How you really make decisions

[Constance]

Hello everyone

I was inspired to share this video called, How You Really Make Decisions made by BBC Horizon in 2016. I have shared this elsewhere but I feel it needs front and centre in these trying times.

There are some great takeaways to be found in this video but there was one part of the video that really stood out for me and it was around confirmation bias.

In this great video, there was an experiment carried out.

The subjects of the experiment involved a mixture of people, those who were trained intelligence assets and those who were novices. Both were asked to correctly identify who the terrorists were in a mock terrorist attack scenario.

The subjects were asked to thwart a terrorist attack upon a made-up city. They were asked to analyze a wealth of data from all sources such as social media, government agencies, emergency services and mobile phones.

When the subjects were finally asked to correctly identify the terrorists, eleven out of the twelve subjects gave the wrong answer. The eleven who incorrectly identified the terrorists were the trained intelligence assets. The only subject who correctly identified the terrorists was the novice.

What this experiment demonstrated was that experts can also be affected by confirmation bias.

The implications for this are enormous and effect every professional field within society.

However, what this video also highlights is that we are all subject to confirmation bias, purely because of our conditioning and programming.

I know that we all want to look at this unfolding situation with COVID 19-84 from every conceivable angle in order to put all the pieces of the puzzle together but how can we recognise our own confirmation biasses around subjects? And if so, how do we change that trajectory or how do we ensure that we can transcend these biasses?

My apologies in advance for the link. This was the only link I could find. The BBC have a worldwide copyright on this material.




Source: https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x3q4alx?retry

[Ernie Nemeth]

Thanks Constance. Informative video.

I see that I've been lead by a forward confirmation bias since I was about 17. Back then info was hard to come by, so I had to compile a file with pertinent data to my search for proof that science was moving down an intellectual dead end based on its own cognitive bias. Funny how I saw their bias but not my own. I have rejected much hard data because it did not fit my premise.

Risk aversion based on the perception of loss is an interesting concept that probably lead to me finally deciding to quit the money game entirely, and is in part why I have so little regard for money at all. 'It doesn't work for me so why bother even trying', type thinking brought about by repeated losses over decades.

Not sure what I can do about it since the video makes the claim that such illogical, type1 thinking is innate and has probably been with us for many millions of years, since our ancestors were monkeys themselves, if we give them the benefit of the doubt about our lineage.

[Constance]

Why do we believe things that aren't true?

"...In the nineteen eighties, a pyschologist named Thomas Landeau set out to estimate the size of an individuals knowledge base in bytes. The same scale that is used to measure computer memory. One approach he took was to analyse the result of memory experiments, where people are asked to study some pictures or words or bits of music, then later tested to see if they recognised them. Using the data, he was able to estimate the rate at which we acquire knowledge and also the rate at which we forget what we learned and then, he extrapolated to a seventy year life span. So, how much do you know? Landeau's estimate... one gigabyte..."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jobYTQTgeUE

When I consider this, it is very humbling indeed and I have to consider that I may not have all the pieces of the puzzle to any given situation I find myself in, or in relation to another person.

[Gemma13]

Posted by Constance (here)
Hello everyone

I was inspired to share this video called, How You Really Make Decisions made by BBC Horizon in 2016. I have shared this elsewhere but I feel it needs front and centre in these trying times.

There are some great takeaways to be found in this video but there was one part of the video that really stood out for me and it was around confirmation bias.

In this great video, there was an experiment carried out.

The subjects of the experiment involved a mixture of people, those who were trained intelligence assets and those who were novices. Both were asked to correctly identify who the terrorists were in a mock terrorist attack scenario.

The subjects were asked to thwart a terrorist attack upon a made-up city. They were asked to analyze a wealth of data from all sources such as social media, government agencies, emergency services and mobile phones.

When the subjects were finally asked to correctly identify the terrorists, eleven out of the twelve subjects gave the wrong answer. The eleven who incorrectly identified the terrorists were the trained intelligence assets. The only subject who correctly identified the terrorists was the novice.

What this experiment demonstrated was that experts can also be affected by confirmation bias.

The implications for this are enormous and effect every professional field within society.

However, what this video also highlights is that we are all subject to confirmation bias, purely because of our conditioning and programming.

I know that we all want to look at this unfolding situation with COVID 19-84 from every conceivable angle in order to put all the pieces of the puzzle together but how can we recognise our own confirmation biasses around subjects? And if so, how do we change that trajectory or how do we ensure that we can transcend these biasses?

