Blog 3246 – 09.21.2024

Brainwashed?

How do you know if you have been brainwashed, programmed, indoctrinated, groomed, manipulated? The signs may be evident to others, but all too often we are obvious to fact that we have been seduced, manipulated, or duped. Others may be gullible, easy marks, suckers, but not us for we are educated, worldly-wise, and therefore immune to con-men, grifters, and religious and political charlatans. Really?

If we are over-sure of our opinions and think that even considering what others believe or think is a sign of weakness we may be if not already brainwashed quite susceptible to manipulation by those who would control us to help them accomplish their own ends which are usually wealth and power for themselves at our expense.

In 1988 after many years in a fundamentalist religious cult I began rising early and going for long walks before sunrise. As I walked I thought things over. I called this hour my quiet time. I tried to open my mind up to God. It is a dangerous thing, thinking, being open to new ideas, questioning. These are things our programmers, puppet masters, handlers do not want us engaging in. They want us continually reinforcing what we have been told to believe, to think, and to do. To depart from accepted dogma, catechism, the party line is to be a traitor, backslider, apostate, turncoat. The end result of my quiet time was that I began to questions things and was therefore unceremoniously asked to no longer attend the narrow cult meetings with those that I had long thought of as my “church family.”

One of my favorite sayings that young people used around the turn of the century is, “Free your mind and the rest will follow.” It reminds me of a Bible verse:

How do we know if we have been brainwashed, If our thoughts are no longer our own, but that we are under the spell or sway of someone else? When we refuse to even consider the possibility that we could be mistaken or wrong we have been brainwashed. What is true, what is real, does not need continual and constant reinforcement to remain so.

Consider the alternative, the other side. If we have not changed our mind in a long time, chances are we may indeed be brainwashed, in my opinion.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White