Once You Learn How They Try to Manipulate You and Your Family...

 

Mind control defined: "...the process by which indivivual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognitive or behavioral outcomes." Phillip Zimbardo

Computer programming - Place into a machine the data to insure desired outcomes.

"All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?" Nicholas Johnson

George Orwell noted that "All art is propaganda." Was he correct? Well, yes. Even if someone wanted to write a book, develop a script or bring a television show to life, there is no way they can do so without injecting bias.  So in everything you see or read, there is a message. However, it must be noted that few, if any, writers or directors try to stay away from injecting their own preferences and beliefs, and this is what we must be aware of when consuming their products.

If you don't believe the power of media, look how you, or others, react when a character you have identified with in some way dies in a show. You feel sadness, as if they were really dead. The same is true of if a character falls in love, gets married or is staring at "their" newborn baby. You react. So if a program can manipulate our emotions, is it any surprise it can manipulate our beliefs?

Edward Bernays was one of the first to recognize the power of newspapers, radio, movies and later TV. He is credited with being the father of modern advertising, not through rational persuasion, but emotional connection.  He caused women to take up smoking by linking cigarettes to power and liberation, not because they contributed to such yearnings, but because he associated the behavior with feeling like they did. He was sought after by corporations, the movie industry and politicians to use his skills at social engineering aimed at the masses.

Check this presentation on Bernays out and please subscribe to the channel:

Most people reading this will respond that this is nothing new, there is bias everywhere. However, unless people become aware of how subtle it is, then they too can be manipulated, and even more so, their children.  To be honest, forget about that proverbial discussion about "the birds and the bees" because they know all about that already. If you want your children to adopt your values, and not those of the woke mobs, you need to start training them to identify, analyze and resist messages they find in books, TV programs, music videos and movies; especially the ones marketed to the young. 

Few people realize that there are organizations that help those who produce entertainment to inject target audiences with programming that will gradually shift their views on any number of issues. These strategies usually borrow heavily from Bandura's social learning theory which notes that what we see around us becomes our rality, whether what we see is our family, or our "families" on TV.  We learn through stories and always have. However today's stories strive to get us to see small families as ideal, religion as outdated, or liberal "progressive" ideas as the most desirable. And these programs are employed on adults, yes, but also on children.  How many really young children grow up on Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny anymore? Check the shows out that are designed for children today, they are generally vehicles for pushing agendas, not to make kids laugh.

And the people who control the media are quite patient.  If they hit audiences with blatent propaganda, the targets will reject it (an expensive waste of resource with no results). Instead, they know that people will consume their programs, even with just a little, almost subliminal, item in the script that might irritate them, but not enough to turn it off. Over years of introducing a tiny bit here, a tiny bit there, the audience will become comfortable with the message, even though they would have turned off the TV in anger, had their younger selves been able to see what they are viewing today.  And their kids? The message is what they grew up with - it is now their norm. In fact, at some point, there will be a collision between the ideals they have been taught, and the values the family still says they support. And too often the new values win out.

Recent surveys have shown that young adults are far less likely to identify as heterosexual as they were just a few years ago. If we were to believe that sexual orientation was a fixed (genetic) concept, we should not see such a shift. So what is causing this trend? When Gen Xers were growing up, same-sex issues were more political (demonstrations, voting issues, etc) but younger generations see these as more personal.  Young women turn on porn (yes, they do) and see gorgeous female models in romantic, intimate scenes. Yet not only that, they have music videos, movies, and magazines aimed at their demographic showing how natural it is for women to be attracted to each other. Why the surge of young women identifying as bi-sexual? Well, it is fiarly apparent.

As for families, in the older movies (you know, romantic movies from the 1990s) the lead male and female eventually hook up.  Not so much in newer movies where there are "more important" tasks at hand than marriage, babies and a home in the suburbs. When young men and women grow up on a steady diet of this, reinforced by a toxic society in which marriage is already undervalued, then is it a wonder young people are hesitant to strive for a lifelong commitment?

And how does religion fit into this? Well, gotta be, as was once a popular phrase, "hip" and all.  Even conservative religions start using terms like "inclusivity" and getting more and more comfortable with divorce, non-marriage goals, careerism, and the like. Give it one more generation and these same religions will be where society is today, except telling you that it is still important to attend Sunday services and contribute money to the organization. They fail to realize that trying to reach out with a more "modern" outlook always leads to that religion losing significance.

So what to do? Sit down with your children or grandchildren and start educating them on how there is no such thing as a neutral message in media. I had a psychology professor who would sit down with his children and when a commercial came on they had a game of picking apart what the message is, as well as how stupid it was.  He equipped his chileren with teh ability to analyze content, and when one recognizes how manipulation works, the ability to resist the message grows significantly. Of course you can rely on going to church every Sunday and not letting your kdis watch R-rated movies to help them turn out right.  Sadly, if you do, you are going to learn what having an SJW, or woke, child is all about once they reach their later teens.

Like Science fiction? Like detective stories? Check out this work set in the days of Noah: 

https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Our-Past-Michael-Cross-ebook/dp/B01MY4WASN