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Psychological Manipulation

This is an excerpt from the e-book The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis. Throughout the 20'th century vast resources and great minds were employed in the research and development of psychological manipulation. For example, the CIA's program of research in behavioural modification called MKULTRA [FR, FR]; it was a top secret project and little is known of its real depth and scope but some indication of the nature of this project can be seen from this archive of almost 20,000 pages of declassified documents [FR], also see these other archives [FR] and here is some information on Russian efforts [FR]. Such projects were a major initiative throughout the 20'th century because the technology became available and the motivation was irresistible. When the minds of the masses are ideologically placed in the centre of power, research into the technology of mass manipulation became critical and enormous effort was expended in perfecting the science of manipulation. With trillions of dollars of vested interests and the power of vast nation states dependent on the minds of the population through their spending and voting choices, a means had to be found to control the minds of the population, this is simple pragmatism and market forces. The motivation is obvious, who would let their corporate empire and imperial aspirations be left to the whim of the masses? Especially when it is certain that competitors will be vying for control; every sensible power broker had to get involved or otherwise be left behind. It essentially became an arms race in psychological weapons that can be used against the population.

A degree of social conditioning is vital and leads to social cohesion but when it ceases to serve society and starts to dominate and manipulate society it starts to destroy society and to erode the very foundations of our civilisation.

The modern era of psychological manipulation (also called psychological operations or psyops [FR, FR]) could be said to have began around 1900 with Ivan Pavlov and his "Classical Conditioning theory" [FR] which was the theory of how to elicit a conditioned reflex [FR] whereby "A response may be produced with very high probability after a specific stimulus." [FR] This operates on the level of the subconscious functioning of the mind and bypasses all forms of rational judgement thereby subverting self-control and resulting in programmed control. To briefly describe this method one takes an unconditioned reflex "for example, a puff of air to the cornea of the eye is an unconditioned stimulus that produces a blinking response" [FR]. Another example is people's tendency to uncritically accept authoritarianism when faced with fear of personal safety. Sexual arousal is also a powerful manipulative hook; it is the primitive instincts that are the most deeply reflexive and beyond rational control or awareness and thereby form the most fertile ground for conditioning. One need only consider the two largest industries on the planet, warfare and pornography, to see how our primitive instincts are being conditioned and harnessed by the global system.

The conditioning arises when "A conditioned stimulus... is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. For example, a tone sounded just prior to the puff of air being delivered to the cornea of the eye. Without prior training, the tone does not elicit an eye blink: however, after a number of tone-puff pairings, the tone alone comes to elicit the blinking response." [FR] This could also be the use of certain catch phrases or symbols, often used in patriotic conditioning and advertising. "For example, many beer ads prominently feature attractive young women wearing bikinis. The young women (Unconditioned Stimulus) naturally elicit a favorable, mildly aroused feeling (Unconditioned Response) in most men. The beer is simply associated with this effect. The same thing applies with the jingles and music that accompany many advertisements." [FR]

"A conditioned response... is the response that the conditioned stimulus elicits after it has been repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus." [FR] Here repetition is vital, the conditioned stimulus may be totally benign such as the rhetoric of "Freedom and Liberty" but the conditioned response may involve the masses clinging to an authoritarian regime that strips them of all rights and engages in acts of violence and oppression, which are the antithesis of "Freedom and Liberty". The people are unaware of the conditioning and create many rationalisations to explain to themselves why they acted that way but these rationalisations invariably fall apart upon close analysis and so must be protected by various denial and self-deception mechanisms which can also be based upon conditioned responses that short circuit critical thought. The result of this build up of conditioning is that "psychological manipulation... can induce psychological and physical disorders." [FR]

"Common experience and careful research both confirm that human emotion conditions very rapidly and easily. Particularly when the emotion is intensely felt or negative in direction, it will condition quickly." [FR] This is why 'fear' or 'terror' is the mainstay of fascist regimes, not only do they naturally arouse fear because of their fascist nature but they can use this fear as an extremely effective for of psychological manipulation. They can associate the feeling of fear with rhetoric about a perceived enemy and condition people such that when they feel fear they wish to destroy that enemy. The source of the fear is usually the fascist regime itself but this is diverted and channelled by the regime into an intense desire to destroy the enemy.

"Classical conditioning is a pervasive form of influence in our world. This is true because it is a natural feature of all humans and it is relatively simple and easy to accomplish." [FR] Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to detect. In needn't take the form of propaganda posters showing "brave comrades" or political rhetoric being broadcast through the news or even catchy advertising. It can be imbedded within movies, novels, television dramas and it can spread into the language and cultural traditions of a society. The prevalence of movies and television dramas about police, lawyers, soldiers and so on in recent times is a good example of this. On one level it is exciting drama and entertaining action for many people but the repetitive message is that there is much to be afraid of, that human nature and the informal structure (defined elsewhere) is sick and that only the authorities or the formal structure can be trusted and relied upon. The conditioning has the effect that when things turn bad people don't turn to each other and perhaps organise against the authorities but instead they remain isolated and cling to the authorities as their only saviour even when it is the rising authoritarianism that is often the underlying cause of the problem.

