Miscellaneous
See other Miscellaneous ArticlesTitle: Guide to Brainwashing Little Kids
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Liberty Forum
URL Source: http://NA
Published: Nov 24, 2007
Author: Polak
Post Date: 2012-02-27 16:34:49 by bluegrass
Ping List: *New History*
Keywords: None
Views: 7187
Comments: 4
It is rare that people are truly interested in ugly side of history, politics, or human nature. In search for such people I have decided to share some of my experiences with one ugly side of communism -- brainwashing and control of “intellectual” elite.
In recent years, there appears to be (finally) some growing unease among the Americans over what it is that the public schools really “teach.” Many people cannot understand why would somebody ever come up with “sex-ed,” or “death-ed,” or fanatical environmental “science,” or “political correctness,” and push it on kids who barely know how to read. Many of those who do the pushing do not know either -- they are only “doing their jobs.” While these school programs might look illogical and wasteful, there is logic and a purpose to it.
In my view, using brainwashing tricks on little kids is most disgusting thing imaginable. An adult already has (or at least should) the analytical skills developed to filter out garbage coming in. Kids do not and it is unfair to expect them to. This means that ALL correctly formulated conditioning will generally make it to the kid’s mind (or it’s associative database to be exact using the model I have presented). I see the whole thing as en extremely repulsive thing – how would you feel after discovering that six-year old kids are exposed to beating through punches designed by champion boxers?
This thing has bothered me for many, many years. For me, the first visible sign of trouble in the US was “crossing guards” that I have seen utilized even for high school students. You might not think that this is a big thing – but think about it – you CAN teach a two-year- old dog to cross a street on his own. Yet the system insists on one hand that the high school kids are old enough to have sex, but on the other, they are not advanced enough to be able to cross a street on their own.
Later, by accident, I had a chance to review years of school writing assignments of some American kid. The assignments were not formulated to test any real skills (knowledge of literature, logical thinking, knowledge of geography, history, etc). They were clearly formulated to exercise emotions. This rung the warning bell big time - is a well-known trick of totalitarian systems. The worst application of something like that was treatment of political prisoners who were forced to write an emotional essay about the system every day – or they wouldn’t get food. Sure, it is not a problem to fake something like that once, twice, for a week, or a month – but try doing something like that for several years at a situation where no other stimulants are present. No matter how strong you are, you will end up spilling your soul out and giving in to the dogmas you are forced to write about.
I have discussed the issue with some libertarians and one of them told me that there was a book written on the subject of brainwashing in the American schools:
Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas by Thomas Sowell
Long time later, I have found another interesting book on the subject:
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
Both of these books confirmed my fears and provided well-documented evidence that the problem is worse than I suspected. If several different individuals, all from totally different backgrounds reach the same conclusion, there must be something to it. I urge anyone interested in the subject to read these books.
As good as these books are – they do miss one important element in my opinion– the technical analysis of the techniques and goals. I might be very non-objective here, but I think that all people with Polish/Czech/Serb background have much more experience in that matter. There is a good reason for it – we were exposed to it for hundreds of years – all the “tricks” were developed and tried on us in the attempts to merge us into other countries (germanization, russification, etc). In Poland there is both fiction and non-fiction literature on the subject, some of which has been translated.
One book I particularly recommend is this one:
The Inquisitors by Jerzy. Andrzejewski
Unfortunately, this book is very rare. I looked for it for years so I could let my American friends read it. After years of searching I finally purchased from a dealer for a really steep price – over $100. Now the Z-shops are much more effective - you can have it for $14. Some university library may also have it.
Divide and Conquer
Even though communism and other totalitarian systems rely on creation of unsophisticated people as its core base of support, no system can survive without being run by people who do not have exceptional skills. Most people will agree that communism (with its main idea being “To everybody according to his needs, from everybody according to his abilities.”) is by nature destructive to creative, exceptional people. How then can you corrupt enough skilled people to sustain communism’s existence?
To accomplish the above requires a complex system of controlled public education, cultivating of high ambition, dividing the society (into takers and producers), cultivating controlled rebellion, and taking advantage of these divisions to corrupt, brainwash people with potentially high skills.
