Manipulation/mind Control

[Illyria]

**Alpha I've been thinking about mind control, can't find a thread that "manipulation" would fit into...please move it to the Right area, if this is not it**

I find that manipulation is a huge form of obvious and not so obvious mind control. Some are very proficient at it, while others seem to be "victims" of it.

What is manipulation?
Manipulation is a set of behaviors whose goal is to:

~Get you what you want from others even when the others are not willing initially to give it to you.

~Make it seem to others that they have come up with an idea or offer of help on their own when in reality you have worked on them to promote this idea or need for help for your own benefit.

~Dishonestly get people to do or act in a way which they might not have freely chosen on their own.

~"Con'' people to believe what you want them to believe as true.

~Get "your way'' in almost every interaction you have with people, places, or things.

~Present reality the way you want others to see it rather than the way it "really is.''

~Hide behind a "mask'' and let people see you in an acceptable way when in reality you are actually feeling or acting in an ``unacceptable'' way for these people.

~Maintain control and power over others even though they think they have the control and power.

~Make other people feel sorry for you even though it would be better for them to make you accept your personal responsibility for your own actions.

~Get away with not having to do the things necessary to meet your obligations, responsibilities, and duties in life.

~Involve everyone in your life's problems so that you do not have to face the problems alone.

~Keep everything the same so that the "status quo'' is not affected or changed.

~Make others feel guilty or responsible for actions or thoughts which are yours alone.

~Get others to feel like they are responsible for your welfare so that you do not have to make a decision or take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in your life.

Manipulative Behavior Inventory
Scroll Down a bit

The negative effects of continued use of manipulation to control others are that:

~People will wake up to your "con job'' on them and be no longer willing to support, assist, or help out when you need them.

~You will become more likely to believe your own "con'' stories and fantasies and slip into a "pre-psychotic'' state with the inability to tell the difference between the reality and fantasy in your stories and lies.

~You will get caught up in the need to continue to manipulate and con because it is the only way people will respond to you since they won't be able to relate to you as a "real'' or authentic person because that side of you is rarely shown.

~People will find it difficult to fully trust you in the future and they will intentionally distance themselves from you for their own self-protection.

~You run the risk of loss of a healthy "conscience'' and you will not be able to see the wrongness of your lying, conniving and storytelling.

~People will be hurt by your behaviors because they will have opened themselves up to you by believing your "con job'' and then will be hit in the face by the reality of your scam on them.

~You run the risk of being the recipient of others' anger, resentment, revenge seeking, hatred, or rage when they 'wake up'' to how they have been manipulated, used and abused.

~You will use up enormous amounts of emotional energy in continuing your con of others and have little left to care for yourself.

~You will experience a greater degree of stress and anxiety as time goes on and your con story line becomes more complex and people begin to pick apart the falsehood and dishonesty in your story.

~You will experience depression and an emptiness as you realize that all of your success up to a point has been built like a "house of cards.''

~Your low self-esteem will be exacerbated because of the lack of ability to take pride in your hard honest work to become everything you were capable of becoming

How is manipulation a control issue?
Manipulation is a control issue because:

It can be a "politically savvy'' tool to handle over-controlling, intimidating, and autocratic people, places, or things, by giving the impression that the others have the "power'' when in reality you are freely doing what you need to do in order to politically survive and thus retain the "locus of control'' in your own hands.

The goal of manipulation is to control and overpower other people to do what you want them to do for you.

It is the unhealthy use of "power'' tactics to get something for yourself even if it robs others of their freedom of choice, reason, and rationality.

It uses control behaviors such as suicidal gestures to blackmail people to do and be for you the way you want them to be.

Sets up over controllers to rescue, as you get away with shifting your responsibility for yourself off on others, you will become more helpless so will seek out "fixers,'' "caretakers,'' and "rescuers'' to take care of you.

Hooks others since you might be an unchangeable and uncontrollable factor in someone else's life and yet keep that person "hooked'' into trying to ``be there'' for you when it becomes unhealthy or toxic for that person to continue to do so.

It involves dishonesty, deceit, use of masks, lack of clarity of messages sent, and pretense in order to get people to be the way you want them to be.

It can be a subtle use of control over others since you get them to do for you what they might not have freely chosen to do on their own will.

It is a form of mind control or brainwashing to control the thinking of others in a way which may not be consistent with their previous pattern of behavior, feeling or thinking.

