Subject: MUST READ: TELEVISION AND THE HIVE MIND
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TELEVISION
AND THE HIVE MIND
http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1438&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Posted by: valis on Dec 21, 2002
by Mack White
mailto:mackwhite@austin.rr.com
Sixty-four years ago this month, six
million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological
warfare.
It was the night before Halloween,
1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson
Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well
known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so
realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually
under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic,
not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had
all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien
invaders.
Later, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the
broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study
in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media,
particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the
influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio
Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also
affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had
broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of
CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of
the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done
groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing.
Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the
Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies
conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political
operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War
II, Cantril÷and Rockefeller money÷assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R.
Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to
study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS
propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign
Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United
States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National
Security Council.
Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the
propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in
time for the Dawn of Television ...
Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that, when a person
watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right
hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the
seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component
parts and critically analyzed.
The right brain, however, treats incoming data
uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather
than logical, responses. The shift from
left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's
own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to
watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown
that very few people are able to kick the television habit.
This numbing of the brain's cognitive function is compounded by another shift
which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher
brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the
lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly
referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental
functions, such as the "fight or flight" response.
Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response.
It is not just commercials that manipulate us.
On television news as
well, image and sound are as carefully selected and edited to influence human
thought and behavior as in any commercial. The news anchors and reporters
themselves are chosen for their physical attractiveness--a factor which,
as numerous psychological studies have shown, contributes to our perception
of a person's trustworthiness.
Under these conditions, then, the viewer easily forgets--if, indeed, the viewer
ever knew in the first place--that the worldview presented on the evening news
is a contrivance of the network owners--owners such as General Electric (NBC)
and Westinghouse (CBS), both major defense contractors.
By molding our perception of the world, they
mold our opinions.
This distortion of reality is determined as much by what is left out of the
evening news as what is included--as a glance at Project Censored's yearly list
of top 25 censored news stories will reveal.
If it's not on television, it never happened.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Under the guise of journalistic objectivity, news programs subtly play on our
emotions--chiefly fear. Network news
divisions, for instance, frequently congratulate themselves on the great service
they provide humanity by bringing such spectacles as the September 11 terror
attacks into our living rooms. We have heard this falsehood so often, we have
come to accept it as self-evident truth. However, the motivation for live
coverage of traumatic news events is not altruistic, but rather to be found in
the central focus of Cantril's War of the Worlds research--the
manipulation of the public through fear.
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
There is another way in which we are manipulated by television news. Human
beings are prone to model the behaviors they see around them, and avoid those
which might invite ridicule or censure, and in the hypnotic state induced by
television, this effect is particularly pronounced. For instance, a lift of
the eyebrow from Peter Jennings tells us precisely what he is thinking--and by
extension what we should think. In this way, opinions not sanctioned by the
corporate media can be made to seem disreputable, while
sanctioned opinions are made to seem the very
essence of civilized thought. And
should your thinking stray into unsanctioned territory despite the trusted
anchor's example, a poll can be produced which shows that most persons do not
think that way--and you don't want to be different do you? Thus, the mental
wanderer is brought back into the fold.
This process is also at work in programs ostensibly produced for
entertainment. The "logic" works like this: Archie Bunker is an idiot, Archie
Bunker is against gun control, therefore idiots are against gun control.
Never mind the complexities of the issue. Never mind the fact that the true
purpose of the Second Amendment is not to protect the rights of deer hunters,
but to protect the citizenry against a tyrannical government (an argument
you will never hear voiced on any television program).
Monkey see, monkey do--or, in this case,
monkey not do.
Notice, too, the way in which television programs depict conspiracy researchers
or anti-New World Order activists. On situation comedies, they are buffoons.
On dramatic programs, they are dangerous fanatics. This imprints on the mind
of the viewer the attitude that questioning the official line or holding
"anti-government" opinions is crazy, therefore not to be emulated.
Another way in which entertainment programs mold opinion can be found in the
occasional television movie, which "sensitively" deals with some "social" issue.
A bad behavior is spotlighted--"hate" crimes, for instance--in such a way
that it appears to be a far more rampant problem than it may actually be, so
terrible in fact that the "only" cure for it is more laws and government
"protection." Never mind that laws may already exist to cover these
crimes--the law against murder, for instance. Once we have seen the
well-publicized murder of the young gay man Matthew Shepherd dramatized in not
one, but two, television movies in all its heartrending horror,
nothing will do but we pass a law making the
very thought behind the crime illegal.
