Wednesday, July 28, 2010

This may be an eye opener for you

The following topic might seem to be a bit off my beaten track initially but really it is dead center.  Stick with me to the end and you might be amazed by what you see.
All of us like to think we are in control of ourselves.  We want others to think we are in control and we want to believe that others around us are in control of themselves.  We also want to believe that society in general has an order and a predictability that we we understand.  Our mental well being actually depends on our believing this.  So when someone comes up with something that suggests we are not in control, the idea is quickly (and generally adamantly) rejected.  Generally these suggestions come from societal outcasts and are presented in ways that are hard to believe regardless of the actual veracity of their statements.  Take the topic of rapid hypnosis and mind control.  You might think that hypnosis is mostly fake and that mass mind control is the stuff of conspiracy theorist novels.  However, the truth is that people are biological machines which run a form of software and as such they can be analyzed and picked apart using well understood scientific processes.  If someone does that to computer software then the software can be corrupted and repurposed.  We call that a virus.  Similarly, if the brain and the psyche are sufficiently understood they can be manipulated and controlled.  I hope to provide compelling evidence of this over the remainder of this email so read on.
Now, just for a second, suspend the growing disbelief that is welling up inside your mind and consider, just for a second, the power one would have if he could control only a small portion of the population to some degree.  If the art of mind control were well understood enough to just affect the most susceptible 5 or 10% of the people on the planet, think about what could be done with that power.  It could be the swing vote to elect the politician (or puppet) that you want in place.  It could cause people to buy your products even if they really don't need or want them.  It could raise the level of civil discontent or it could calm a herd that has good reason for discontent.  It could cause people to take out loans on houses that they know they can't afford.  It could even cause you to believe that something which is totally worthless indeed has value.
Keep that in mind as you watch these videos.  They are all done by a Brit named Derren Brown who makes his living by understanding how the mind works and by using it to manipulate the way people think.  I'll save you the trouble of checking him out on Snopes - this guy is for real and his exploits are well documented.  If you want to check out his wiki later on you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
In this first video, Brown approaches a man on the street and uses several psychological devices against him in order to confuse and distract him into handing over his keys, his wallet and in fact the entire contents of his pockets.  Not once, but twice:
OK, now that you have watched, what do you think?  Was it all a set up?  Can this really happen?  Perhaps Mr. Brown is just very good at picking dim witted susceptible people out of a crowd.  As you were watching it was probably pretty clear that Brown is fast talking, fast moving, always keeping his mark off balance.  But as you can see in the blow by blow description in the following video, many of the techniques that Brown used to accomplish his scam have names.  In other words, people are studying these things, mastering them.  It is becoming science:
Now, if you weren't too impressed by the last video, hopefully the next video is going to make things a bit clearer for you.  In it Mr. Brown goes around NYC with a wallet full of blank slips of paper which he uses to buy things in shops.  Watch as he is handing over the blank bills with perfectly timed verbal repetition of "It's OK, take it".  "Take it, it's fine".  "So I did".  He is planting subliminal suggestions into the minds of his marks.  They don't know it is happening - their minds accept this input automatically.  In the absence of con men, this automatic subliminal thought can actually be a valuable quality to possess.  It provides rapid insight into things without having to actually think about them.  It's a form of sensory input and the people who study these things to the point of understanding see it as a weakness shared by all humans.
Now that you have watched the video, was everyone he scammed just weak minded?  The fish salesman seemed to be a fairly street wise vendor, no?  You really can't be a gullible idiot in NYC and survive in business for 20 years like that guy said he had done.  And what about the jewelry salesman?  Was he just a weak minded moron too?  He let a $4500 ring walk out the door like it was nothing.  The hot dog salesman was not properly distracted for whatever reason and he caught onto the scam, calling Mr. Brown an "asshole" In other words, he knew it was no mistake even though Brown quickly followed up the attempted crime with proper payment (a very common tactic we see all over the business world today).  Mr. Brown is well dressed (which is part of the intimidation tactic used in the scam) and he remained calm and polite even though he was completely busted (also a common technique used by the scammers).  The hotdog salesman was dressed in casual clothing and did not sound well educated.  If the hotdog vendor started screaming at the top of his lungs that Brown was a con man who tried to rip him off, would anyone believe it or would they just look sideways at the hotdog guy like he was crazy or on drugs?  And if the hot dog vendor had pressed his point too far, would he not end up in jail with Mr. Brown pressing charges, talking to the authorities and shaking his head at how crazy people can be?
