Fear is the key to mind control and a traumatized mind is a highly suggestible mind. Create fear and there is the potential to control the minds of the vast majority of the populace.

So how do we create the conditions that lead to human mind control?

If people have a strongly held core belief in say religion or politics and are presented with evidence that refutes that belief then there is a strong urge to protect personally held core beliefs. They will rationalize, ignore and ultimately deny any honestly offered irrefutable evidence. Anxiety and tension is created between what a person believes and the uncomfortable knowledge that they are at some level wrongly believing.

A belief that killing is wrong but on the contrary that killing Terrorists is good or that saving life as a doctor is noble but that abortion is acceptable are good examples of this duality of mind. In effect the minds response is that the end justifies the means which in turn gives rise to moral relativistic ideas and a conflicted mind.

People ultimately want their expectations to meet with reality and in turn create that calming personal sense of equilibrium. Sadly there is nothing more human. Diametrically opposing personal ideas or beliefs and the internal tension this can cause is what psychologists terms Cognitive Dissonance.

In response people will naturally shy away from information sources that give rise to personal uneasiness or dissonance. Consequently people will resist information that is in conflict with what the mind thinks it already knows. This is called confirmation bias by psychologists. This is where the mind pays more attention and assigns greater weight to ideas that support a currently held personal belief. We have a tendency to cherry pick the evidence that supports a contention we already believe and ignore evidence that argues against it. We impose on ourselves a dis-confirmation bias and expend enormous energy trying to disprove ideas that contradict our world view.

The mind naturally holds onto accommodated beliefs at all costs. The fight or flight response kicks in and a knee jerk reaction is normally the order of the day when keenly held beliefs are challenged. The mind more generally takes a circling of the wagons approach to information that is presented in contradiction to personally held beliefs. In effect the mind narrows and closes off to reasoned argument. At this point of mindful entrenchment it becomes futile to argue with a closed off foolish mind.

Where there is conflict in the mind or dissonance and confirmation bias is at work this can sadly be the time to exaggerate internally held personal fears and control the mind. All the controlling agent, be it politician, religious leader or other agency, have to do is simply add minimal negative thought energy to accelerate the momentum of the mind.

There are some who are grand masters at controlling narrowed minds and manipulating opportunistic situations. This is no more apparent than when there are bombings or in situations of economic turmoil. In the 1930’s the German National Socialists used the cognitive dissonance of the people to ferment a total disregard for human life resulting in the forced extermination of Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill out of a keenly and universally held fear. The prevailing situation was economic downturn in this case and a commonly held belief at the time in Germany that the Jews had created these adverse economic conditions. The outcome was a socially narrowed mind which ultimately created a worsened economic situation with much attendant loss of life and limb.

In more modern times take for example the rise of IS and their evident intent to create the conditions for human mind control given their narrow interpretation of Islam and the consequential diminishing of civil liberties. This misogynous death cult it appears are masters of psychology and I’m happy to give them that recognition alone. This unrepresentative cult has the potential to become the overriding spirit of Islam and thereby have a very de-humanizing effect on the world. To be as balanced as possible religious fundamentalism in American with the death cult end of world notion of Rapture is just as culpable and de-humanizing.

Now in logic there is a term called argumentum ad numerum. It states that something is accepted as being universally true if a lot of people believe in it. But this is a logical fallacy. The truth is that many arguments have been proven false, even though everyone in the world once accepted them as true. As an example it was only a short few centuries ago that everyone believed that the Earth was flat and was at the centre of the universe. Despite that common belief both geo-centricity and the idea of the flat Earth have been scientifically proven false.

If left unchecked and unchallenged cognitive dissonance has the potential to perpetuate the very condition that is being guarded and fought against. Fear of the enemy will eventually become fear of the state.

Given current world events there is a real opportunity at this time for the inmates to take over the asylum. For those that consume ideas now is the time to question the orthodoxy of the time. One questioning voice taking the middle way has the potential to influence the masses away from a darkened world.

Be forever mindfully diligent, study your own thoughts critically and do not let the world go beyond the event horizon into self-consumptive madness.