Mind Conditioning & Control

I saw this image in a recent article I read on WIRED. The article itself is worth reading but this picture is in itself replacing the thousand words that I wanted to write on this topic of mind conditioning and control.

Its more than recent that I was inclined to look beyond the obvious and realize how easy it is to control minds and condition them to think in a particular way. How we all have been victim to a very huge conspiracy of making us think the way we do today. For the not so cynical, even if there is no conspiracy, how unintentionally with the things we watch and read, we have now trained our mind to react in a particular way to events.

We also know that the brain has the virtually existent "mind" which better explained is a hardware-software kind of relationship. Brain is the hardware and mind is the software. The interesting part is that it is an intelligent software which learns and applies and then learns a bit more from the application. Repeat cycles of cause and effect since the time we are little, develop what is later better known as "instinct".

Lets take a little step backward and observe as I take you through a life-cycle. When you are born, your mind has only vague ideas of sounds as the human baby is able to learn on the sounds listened to after 6 months of conception. With eyes wide open, after being born, the child starts linking voices to images. The mother, the father, the music, and relies on soothing stuff. Anything abrupt is taken as a learning element of the mind, something not immediately liked.

As we grow older, we learn the basic rules of cause and effect, how good things done are treated with a golden star or a pat on the back and how bad things lead into punishment or standing in the corner type punishments. As we grow further, we get into school and yes TV, the avoidable-if-possible-but-impossible threat becomes more accessible to us as we grow up. If this is not closely monitored, the mind can easily develop in the not so ideal way as we would like to have it developed.

Depending on the environment, the culture, the country you are in, the mind gets trained under those circumstances. Hence a child growing up in a poor family gets to experience a different set of things compared to a child growing up in a rich family. A child growing up in the west will have a different type of experience than a child growing up in the east. Same thing would apply for a child growing in a developed country compared to a 3rd-world developing country. We are talking about the same brain and mind but the factors under which it learns is what defines how it will apply logic to various situations upcoming in life.

In fact people talk about character traits. I think these are linked to the mind as well and will depend on how the mind was trained. Talk about the people in the army, they get trained in situations repeatedly so that they could "instinctively" react. Talk about air force pilots, talk about doctors. You keep practicing, you keep experiencing life and your mind improves and conditions itself from all of what goes on around it or what it was put through, continuously learning and absorbing whether good or bad.

So the main thought is, what if somebody could control how a mind is conditioned. What if somebody could govern what kids read and learn in school? The educational curriculum. What if somebody could control what you see on TV, what you read in the news? What if somebody could control both, the "causes" and the "effects" and not either as we are led to believe? What if somebody could control what leads you to believe what is right or wrong? What if somebody could control what is right or wrong? What if wrong was supposed to be right and right was supposed to be wrong and we have been taught the basics incorrectly?

Think about it. Think about how many times your opinion was driven by something you saw or read and not by the pure creative thought of your mind. In fact, what is "pure" anyway? The "pure" that we think may have already been infiltrated with the "muddy", based on all the things we have been through.

This post was inspired by some self-realization on the above. The first thing is to accept the above does happen, it is not avoidable. Once you have crossed that then you would not let your first reaction to something, also called "instinct", drive your decision making. Always give it another thought, read another opinion, start neutral and build on to something. This will lead you to be more successful and more independent and do justification to your "individuality" in this world.

Not everybody is made to be a leader but everybody doesn't need to be a "blind" follower either. Have a pure self-created opinion and make your contribution to this world. If you lead, you need to have this. If you follow, make a self-aware and researched decision before going with somebody's opinion.

There are and will always be tough times ahead, that is the nature of this world. Be prepared for it.