|
by Academy of Ideas
April 24,
2021
from
AcademyOfIdeas Website
Spanish
version
|
Academy of Ideas is the creation of two brothers from
Canada.
All
of the content is produced by us.
We
are not supported by or affiliated with any organization
or university.
Our
goal is to to spread the message of individual liberty
and empowerment to the world. |
The following is a
transcript, of video at footnote:
"The masses
have never thirsted after truth.
They turn aside from evidence
that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error
seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily
their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is
always their victim."
Gustav Le Bon
The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind
Diseases of the
body can spread through a population and reach epidemic proportions,
but so too can diseases of the mind.
And of these epidemics of the
latter variety, the
mass psychosis is the most dangerous.
During a
mass psychosis madness becomes the norm in a society and delusionary
beliefs spread like a contagion.
But as delusions can take many
forms, and as madness can manifest in countless ways, the specific
manner in which a mass psychosis unfolds will differ based on the
historical and cultural context of the infected society.
In the
past, mass psychoses have led to,
-
witch hunts
-
genocides
-
even
dancing manias,
...but in the modern era it is the mass psychosis of
totalitarianism that is the greatest threat:
"Totalitarianism is the modern phenomenon of total centralized
state power coupled with the obliteration of individual human
rights:
in the totalized state, there are those in power, and
there are the objectified masses, the victims."
Arthur Versluis
The New Inquisitions - Heretic-Hunting and
the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism
In a totalitarian
society the population is divided into two groups,
the rulers and
the ruled,
...and both groups undergo a pathological transformation.
The rulers are elevated to an almost god-like status which is
diametrically opposed to our nature as imperfect beings who are
easily corrupted by power.
The masses, on the other hand, are
transformed into the dependent subjects of these pathological rulers
and take on a psychologically regressed and childlike status.
Hannah
Arendt, one of the 20th century's preeminent scholars of this form
of rule, called totalitarianism,
an attempted transformation of
"human nature itself"...
But this attempted transformation only turns
sound minds into sick minds for as the Dutch medical doctor who
studied the mental effects of living under totalitarianism wrote:
"...there is in
fact much that is comparable between the strange reactions of
the citizens of [totalitarianism] and their culture as a whole
on the one hand and the reactions of the... sick schizophrenic on
the other."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
The social
transformation that unfolds under totalitarianism is built upon, and
sustained by, delusions...
For only deluded men and women regress to
the childlike status of obedient and submissive subjects and hand
over complete control of their lives to politicians and bureaucrats.
Only a deluded ruling class will believe that they possess the
knowledge, wisdom, and acumen to completely control society in a
top-down manner.
And only when under the spell of delusions would
anyone believe that a society composed of power-hungry rulers, on
the one hand, and a psychological regressed population, on the
other, will lead to anything other than mass suffering and social
ruin.
But what triggers
the psychosis of totalitarianism?
As was explored in
a previous
video of this series, the mass psychosis of totalitarianism begins
in a society's ruling class.
The individuals that make up this
class, be it politicians, bureaucrats, or crony capitalists, are
very prone to delusions that augment their power, and no delusion is
more attractive to the power-hungry, than the delusion that they
can, and should, control and dominate a society.
When a ruling elite
becomes possessed by a political ideology of this sort, be it
communism, fascism or
technocracy, the next step is,
to induce a
population into accepting their rule by infecting them with the mass
psychosis of totalitarianism...
This psychosis has been induced many
times throughout history, and as Joost Meerloo explains:
"It is simply a
question of reorganizing and manipulating collective feelings in
the proper way."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
The general method
by which the members of a ruling elite can accomplish this end is
called
menticide, with the etymology of this word being
'a killing
of the mind', and as Meerloo further explains:
"Menticide is
an old crime against the human mind and spirit but systematized
anew.
It is an organized system of psychological intervention
and judicial perversion through which a [ruling class] can
imprint [their] own opportunistic thoughts upon the minds of
those [they] plan to use and destroy."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
Priming a
population for the crime of menticide begins with the sowing of
fear...
For as was explored in the first video of this series, when an
individual is flooded with negative emotions, such as fear or
anxiety, he or she is very susceptible to a descent into the
delusions of madness.
Threats real, imagined, or fabricated can be
used to sow fear, but a particularly effective technique is to use
waves of terror...
Under this technique the sowing of fear is
staggered with periods of calm, but each of these periods of calm is
followed by the manufacturing of an even more intense spell of fear,
and on and on the process goes, or as Meerloo writes:
"Each wave of
terrorizing... creates its effects more easily - after a
breathing spell - than the one that preceded it because people
are still disturbed by their previous experience.
Morality
becomes lower and lower, and the psychological effects of each
new propaganda campaign become stronger; it reaches a public
already softened up."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
While fear primes a
population for menticide (brainwashing), the use of propaganda to
spread
misinformation and to promote confusion with respect to the source
of the threats, and the nature of the crisis, helps to break down
the minds of the masses.
Government officials, and their
lackies in
the media, can use,
-
contradictory reports
-
non-sensical information
-
even blatant lies,
...as the more they confuse the less capable
will a population be to cope with the crisis, and diminish their
fear, in a rational and adaptive manner.
Confusion, in other words,
heightens the susceptibility of a descent into the delusions of
totalitarianism, or as Meerloo explains:
"Logic can be
met with logic, while illogic cannot - it confuses those who think
straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have
more emotional appeal... than logic and reason.
While [the people are] still searching for a reasonable counter-argument
to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault [them] with
another."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
Never before in
history have such effective means existed to manipulate a society
into the psychosis of totalitarianism.
Smart phones and social
media, television and the internet, all in conjunction with
algorithms that quickly censor the flow of unwanted information,
allow those in power to easily assault the minds of the masses.