My apologies in advance for the link. This was the only link I could find. The BBC have a worldwide copyright on this material.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3q4alx?retry

The Confirmation Bias Experiment is @30:30 - 39:45.

Trained and novice analysts are deliberately set up and tested for confirmation bias in a simulated event.

1 (novice) out of 12 analysists didn't succumb to confirmation bias.

What's further interesting is the supervisor being able to monitor when bias kicks in by analysing the analyists.

So there are ways confirmation bias can be minimalised in professional environments.  But for us we just gotta keep reminding ourselves to always look at oppositional data when making choices and decisions.

[Constance]

Would you know if you were being manipulated? I ask this rhetorical question because most people would like to think that they are beyond manipulation or mind control.

In this very telling experiment with Derren Brown, we can see how easily these two advertising executives were duped using a technique called NLP.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YQXe1CokWqQ

[Constance]

What if you are not making the decisions yourself, what if it is the bugs in your guts/brain calling the shots?

In this animated video, we see how parasites change their hosts behaviours. Enjoy

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g09BQes-B7E

[Constance]

This clip is hilarious because Simon Peggs is such a good sport but it is so seriously telling!

NLP used in a positive way can have amazing results on influencing the mind but what if it was used against you, say on the TV, or the radio or by politicians who are skilled in this kind of subtle programming?

When it comes to being convinced about what you want, and why you want it, this is so very revealing about how your mind can be changed so very quickly with a skillful play on words and an offering.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sEmCQzueyEQ

[Constance]

Are you really able to trust your ears and the things they hear?

What you hear may depend on what you are looking at.

In this interactive video, the presenter talks about the McGurk effect, The Tritone paradox and the Shepard tone illusion.

Have fun with it!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU

[Constance]

The Backwards Brain Bicycle

In this delightful video, Destin takes you on a journey with him as he explores what it means to be able to ride a backwards bicycle. This eight month experiment however proved to be a little more revealing and insightful than he ever bargained for.

During the course of the experiment, Destin had three very profound realisations around how he/we interpret the world. One of the questions that was raised by him was, can we ever be free of our biases?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=438&v=MFzDaBzBlL0

[Constance]

Freewill and the brain

I know that I have posted this elsewhere on the forum but this is the perfect place to post it once again. For those who haven't seen this excellent talk between Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford University and actor Alan Alda, this is an earnest discussion centred around the brain and the law.

The first five minutes of the conversation begins with Robert sharing that whenever we are making any moral decisions or moral judgements that these are actually post hoc justifications for things that subliminally, our brains knew long before we consciously headed in that direction.

Our capacity to regulate our behaviours as adults begins with the health and wellbeing of our frontal cortex. The thickness and development of our frontal cortex is determined by two factors. The first being the health and the wellbeing of the mother whilst we are inutero, and the second being parental and environmental influences in early childhood.

Robert says that the term 'responsibility' almost becomes irrelevant if someone cannot regulate their behaviours due to an undeveloped frontal cortex. He implies that you cannot make someone responsible if they cannot regulate their behavior any more than you could hold someone responsible for something that they had nothing to do with the making of, eg. the shape of their cheekbones.

He went on to say that it doesn't change in the slightest, the need to protect people from those who cannot regulate themselves, the need to protect the offenders themselves or the need for deterrents but what has to be completely removed from the table are concepts like evil, or the types of brain damage where somebody can tell you precisely what is the appropriate behaviour to do eg. the solving of a puzzle or what you should or shouldn't do to your fellow human and yet they can't regulate their behaviour. These things need to be taken into account.

Robert postulated that it is absurd to frame the criminal justice system in a world of volition and of blame and of souls. Alan then asks the question, when you have a body of law that assigns guilt, punishment, do you go all the way back in your thinking to not just how cases are settled in court, but how the laws need to be rewritten to take into account the fact it's not right or fair to put people in jail for things that they didn't decide to do?

and Robert responds by saying

It needs to be torn apart from top to bottom - which is not meaning that we do not have to restrain people - a car whose brakes are broken is a very dangerous machine and we have a societal responsibility to make sure it doesn't go rolling into the playground of preschool but the car is not sinful if its brakes failed...

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8xEUYrb74

[gord]

Posted by Constance (here)
The Backwards Brain Bicycle

In this delightful video, Destin takes you on a journey with him as he explores what it means to be able to ride a backwards bicycle. This eight month experiment however proved to be a little more revealing and insightful than he ever bargained for.