People will also model behaviors from
popular entertainment which are not only dangerous to their health and could
land them in jail, but also contribute to social chaos. While this may
seem to be simply a matter of the producers giving the audience what it wants,
or the artist holding a mirror up to society,
it is in fact intended to influence behavior.
Consider the way many films glorify drug
abuse. When a popular star playing a sympathetic character in a mainstream
R-rated film uses hard drugs with no apparent health or legal consequences
(John Travolta's use of heroin in Pulp
Fiction, for instance--an R-rated film produced for theatrical release, which
now has found a permanent home on television, via cable and video players), a
certain percentage of people--particularly the impressionable young--will
perceive hard drug use as the epitome of anti-Establishment cool and will model
that behavior, contributing to an increase in drug abuse. And who benefits?
[The
Machiavellian CONTROLLERS who create and manage chaos, terror and war to
consolidate their profits and power-to-control - CR]
As has been well documented by Gary
Webb in his award-winning series for the San Jose Mercury New, former Los
Angeles narcotics detective Michael Ruppert, and many other researchers and
whistleblowers--the CIA is the main
purveyor of hard drugs in this country. The CIA also has its hand in the
"prison-industrial complex." Wackenhut Corporation, the largest owner of private
prisons, has on its board of directors many former CIA employees, and is very
likely a CIA front.
Thus, films which glorify drug abuse
may be seen as recruitment ads for the slave labor-based private prison system.
Also, the social chaos and inflated crime rate which result from the
contrived drug problem contributes to the demand from a frightened society for
more prisons, more laws, and the further erosion of civil liberties. This
effect is further heightened by television news segments and documentaries which
focus on drug abuse and other crimes, thus giving the public the misperception
that crime is even higher than it really is.
There is another socially debilitating process at work in what passes for
entertainment on television these days. Over the years, there has been a steady
increase in adult subject matter on programs presented during family viewing
hours. For instance, it is common for today's prime-time situation comedies to
make jokes about such matters as masturbation (Seinfeld once devoted an entire
episode to the topic), or for daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer's to
showcase such topics as bestiality. Even worse are the "reality" programs
currently in vogue. Each new offering in this genre seems to hit a new low. MTV,
for instance, recently subjected a couple to a Candid Camera-style prank in
which, after winning a trip to Las Vegas, they entered their hotel room to find
an actor made up as a mutilated corpse in the bathtub. Naturally, they were
traumatized by the experience and sued the network. Or, consider a new show on
British television in which contestants compete to see who can infect each other
with the most diseases--venereal diseases included.
It would appear, at the very least, that these programs serve as a shill
operation to strengthen the argument for censorship. There may also be an even
darker motive.
These programs contribute to the general coarsening of society we see all around
us--the decline in manners and common human decency and the acceptance of
cruelty for its own sake as a legitimate form of entertainment. Ultimately, this
has the effect of debasing human beings into savages, brutes--the better to herd
them into global slavery.
For the first decade or so
after the Dawn of Television, there were only a handful of channels in each
market--one for each of the three major networks and maybe one or two
independents. Later, with the advent of cable and more channels, the population
pie began to be sliced into finer pieces--or "niche markets." This development
has often been described as representing a growing diversity of choices, but in
reality it is a fine-tuning of the process of mass manipulation, a honing-in
on particular segments of the population, not only to sell them
specifically-targeted consumer products but
to influence their thinking in ways
advantageous to the globalist agenda.
One of these "target audiences" is
that portion of the population which, after years of blatant government cover-up
in areas such as UFOs and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, maintains a
cynicism toward the official line, despite the best efforts of television
programmers to depict conspiracy research in a negative light. How to reach this
vast, disenfranchised target audience and co-opt their thinking? One way is
to put documentaries before them which mix of fact with disinformation, thereby
confusing them. Another is to take
the X Files approach.
The heroes of X Files are
investigators in a fictitious paranormal department of the FBI whose adventures
sometimes take them into parapolitical territory. On the surface this sounds
good. However, whatever good X Files might accomplish by touching on such
matters as MK-ULTRA or the JFK assassination is cancelled out by associating
them with bug-eyed aliens and ghosts.