Subversive means to get others to puppet what you lead them to do is use of power and control which is problematic and dangerous for those manipulated.

Power position since tt places the "manipulator'' in a power position in control of the emotions and reasoning of those being manipulated.

"Survival'' technique which allows you to retain control of your life to ensure you that no one takes advantage of you.

Power struggle tool, since in any struggle for power and control it is a tool'' which is used to catch the other side off guard in order to win'' the contest.

What irrational thinking leads to use of manipulation?

~If you do not keep others hooked on being involved with you, you will end up being ignored, unaccepted, or unwanted.

~Use of manipulation was the only way you have ever gotten what you needed in life so why should you learn new ways of achieving the same end.

~Use any means you need to "win'' since "winning'' is all that counts in life.

~Don't ever let others think they have the "upper hand'' on you so that they never can take advantage of you.

~It is always better to show the "perfect'' you to people than to let them see the "real'' you.

~There is a "sucker'' born every minute so if you work hard enough you can sucker someone into taking care of all of your needs.

~You can fool all of the people all of the time in order to get what you want out of them.

~You must get others deeply involved in your life's problems in order for you to feel important, the center of attention, cared for, approved of, and accepted.

~You are most successful when you are able to "delegate'' to others what you need to be doing for yourself.

~If it works use it; worry about the consequences later.

~Perception is reality, all that people are concerned about is their perception about things not the truth or underlying reality of the real situation.


Ways to eliminate manipulation in your relationships

In order to cease using manipulation in your relationships with others, you can try these steps:

First: Identify what behaviors you are using in your relationships with others in order to manipulate them into doing what you want them to do for you.

Second: Identify what issues in your life you are not wanting to accept personal responsibility for and which lead you to manipulate others to ignore or take care of for you.

Third: Identify your feelings about the issues in your life that you manipulate others to address or ignore.

Fourth: Identify what irrational beliefs underlie your need to manipulate others to take over the responsibility for the issues in your life.

Fifth: Identify what new beliefs about these issues would make you more personally responsible and a more "authentic'' or "real'' person.

Sixth: Identify what fears block your taking personal responsibility for these issues in your life and thus lead you to manipulate others to ignore or take care of them for you.

Seventh: Identify new feelings about these issues which would help you to be more realistic and more responsible as you face these issues.

Eighth: Identify new healthy, more productive coping behaviors which you can put into practice which will help you to become more personally responsible and less manipulative.

Ninth: Inform those people you have been manipulating to take care of you that you are now going to take the full responsibility for these issues on your own.

Tenth: Seek support from people in your life to assist you not to fall back into manipulating others to ignore or to take care of these issues for you.

Eleventh: Give permission to the people in your life to "call you on it'' when you are falling back into the manipulative behaviors by which you try to control them to take responsibility for the issues in your life.

Twelfth: When you find yourself falling back into use of manipulation, return to the first step and start over again.

Steps to eliminating manipulation in your life

Step 1: In order to eliminate the use of manipulation in your life, you first need to identify the behaviors you use to manipulate others to ignore or take over responsibility for your care and your problem life issues. To identify your manipulative behaviors, use the Manipulative Behavior Inventory in the beginning of this chapter.

Step 2: Once you've identified the manipulative behaviors you use to get people to do things for you to ignore your problems or to keep them off guard, you then need to identify who are the people you manipulate. In your journal, identify the people you manipulate.

Step 3: Why do you manipulate others? Identify in your journal the issues present in your life which you manipulate others to address or ignore. Answer the following questions about these issues.

A. How do you feel about each of these issues?

B. Why do you feel a need to manipulate others concerning these issues?

C. Which issues do you want others to ignore or overlook?

D. Which issues do you want others to fix or change for you?

E. Which issues do you want others to feel responsible for?

F. Which issues overwhelm you? Which issues overwhelm others?

G. Which issues depress you? Anger you?

H. Which issues do you want to run away from?

I. Which issues do you feel helpless to deal with? Hopeless to cope with?

Step 4: In your journal now identify:

A. What irrational beliefs keep you from successfully coping with each issue identified in Step 3?

B. What new, healthy, more rational beliefs do you need in order to cope with and handle these issues?

C. What thinking keeps you from accepting personal responsibility for your problems and issues?

D. What new thinking do you need in order to accept personal responsibility for your own problems and issues?

Step 5: In your journal now identify what new, healthier, more productive behaviors you need to develop to address your problems and issues.