Anybody who faced controlled schooling in a communist country would go through a roller-coaster of stress and ecstasy, happiness and fury, where a person’s ego would be carefully cultivated only to be trashed in an appropriate moment. All of this served a specific purpose. It is a devilish system that with 100% efficiency sorts and identifies individual people.
In a great simplification, the process would look like this:
- 1. A random sample of kids enters a government assigned elementary school, where no placing based on individual’s skills is allowed (since everybody is equal). COMPULSORY PUBLIC EDUCATION IS NO 1 REQUIREMENT OF MAINTAINING COMMUNISM OR ANY OTHER TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENT!!!
- 2. The teachers begin pumping the official curriculum, much of which is denial of simple, common knowledge, which kids might have brought from home and pumping of official dogmas. It includes trashing of common-sense morality (and religion) substituting it with primitive, official dogmas. On one hand the dogmas are idealistic and pure, on the other hand, they are crude and idiotic -- but the most important factor there is CONFLICT.
- 3. This conflict causes havoc and “overload” in the kid’s brains -- they have not experienced anything like that before. This is the trick here – being exposed to conflicting, hard-to-understand, illogical data that are impossible to reconcile with the previous knowledge and experiences, and have this done when the “garbage filter” is not yet operational. This is a horrible thing to do – the “associative database” part of the brain makes it impossible to store conflicting information and there are only two paths out of this predicament.
- 4. At this very early stage of life, a kid is pushed to make the most important decision of his life -- whether to abandon the desire to question things, become a submissive “sheep” which does what it is told, and never, ever is allowed to get “out-of-line,” or whether to rebel against the “pure, great, idealistic” dogmas, preserve at all cost the natural desire to build all information into logical, interconnected system. The second choice is hard - it demands becoming a “wolf” - a little rebel and a little criminal, who at the early age of 7 or 8 has to tell the adults (the teachers) that they are full of crap in order to save his brain from being permanently ruined. The sheep will later in life became workers, clerks, and other “followers,” the wolves will either become the elite of the system or face its guillotine. The “Big Brother” already knows who is a sheep and who is a wolf. This greatly simplifies the overseeing process: only wolves are watched, paying attention to sheep would be waste of time.
- 5. The division into sheep and wolves further escalates the conflict. The extraordinary individuals are now playing unruly, rebellious criminals, and the sheep, out of envy and remains of ambition (they subconsciously would love to be wolves), become informants of the system. The sheep do not miss any opportunity to impress the system (the great, noble teachers) and report every incident of a wolf’s misbehavior. The wolf kids grow frustrated and alienated -- the conflict grows - The sheep are used to shock the wolves – “how can sheep be so stupid and submissive?” and the wolves are used to shock the sheep – “how can the wolves get away with being such jerks?”
- 6. The obvious result for a kid wolf is, that finally he does something bad enough to be reported to a “higher level” -- school principal in this case. In most cases it will be some nasty joke played on the teacher shamelessly pushing the dogmas. This is a very key development for the kid wolf - on one hand, he now became the worst school criminal and faces punishment; on the other hand, he now became important enough to be dealt with by the most important person in the school (after months of alienation among “informant sheep” -- the attention given him breaks the frustration of a lonely individual).
- 7. The school principal is usually the only adult wolf in the school (with all teachers being “sheep”). In communist countries school principals would usually be experienced party operatives, who would “retire” into a school. To the great surprise of the kid wolf, the principal is not mad at him. The principal actually KNOWS why the kid wolf was misbehaving. The Principal tells the kid that he feels the same way about the “primitive dogmas” that the teachers push. The Principal further explains that these dogmas are needed so all the stupid, evil sheep kids can understand things. If the kid wolf still has doubts whether or not all the kid sheep are evil and stupid, the principal has an ace card to play -- He tells the kid wolf which sheep kid reported on him on what he reported (with a little exaggeration). The kid wolf now finds himself in the awkward position of defending his prosecutors (and humanity’s morals in the process).