If you wish to test the level of authoritarian conditioning in people, get a good actor to put on airs of authority and to use the common conditioned stimuli such as facial expressions, forceful body language, forceful voice, use of props such as uniform, badge and so on, then send them out into society and see how people respond. If people have been conditioned they will respond by obeying the actor and if they have not been conditioned they will look upon the actor as if he or she is insane. In 'civilised' societies many people will unthinkingly obey but in so called 'primitive' societies they will just avoid the person because they will think them to be insane. This is a common clash of worlds that arises between police and teenagers who have yet to be fully conditioned; the police use conditioned stimuli but to the teenagers they just look insane, most adults look insane through the eyes of a child because children are still human and they have yet be conditioned and assimilated into the societal 'machine'. It is sometimes proposed that obedience to authority is a fact of human nature [FR] but this is stated in ignorance of the fact that authoritarian conditioning has been a pervasive force and a central principle of 'civilisation'. It is not a fact of human nature but merely a result of authoritarian conditioning. Whereas responding to love and compassion is a very real fact of human nature that requires no conditioning, but this part of human nature needs to be suppressed to make way for the authoritarian conditioning that is the fabric of what we call 'civilisation'. How civilised is this civilisation really? When Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilisation he responded that he thought it would be a good idea.

These methods of conditioning are just the basics of an advanced science of manipulation, the discovery of these methods is analogous to the invention of the transistor, which can be formed into intricate circuitry to create all kinds of specific technologies. The current cultural discourse is an intricate circuit of manipulative conditioning, analogous to a computer that creates a computational space within which the operating system functions. In this way the cultural conditioning creates the space within which the collective ego functions and enacts its various programs such as warfare, economic slavery, corporate tyranny and the objectification of life into being just a resource of consumers and producers.

The use of media manipulation in pursuit of corporate interests is so common that it has long been institutionalised and goes by euphemisms such as advertising, product placement, economic amplifiers and so on. But once its real nature is known and its holistic effects are understood it is clear that this is not just benignly informing people about new products, it is more the case that something seriously destructive is happening. Our minds are being subverted and assimilated into something that would horrify us if only we knew what was really happening.

"Humans are not passive machines to be manipulated by life, but are dynamic organisms which can react in intelligent ways to the information presented to them. Our world of today spends an inordinate proportion of its resources on manipulation. This takes the form of misleading advertising, of political spin-doctoring, of selective media information and of outright corporate lies. All these processes work against the fitness of the individual, and by implication against our societies themselves." [FR] Media bias leads to biases throughout our minds and throughout society, beware of it and be aware of how biased it it [FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR, FR].

If we are to retain our self-control and sanity we must be aware of the pervasiveness of conditioning, even when it seems innocuous [FR] on the surface as in most advertising, rhetoric and entertainment, but billions of dollars and decades of research lie behind their slick surface. If we look into what emotions and reflexes they elicit, how our actions are thereby controlled and to what ends those actions are directed we soon see that there is widespread manipulative subversion of entire populations in pursuit of very narrow and destructive agendas. It might just be the ring of a bell but when conditioned it can elicit a violent and self-destructive response.

These deceptive manipulative tactics are psychological abuse and technically amount to a declaration of psychological warfare against the population. Not only can they be said to be 'wrong' in some absolutist sense, but they create massive casualties, destabilising whole generations of minds and creating mass schizophrenia. Those who wield such weapons should ask themselves, do the benefits to themselves really outweigh the dangers? We all dwell within society and to destroy society would surely make it difficult for the perpetrators to enjoy whatever gains they may have made for themselves. Unless their agenda from the start was to destroy society and then eek out some fortified existence amidst the mass insanity, but that would be an insane thing to do. I can only assume that they have no idea what they are doing, like someone splashing chemical and biological weapons around for petty gains without knowing what these things are and how deadly they can be. Many people have been doing exactly that with memetic or psychological weapons. Just as houses where once routinely insulated with asbestos, many people's media diet is routinely contaminated with memtic viruses. When this situation is given some broad and rational thought it is clear that the long term dangers far outweigh the short term benefits.

By destroying people's fundamental ability to think coherently about important events we have crippled many minds and thereby created crippled societies. This is the inevitable result of irresponsible egos running wild upon the earth whilst they can, and dwelling in denial when they can't but sooner or later reality comes crashing in: "The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." (Orwell) [FR]

Some more words from George Orwell on this subject: "When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say ‘Guns before butter’, while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words. Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy... avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." [FR, FR]

Especially when immersed in a sea of deceptive and manipulative propaganda. What we see is stirred up by some underlying reality but what we actually experience is purely a construct of our minds. If our minds are conditioned, unbalanced and agitated then the world that we experience is likewise. I also discuss the long term impacts of conditioning in this essay: A Psychological Perspective on Civilisation.

It is through commonsense realism that we confuse this distorted cognitive impression with the objective reality and this opens up to ever deepening delusion. By breaking the commonsense realist confusion we break out of all conditioning, it may still influence our minds but we know that is not real and we look through it to connect with what is real. As that connection strengthens the delusions are washed away by the flow of truth into our minds.

We live out our lives in the midst of information warfare and psychological warfare like no other generations before us. It is no wonder that rates of psychological illness, depression and suicide are increasing. But so long as the manipulators get what they want in the short term, the real suffering and damage done to society and the holistic system is unimportant to them, their ego probably won't live to suffer the consequences, but billions will and for generations after us. Because of this we must arm ourselves with awareness and liberate ourselves from the web of deceit and manipulation, otherwise through ignorance we are culpable in the demise of humanity.

Best wishes : )
John Ringland

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