How to counter Evil Brainwashing

Did you know that a Brainwashing Manual exists? That’s right. It’s used by Scientology (the cult-like religion that believes in aliens and that Tom Cruise is part of). So I delved into the world of brainwashing and found out something interesting. It happens to us every day.

Every day, there are people using the same brainwashing techniques on us and on everyone else. In fact, I even realized that we use them on each other. What are these techniques?

Techniques of brainwashing

• Keep them scared – Making people think the world could explode under them at any moment is a great way to control someone. If you offer someone your ideas and protection while they feel vulnerable, they will feel safe, making your manipulative ideas seem like the correct ones.

• Play emotions – Emotions allow easy manipulation, especially when the emotions are associated with fear and sadness. Making a person feel bad when they don’t comply with wishes, or making someone scared to not do the “right” thing can coerce them into doing what is desired by the manipulator.

• Repeat, repeat, repeat – Repetition is key. The more you hear something, the more subliminal it becomes. If you were told day in and day out that your spouse was cheating, you would probably start to suspect something. So the same goes for other things, as well. If you are told your shoes smell daily but you don’t believe it, eventually you will because you are inconveniencing another human, which is something humans don’t like to do.

• **Encourage laziness **– This promotes a passive lifestyle in which the person is a couch-locked bimbo, allowing easier manipulation.

• Manipulate choices – Leaving people with choices, but making sure that those choices give the same result no matter what, is a good way to get into someones head. For example, instead of asking someone “Would you like some dinner?”, say “Would you like pizzas or eggs for dinner?” instead. When you do this over and over, it gives the person the illusion of choice and freedom.

• Remove self-awareness and responsibility – Make people think their instinct is always wrong, and eventually they will believe it. Make them believe that they are powerless without the help of others, but stronger than anyone with it. Independence inspires intelligence and will, which inspires revolt. Manipulators don’t want that.

• Children in advertising – Utilizing children to give flash vibes of innocence is common. If you show a funny commercial of a group of children pushing down an old lady for fruit rolls, it would go unquestioned because of the children and atmospheric music telling you that it’s okay.

• Intense intelligence-dampening – When people are fed information, keep the information in small snippets about many subjects. Like a television. This actually induces ADD by promoting short-term learning, which will train your brain to have a short memory. Try to not even use rationale in your teachings to skew things even more, like the infamous “war is peace” idea.

*Source: Null-Byte *

These are some techniques used in brainwashing that even exist in our daily lives. TV, politicians and advertisements use these same techniques to influence our minds. But something else struck me as I looked at the forms of brainwashing that these cults use to keep their people brainwashed. It struck me that I was using the same techniques for years.

Let me clarify, I wasn’t really brainwashing anyone. At least, that wasn’t my purpose. My purpose was debating.

Brainwashing in debate

It turns out that structured formal varsity debating encourages the use of these very same techniques in convincing a judge to give you the win. This next part will use a bit of debate jargon but I’ll try my hardest to explain it along the way. Let me now show you how the same brainwashing techniques are used in a formal debate setting.

• Keep them scared? Paint an urgent problem. We start off the debate by painting a problem that’s huge and urgent. Something that needs to be solved right now. Tell them that the problem is so big it’s worth sacrificing anything, even a few rights and freedoms here and there. After all, we wouldn’t sacrifice them completely, it’s just this one special case. This is a great way in a debate to justify the Patriot Act.

• Play emotions. It always helps to put emotion and passion into an argument. For example, talk about how we’re civilized humans and should move away from the concept of violence and punishment. It doesn’t really make any sense, but there you go. And you can always say that your opponents are heartless and don’t care about saving the children when they don’t agree with you.

• **Repeat, repeat, repeat. **Using the Rule of Three is a simple way that speakers and debaters do this, however, there’s more. By emphasizing and repeating arguments around a certain issue, the opponents and audience start believing that issue is important. This steers the debate into an area where you can win it. So you see, just by repeating it, you can change people’s minds about it.

