Brainwashing – Learn How It’s Done So You Can Undo It
Brainwashing is perhaps a very well-known word today. We hear it in regard to terrorists, extremists and criminals way too often. But what most people fail to realize, is that brainwashing exists in everyday life too. Anyone can be a victim and anyone can be an abuser. People who brainwash others are not downright evil; they are simply sociopaths who like to dominate others.
The way to counter brainwashing abuse is to first understand how it works. Here are the steps that can brainwash you:
1. Isolation
The most basic and fundamental step of brainwashing is isolation. Man is a social animal; most of what we know comes from external influences. This is why isolation is very important for the abuser to brainwash you. It may
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Monopolization of Perception
One of the biggest strengths that humans have is the ability to form their own opinions. This ability is attacked by the abuser during brainwashing. It starts from the simple need for attachment, but it soon escalates to the point where your whole world revolves around the abuser. This leads to the situation where you cannot form your own opinions and think what the abuser wants you to think.
3. Induced Debility and Exhaustion
Our minds are capable of extraordinary feats. But all this would be rendered futile if you are mentally exhausted. This is what an abuser does while brainwashing you. Little things in life that give your pleasure are termed as "useless", you are not allowed certain emotions because they are "unacceptable" according to you abuser and feeling guilty even when you are not wrong; all this leads to a point where your mind is exhausted and simply chooses to give in to the whims of your abuser.
4. Threats
Perhaps a less refined step but effective nonetheless. Threats trigger our mind to choose between "fight or give up". And if the previous step has already exhausted your mind, you are more prone to give up to threats.
5. Occasional
Brainwashing works in Brave New World just like it works in society today. Their brainwashing makes their society not fight back and make them calm all the time. In the end this is the smart way for a government to control their society because everyone thinks they are happy because they have been brainwashed to be. Our society also gets brainwashed everyday. As soon as you turn on the radio or TV the propaganda and lies come rushing through the speakers. Today it is very easy to be brainwashed and the government is going to use this in their advantage someday just like in Brave New World.
You could take this topic to an extreme and ask what if someone was hypnotized. If a person is hypnotized and he is told to kill someone, who's fault would that be?
What’s more, with Robbins melding insights gained from work both past and present, could the insights gained from cognitive science, provide additional understanding into the ways in which totalistic groups are capable of “brainwashing” their adherents? If the frames or schemas are constructed and informed through social conditioning, it seems that they may be subject to re-shaping, and re-definition by a group or a society. While sociorhetorical interpretation’s scope seems to be extremely broad, it may be the approach needed to successfully engage and explain such phenomena.
Humankind has always had a thirst for power; over its peers, environment and spiritual beliefs. To quench this thirst it has gone as far as genocide; but has often employed more subtle techniques, such as mind control. In today’s socio-economical and political worlds, mind control plays a key role in dictating tastes and lifestyles; as well as controlling political thoughts, views, and people’s understanding of the world. It is accomplished using various channels to condition people’s thinking. Publicity and advertisement campaigns saturate people with products, broadcasting over radio, and television which in itself is a prime example. Many religions employ mind control, conditioning their followers to obey without questioning.
Fear motivates many people to act upon matters, right or wrong. This emotion has been important in many events in both works of literature, and in the real world. It has forced military geniuses into retreat, and influenced them to plan another method of attack. Fear can be both a positive and a negative acting force in one’s life, a quality that can motivate one to success as well as to downfall.
As the mind matures and grows, new opinions are formed with the help of the revolutionizing consciousness of humanity. The human conscious allows humanity to develop individually and gain unique cognitive patterns and thinking processes. However, these opinions can be manipulated by environmental sources, like the media. The media’s puppet strings can be used to influence the minds of the masses and control their overall thinking process. It takes away an individual’s freedom to think for themselves and form their own opinions. Manipulation is a key ingredient in attaining support for a side of an argument. News networks have this ability to twist the minds of their listeners and unconsciously force them to believe in their words. Two of the
Brain washing is wrong on so many different levels. When people are being brain washed they are not given the opportunity to think and act on their own. Some people might say that brain washing is a thing of the past, but in all honesty, it is not. Some type of brain washing is happening every day and people may not even see it. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, they started brain washing the people of their community at a very early age. In the novel they had the motto of “Community, Identity, Stability” and the people lived their lives by it. Today in our world we have brain washed people by extremely persuading them to pay taxes, to follow all the rules the government has laid out for us, we have the democratic and republican parties control and actions to elect people into office, and the whole idea that making kids go to college will guarantee them a better life. The devices we use to create such persuasion are statistics and media such as the news, radio, and electronic devices. These devices aren’t needed for brain washing ...