During the course of the experiment, Destin had three very profound realisations around how he/we interpret the world. One of the questions that was raised by him was, can we ever be free of our biases?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=438&v=MFzDaBzBlL0

When I was about 12 or so, I reversed the crank and rear wheel on a bicycle so that the chain was on the left, and you could sit on it facing forwards, but pedal backwards, and go backwards. It took about 2 weeks to learn how to ride it that way. I rode it that way for a few weeks, and then put it back together the normal way. I think learning reversed steering would be harder.

[Constance]

This experiment that Derren Brown did in relation to group think/mob mentality is so very telling. I won't share what happens in this video, you need to see how it all unfolds because the message comes right at the end.



Derren Brown: Remote Control | Derren Brown's The Experiment

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ReUHhStG70k

[Constance]

Tony Wright, Author of Return to the Brain of Eden: Restoring the Connection between Neurochemistry and Consciousness has a very fascinating and unique hypothesis to share.

Tony's background is a botanist but around 25 years ago, he began to ask some serious questions around whether our perceptional system and equipment is actually functioning. He has been researching and testing the data for over 25 years now and all the data he has collected all points to the hypothesis that there has been a de-evolution of mankind.

He asks us to consider, no matter how radical the theory, this side of the story because it may be linked to how we have as a society have become so brainwashed and controlled.

He questions whether the most extraordinary complex biochemical formula we know actually equals the most extraordinary complex system that we know. And how would we be able to tell if this system was actually functioning?

He also asks some very important questions here

What was our original design?
What materials were we built from?
What fuel did we require?

Tony's hypothesis is that

our original design changed
our building material changed
our fuel changed

and within this hypothesis he says that the left hemisphere of our brain is a damaged version of the right.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ci0hI_Zk-2I

For more information around what he is sharing, here is another talk that gives you a more rounded idea of where his theories have come from and how it might explain how sociopaths and psychopaths are born or created.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zFaTk2-mFGI

[Gracy]

Posted by Constance (here)
The Backwards Brain Bicycle

In this delightful video, Destin takes you on a journey with him as he explores what it means to be able to ride a backwards bicycle. This eight month experiment however proved to be a little more revealing and insightful than he ever bargained for.

During the course of the experiment, Destin had three very profound realisations around how he/we interpret the world. One of the questions that was raised by him was, can we ever be free of our biases?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

That was both fun and interesting Constance! It's one of those things where it LOOKS easy enough, but surely I'd wreck all over the place just like the rest of them.

As to his question. Yes, I think we can to a certain extent anyway, but just like riding that backwards bike it takes one hell of a lot of work and practice. I wonder what % of the average person on the street even ever has a thought like that in the first place?

I started doing something kinda like his bike thing probably 10+ years ago now, but on a much much smaller and simpler scale. Being right handed, it occurred to me one day to start making a point of using my left hand much more often with all the daily mundane things that the right just does automatically. From washing dishes, scrambling an egg, or using a screwdriver. Difficult to tell if it's had any effect in the overall way I go about thinking of things, but it's definitely a new neural pathway forged, even though the old one and the body memory still balks at it from time to time.

It's probably just a useless exercise, with no more effect than making my left hand more coordinated, but I still like to think it's keeping the old brain on it's toes a bit where it otherwise wouldn't have been.

Here's a question I have now, and it's not just about the bike. What if you didn't want to lose the old way of riding a traditional bike, while also mastering the backwards bike, can the brain ever be rewired yet also stay where it is, to the point where a person can smoothly ride back and forth between the two?

As a new neural pathway like that is forged, I suppose the brain naturally assumes the original is no longer needed. Ha, that might make a very confused brain indeed. "Hey, you don't need both dummy, choose!"

[gord]

Posted by Constance (here)
This experiment that Derren Brown did in relation to group think/mob mentality is so very telling. I won't share what happens in this video, you need to see how it all unfolds because the message comes right at the end.



Derren Brown: Remote Control | Derren Brown's The Experiment

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ReUHhStG70k

Constance, you have some very fine threads going right now, and I hope my following comment is appropriate for this thread.

These Derren Brown videos are excellent. I watched a lot of them about 6 or 7 years ago. I found “The Assassin”, “How to convert an atheist”, and “Conversational Hypnosis” particularly interesting. I suspect many people see his videos as merely entertainment, and if that’s the case, it would be a real shame, because it’s quite clear to me that all of this bit of science was weaponized against everyone centuries ago. After all, the whole purpose of the state sponsored terrorism and false flags that we’ve all seen so much of is to hypnotize people and make them accept what they would normally refuse.

