I recently encountered this C. S. Lewis quote from his 1945 book That Hideous Strength:
Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others.
When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him.
But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
It seems to me that many “educated” people are so brainwashed that they are unwilling even to take seriously the notion that they could have been brainwashed.
And I write as someone who — at least to some extent — used to be one of them.
I have come to realise that here are many and various ways in which we can be manipulated psychologically. Below is an illustration from a video, followed by some examples from AI-generated images.
An illustration from a video
This video — six minutes from here — provides a simple illustration of how one form of mind control can work. It’s well worth watching, and the rest of this section won’t make much sense if you haven’t seen the clip. A transcript cannot do it justice:
It is important to note that the environment and the pressure to make a quick decision is an important element here.
If you’re wondering about the time on the watch, it’s worth considering the words that Major uses both in his introduction and also in the studio:
[1:14] I can finally feel the pieces coming together. Per-[FOUR]-ming is my dream and America’s Got Talent is the opportunity that’s going to get me there. Tonight, as I per-[FOUR]-m in the live rounds I need to be totally in tune with the judges…
And then:
[1:54] Can you hold up a clean sheet so that I can see you’re ready to begin. Good. If you can just hold that comfortably in your lap [FOUR] now… In a moment I’m going to ask each of you to draw a picture but be-[FOUR] you do that I want you to close your eyes… and focus on your image. See it in your mind and open your eyes.1
And just before he asks Howie Mandel2 to close his eyes and imagine a clock face, he says:
[2:32] Howie, in addition to connecting with our virtual audience tonight, I’d love to connect with you… Are you up [FOUR] it?
The use of these words is surely no coincidence, for mind control experts understand that
we respond, often subconsciously, not just to what we see but to what we hear
Some examples from AI-generated images
Images such as those below provide another type of example.
Consider this photograph of a man and six women walking down a street. What do you see?
If nothing strikes you as odd about the picture, look again.
…
Before
…
scrolling
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down
…
any
…
further
…
And then try this…
A scaled down version of the same image:
Below are three more examples. Try to look at them carefully before scrolling down to the scaled down versions:
The
…
scaled
…
down
…
versions
…
are
…
below
…
Or you can just squint.
I wonder how much of this sort of thing there is out there. And in how many other ways we are being manipulated…
Related:
For the record, there is also the word comfortably — or com-[FOUR]-tably — although I am doubtful that that would have had much influence
One of the judges on America’s Got Talent