Step 6: Implement these new behaviors.

Step 7: Inform people of your old manipulative behaviors and give them permission to "call you on it'' if you fall back into old manipulative ways.

Step 8: If you find yourself relapsing back into manipulative behaviors to get people to ignore or take care of you, then return to Step 1 and begin over again.

http://www.coping.org/control/manipul.htm

[Alger]

Very interesting Illy. I've always wondered why I come away so confused after a conversation with you. Thanks buddy. I think. I will now watch your movie. It better be good.

[Alpha]

Illy,

Truly a most excellent post and from my perspective and very a propos for the goings on here of late.

Thank you for asking for my opinion on where this thread should stand, however I think it has much value in it's own right just the way it is....mebbe should also be posted as a pre "mantra" in the members lounge for future consideration.

No doubt, that the very early forms of mind control began with exactly what you describe in your post....used by the individual, clergy, state etc. for ultlimate manipulation and control ...en sole and mass.


Grew alot more insidious and contrived as time went on and that's another story which I guess is somewhat well represented in much of the content here on IW.

Guess what saddens me most, on any past or current reflection is what that says and implies about us individually and globally within the human condition, relative to motivation and intent.

Guess we really are those "warlike" creatures for the most part....where ego, greed, supremacy often out weighs compassion, consciousness and global good intent for all in any nano or macro petrie dish in this 3rd dimension.

Type 1 civilization.....well.....

[Illyria]

I think so many of us use manipulation, like breathing Alpha. We don't even give it a second thought. After all I have to at times "manipulate" my kids into listening to me, or getting the job done. But I have fond just getting on their level and explaining to them why it is I need something from the, works just as well.
I think many people have a need to "win". But really what is winning? If you must ,manipulate to win said target, you are losing, really.

I just thought of the "greed" aspect of this tonight. Numbers, ratings, and bottom lines. TV stations, books tores, coffeehouses, everywhere, always being pushed to bring more of the green in.

I used to at one time be in Sales. I'm not a good sales person. I can not sell dog food to cat people. But one man could, and he seemed to celebrate the fact he could MANIPULATE people into buying things they did not need nor could afford. I wasn't interested in tricking anyone into anything. I did okay in my overall sales, and was never worried about being the "shark" or the top seller, to me it was a joke. I was good at my job, and good with people.

The goal of manipulation is to control and overpower other people to do what you want them to do for you.

I think maybe we should start teaching the word NO isn't a bad thing , right around at age 3 months. SOME PEOPLE have a real hard time with being told no or rejected. It is part of life as I see it.

[maryals]

Yes, Illy, excellent Topic.
Some quotes:
"Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures . A society, most of whose members spend a great deal of their time not on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy , will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it."

"Aldous Huxley was on the spot in the foreword of his revised 1946 edition of Brave New World which, perhaps more than any other work of 20th century fiction, predicted the psychological climate of our wired age."

From the page "Breaking the Trance" on the Adbusters site.

I have not been able to find this passage
in the forward of Brave New World,
and I do not know its true provenance -- ed.
-- A page on this site on / Aldous Huxley / "

And this:
"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
from Chapter VI: War Propaganda "

(italics mine) in short, "Dumb Down" the populace. Sound Familiar?

How about this:
"...in a military State or a feudal State or what we would nowadays call a totalitarian State, it doesn't much matter what people think because you've got a bludgeon over their head and you can control what they do. But when the State loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force and when the voice of the people can be heard, you have this problem. It may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule and therefore you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda. Manufacture of consent. Creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of either marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion."
Noam Chomsky quoted on the site of ANTHONY DOUGHERTY "
(italics mine) repeat from above: Manufacture of consent. Creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of eother marginalizing the General Public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion

-- Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! --

For a page full of excellent links for information about this topic of Manipulation, may I recommend THIS LINK

MaryAlice how about a game of Solitaire?

[Project]

I never learned more about this topic than by studying Aristotle's Rhetoric. For me, nothing more than that needs to be explained, but it takes some serious study. This is all rhetoric, nothing more or less. The study of rhetoric in today's society is fascinating, and basically overwhelming as rhetoric has supplanted content and information as the dominant mode of communication. When you impart information to someone, before you even start, you use rhetoric to make the person susceptible to your suggestion.

