Anna Brix Thomsen
- Jul 5, 2013
- 7 min read

The Hijacking of Your Mind – (The Propaganda of Paranoia in Education Pt.2): DAY 34

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In this post we are going to have a closer look at the extensive dissemination of propaganda in and through our educational systems. Because most people’s minds, when they hear the word ‘propaganda’ immediately jump to images of Nazi leaflets or Russian billboards or other typical fascist or totalitarian historical forms of propaganda. Seldom do we consider ourselves the recipients of propaganda, which ironically has been one of the greatest achievements of the propaganda of the consumer capitalist system that is now virtually embedded into every home, every kitchen, every nursery and every mind on earth.

A specific problem with propaganda is that it is a form of implicit subjugation that works through the persistent flow of particular forms of information and the simultaneous suppression of other forms of information that creates an artificial environment, like a bubble that cultivates a specific mind-set or world-view that can’t easily be broken once it is embedded within the minds of the individuals who will often fight for it even though it might have destructive effects on their lives. This process is most easily done within the first seven years of a child’s life because that is where we work like sponges sucking all and every information in innocently and with a passion to get to know and interact with the world around us. In sociology it is the process we call ‘socialization’ – the process of becoming an individual belonging to a specific culture, family, religion and society.

“And so, it’s been a real success – one of the great business successes in the United States – to break down organization, to separate people too: it’s part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that’s the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they’re trapped. You don’t have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they’re alone.” – Noam Chomsky

Propaganda has to be enforced repetitively and can therefore be characterized as a form of deliberate brainwashing. Parents do it when they tell their children the same moral stories over and over until the child stops asking questions and integrates the stories into their minds and bodies as ‘absolute truth’ often laced with immense fear and paranoia that ensures that the child is kept within certain limits and bounds that it never strays from because it has defined itself according to it.

Now – there isn’t anything particularly ‘wrong’ with presenting information repetitively to children as part of an education process although there are surely more effective ways that can be developed which we will discuss in blog-posts to come. The problem is when the information presented has it’s starting-point in principles and values that are fundamentally flawed and based on the paranoia of the adults whether these are parents, priests, politicians or teachers.

And everyone that exists on earth has got their ‘life values’ and principles from somewhere, from parents, from media, from school, from church. But no one actually stops up and asks whether these values and principles are Best – for the individual and for the world as a whole. And we most often do not even realize that the values we believe to be ‘true’ and ‘right’ are values we’ve been subjugated into believing already before our seventh year. So even if we do actually start questioning the traditional beliefs and values of our environment, many will recognize the experience that it is difficult to break free of such programmed beliefs – because it has become a part of us to such an extent that it feels like it has been sown into the very fabric of our being, mind and physical body.

And when we have a school system, a family system and a general societal system that is based on paranoia and the aggrandizement of consumer capitalism we literally stand no chance of ever breaking free of the propaganda that is programmed into us.

Because we no longer live in the real world. We live in a bubble within a bubble where the outer bubble is the entertainment industries, the shopping sprees, the health craze, the ‘happily ever after’ fantasies, the sex fantasies, the drugs and alcohol frenzies, the ‘career latter’ illusion and the quest for ‘spiritual enlightenment’ – and if one have a look within oneself: in the middle of all that we are sitting inside a tiny bubble inside ourselves in total petrification, suppression and apathy towards the real world and ourselves.

We know so little about how the world actually works, how the banking and tax systems work – how the environment is being cared for or destroyed at a daily basis or even how our own bodies operate and function. Many people can’t read and even if they can, they don’t or they capitulate with a sigh of relief to the ‘light stuff’ like crime novels or glossy magazines.

And while we try our best to keep our head below the water that is the real world, life on earth is crashing down around us and the systems we have put in place to manage life on earth are unraveling at massive speed.

The only way out of this is to break through the brainwashing and first of all come to terms with the fact that virtually everything we know and care about is a fabrication meticulously engraved into our minds and bodies to make us ‘feel’ and ‘think’ that which will make us effective as ‘consumer citizens’ living in a perpetual state of paranoia, greed and desire. When we’ve come to terms with that, we can begin pulling the information apart and start investigating whether the values we hold so dear are in fact what is best for us and for the world as a whole or if they are mere illusions and delusions of self-interest and paranoia.

Propaganda is only necessary when you’re living on a lie – because only lies has to be constantly maintained and controlled to prevent the truth from slipping out. It’s exactly the same within our own mind. We keep telling ourselves the same lies and convince ourselves they are true because once we stop – reality knocks on our front door.

It is evident that we won’t change the world to a place where everyone can live together in peace and reciprocal prosperity until we stop the propagandization of ourselves to live in bubbles of paranoia and suppression – and it is evident that for that to happen we require changing the economic systems of the world as that is what is currently driving us further and further into paranoia and delusion while driving the earth to the brink of destruction. But for that to happen we have to start with breaking the brainwashing within ourselves.

So how can you tell if you are under the influence of paranoia? If you spend your days in your mind imagining, fantasying, daydreaming, worrying – then you have been brainwashed. If you care more about fashion, celebrities or new gadgets then you know you have been brainwashed. If you go to work every day and hate or dislike your job, but feel completely powerless towards changing your situation because you have to survive, you’ve been brainwashed. If you go to bed fantasizing about becoming spiritually enlightened or that there’s a higher meaning with the suffering taking place on earth, then you’ve been brainwashed. If you wake up in the morning thinking about what not to eat so that you can stay thin and find your one true love, you’ve been brainwashed. There is literally no part of our day that doesn’t come from one point of brainwashing or another. And they’re all connected to the consumer system that is coming at us from all directions to fixate us into such a state of paralyzation that when the day comes where we lose everything, we won’t know what hit us and we’ll even beg for more.

Have a look at it: it simply makes no sense to prioritize such things when the world is literally falling apart around us. See – what should matter to us is real life – our life and the lives of everyone else, including the animals and the planet as a whole. If we dislike our jobs and hate being wage slaves – then let’s investigate how we’ve created such a system where it is necessary for us to sell ourselves to live and sustain ourselves from the resources of the earth that by no means can be claimed to be ’owned’ by anyone. If all we care about is fashion and becoming thin to look attractive, then how about investigating how we created such experiences of inferiority that makes us believe that we aren’t good enough or valuable by simply being ourselves? If we constantly dream ourselves out into space to a different reality where everything is shiny and perfect, why not look at what it is about living here on earth that we’re trying to run away from – and then change that?

This is what we are working with in the Equal Life Foundation and through the proposal of an economic system where Basic Income is Guaranteed from birth for every citizen and where the resources of a country belongs to the people and not to shady corporate entities that has no interest in maintaining the equilibrium of the earth because the people operating it are as brainwashed as we are and can’t see or care about what it is they’re doing because they’re blinded with the paranoia of corporate capitalism.

Until next time…

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Research material and bibliography:

Chris Hedges (2009) Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Democracy and Education in the 21st Century – Interview with Noam Chomsky:

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/16703-democracy-and-education-in-the-21st-century-part-1-dan

Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the Earth?

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17402-who-owns-the-earth

The Hijacking of Your Mind – (The Propaganda of Paranoia in Education Pt.2): DAY 34

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