...take away the freedom of thought. It will stay with us until the end of time. Viktor E. Frankl illustrated this in his essay “An Inner Freedom” from the book Man’s Search for Meaning. He stated, “The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not the result of amp influences alone.”
Instead of supplant lies with truth, psychological conduct treatment just replaces unhelpful musings with accommodating ones. This opens wide the way to relativism. The cognitive behavioral perspective of human instinct is inaccurate. The theory is established in naturalism and hence is not discerning of the otherworldly and does not acknowledge the idea of God. All things being equal, in some ways the social cognitive view suggests the way that individuals have a wicked nature. In any case, it likewise recommends that people are equipped for self-salvation. We are most certainly not. Reconsidering our contemplations won 't spare
From any corner in the world you will be surrounded by propaganda: in the streets, in your house, even when you’re driving. Propaganda appears in many forms but I personally believe it to be the shaping of public beliefs, in which communication is used with the intention of manipulating. In short, propaganda is the art of brainwash. This form of art has been going for many centuries and has played an important role in the history of art, especially during the 20th century in which propaganda was used to persuade people to join the military service or to stand for their countries during wartime. At that time the objective was only one, nowadays there is more than one objective; how does propaganda influence the way 21st century society pre-establishes ideas and makes contradictions within taboos such as tattoos, marijuana and sexuality?
While many may believe humans are inbreeded with certain believes and morals, they automatically diminish the probability of being brainwashed. Literary works as Brave New World, and the government of North Korea, prove controlling the mind to be possible.
Coined by theorist Sigmund Freud, the psychodymanic approach to therapy revolves around the interaction between the conscious and the unconscious. It is believed that the mind is made up for three entities; the Id, Ego,& Superego. The id is known for its pleasure seeking drive and impulsiveness. Often referred to as the “devil on your shoulder” the id exhibits very little self control and is often linked with the unconscious mind. Driven by sex, violence, and impulsivity, the id has been known to encourage risky behavior that normally would not occur. If the id were dominant, a person would behave in a devious, and socially unacceptable manner. Contrary to the id, the superego acts as the “angel on ones shoulder”. As stated in Day,2008, “when the superego is in charge, we are perfectionistic and uptight and demand too much of ourselves.” The superego acts as the conscience by reflecting social standards learned through observation. When the superego is allowed to take control, it sets such high expectations and demands, that is is too difficult to reach such high standards. The only way to stop the pendulum of the psyche from swinging to either extreme is the presence of the ego. The ego is the mediator between the superego and the id, providing moral reasoning and the principal of reality. The reality principle acknowledge that one must not act out id impulses, but also realizes that one cannot live up to the demands of the superego (Day, 2008). The ego helps moderate between these two extremes with the use of defense mechanisms.
In this case, is it right that our minds in some way manipulated to overcome some things we feared the most? Is it a quick fix and for how long? ...
The history of hypnosis is full of contradiction. One can compare it to that of breathing; as hypnosis, breathing is an intrinsic and universal trait, shared and experienced by all human beings since the dawn of time, but it has been only decades that man has come to study and appreciate its immense importance (Kihlstorm 1). Hence, continuingly preserving its relevance to breathing, "[h]ypnosis itself hasn't changed for millennia, but our understanding of it and our ability to control it has changed quite profoundly. The history of hypnosis, then, is really the history of this change in perception"(Kihlstorm 1). It has always been present, while it is a naturally occurring state of your body, yet it is has just recently been dissected and experimented upon to truly comprehend its proper purpose and power. "Ancient Chinese, Hindu, and Egyptian texts all mention healing procedures that are hypnotic inductions by any other name"(Walkin 4), therefore the roots of hypnosis have come a long ways. During these times, the practice was preformed, yet with no scientific explanation, consequently resulting in the rumor of demonic, or spiritual work. After modernization and industrialization began to replace and extinguish all non- proven techniques, including hypnosis, hypnosis took several decades until its next prosperous upspring. The first application of hypnosis on the medical field can be credited to the famous Franz Mesmer as his work "can be seen as both the last flourish of 'occult' hypnosis and the first flourish of the 'scientific' view point. Mesmer was the first to propose a rational basis for the effects of hypnosis" (Walkin 16). Mesmer allowed hypnosis to flourish once again, but in order to be accepted amongst the new 'enlig...