[Shecoda]

[QUOTE=Alpha]
Guess what saddens me most, on any past or current reflection is what that says and implies about us individually and globally within the human condition, relative to motivation and intent.

Guess we really are those "warlike" creatures for the most part....where ego, greed, supremacy often out weighs compassion, consciousness and global good intent for all in any nano or macro petrie dish in this 3rd dimension.

QUOTE]


I especially like the part about the ego often outweighs compassion.

[Maverick]

Type 1 civilization eh? Well I don't see that happening anytime soon. Yes don't we all like to think we are "self actualized".

[Illyria]

Some more interesting info on mind control, might have been posted elsewhere already.. but...

mind control (brainwashing)
Mind control is the successful control of the thoughts and actions of another without his or her consent. Generally, the term implies that the victim has given up some basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes, and has been made to accept contrasting ideas. 'Brainwashing' is often used loosely to refer to being persuaded by propaganda.

conceptions & misconceptions of mind control

There are many misconceptions about mind control. Some people consider mind control to include the efforts of parents to raise their children according to social, cultural, moral and personal standards. Some think it is mind control to use behavior modification techniques to change one’s own behavior, whether by self-discipline and autosuggestion or through workshops and clinics. Others think that advertising and sexual seduction are examples of mind control. Still others consider it mind control to give debilitating drugs to a woman in order to take advantage of her while she is drugged.

Some of the tactics of some recruiters for religious, spiritual, or New Age human potential groups are called mind control tactics. Many believe that terrorist kidnap victims who convert to or become sympathetic to their kidnapper's ideology are victims of mind control (the so-called Stockholm syndrome). Similarly, women who stay with abusive men are often seen as victims of mind control. Many consider subliminal messaging in Muzak, advertising, or on self-help tapes to be a form of mind control. Many also believe that it is mind control to use laser weapons, isotropic radiators, infrasound, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generators, or high-power microwave emitters to confuse or debilitate people. Many consider the "brainwashing" tactics (torture, sensory deprivation, etc.) of the Chinese during the Korean War and the alleged creation of zombies in Voodoo as attempts at mind control.

Finally, no one would doubt that it would be a clear case of mind control

More info--link

[Illyria]

in one of the follow-ups from previous^link

The "Not Me" Myth: Orwell and the Mind

Margaret Thaler Singer Ph.D.
Orwell, as others before him such as Defoe, Zamyatin, Huxley and Jack London, wrote about the "negative utopias." These were places in which man's most central capacities for reasoning creatively, scientifically and compassionately were gradually curbed and eventually stifled. Not only in "1984" but in his essay on Politics and the English Language, Orwell emphasized the power of words. Words represent thoughts and without the capability to express those thoughts, people lost access to them.

`Writers before Orwell prophesied centralized governments using torture, drugs and mysterious esoteric techniques as the feared methods by which man might be controlled. Orwell's genius was in sensing that combinations of social and psychological techniques are easier, more effective, and cheaper than the gun-at-the-head method of coercion. Social and psychological persuasion are also less likely to attract attention and thus are unlikely to mobilize opposition early and easily from those being manipulated. Orwell reasoned that if a government could control all media and communication, meanwhile forcing citizens to speak in a politically-controlled jargon, this would blunt independent thinking. If thought could be controlled, then rebellious actions against a regime could be prevented.

As 1984 begins, various totalitarian governments control and censor the media and squelch dissenting individuals. Perhaps more ominously and subtly here and elsewhere in the world, there are mini-versions of Orwell's Big Brother, Newspeak and Thought Police. Since the early 1970's there has been a burgeoning not of governments, but of independent entrepreneurial groups going into the mind manipulation and personality-change business. Myriads of faddist, cultists, quacks and "new age" and "new-movement" groups have emerged using Orwellian mind manipulation techniques. The groups recruit the naive, the unaffiliated, the trusting and the altruistic. They promise intellectual, spiritual and self-actualization utopias whereas the pied pipers of the past promised primarily social and political new worlds. The New Age pied pipers offer pathways to development, enlightenment and egalitarianism. Many later subject their followers to mind-numbing treatments that block thinking and subjugate free will in a context of a strictly enforced hierarchy.

Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, not themselves, most citizens like to think that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. " Other people can be manipulated, but not me," they declare. People like to think that their opinions, values and ideas are inviolate and totally self-regulated. They may admit grudgingly that they are influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to preserve a myth in which other persons are weak-minded and easily influenced, but they are strong-minded. People cherish a fantasy that manipulators confront, browbeat and argue people into doing their bidding. They envision Big Brother coming in storm-trooper boots, holding guns to heads and forcing persons to change their beliefs, alter their personalities, and accept new ideologies. Orwell drew on the wisdom of the ages -- most manipulation is subtle and covert. Orwell envisioned the evolution of an insidious, but successful mind and opinion manipulator. He would appear as a smiling, seemingly beneficent Big Brother. But instead of one Big Brother, we see hordes of Big Brothers in the world today.

Orwell's predictions have not totally, and perhaps may never completely occur because of the wondrous properties of the human mind when it remains free to reason. But his ideas serve as warnings of the extent to which people's thinking can be influenced.

The myth of mind invulnerability needs to be examined over and over to prevent Orwell's 1984 world from happening. In just the past half-century, the world has seen numerous examples of the extent to which people can be influenced. A number of these have been California-based phenomena. In the 1930's we saw the Russian purge trials, in the late 1940's the world witnessed the Chinese Thought Reform programs change the beliefs and behavior of the largest nation in the world. The 1950's brought the Korean War in which North Korea's intensive indoctrination of United Nations prisoners of war showed the extent to which captors would go in an attempt to win converts to their political cause. Later in the same decade Cardinal Mindszenty, the head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, and a man of tremendous personal forcefulness, strength of convictions, and faith in God, ended up being so manipulated and processed by his Russian captors that he -- as had the purge trial victims of the 1930's-- both falsely confessed and falsely accused his colleagues. As he later looked back on the manipulation and processing done to him, he wrote in his memoirs, "Without being aware of what was happening, I had become another person." These extremes of social and psychological manipulations of thought and conduct are often disregarded by Americans because the events occurred for away and could be dismissed as merely foreign propaganda, and political acts. The reasoning was based on the "not me myth" -- not in our land could such happen. Then we had to begin looking at certain events that were occurring the California and see that extremes of influence and manipulation were possible here. Charles Manson manipulated a band of middle-class youths into believing his mad versions of "Helter Skelter" and under his influence they carried out multiple vicious murders. Later Patricia Hearst, a kidnap victim, was psychologically and otherwise abused by a rag-tag group of Bay Area revolutionaries. They used Orwellian mind manipulations as well as gun-at-the-head methods to coerce her compliance. Then in 1978, Jim Jones manipulated 912 persons into history's largest mass murder-suicide phenomenon. Since him the world has seen other cult leaders such as David Koresh in Texas, Luc Jouret with followers in Canada, France and Switzerland lead their followers to fiery deaths. Hundreds of other cult leaders have gathered far more followers than Jones by promising new psychological and spiritual utopias. They have succeeded by combining various ages-old psychological and social persuasion techniques in an atmosphere os Madison Avenue soft-sell approaches. Because most of the followers have been youthful or poor, little attention and credence has been given to reports from ex-members, families and friends who report the effects of the techniques of manipulation used by the groups. Representative Leo J. Ryan understood the manipulation phenomena people were describing to him and he lost his life in a Guyanese jungle investigating how Jim Jones "bent minds."

Were George Orwell alive, he might be intrigued with the variety of situations in which mind-bending and thought manipulation techniques are applied today. His genius centered on seeing how language, not physical force would be used to manipulate minds. In fact the growing evidence in the behavioral sciences is that a smiling Big Brother has greater power to influence thought and decision-making that a visibly threatening person. As Orwell's last words in his prophetic book stated: "He loved Big Brother."

Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.


http://www.ideajournal.com/01msinger-orwell.html

[Captain Beyond]

Good info Illy,but prolly toooo long for many members taste here! It is also others people's opinions instead of your own,and that is a no no too.Better watch it!

CB

[Illyria]

Good info Illy,but prolly toooo long for many members taste here! It is also others people's opinions instead of your own,and that is a no no too.Better watch it!

CB

Well just in case anyone has spare time, I know sometimes I don't have much, but I look though the links provided.

[Topper]

Its never been a secret that many of the sci-fi writers where enlisted by the government for some R & D projects ... where do you think L. Ron Hubbard
got his start? Same applies to Huxley and what's his name in Sri Lanka
they all contributed to what seems to be turning into our current political reality.

What's new? Shakespeare wrote "Today's dreams are tomorrows reality"