We ARE in fact brainwashed - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Language, bias, ownership, influence; all media related topics.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14714475
I didn't take the quiz because that's the first step of brainwashing. HA!
#14714678
Godstud wrote:I didn't take the quiz because that's the first step of brainwashing. HA!

The test above tests your knowledge of what brainwashing is, and NOT your level of being brainwashed.

For anyone who hasn't studied propaganda, the test is a great summary of some of the things you would learn.
#14714680
I am above it all. I don't watch TV. I hate ads. You're the one brainwashed! You still pay attention to it all! I escaped it all and am in my own personal Nirvana of Ultraspiritualism™.
#14714699
Godstud wrote:I am above it all. I don't watch TV. I hate ads. You're the one brainwashed! You still pay attention to it all! I escaped it all and am in my own personal Nirvana of Ultraspiritualism™.

How do you know you're "above it all" if you haven't studied propaganda and refuse to take a test to increase your awareness of it?

Most brainwashed people think they are "above it all" because they don't know where "above" is. :lol:
#14714703
Maybe you are dull enough that you don't know where you are, but I am fully aware. You blubbering means nothing to me, and taking some stupid test to know I am above it all, proves nothing.
#14714790
USA USA USA

Let's look at the backdrop of the capitalist society for the majority in the west.
Where enslavement is totally accepted and encouraged. Where the game of life is rigged and mostly the privileged make it without hard work.
A system where self worth is measured by the amount of wealth one has.
Basically a system where only a minority will be satisfied with their lives and the majority who will be feel second rate and inadequate..
Where the individual is blamed for any failings in their lives not the fucked up system that engulfs the individual at birth, where the odds are stacked up against the disadvantaged.
A country that is basically a whore house where using each other is acceptable, infact encouraged.
A system that is carceral In nature and where freedom is an illusion.
Where the American dream is just a dream for the majority, where work is a sentence of 40 years.
Where unemployment and its stigma create a population that infact wishes to be enslaved.
Enslaved from an early age where the schooling is really just preparation for work.
When employed and being paid half what they are worth, is acceptable and using each other is acceptable.
Where knowledge for knowledge sake is not in the game plan.
Where majority are fond of their illogical slavery.
Where hypnotic conditioning surrounds the individual, where it is practically impossible for the majority to escape from it.
#14714807
My brain is simply too powerful, A23. I'm insanely humble about it, too.
#14714831
Godstud wrote:My brain is simply too powerful, A23. I'm insanely humble about it, too.

Ha Ha.
Many a true thing is said in jest. Only joking.
Personally I think you have to be weak willed or stupid to be hypnotised.

Edit.
What is the difference between arrogance and confidence?

An arrogant person only feels smart if someone else feels stupid. Their sense of themselves depends on thinking less of someone else. They insist on correcting other people’s grammar or showing them their flaws, as it’s the only way they can feel an approximation of confidence. Arrogance is about intent: its when ability (or perceived ability) is used to look down on others.

A confident person feels competent from the inside out. They use their talents to genuinely try to be of use, or to succeed at the task at hand. They might seek external validation, but they don’t depend on it to define their sense of their ability or nature.

In some cases an arrogant person may have more skill than a confident person, but the confident person will tend to wield whatever abilities they have with more calm control than an arrogant person can.
#14714948
On that note, I must mention that people have tried to hypnotize me, on several occasions, and failed to do so. I even tried to allow it to happen and nope, so maybe I am abinormal... in a good way. :D

Confidence and arrogance...