• Encourage laziness? Push a negative case. It’s infinitely much easier to get people to disagree to something rather than agree to it. Especially when you’re talking to a bunch of debaters. Pushing a negative case means that you don’t actually find a solution to the problem when you’re the opposition. Instead, you just stand up and point out that the government is wrong, their case is wrong, and that they won’t solve anything (See? I used the Rule of Three there). A side benefit of this is that you make the government extremely flustered because they have to defend themselves left and right.

• Manipulate choices. We call these Even-If arguments. An example is on the topic of banning violent video games. First, say that the ban won’t work because the majority of people aren’t influenced by violent video games anyway. And even if (see the even-if there?) a few are influenced, they’re  people who already have violent tendencies and would have been violent anyway. And even if (again) there are some who become violent because of the video games, it’s not fair to punish the video games. Rather, those people should be punished for their own actions. Therefore, we shouldn’t approve the ban. All the choices lead to the same end. Manipulation much?

• Remove self-awareness and responsibility. In the debate, there are often arguments that say we shouldn’t do what’s right, but rather do what the majority wants. Democracy, the tyranny of the weak. You also get to push responsibility onto everyone else.

• Children in advertising. It’s not just children. The real concept here is that the end justifies the means. To make children happy, you don’t mind what wrong ways you use to do it. The argument often goes that it’s true we need to sacrifice, but we’re doing it for a much bigger reason.

• Intense intelligence-dampening. In debate it’s called matter-loading. Rather than giving out 2 fully-explained arguments in the space of 4 minutes, you instead give out 8 snippets of arguments in the same time frame. This often makes the judge believe that you have more and better arguments.

After realizing that the same techniques were employed in debating, I was extremely surpri… ok ok , I wasn’t surprised. After all, both brainwashing and debating are about persuasion and influence. It makes sense that they employ the same techniques in slightly different contexts.

In fact, the only real difference I found was that debating is very open about the fact it’s trying to convince you of something. Brainwashing? Not so much.

In truth, we all want to convince and influence people everyday. After all, there are some things where we think we know better and we think we can help people. When we have that feeling, the natural reaction is to try to convince them to think our way. Which isn’t wrong.

I fully believe we should try influencing others. The only problem is that most people don’t think the same way. But once you start thinking of everyone trying to influence you (albeit because they’re trying to help you towards the right thing), you then start taking everything as just a suggestion.

Removing blind faith

Once you realize everyone thinks that they’re right and that’s why they try to influence you to think their way, then you stop following everything blindly.

I’m always surprised that whenever I ask advice from my friends, they always say first, “Now, I’m not telling you what you should do, but if it were me, then I would do it this way“. It’s weird for me because I would never follow that blindly anyway. Even if they did tell me what to do, I couldn’t imagine myself taking it any other way than as a suggestion.

You see, influencing others is not wrong, it’s not bad, it’s not evil. It’s just a tool. The only issue is what you influence them towards. Something that’s good for them or something that’s bad? And you should always, always realize that it only seems good to you, so don’t get angry when they don’t follow your advice.

But there’s a problem. If these persuasion techniques are used properly, we can’t stop being influenced.

How to counter brainwashing

There are brainwashing and influencing techniques all around us every day. And none of us are immune to them. Most people believe that they’re stronger than others, that they’re somehow different, that they won’t fall for those techniques.

It will affect us in some way. It’s coded into our underlying subconscious to fall for these tricks. If you really are immune, then tell me that you’ve never done a single thing (whether good or bad) because your friends were doing it. Peer pressure much?

Rather than believing that we are somehow stronger than other people, it’s better that we find a counter. What’s the counter to bad influence?

Good influence.

If you find  yourself in an environment where there are lots of bad influences, counter that by surrounding yourself with good influences. Good people, good friends, good neighbourhood.

For me, one of those is my religion. Yes, religion does brainwash you a little. So does school, counselling, and atheism, and I’ve never heard complaints about those. TV does too by the way. But the main point is that religion gives you good brainwashing and gives you good moral values and a good way to lead your life.

The best counter to brainwashing isn’t to “get a stronger will”  or something. It’s to give yourself brainwashing with influences that are good for you. That’s why it’s so important for you to choose your friends. That’s why it’s equally important for you to choose your children’s friends when they’re little kids.

Good brainwashing counters evil brainwashing. Is it really so surprising?