Society management technology bypassing consciousness

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Child psychologist, publicist Irina Medvedeva and teacher, writer Tatyana Shishova talk with Dmitry Raevsky, one of the founders of the Teach Good project, about how to manage a mass audience bypassing consciousness, primarily through the media and mass culture.

The era of the "Great Combinator"

Modern living conditions can be called the time of the "great combinator". And although on every corner we do not find monuments to the hero of the novel "The Twelve Chairs" Ostap Bender, but it is his work and his life principles that dominate today in many public spheres. Everyone will probably remember the cases when he fell for the tricks of manufacturers or sellers of goods and services, from the purchase of which you get more problems than benefits. Or faced with the need to contact the service center for a newly purchased technical device (household appliances, telephone, medical device, etc.) - sometimes it is easier for us to throw out the constantly breaking thing and go to the store for a new one.

Many do not even suspect that the reason for this is planned obsolescence - the creation of goods by manufacturers with an unreasonably short life in order to force the consumer to make repeat purchases. And what is the cost of the widespread agitation to use credit money? At international economic and banking forums, the low debt load of the population is seriously considered as one of the problems of economic development. But compared to the media and "popular culture", all these merchandisers and managers offering "installments", "quick loans" and other supposed "help" look like children playing in the sandbox. They work with individual clients according to the prescribed rules and catch quite naive citizens in their networks. And really large-scale and professionally done manipulations, aimed at a wide audience, take place through large news agencies, TV channels, production centers, film companies and music brands. It is in this area, the main product of which is "SLOVO", that the most experienced combiners work. And although their product is often distributed free of charge, it brings very large profits.

How to manage yourself?

To understand how you can influence the behavior of an individual or a group, you must first understand how a person controls himself. And here one cannot do without a "boring" theory - the one that most are accustomed to ignore. Therefore, for better memorization, we will tie it to a vivid image. In our case, it will be the captain of the cruise ship, standing at the helm and looking into the distance with inspiration.

Looking at this picture, imagine yourself in the place of the ship's captain

After enjoying the beautiful seascape and the endless possibilities opening up before you, you begin to test how the ship lends itself to your control. Turning the steering wheel in one direction or the other, you notice how the ship appears to roll and the sun smoothly moves across the sky, indicating a change in course. You feel confident and at ease, and looking at you from the sidelines, an outside observer gets the impression that you are the one who controls this vessel. But is it?

Having looked at the movement of the ship from a bird's eye view, we will soon see that it maneuvers chaotically, that, despite the long voyage, the ship remained in the area from which it began its journey. And the captain, so proudly towering on the captain's bridge, is only in the illusion of controlling the ship, because he does not have the most important thing - PURPOSE. If there is no goal, then it is impossible to manage. To consolidate the image, imagine an airplane that took off from an airfield, but does not know where it needs to fly. How will such a flight end for him? At best - a hard landing somewhere in the middle of the field, at worst - the death of all passengers and crew when the fuel runs out. The situation is absolutely similar with a person who, having become an adult and entered an independent life, did not ask himself the most important question “Why do I live?”, The answer to which should have been a list of goals and life guidelines. If you do not have specific goals and you do not know where you are going, then you are like that captain, mindlessly turning the wheel back and forth and dwelling in the illusion of controlling the ship.

A conscious life begins with the answer to the question "why do I live?" and creating an ordered list of goals you want to achieve. Having defined the goals, you can compare all your actions with whether they bring you closer to the set goals or move away, and based on these indicators, manage yourself. If you do not have goals, then you cannot control yourself, which means that someone else will control you

Let's look at a simple example. If a person has defined “creating a strong family and having healthy children” as one of the important goals of his life, then with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that poison the body and intoxicate the mind, he will automatically be out of the way. He will find himself alternative options for rest and relaxation, which not only do not harm health, but also benefit - for example, physical education, creativity, team games, and so on. If a person, after leaving the care of his parents, did not think about where he was going, or for some reason put the item "entertainment on Fridays" in importance above "creating a healthy family", then it is quite possible that for him, Friday evening will become a "symbol of drunkenness", which is actively implanted in society through many media.

So, we figured out the first main point: a person's life can be called conscious only if he knows why he lives. As personal development and broadening of horizons, the list of a person's goals can change, and this is normal. The main thing is that it should be, albeit not ideal, but the one that you yourself have defined. Now we again mentally return ourselves to our captain's bridge. We have a goal and we know where to sail. Having determined the required direction of movement by the compass, we set the desired course and hit the road. The wind fills our sails, the ship confidently cuts through the waves and there is definitely a bright future ahead of us, right? Not really. Ahead of us are shallows and underwater reefs, and if we continue to move on a given course, then a shipwreck and, at best, the fate of Robinson Crusoe awaits us. What have we forgotten about? The fact that you need to outline the stages of your movement and pave a safe route. And for this, every ship captain needs a map. And the more detailed and competently this map is drawn up, the fewer emergencies will arise on the way. What is the analogue of a map for a person pondering how he can achieve his goals? His worldview.