Arrogance is having an exaggerated sense of your own abilities whereas confidence is have strong self belief and assurance in yourself. I'd assume there's often a fine line between the two, depending on how arrogant they are.
#14715152
So are you saying that your arrogance creates some kind of physiological placebo bubble which guards you from the average cosmopolitan hypnotist? :lol:
#14715340
Pokemon Go is but one trick in the toolbox of the magi. Poems, novels, drama, cinema, video games, board games, card games, sporting games, athletics, magic tricks, music, art, VR.. it is all the craft of the magi and it is all crafted to beguile and to entertain. That many people are entertained by these products does not mean they are brainwashed. They choose to participate because they enjoy them, they choose because life is pretty boring once survival is easy and because life is wearisome when survival is difficult. The magi give us a desirable distraction from the ennui of eating, working, shitting and sleeping, they give us a desirable distraction from troubles of our life. Fear not the magi.
By RhetoricThug
#14715377
SolarCross wrote:Pokemon Go is but one trick in the toolbox of the magi. Poems, novels, drama, cinema, video games, board games, card games, sporting games, athletics, magic tricks, music, art, VR.. it is all the craft of the magi and it is all crafted to beguile and to entertain. That many people are entertained by these products does not mean they are brainwashed. They choose to participate because they enjoy them, they choose because life is pretty boring once survival is easy and because life is wearisome when survival is difficult. The magi give us a desirable distraction from the ennui of eating, working, shitting and sleeping, they give us a desirable distraction from troubles of our life. Fear not the magi.
Dismissing your naive sarcasm... Shouldn't you be in the digital field electronically sharecropping (developing the developer's software) data? I fail to understand why intellectual peasants wish to spend time trying to grasp things beyond their 'reach.' Pre-electronic recreational artifacts are far less 'potent' than post-electronic devices, especially when we are concerning ourselves with modifying group behavior. The old hardware didn't possess the capability to augment our milieu, because the old hardware couldn't interface with or (re)program simultaneously/instantaneously public information fields. Such a limited scope of total awareness enabled private perspective to exist (and in some cases, prosper), yet electronic awareness infringes upon the individual citizen's private identity and restructures the entire field of activity due to its ability to nullify time & space. Thus the private citizen is now a member of the electric tribe and 'flows' with the 'wave' of trending information, like an individual capacitor inside one socially engineered electronic schematic. Electronic devices promote group activities, with emphasis on collective participation.

Please note that I am not factoring in the individual's education. An educated intellectual peasant may be more tech savvy and able to avoid or bypass the information developer's neurophysiological conditioning. 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.' -George Orwell Thanks to the computer, social engineers can 'program' interactive environments that not only shape public opinion, but mold public action as well.

Please reread:
As long as the content or software intrigues the human organism, one can predicatively program the hardware to reinforce gene expression (epi-genetics). For social engineers, the vice grip occurs when the medium or vehicle of information creates synergy within the method of sensory engagement created by the information field (total field of awareness). Therefore the content or software influences 'perception' as the hardware or medium influences physiological reception through repetition. Repetition may 'condition' physiological traits due to the human brain's neuroplasticity. Social engineers must exploit the innate flexibility or adaptability of the human system in order to properly/incrementally (re)program human populations.

Propaganda (programming) must be total, education, entertainment, art, etc. The matrix of experience must lean toward desirable genetic expression(s), dictated by the information priest class (today's scientific social engineers) throughout each phase of civilization. In evolutionary biology, convergent evolution is the process whereby organisms not closely related, independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.



Thank your for time, SolarCross ;)
#14715714
This thread isn't necessarily a test for any individual's will/spirit. YOUR ability to cope with social engineering is irrelevant, since the group's inability to cope with social engineering will systematically override the individual's conscience. Please post your cute 'memes' elsewhere...

In America, socioeconomic statistics mathematically represent social engineering.

The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class
Americans have long lived in a nation made up primarily of middle-class families, neither rich nor poor, but comfortable enough.

This year, that changed, according to the Pew Research Center.

A just-released analysis of government data shows that as of 2015, middle-income households have become the minority. The trend is so firmly established that it may well continue; Americans have experienced "a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point," Pew researchers concluded Wednesday.

Thanks to factory closings and other economic factors, the country now has 120.8 million adults living in middle-income households, the study found. That compares with the 121.3 million who are living in either upper- or lower-income households.

"The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for the past four decades," Pew concluded.

And middle-income Americans not only have shrunk as a share of the population but have fallen further behind financially, with their median income down 4 percent compared with the year 2000, Pew said.

So what exactly does it mean to be a middle-income family?

Pew starts with the U.S. median household income, which is the paycheck smack in the middle of them all, lined up from smallest to biggest. In other words, half of all households earn more, and half earn less. Then Pew defined "middle class" as households that had at least two-thirds of the median income, but no more than double that amount. And it adjusted for household size.

Bottom line: For a household with three people, being middle class means making between about $42,000 and $126,000. If your family of three makes less than $42,000, then you are in the lower class. If your family brings in more than $126,000, you are in the upper class.

Using that formula, Pew concluded that back in 1971, about 2 out of 3 Americans lived in middle-income households. Since then, the middle has been steadily shrinking. Today, just a shade under half of all households (about 49.9 percent) have middle incomes.