Years ago I listened to a bunch of interviews by Jon Rappaport of a hypnotherapist named Jack True, who stated that he eventually realized that every client he ever had, arrived already hypnotized, and his job was to attempt to undo it.

At the moment, I’m reading a book by The Rogue Hypnotist (Mark Anthony) called “Escaping Cultural Hypnosis - Startling Confessions of a Rogue Hypnotist!”. Here’s a bit of the introduction (all emphasis in the original):

Introduction: ‘Cultural hypnosis’ – what it is, why you should care.

What is a ‘hypnotic reality’?

First off – you need to know what a ‘hypnotic reality’ is. Reality (material reality) that is, is that which we perceive with the 5 major senses and all the other little ones. It is that which we can verify by our senses: the physical matrix into which we enter/emerge etc. at conception. A hypnotic reality is any ‘pseudo reality’ (secondary reality) that exists in the mind of an individual or groups of individuals only: it has no supporting proof; it is founded on ideas and not experience. It consists of a ‘map of reality’ – these are all the bits of data, memory, bias, life experiences, sets of generalisations, unquestioned assumptions, opinions about x, y and z that we have about the true external physical matrix. Its psycho-biological purpose is to help us successfully navigate our way through the human life cycle. This map of reality may be ‘realistic’, that is a pretty accurate representation of external reality or it may be widely at variance with the physical matrix reality (what religions call ‘Creation’). We see the latter most markedly in brainwashed victims of ‘cults’. Such people are only very loosely connected to reality – in fact they are in a permanent state of dissociated waking hypnosis: fuelled by primarily unconscious Gnostic delusions. We will expand upon this matter later. To a certain extent as humans, and because we are limited by our senses to a certain ‘band width’ of experience and are therefore physiologically incapable of omnipotence, we all operate from an approximation of the reality of reality – known as the middle spectrum/band. And most of us get along fine with that. Or do we? 

Cultural hypnosis defined.

Quite simply cultural hypnosis may be defined in this manner: cultural hypnosis is a catch-all term that covers the mass of influence from a wide range of people, institutions and situations that each human being is effected by from the moment of conception till death within a given, definable and limited culture matrix. 

Less euphemistically cultural hypnosis is aka PROGRAMMING! 

So what? Well did you choose to be immersed in it? Did you have any say in this influence? There but for fortune you may be an entirely different person, even with the same genetics because we know from epigenetics (the science of gene expression) that all incoming ‘data’, food, locale, people, accents, schooling, exposure to the arts etc. powerfully affect who we are and how our genes express themselves in this physical matrix. Any persons or groups that can seize control of the culture creation industries in the widest sense of that term can and in fact do shape its respective citizenry as and how it pleases. Do you see why this is an important yet untouched upon sphere of enquiry? The culture creation industries can powerfully shape anyone’s map of reality, a kind of internal ‘holographic matrix’ that we all operate from. If this doesn’t concern you yet, I assure you by this book’s end it will. But relax – the situation is not all hopeless. As I have hinted, you have a powerful weapon: your analytical conscious mind. Hypnotists often have a mistaken bias against conscious states: in fact we would be zombies without them. 

What are the predominate sources of hypnotic culture in any given society and how do they shape us? How do they create the trances we live by? Just before we get to that, we must define the purpose of knowing about it at all… 

Commonly attributed to Mark Twain (maybe so, maybe not):

“It’s Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.” – Mark Twain

Trying to convince people of any of this is a threat to their egos, and many will immediately turn into a blindfolded terrible two-year old version of Yosemite Sam, with unlimited ammo, and an itchy trigger finger if you try. --me

[Constance]

Thanks for that question Gracy May and your personal story. I'm glad you enjoyed that video!

To the best of my knowledge, if we continue to nurture, nourish and strengthen those neurological pathways, we could eventually master the ability to switch back and forth between the two ways of riding the bike effortlessly

All it really takes is persistence and a consistent approach.

I was talking to a close friend about this yesterday and what I shared was, when a baby learns to walk, there are a whole bunch of steps that have to happen before it can actually walk. A babies brain has to go about building and strengthening its neurological pathways in the leadup to being able to walk. They just don't get up like a giraffe or a horse does in the first five minutes after birth because neurologically, we are just not wired that way.

