Mind Control Theories And Techniques Used By The Mass Media

Created on Saturday, 05 June 2010 16:18

Programming Through Mass Media

Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet.

Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population, in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool to ensure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship.

There used to be a variety of viewpoints, ideas and opinions in popular culture. The consolidation of media corporations has, however, produced a standardization of the cultural industry. Ever wondered why all recent music sounds the same and all recent movies look the same? The following is part of the answer:

Media Ownership

The number of corporations owning the majority of U.S. media outlets went from 50 to 6 in less than 20 years. Here are the top corporations evolving around the world and the assets they own:

 

The Standardization of Human Thought

The merger of media companies in the last decades generated a small oligarchy of media conglomerates. The TV shows you follow, the music you listen to, the movies you watch and the newspapers you read are basically all produced by SIX corporations. 

The owners of those conglomerates have close ties with the so-called "world’s elite" and, in many ways, they are "the elite". By owning all of the possible outlets having the potential to reach the masses, these conglomerates have the power to create in the minds of the people a single and cohesive world view, engendering a “standardization of human thought”.

Even movements or styles that are considered marginal are, in fact, extensions of mainstream thinking. Mass media produce their own rebels who definitely look the part but are still part of the establishment and do not question any of it. Artists, creations and ideas that do not fit the mainstream way of thinking are mercilessly rejected and forgotten by the conglomerates, which in turn makes them virtually disappear from society itself. However, ideas that are deemed to be valid and desirable to be accepted by society are skillfully marketed to the masses, in order to make them become the self-evident norm.

In 1928, Edward Bernays already saw the immense potential of motion pictures to standardize thought:

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize, and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.”
– Edward Bernays, Propaganda

These facts were flagged as dangers to human freedom in the 1930s by thinkers of the school of Frankfurt such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. They identified three main problems with the cultural industry. The industry can:

  1. reduce human beings to the state of mass by hindering the development of emancipated individuals, who are capable of making rational decisions;
  2. replace the legitimate drive for autonomy and self-awareness by the safe laziness of conformism and passivity; and
  3. validate the idea that men actually seek to escape the absurd and cruel world in which they live, by losing themselves in a hypnotic state of self-satisfaction.

The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with the advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public has been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it. Propaganda (used in a political, cultural, and commercial sense) is no longer the coercive or authoritative communication form found in dictatorships: it has become the synonym of entertainment and pleasure.

A single piece of media often does not have a lasting effect on the human psyche. Mass media, however, by its omnipresent nature, creates a living environment we evolve in on a daily basis. It defines the norm and excludes the undesirable. The same way carriage horses wear blinders so they can only see what is right in front of them, the masses can only see where they are supposed to go.

Manipulation Techniques

The drive to sell products and ideas to the masses has lead to an unprecedented amount of research on human behavior and on the human psyche. Cognitive sciences, psychology, sociology, semiotics, linguistics, and other related fields were and still are extensively researched through well-funded studies.

The results of those studies are applied to advertisements, movies, music videos and other media in order to make them as influential as possible. The art of marketing is highly calculated and scientific because it must reach both the individual and the collective consciousness. In high-budget cultural products, a video is never "just a video".

Images, symbols and meanings are strategically placed in order to generate the desired effect.

Desensitization

In the past, when changes were imposed on populations, they would take to the streets, protest and even riot. The main reason for this clash was due to the fact that the change was clearly announced by the rulers and understood by the population. It was sudden and its effects could clearly be analyzed and evaluated. Today, when the elite needs a part of the agenda to be accepted by the public, it is done through desensitization. The agenda, which might go against the public best interests, is slowly, gradually, and repetitively introduced to the world through movies (by involving it within the plot), music videos (which make it cool and sexy) and the news (which presents it as "a solution" to today’s problems). After several years of exposing the masses to a particular agenda, the elite openly presents the concept to the world and, due to mental programming, it is greeted with general indifference and is passively accepted.

Predictive programming is often found in the science fiction genre. It presents a specific image of the future – the one that is desired by the elite – and ultimately becomes in the minds of men an inevitability. A decade ago, the public was being desensitized to war against the Arab world.

Today, the population is gradually being exposed to the existence of mind control, transhumanism, and an Illuminati elite. Emerging from the shadows, those concepts are now everywhere in popular culture.

Edited from: The Vigilant Citizen

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