Television and the hive mind
old article - 2003? by Mack White
http://www.ar.utexas.edu/Staff/White/tv.html
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=13624
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
Centre, 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. The reptile brain is unable
to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of
television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. 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. The reptile brain makes it possible
for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us
vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers.
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 behaviour 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 defence 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.
There is another way in which we are manipulated by television news.
Human beings are prone to model the behaviours 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 behaviour 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 behaviours 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 behaviour.
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 behaviour, contributing to an increase in drug abuse.
And who benefits?
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 labour-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 centres 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.'"
How convenient that what Spielberg says the people expect is also
what the Pentagon wants them to believe.
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 travelling 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--to unite the world's
population against a perceived common threat, thus offering the
pretext for one-world government.
The following quotes demonstrate that the idea has at least occurred
to world leaders:
"In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how
much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some
outside, universal threat to make us realize this common bond. I
occasionally think how quickly our differences would vanish if we
were facing an alien threat from outside this world." (President
Ronald Reagan, speaking in 1987 to the United Nations.
"The nations of the world will have to unite, for the next war will
be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make
a common front against attack by people from other planets." General
Douglas MacArthur, 1955)
Some one remarked that the best way to unite all the nations on this
globe would be an attack from some other planet. In the face of such
an alien enemy, people would respond with a sense of their unity of
interest and purpose." (John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy at
Columbia University, speaking at a conference sponsored by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1917)
And where was this "alien threat" motif given birth? Again, we find
the answer in popular entertainment, and again the earliest source is
The War of the Worlds--both Wells' and Welles' versions.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that H. G. Wells was a founding member
of the Round Table, the think tank that gave birth to the Royal
Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) and its American cousin,
the CFR. Perhaps Wells intentionally introduced the motif as a meme
which might prove useful later in establishing the "world social
democracy" he described in his 1939 book The New World Order.
Perhaps, too, another purpose of the Orson Welles broadcast was to
test of the public's willingness to believe in extraterrestrials.
At any rate, it proved a popular motif, and paved the way for
countless movies and television programs to come, and has often
proven a handy device for promoting the New World Order, whether the
extraterrestrials are invaders or--in films like The Day the Earth
Stood Still--benefactors who have come to Earth to warn us to mend
our ways and unite as one, or be blown to bits.
We see the globalist agenda at work in Star Trek and its spin-offs as
well. Over the years, many a television viewer's mind has been
imprinted with the idea that centralized government is the solution
for our problems. Never mind the complexities of the issue--never
mind the fact that, in the real world, centralization of power leads
to tyranny. The reptile brain, hypnotized by the flickering
television screen, has seen Captain Kirk and his culturally diverse
crew demonstrate time and again that the United Federation of Planets
is a good thing. Therefore, it must be so.
It remains to be seen whether the Masters of Deception will, like
those scientists in The Outer Limits, stage an invasion from space
with anti-gravity machines and holograms, but, if they do, it will
surely be broadcast on television, so that anyone out of range of
that light show in the sky, will be able to see it, and all with eyes
to see will believe. It will be War of the Worlds on a grand scale.
Jack Kerouac once noted, while walking down a residential street at
night, glancing into living rooms lit by the gray glare of television
sets, that we have become a world of people "thinking the same
thoughts at the same time."
Every day, millions upon millions of human beings sit down at the
same time to watch the same football game, the same mini-series, the
same newscast. And where might all this shared experience and
uniformity of thought be taking us?
A recent report co-sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation
and the Commerce Department calls for a broad-based research program
to find ways to use nanotechnology, biotechnology, information
technology, and cognitive sciences, to achieve telepathy,
machine-to-human communication, amplified sensory experience,
enhanced intellectual capacity, and mass participation in a "hive
mind." Quoting the report: "With knowledge no longer encapsulated in
individuals, the distinction between individuals and the entirety of
humanity would blur. Think Vulcan mind-meld. We would perhaps become
more of a hive mind--an enormous, single, intelligent entity."
There is no doubt that we have been brought closer to the "hive mind"
by the mass media. For, what is the shared experience of television
but a type of "Vulcan mind-meld"? (Note the terminology borrowed from
Star Trek, no doubt to make the concept more familiar and palatable.
If Spock does it, it must be okay.)
This government report would have us believe that the hive mind will
be for our good--a wonderful leap in evolution. It is nothing of the
kind. For one thing, if the government is behind it, you may rest
assured it is not for our good. For another, common sense should tell
us that blurring the line "between individuals and the entirety of
humanity" means mass conformity, the death of human individuality.
Make no mistake about it--if humanity is to become a hive, there will
be at the centre of that hive a Queen Bee, whom all the lesser
"insects" will serve. This is not evolution--this is devolution.
Worse, it is the ultimate slavery--the slavery of the mind.
And it is a horror first unleashed in 1938 when one million people
responded as one--as a hive--to Orson Welles' Halloween prank.
In a sense, those people who fled the Martians that night were right
to be afraid. They were indeed under attack. But they were wrong
about who was attacking them. It was something far worse than
Martians. Had they only known the true nature of the danger facing
them, perhaps they would have gone to the nearest radio station with
torches in hand like the villagers in those old Frankenstein movies
and burned it to the ground, or at least commandeered the new
technology and turned it towards another use--the liberation of
humanity, instead of its enslavement.
--
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"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
www.abolishwar.org.uk
www.globalresearch.ca
www.public-interest.co.uk
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www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1407615751783.2051663.1274106225&l=90330c0ba5&type=1
<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which
alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be
revealed; and nothing hid that shall not be made known. What I tell
you in darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the
ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6
--
Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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