It is entirely probable that most ideas commonly held by society are nothing but a product of media manipulations. We need to take back our thinking processes and stop taking the word of “experts” and “reliable sources”. A rational approach to life is based on sound reasoning, not emotional reactions or conditioned responses. We need to reason things out on our own way in order to know what is true or not. This is the principle of living consciously. Awareness makes the difference between pawn or master.

You must create your own system or be enslaved by another man’s. Anyone who does not do their own thinking will have their lives thought out for them by others willing to do the thinking. The bosses, the rulers and those in positions of control and power are the ones who are willing to do the thinking and create systems to direct the lives of the unthinking masses. There is a very wise saying: Fools will be fools as certain as fate. Men of wisdom, make them your tools. That, and only that, is the use of fools.
[hidepost]
Manipulative techniques were tried-out and by researchers, after a period of about 6 months, it was apparent that they were a success. What the researchers discovered was that only a very small group of people understood the process of reasoning and the ability to observe the problem as opposed to passing an opinion on it. This was the way in which 87% of the British public approached the war, and that the same principle applied not only to the war, but to every conceivable problem in society in total.

Having literally stumbled upon so profound a conclusion, the manipulators put it to one test after another during the war, so that in spite of hundreds of thousands of the youth of Britain being slaughtered on the battlefields of France, there was virtually no opposition to the bloody war. Records of the time show that by 1917, just before the United States entered the war, 94% of the British working-class bearing the brunt of the war did not have the faintest idea what they were fighting for. They were as pawns.

The only idea was the image created by the media-manipulators that the Germans were a horrible race, bent upon destroying their monarch and their country, and who had to be wiped off the face of the earth. Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them. The situations to which public opinion refers are known only as opinions. It is the pictures inside heads of human beings, of their needs, purposes and relationships that are actual public opinions.

These pictures which are acted-upon by groups of people or by individuals acting in the name of groups are PUBLIC OPINION with capital letters. The picture inside the head often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside of their heads. If you want to know the mass perception of people, it isn’t found in what most people are saying or writing about. It is found in what most people are actually thinking. What they think will show in what they are doing. You can know the thoughts through action.

Deception diminishes power. Knowledge is power, and lies diminish the knowledge of those who are deceived, and therefore diminish the power of the deceived. Deception obscures the alternatives that people have. It also clouds up various objectives people would work toward. Some people give up certain objectives due to misperceptions that the objective is undesirable or unattainable. Power is about choice. The more options you have, the more power you have. Awareness of the options brings the power.

Prominent psychologists have suggested that only ten percent of the population ever reason at the highest, or adult level. It’s a sad fact that most people decide what is true and what is not true by consciously or unconsciously basing their opinions on what makes them feel good at the moment. “It feels good, so it must be true.” Truth is truth no matter what you feel must be true. If you know something to be true based on sound reasoning, then use it even when faced with conflicting thoughts or emotions.

Psychologists have identified this as one of the “cognitive distortions” (or thinking errors). If you regularly engage in this cognitive distortion then you have opened yourself up to being manipulated by those that will utilize this weakness. Those that are most easily manipulated say, “I feel it so it must be so.” Those that reason at the adult level say, “I want to know the truth in spite of how I may feel right now. If my emotions conflict with truth, I will work on aligning my emotions with what I know is going on.”

There is the subversion of truth through the use of the “sandwich smear”. This is also known as the “propaganda of the lump”. This is the technique of lumping legitimate groups with good ideas together with violent, racist, or radical groups that have already been discounted. The legitimate group suffers from the created association when no actual association exists. This is a common tactic used by today’s media. They mention a good group in the same setting as a despicable one, or talked about by some.

This manipulation influences the target audience into associating the negative feeling it has for the bad group with the group that is now being unfairly persecuted. Those who are intellectually honest spend their time and energy in the pursuit of truth. Those who are easily manipulated, are in the pursuit of self justification and short-term emotional pleasure. Are you intellectually honest? Are you willing to forego short-term pleasure for long-term happiness? Freedom of awareness trumps bliss of ignorance.[/hidepost]