What
is more the addictive nature of these technologies means that many
people voluntarily subject themselves to
the ruling elite's
propaganda with a remarkable frequency:
"Modern
technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is
looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology
lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements.
No
rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation - the senses
are continually overloaded with stimuli.
[Man] doesn't learn to
question his world anymore; the screen offers him
answers-ready-made."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
But there is a
further step the would-be totalitarian rulers can take to increase
the chance of a totalitarian psychosis, and this is,
to
isolate the
victims and to disrupt normal social interactions...
When alone and
lacking normal interactions with friends, family and coworkers, an
individual becomes far more susceptible to delusions for several
reasons:
Firstly, they lose contact with the corrective force of the
positive example.
For not everyone is tricked by the machinations of
the ruling elite and the individuals who see through the propaganda,
can help free others from the menticidal assault.
If, however,
isolation is enforced the power of these positive examples greatly
diminishes.
But another reason that isolation increases the efficacy
of menticide is because like many other species, human beings, are
more easily conditioned into new patterns of thought and behavior
when isolated, or as Meerloo explains with regards to the
physiologist Ivan Pavlov's work on behavioral conditioning:
"Pavlov made
another significant discovery:
the conditioned reflex could be
developed most easily in a quiet laboratory with a minimum of
disturbing stimuli.
Every trainer of animals knows this from his
own experience; isolation and the patient repetition of stimuli
are required to tame wild animals...
The totalitarians have
followed this rule.
They know that they can condition their
political victims most quickly if they are kept in isolation."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
Alone, confused and
battered by waves of terror, a population under an attack of
menticide descends into a hopeless and vulnerable state.
The
never-ending stream of propaganda turns minds once capable of
rational thought into playhouses of irrational forces and with chaos
swirling around them, and within them, the masses crave a return to
a more ordered world.
The would-be totalitarians can now take the
decisive step:
they can offer a way out and a
return to order in a
world that seems to be moving rapidly in the opposite direction...
But
all this come at a price:
The masses
must give up their freedom and
cede control of all aspects of life to the ruling elite...
They must
relinquish their capacity to be self-reliant individuals who are
responsible for their own lives, and become submissive and obedient
subjects.
The masses, in other words, must descend into the
delusions of the totalitarian psychosis.
"Totalitarianism is man's escape from the fearful realities of
life into the virtual womb of the leaders.
The individual's
actions are directed from this womb - from the inner sanctum... man need no longer assume responsibility for his own life.
The
order and logic of the prenatal world reign.
There is peace and
silence, the peace of utter submission."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
But the order of a
totalitarian world is a pathological order.
By enforcing a strict
conformity, and requiring a blind obedience from the citizenry,
totalitarianism rids the world of the spontaneity that produces many
of life's joys and the creativity that drives society forward.
The
total control of this form of rule, no matter under what name it is
branded, be it rule by scientists and doctors, politicians and
bureaucrats, or a dictator, breeds stagnation, destruction and
death
on a mass scale...
And so perhaps the most important question facing
the world is, how can totalitarianism be prevented?
And if a society
has been induced into the early stages of this mass psychosis, can
the effects be reversed?
While one can never
be sure of the prognosis of a collective madness, there are steps
that can be taken to help effectuate a cure.
This task, however,
necessitates many different approaches, from many different people.
For just as the
menticidal attack is multi-pronged, so too must be
the counter-attack...
According to Carl Jung, for those of us who wish
to help return sanity to an insane world, the first step is to,
"It is not for
nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for
the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of the
collective [psychosis] and save at least his own soul, who
lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at
least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from the
fatal identity with the group psyche."
Carl
Jung
Civilization in Transition
But assuming one is
living in a manner free of the grip of the psychosis there are
further steps that can be taken:
firstly, information that counters
the propaganda should be spread as far, and as wide, as possible.
For the truth is more powerful than the fiction and falsities
peddled by the would-be totalitarian rulers and so their success is
in part contingent on their ability to censor the free flow of
information.
Another tactic is to
use humor and ridicule to
delegitimize the ruling elite or as Meerloo explains:
"We must learn
to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictators in our midst... with the weapon of ridicule.
The demagogue himself is almost
incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor,
he will begin to collapse."
Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the
Mind - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and
Brainwashing
A tactic
recommended by
Vaclav Havel, a political dissident under Soviet
communist rule who later became president of Czechoslovakia, is,
the
construction of what are called "parallel structures"...
A parallel
structure is,
any form of organization, business, institution,
technology, or creative pursuit,
...that exists physically within a
totalitarian society, yet morally outside of it..
In communist
Czechoslovakia, Havel noted that these parallel structures were more
effective at combating totalitarianism than political action.
Furthermore, when enough parallel structures are created, a "second
culture" or "parallel society" spontaneously forms and functions as
an enclave of freedom and sanity within a totalitarian world.
Or as
Havel explains in his book The Power of the Powerless:
"... what else
are parallel structures than an area where a different life can
be lived, a life that is in harmony with its own aims and which
in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? ...
What
else are those initial attempts at social self-organization than
the efforts of a certain part of society... to rid itself of the
self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to
extricate itself radically from its involvement in
the... totalitarian system?"
Vaclav Havel
The
Power of the Powerless
But above all else
what is required to prevent a full descent into the madness of
totalitarianism is,
action by as many people as possible...
For just as
the ruling elite do not sit around passively, but instead take
deliberate steps to increase their power, so too an active and
concerted effort must be made to move the world back in the
direction of freedom.
This can be an immense challenge in a world
falling prey to the delusions of totalitarianism, but as Thomas
Paine noted:
"Tyranny, like
hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with
us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph."
Thomas Paine
American Crisis
Video
| 