Slightly more than half of Americans (about 50.1 percent) either live in a lower-class household (roughly 29 percent) or an upper-class household (about 21 percent).

But Pew also points out that Americans have all gained. That is, the median income has risen 34 percent since 1970.

So we should be grateful, no? Yes, but here's the rub: Upper-class Americans have seen their incomes rise 47 percent, while lower-class families have gained only 28 percent.

In other words, the U.S. economy has been growing, and we all have been getting wealthier. But people who have the biggest incomes have been pulling away from the pack in a trend that shows no sign of slowing. Those upper-class households are increasingly likely to be headed by a married couple with higher educations, the data show.

"Those Americans without a college degree stand out as experiencing a substantial loss in economic status," Pew concluded.

The Pew study is the latest showing lost momentum for the middle class. For example, in August, Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce released a study showing that high-paying jobs are proliferating, but not middle-income jobs.

The Georgetown report concluded that the U.S. economy now has about 1 million more jobs that rank in the top third of income-generating occupations. But the middle third jobs have not yet recovered from the recession — that category is still showing 900,000 fewer jobs, compared with pre-recession levels.

The Georgetown study's key finding was this: Since the recession ended, "almost all good jobs have gone to college graduates. Out of the 2.9 million good jobs created since the recovery, 2.8 million have been filled by workers with at least a bachelor's degree."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... ddle-class

Go to college, increase debt
You’ve probably heard the statistics: Americans owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 43 million borrowers. In fact, the average Class of 2016 graduate has $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from last year.

https://studentloanhero.com/student-loa ... tics-2016/

Auto loan debt
Given Americans’ love of cars and debt, it was just a matter of time before zipping past a new mile marker: $1 trillion in auto loans outstanding.

With the recession now six years behind in the nation’s rearview mirror, lending for automobiles has sharply accelerated: Around $119 billion in auto loans were originated in the second quarter of this year, a 10-year high, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Thursday.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/total-u-s-a ... 1439478198

Credit card debt
Millions Of Americans' Wages Seized Over Credit Card And Medical Debt
http://www.npr.org/2014/09/15/347957729 ... -a-big-hit



Unnatural debt accumulation may occur during cycles of intense social engineering, through 'hard' and 'soft' wars. Globalism may be the first global culture war. Of course, I'm well-aware that war may be 'natural,' but social engineering may always accompany war because the 'masses' need to be mobilized for the war. War doesn't 'just happen,' and the esoteric decisions must be embraced and reinforced through exoteric policies. In other words- structural opportunities & constraints may mobilize the unthinking majority.
Image

As social engineering conditions become more intense, the social engineers may rely on 'entertainment' to 'soften' the 'blow.' However, the entertainment (weapons of mass distraction) can be coupled with more propaganda, establishing one ubiquitous/efficient propaganda program. Debt in all forms may statistically represent social engineering policies. :)

Looking at the wealth distribution in America, it is easy to see how unnatural debt accumulation may be one symptom of contemporary social engineering.
Image

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency first by inflation then by deflation the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Last edited by RhetoricThug on 06 Sep 2016 03:23, edited 2 times in total.
#14715837
I am invincible!

What was my one-line post, anyways? I forgot it, now. How do I reply with a wordier post if I can't remember the original?

Also, Qatzelok, something to brighten your day:
Hungary Becomes First European Nation To Ban Rothschild Banks
http://livingresistance.com/2016/09/05/ ... ild-banks/
#14724654

The Psychology of Public Relations (Propaganda/Brainwashing) 101
The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann, and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point within certain limits. Mass psychology is as yet far from being an exact science and the mysteries of human motivation are by no means all revealed.
-Page 71, Propaganda, by Edward Bernays, 1928.
Today, science can map out group behavior with the computer. Of course, Neuroscience may be explored with the computer and help our public relations department formulate structured management formulas.
Computational modeling of hierarchically structured behavior, once at the center of the cognitive revolution, has been re-energized thanks to a new focus on hierarchy in behavioral, developmental and neuroscientific research. As reviewed here, recent models have elaborated on a number of earlier ideas but also added some new ones. In particular, there is an emerging focus on how hierarchical action representations are learned and on how they affect learning; a growing cognizance of the distinction between correlational and instrumental structure, and of the parallel between this distinction and the one between habitual and goal-directed forms of action control; and, finally, a new effort to provide a computational account for the role of prefrontal cortex in hierarchically structured behavior. While the latest crop of models provides new insights, it also poses new or refined questions for empirical research, including questions about how abstract action representations emerge through learning, how they interact with different modes of action control, and how they sort out within the prefrontal cortex.