Also, on X Files, the truth is always depicted as "out there" somewhere--in
the stars, or some other dimension, never in brainwashing centers such as the
RAND Corporation or its London counterpart, the Tavistock Institute. This has
the effect of obscuring the truth, making it seem impossibly out-of-reach, and
associating reasonable lines of political inquiry with the fantastic and
other-wordly.
Not that there is no connection between the parapolitical and the
paranormal. There is undoubtedly a cover-up at work with regard to UFOs, but if
we accept uncritically the notion that UFOs are anything other than terrestrial
in origin, we are falling headfirst into a carefully-set trap. To its credit, X
Files has dealt with the idea that extraterrestrials might be a clever hoax by
the government, but never decisively. The labyrinthine plots of the show somehow
manage to leave the viewer wondering if perhaps the hoax idea is itself a hoax
put out there to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. This is hardly
helpful to a true understanding of UFOs and associated phenomena, such as alien
abductions and cattle mutilations.
Extraterrestrials have been a staple of popular entertainment since The War of
the Worlds (both the novel and its radio adaptation). They have been depicted as
invaders and benefactors, but rarely have they been unequivocally depicted as a
hoax. There was an episode of Outer Limits which depicted a group of scientists
staging a mock alien invasion to frighten the world's population into uniting as
one--but, again, such examples are rare. Even in UFO documentaries on the
Discovery Channel, the possibility of a terrestrial origin for the phenomenon
is conspicuous by its lack of mention.
UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the real-life model for the French scientist
in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, attempted to interest
Spielberg in a terrestrial explanation for the phenomenon. In an interview on
Conspire.com, Vallee said, "I argued with him that the subject was even more
interesting if it wasn't extraterrestrials. If it was real, physical, but not
ET. So he said,
'You're probably right, but that's not what the public is expecting--this is
Hollywood and I want to give people something that's close to what they
expect.'"
In Messengers of Deception, Vallee tracks the history of a
wartime British Intelligence unit devoted to psychological operations.
Code-named (interestingly) the "Martians," it specialized in manufacturing and
distributing false intelligence to confuse the enemy. Among its activities were
the creation of phantom armies with inflatable tanks, simulations of the sounds
of military ships maneuvering in the fog, and forged letters to lovers from
phantom soldiers attached to phantom regiments.
Vallee suggests that deception operations of this kind may have extended beyond
World War II, and that much of the "evidence" for "flying saucers" is no more
real than the inflatable tanks of World War II. He writes: "The close
association of many UFO sightings with advanced military hardware (test sites
like the New Mexico proving grounds, missile silos of the northern plains, naval
construction sites like the major nuclear facility at Pascagoula and the bizarre
love affairs ... between contactee groups, occult sects, and extremist political
factions, are utterly clear signals that we must exercise extreme caution."
Many people find it fantastic that the government would perpetrate such
a hoax, while at the same time having no difficulty entertaining the notion that
extraterrestrials are regularly traveling light years to this planet to kidnap
people out of their beds and subject them to anal probes.
The military routinely puts out disinformation to obscure its activities, and
this has certainly been the case with UFOs. Consider Paul Bennewitz, the UFO
enthusiast who began studying strange lights that would appear nightly over the
Manzano Test Range outside Albuquerque. When the Air Force learned about his
study, ufologist William Moore (by his own admission) was recruited to feed him
forged military documents describing a threat from extraterrestrials. The effect
was to confuse Bennewitz--even making him paranoid enough to be
hospitalized--and discredit his research. Evidently, those strange lights
belonged to the Air Force, which does not like outsiders inquiring into its
affairs.
What the Air Force did to Bennewitz, it also does on a mass scale--and popular
entertainment has been complicit in this process. Whether or not the filmmakers
themselves are consciously aware of this agenda does not matter. The notion that
extraterrestrials might visit this planet is so much a part of popular culture
and modern mythology that it hardly needs assistance from the military to
propagate itself.
It has the effect not only of obscuring what is really going on at research
facilities such as Area 51, but of tainting UFO research in general as
"kooky"--and does the job so thoroughly that one need only say "UFO" in the same
breath with "JFK" to discredit research in that area as well. It also may, in
the end, serve the same purpose as depicted in that Outer Limits episode--
###
RELEVANT LINKS
U.S. Government Report: Human Beings to be Merged with Technology to Create a
"Hive Mind" Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/20/1026898931815.html
To receive a free copy of Mack White's book, FACTS ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11, write him
at mackwhite@austin.rr.com with your mailing address.