Two types of worldview

A worldview is a set of all figurative ideas about the world around, formed from birth and throughout life. Everything that a person learns from the moment he first opened his eyes, began to hear, feel, read and cognize, takes one or another place in his worldview picture. And just as geographical maps can differ in scale, type of displayed objects and degree of reliability, so the worldview of people can be fundamentally different. Some are said to have chaos and a kaleidoscope in their heads. Today they do one thing, and tomorrow they do the opposite.

About others, on the contrary, they say that they understand all processes well, see cause-and-effect relationships, are able to predict the situation and perform complex and multi-level tasks. Why does the ship of life for some people crash on the rocks, while for others it is safely caught by a favorable wind? Often the reason turns out to be just in the quality of our "map", that is, worldview, and in the extent to which it adequately reflects reality. Therefore, a meaningful attitude to information entering the worldview is a vital condition for our "map" to be formed holistic and reliable.

Manipulation technology

Let's go back to the example of the person who added the item “creating a strong and healthy family” to the list of his life goals. Suppose that in the evening after work he comes home and decides to take some rest, sitting in front of the TV. Having turned on Channel One, he gets on a program with Elena Malysheva, who, together with eminent doctors, talks about the fact that regular alcohol consumption is not only not harmful, but even beneficial to health. Because alcohol, for example, dissolves cholesterol plaques (in the defaults it remains that it dissolves everything else in our body). Scary mock-ups of sealed vessels are demonstrated on the stage, which can only be saved by a bottle of "quality" wine. Malysheva refers to British scientists, the professors present in the studio nod their heads with an important look, the audience smiles and applauds. Malysheva's snow-white medical gown sparkles, and sweet words come from her lips that wine also protects from radiation, dispels boredom and helps to establish relationships with the opposite sex. After watching a scientific and educational program, our hero decides to have fun and turns on another TV channel on which the action movie is going.

The character of the film, whose strength and dexterity will be the envy of any real athlete, after the next salvation of the world, celebrates his victory in a bar, raising toasts to friendship and justice. After clicking on the TV channels a little more, listening to the new BI-2 music video "What Russian Doesn't Drink Whiskey" and slightly improving his mood with humor from the Comedy Club on the topic of not "drinking in our country is impossible", the rested TV viewer peacefully falls asleep. During his sleep, all the information learned in the day in the psyche is processed again and takes its rightful place in the worldview. And since watching TV proceeded in a relaxed mode, without any critical perception, alcohol at the subconscious level acquires many wonderful properties, thanks to which it gradually becomes not a person's adversary in creating a healthy family, but a “friend and helper”.

Now the sound of clinking glasses and any alcoholic theme in our viewer begins to evoke positive emotions, since subconsciously this whole sphere for a person turns out to be filled with creative meanings. After all, our emotions and desires, the reasons for which we ourselves are quite difficult to explain (for this we must at least stop and think seriously), are directly related to the algorithms inherent in our subconsciousness, and the images formed in the worldview. And what could be more effective than managing a person's desires and emotions?

It is at this level that the main modern combinators work, knowing that a person can be controlled by influencing his worldview and forming false stereotypes and misconceptions about the world around him. There is no need to convince or argue with anyone. Just create so-called "entertainment content" and put into it everything that needs to be brought into the life of your audience: vulgarity, alcohol, drugs, glamorous brands, consumerism, perversion, selfishness, and so on. Those who like to have fun will safely learn all this and gradually begin to embody in their lives, and if there are a majority of them, then in the life of the whole society.

And from this point of view, Hollywood is not a "dream factory", but a "factory of desires", the very ones in pursuit of which many waste their lives. In order to better understand how great the impact of this kind of control, let's think about how the process of learning to drive a car proceeds. At the first stage, a person studies the rules of the road, remembers the signs, understands the engine and so on. Then, together with the instructor, he gets behind the wheel and receives the first driving lessons. Usually they proceed very intensely: the palms are sweating, the pedals are not pressed, and there is not enough attention for everything. But now, finally, the exams are passed, and we begin to drive the car on our own. Not even a month has passed when driving a car not only ceases to deliver any troubles, but on the contrary, it begins to bring joy. After some time, the driving process completely switches to automatic mode, and we can calmly communicate or listen to music while driving. At this moment, our subconscious is responsible for driving and the situation on the road. Now imagine that your subconscious mind was not programmed for various patterns of behavior by yourself, as in the case of a car, and not even by your parents, who sincerely wish you well, but by someone sitting on the other side of the screenand pursuing their own selfish goals? And think about how many people today spend their free time in front of the TV and go to cinemas to relax and not think about anything - but in fact, open your psyche to load everything that is presented in a bright picture from special effects and love stories? What part of your life have YOU PERSONALLY spent absorbing so-called "entertainment content"? Drawing our analogy with a ship or an airplane, modern people, like modern ships, also pass a huge part of their route in autopilot mode. And the "autopilot" itself is not bad, the only question is, what algorithms it contains, who sets it up and for what purposes.

And here we are again on the captain's bridge. In our hands we have a map that is pretty crumpled, but seems to be cleared of garbage and mistakes, which should lead us to the bright future that we have chosen for ourselves. Will it be possible to swim there now? It depends on many factors - whether the captain has the will, whether he knows the structure of the ship, whether he is ready to overcome obstacles, whether there are faithful companions at hand, whether, in the end, there will be a fair wind. But that's a completely different story …

Dmitry Raevsky