1. Mounting evidence points to the existence of two action control mechanisms: a habit system that operates based on context-response associations and a goal-directed system that plans based on predicted action outcomes. Such systems would appear naturally suited to encode correlational and instrumental hierarchical form, respectively. In modeling hierarchically structured behavior, should we have a dual-system account in mind?
2. How are hierarchical representations of behavior learned? How might this yield skills that are useful across tasks, supporting later learning? What are the relevant neural mechanisms? Are computational techniques for hierarchical reinforcement learning potentially relevant in addressing these questions?
3. Recent findings suggest that hierarchical action representations may map topographically onto frontal cortex. What purpose might this serve, from a computational perspective? What are the computational factors driving the development of this topographic organization? What are the roles of temporal, policy and state abstraction in structuring this functional-anatomic hierarchy, and how might these different forms of abstraction interrelate or align?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957875/

Emotional contagions
Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others. Data from a large real-world social network, collected over a 20-y period suggests that longer-lasting moods (e.g., depression, happiness) can be transferred through networks [Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008) BMJ 337:a2338], although the results are controversial. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full





Brainwashing/social engineering may be enhanced by information technologies. More data processing=better/faster group manipulation.

RhetoricThug wrote:In America, socioeconomic statistics mathematically represent social engineering.

The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... ddle-class

Go to college, increase debt

https://studentloanhero.com/student-loa ... tics-2016/

Auto loan debt

http://www.wsj.com/articles/total-u-s-a ... 1439478198

Credit card debt
Millions Of Americans' Wages Seized Over Credit Card And Medical Debt
http://www.npr.org/2014/09/15/347957729 ... -a-big-hit



Unnatural debt accumulation may occur during cycles of intense social engineering, through 'hard' and 'soft' wars. Globalism may be the first global culture war. Of course, I'm well-aware that war may be 'natural,' but social engineering may always accompany war because the 'masses' need to be mobilized for the war. War doesn't 'just happen,' and the esoteric decisions must be embraced and reinforced through exoteric policies. In other words- structural opportunities & constraints may mobilize the unthinking majority.
Image

As social engineering conditions become more intense, the social engineers may rely on 'entertainment' to 'soften' the 'blow.' However, the entertainment (weapons of mass distraction) can be coupled with more propaganda, establishing one ubiquitous/efficient propaganda program. Debt in all forms may statistically represent social engineering policies. :)

Looking at the wealth distribution in America, it is easy to see how unnatural debt accumulation may be one symptom of contemporary social engineering.
Image


Take some time to consider the technological side of social engineering. Computers make group management easier.
RhetoricThug wrote:https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=166323
This is the information age, everything is connected. Yet, everything I write is outdated, due to the 'knowledge doubling curve.'

PoFo posters are obsessed with surface symptoms, or the tip of the iceberg. Did you know that the surface web contains about 5% of the internet?
Image



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... es-clapper

Internet of things will connect everything to the digital panopticon
Image
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=166025&p=14709204#p14709204

Panopticon: a building, as a prison, hospital, library, or the like, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.


My final point, technology reorganizes society. Your finite sensibilities vs infinite potentiality.

Image


viewtopic.php?f=50&t=165397&start=20
:excited:
#14724736
The best scene would probably be something from the episode where number 6 meets his "twin" or maybe the election episode.
#14725479
Propaganda: The Formation of Mens Attitudes
Jacques Ellul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagand ... _Attitudes

While I was studying Political Science and Media in University, I read the above book for a course called "An Introduction to Propaganda Techniques."

Ellul (the author) describes different techniques that have been used by various nation states in the past, with a special emphasis on those very successful propaganda techniques of capitalist nations - the ones that were perfected by Sigmund Freud's nephew using the (then) newfound window into how human dreams and nightmares work.

That his "science" was weaponized and used to dumb down hundreds of millions of unsuspecting people.... shows the administrative bankruptcy of late capitalism. It can't "share the wealth" because it's based on competing with other mammals for "prestige" even if this involves killing and creating less-than-ideal social conditions for the killer(s).

I stopped watching TV and Hollywood a few months after reading this book, after I had had time to digest the personal consequences of emotional manipulation via entertainment.
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