As you may already be aware Gracy, the first thing a baby does on its developmental path to walking is to be able to hold its head up firmly, without it sagging. The next step is to be able to wave its little arms and legs around in the air. It may not look like much but it is building the foundation for wiring its brain in such a way that it is eventually going to walk!

The next step in its development is when a baby starts to learn to roll. It takes a while to get there because at first, it doesn't have any control over the mechanism that helps a baby to roll, but it continues to do just that one thing.

Babies are fantastic and fascinating teachers. When a baby cannot yet roll, it might just lay there for a minute or two but then, it will try again and again until it masters that step.

The next step after that is pulling its little body up by its arms and then before you know it, he or she is sitting up. The number of times I watched my son try to sit up and then fall back was both hilarious and enlightening. He was so focused on learning to sit up. There was a unrelenting attention to just that one thing and that one thing only.

And then..a baby learns to push itself up on all fours and crawl. And then crawl and crawl for a while before it pulls itself up to stand. That takes some mastering, as you might well know. Parents reading this might well be able to relate to the phenomena of never having any clean clothing or furniture because their children need a leverage tool to pull themselves up on to stand.

And as that baby starts to skirt their way around the furniture, they then learn to climb that furniture. And then, once they have mastered that, they take their first wobbly steps with some guidance.

That baby falls down a lot whilst it is still learning to walk but it all happens very organically without the baby having to do too much except persist. It is that persistence and consistency that actually helps that baby to keep moving in the direction that it needs to, to develop the ability to walk.

Posted by Gracy May (here)

That was both fun and interesting Constance! It's one of those things where it LOOKS easy enough, but surely I'd wreck all over the place just like the rest of them.

As to his question. Yes, I think we can to a certain extent anyway, but just like riding that backwards bike it takes one hell of a lot of work and practice. I wonder what % of the average person on the street even ever has a thought like that in the first place?

I started doing something kinda like his bike thing probably 10+ years ago now, but on a much much smaller and simpler scale. Being right handed, it occurred to me one day to start making a point of using my left hand much more often with all the daily mundane things that the right just does automatically. From washing dishes, scrambling an egg, or using a screwdriver. Difficult to tell if it's had any effect in the overall way I go about thinking of things, but it's definitely a new neural pathway forged, even though the old one and the body memory still balks at it from time to time.

It's probably just a useless exercise, with no more effect than making my left hand more coordinated, but I still like to think it's keeping the old brain on it's toes a bit where it otherwise wouldn't have been.

Here's a question I have now, and it's not just about the bike. What if you didn't want to lose the old way of riding a traditional bike, while also mastering the backwards bike, can the brain ever be rewired yet also stay where it is, to the point where a person can smoothly ride back and forth between the two?

As a new neural pathway like that is forged, I suppose the brain naturally assumes the original is no longer needed. Ha, that might make a very confused brain indeed. "Hey, you don't need both dummy, choose!"

[kfm27917]

I like the way your mind works !!!

[Constance]

Gord, I really like the way you think and your comments were more than appropriate for this thread

Just like yourself, I have found many of Derrens videos very insightful and instructive on how we as individuals and a collective can be conditioned and programmed.

You must be a bit of a mind reader because my next video was going to be "The Assassin"

You are right about it not being just entertainment. And it is a darn shame that the masses watching would see it that way.

The issue that we have in society is where people can literally only see or hear something in one way and they are unable to shift their perception. (And I'm sure you have experienced more than enough of that with other people)

Take this Laurel or Yanni video for example

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0Sjl8pea64

Some people hear Laurel, others hear Yanni. A good percentage hear Laurel but there are many who also hear Yanni.
There may be quite a few explanations for why this is occurring and this video outlines a few of them here

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ

but I don't think this is the entire story. I think that our ability to perceive lays within how neurologically integrated we are on all levels of our beings.

Mind you, this is not through any fault of our own. We all know here on Avalon exactly what we are up against; there has been no stone left unturned by the powers that be.

I was thinking about what you said here about Jack True's clients and how he eventually realized that every client he ever had, arrived already hypnotised, and his job was to attempt to undo it.

It has been said to me many times and in many ways that the further we move away from nature, the further we move away from our natural state of being.

I'm not sure what Jack was attempting to undo for people but I would say that it is more a matter of putting back what is missing from our lives.

I don't know if you have ever watched this video Gord, but if you feel so inspired, it is a video by Gabor Mate called, "Hold onto your kids"

In this video, Gabor relates how and why it is so important that the parent has more influence over the child than its peers and why children grow into immature adults.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_akH6Cin6E

Posted by gord (here)

Constance, you have some very fine threads going right now, and I hope my following comment is appropriate for this thread.

