painkiller as the one preferred by hospitals, implying that it was more effective.

POLITICAL PERSUASION

Subliminal advertising was exposed in the 1950s when some TV commercials were discovered to be transmitting split-second images that were designed to stimulate a viewer's desire for a certain product. For example, during a soft drink commercial, an advertiser might have flashed the message -I'm thirsty' without the viewer realisingg it.

Quite apart from selling products, subliminal advertisements can also sell politicians. During the recent US Presidential elections, the Republican campaign ran a television advertisement which showed, when the ad was slowed down, the word “RATS” appearing briefly while a voiceover criticised Vice President Al Gore's prescription drug plan as one in which “bureacrats decide” Republican presidential nominee, and now US President, George W. Bush, told reporters that he believed the appearance of “RATS” in the advertisement was accidental. Mispronouncing the word “subliminal” as “subliminable” several times' Bush said that he was “convinced” the advertisement was not meant to send a subliminal message. The so-called “RATS” ad, costing US$25 million, ran over 4,000 times in 33 markets nationally for about two weeks, before it was pulled from the airwaves.



THE PROFILERS

Modern computing power and data mining capabilities are providing the mind manipulators with new tools to delve into our psyche. A growing Internet phenomena is online profiling. This new type of subliminal ad strategy is based upon a profile of the individual that is built up over time. Information about browsing habits is culled from various web sites, then every time the person logs on to the Net, they are immediately inundated with banners based on their profile. Web Site banners suddenly offer products and services that the person is interested in, based upon their profile. Similar subliminal sales tactics will be used as Web-TV becomes widespread.

FRIENDLY FASCISM

In many respects, the modern person is increasingly confronted with the face of friendly fascism. Not the jackboots and mass rallies that comprise the popular stereotype of fascism, but rather an insidious, public relations savvy manipulation of power for profit.

Try it yourself The manufacture of consent. The creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of either marginalising the general public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion. This type of indoctrination and entrapment is innocuous and painless, it takes over not by force but by running everyone ragged trying to survive, to keep up with the 'Jones's'. Waking sleep becomes the distraction of choice: the half awake sleep of mindlessly gazing at the TV screen, the mechanical repetition associated with most jobs, the hypnotic trance of being self-absorbed, and the isolated anonymity of being alone, together. The mind is suffocated and the spirit is stifled by corporate imagination killers who offer us everything from anti-aging creams to dog foods which 'produce' less sloppy stools.

In this trance like state, citizens become the easy prey of governments, who rely on the mainstreaming of opinion to propagate apathetic and listless indifference.

The complete mind manipulation of the citizen by corporations and government is thus perfected. Sample issue $12.50. Send cheque or money order payable to J. Genebo Email: mailto:yaunggod@yahool.com.


Printer friendly version Email this article to a friend

Last updated 04/29/2005

Truth Seeker Home Page


Main Page
Picture Album
Interview