The following video is another awesome example of mind control and the reason I think it is worth watching is that it cannot easily be proclaimed a set up.  When Brown was conning the people above, some people might just say "it was all staged" and "the jewelry store guy was a plant", etc.  In other words, they want to maintain their belief system so badly that they make up reasons why the unexpected behavior which lies outside of our programmed belief system can't be true.  But in this video, Brown takes a wallet and stuffs it with money so that the cash is clearly visible.  Then he places it on a busy street corner in London.  Now we all know that if a wallet were seen on the sidewalk in a big city it would be gone in a matter of seconds.  But Mr. Brown knows how the human mind works and so he confidently leaves the wallet on the ground in plain sight using his ridiculously simple and effective technique to ensure that it is not taken.  He comes back several hours later and there it still sits.
Note that this mind control trick worked on everyone who passed that corner over that time period.  In other words, mind control can be effective on everyone who is not aware that it is happening, not just fools or the weak minded.  Some people acted like they didn't see it at all and indeed they may not have.  But others clearly eyeballed the wallet and decided that the yellow circle had mystical power or something so the wallet should be left alone.
OK, all of the above still might seem a bit contrived and so I submit to you a final video for your consideration.  In it, two advertising professionals are called in to come up with a theme for a client's new chain of stores.  Mr. Brown has already drawn up on paper what he wants the guys to come up with and he leaves it in the room with them hidden in an envelope so that we know he did not draw it after the fact.  He leaves them alone for awhile to work on this creative activity.  Later he comes back to hear their ideas and of course we find out that they closely match what Brown had already drawn and put in the envelope.  Somehow, Brown manipulated these guys into achieving a result that was just what he had wanted them to come up with.  It all seems a little spooky but at the very end of the video Mr. Brown shows us how he did it.  In essence, he had access to their subconscious which they did not know was happening. 
What is so thought provoking about this video is that the marks were made to believe that the ideas they came up with were the result of their own highly creative and interactive process.  Also, the programming inputs they received came from a variety of sources and many of these inputs/suggestions were only visible for a short glimpse as the marks were being driven to the place where they were to do the work.  A person in their position would never (and I mean not ever) believe that all of that had been specifically and purposefully implanted subconsciously.  Had Brown said without proof that he had used mind control techniques to get them to do his will and to think the thoughts he wanted them to think they would have rolled their eyes and no amount of explanation would have awakened them to the truth.   Had Brown not been present to explain things, anyone else suggesting that it had actually been done to them would have been called a conspiracy theory nut job and laughed out of town.
Mr. Brown uses his skills and training for entertainment purposes but if he can achieve the above results so easily, do you really think he is the only one practicing this?  Governments have massive sums of money to spend on anything they want to and so they have no problem investigating any crazy idea in the 0.000005% chance that there might be something to it.  One well documented example of this is the costly research that has been done by all world governments over the years into paranormal activities like remote seeing, etc.  They spent millions on these whacky things even though they did not receive much pay back so how much do you think has been spent on something like mind control which has clearly demonstrable and repeatable results?  And once such a powerful set of tools has been discovered and perfected, do you really believe that governments would hesitate to employ it on their populations "for our own good"?
Perhaps most importantly, does mass mind control still sound to you like a ridiculous, impossible conspiracy theory?  If so then take the blue pill quickly because the rabbit hole runs very deep.
Suspend disbelief whenever it makes sense to do so!
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