These Derren Brown videos are excellent. I watched a lot of them about 6 or 7 years ago. I found “The Assassin”, “How to convert an atheist”, and “Conversational Hypnosis” particularly interesting. I suspect many people see his videos as merely entertainment, and if that’s the case, it would be a real shame, because it’s quite clear to me that all of this bit of science was weaponized against everyone centuries ago. After all, the whole purpose of the state sponsored terrorism and false flags that we’ve all seen so much of is to hypnotize people and make them accept what they would normally refuse.

Years ago I listened to a bunch of interviews by Jon Rappaport of a hypnotherapist named Jack True, who stated that he eventually realized that every client he ever had, arrived already hypnotized, and his job was to attempt to undo it.

At the moment, I’m reading a book by The Rogue Hypnotist (Mark Anthony) called “Escaping Cultural Hypnosis - Startling Confessions of a Rogue Hypnotist!”. Here’s a bit of the introduction (all emphasis in the original):

Introduction: ‘Cultural hypnosis’ – what it is, why you should care.

What is a ‘hypnotic reality’?

First off – you need to know what a ‘hypnotic reality’ is. Reality (material reality) that is, is that which we perceive with the 5 major senses and all the other little ones. It is that which we can verify by our senses: the physical matrix into which we enter/emerge etc. at conception. A hypnotic reality is any ‘pseudo reality’ (secondary reality) that exists in the mind of an individual or groups of individuals only: it has no supporting proof; it is founded on ideas and not experience. It consists of a ‘map of reality’ – these are all the bits of data, memory, bias, life experiences, sets of generalisations, unquestioned assumptions, opinions about x, y and z that we have about the true external physical matrix. Its psycho-biological purpose is to help us successfully navigate our way through the human life cycle. This map of reality may be ‘realistic’, that is a pretty accurate representation of external reality or it may be widely at variance with the physical matrix reality (what religions call ‘Creation’). We see the latter most markedly in brainwashed victims of ‘cults’. Such people are only very loosely connected to reality – in fact they are in a permanent state of dissociated waking hypnosis: fuelled by primarily unconscious Gnostic delusions. We will expand upon this matter later. To a certain extent as humans, and because we are limited by our senses to a certain ‘band width’ of experience and are therefore physiologically incapable of omnipotence, we all operate from an approximation of the reality of reality – known as the middle spectrum/band. And most of us get along fine with that. Or do we? 

Cultural hypnosis defined.

Quite simply cultural hypnosis may be defined in this manner: cultural hypnosis is a catch-all term that covers the mass of influence from a wide range of people, institutions and situations that each human being is effected by from the moment of conception till death within a given, definable and limited culture matrix. 

Less euphemistically cultural hypnosis is aka PROGRAMMING! 

So what? Well did you choose to be immersed in it? Did you have any say in this influence? There but for fortune you may be an entirely different person, even with the same genetics because we know from epigenetics (the science of gene expression) that all incoming ‘data’, food, locale, people, accents, schooling, exposure to the arts etc. powerfully affect who we are and how our genes express themselves in this physical matrix. Any persons or groups that can seize control of the culture creation industries in the widest sense of that term can and in fact do shape its respective citizenry as and how it pleases. Do you see why this is an important yet untouched upon sphere of enquiry? The culture creation industries can powerfully shape anyone’s map of reality, a kind of internal ‘holographic matrix’ that we all operate from. If this doesn’t concern you yet, I assure you by this book’s end it will. But relax – the situation is not all hopeless. As I have hinted, you have a powerful weapon: your analytical conscious mind. Hypnotists often have a mistaken bias against conscious states: in fact we would be zombies without them. 

What are the predominate sources of hypnotic culture in any given society and how do they shape us? How do they create the trances we live by? Just before we get to that, we must define the purpose of knowing about it at all… 

Commonly attributed to Mark Twain (maybe so, maybe not):

“It’s Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.” – Mark Twain

Trying to convince people of any of this is a threat to their egos, and many will immediately turn into a blindfolded terrible two-year old version of Yosemite Sam, with unlimited ammo, and an itchy trigger finger if you try. --me

[Constance]

Posted by kfm27917 (here)
I like the way your mind works !!!

Are you talking to me kfm27917?

[kfm27917]

yes: I believe U opened an interesting subject !
I am into Chaos Magick and I define magick as being able to change reality with one;s mind.
So this thread is extremely interesting to me !