- 8. It is really important to understand what happened here technically-wise. Some people have argued with me that fear is the best brainwashing button. It is not. It might be the most widely used button, most primitive, but it is the least effective one. Why? Because it is EXPECTED!!! In this situation the kid has already prepared himself for the punishment – so the actual punishment would not be so shocking. If the principal simply threatened the kid, the emotional load would be very little compared to the other trick. The UNEXPECTED always is the best button – imagine you drive 150mph, a cop pulls you over, and invites you for a beer in order to find out more about you and your car.
- 9. After the soul exchange, the principal explains that even though he likes the kid wolf a lot, he cannot allow him to play nasty jokes on the teachers. The kid wolf understands (often without words to be said) that he faces penalties and humiliation (like being dragged out of school by angry parents, who were humiliated by being dragged out of work). As an alternative, the Principal suggests that (rather than playing nasty jokes on the teachers), the kid wolf can simply talk to him about his anger. If the kid chooses punishment and humiliation, he is finished (since he is out of school and there are no non-governmental schools). If he chooses the “friendship” with the Principal, he gets as a reward an opportunity to get even with those who reported him, he gets an opportunity to control the teachers, and otherwise “get away with murder” as long as he continues to be “friends” with the principal. He is actually encouraged to humiliate the teachers as long as he improves his skills (so he is of value for the system).
- 10. Please notice how devilishly clever the system is: not only was a future “comrade” recruited, but also an informant reporting on the teachers was gained. The system (the school) becomes a solid unit with multi-threaded controls: kid-sheep reporting on the kid-wolves, teachers reporting on kids, kid-wolves reporting on teachers. The principal consolidated his dictatorial rule without any violence at all. The kid wolf is on his way to become a ruthless enforcer who can kill without blinking an eye (his morality was destroyed by “betrayal” of his peers)
- 11. The system is continued throughout a person’s life: high-school, university, work. The carrots for “being friends” with the system grow more and more lucrative (promotions, money, honors, etc.) and carrots for misbehavior much more severe (losing one’s means of survival, being hurt(killed) personally, having one’s family hurt). The corrupted individual can lie to himself that he stands for higher values, that he only does the bad things since they are necessary to avoid a worse evil -- we have a “sheep” of a higher level. If he struggles and rebels, he faces a “principal” of a higher level, with better carrots and better sticks. In such case, again, he either gets eliminated or becomes an operative of a higher level.
- 12. As bad as it might seem for wolves, the life of a sheep is even worse. Giving up on logic in an early stage means that the sheep has no chance to learn any advanced skills. The sheep is sentenced to life of doing “the safe thing,” imitating other sheep, abandoning all ambition, in order just to survive.
- 13. Why do people allow this? Simple – lack of knowledge and laziness. Among other things, for a teacher or parent it might SEEM that having kid-sheep is great. Wolves (or even simply uncorrupted individuals) constantly need attention, constantly test the limits of themselves and environment, constantly explore and get into trouble; sheep just sit there duh-ing all day. It is difficult enough for a parent-wolf to deal with a kid-wolf, but it is almost impossible for a sheep-parent to tolerate a kid-wolf. So, once started, the disease spreads exponentially.
- 14. Please note, that in most cases ALL elements of the system are pursuing EVIL goals without actually knowing that. The system has built-in multi-level controls that maintain order.
How does one defend himself (or his kids) from being corrupted? There are equally devilishly clever ways to deal with the system. If there is enough interest demonstrated, I will write about it here.
(Now I have done it -- I have rebelled, I have spilled the knowledge of a higher level. I am ready for the stick and the carrot. Will I take the carrot?! )
Application in America today
How does it apply in the US? Quite well – almost all elements are implemented through dictates from above. Wonderfully illogical curricula are pushed on “young skulls full of mush,” while development of any real skills is totally neglected. Excellent level of conflict is achieved. Sheep and wolves are separated; the wolves are in mental warfare with everybody around. This is where it ends, unfortunately. America faces acute shortage of retired party operatives willing to serve as school principals. The poor wolves are all primed up (agitated and alienated) and do their stuff, but (more often than not) there is no “Principal” to “guide” the energy “correctly” (this might be partially good). At the extreme cases, the wolf finds salvation to his conflict in his daddy’s firearm arsenal. Mind-altering substances administered to the wolf by the school to reduce his “hyperactivity” do help that process too. In short “It takes a village” PRINCIPAL to “educate the “next generation.”
As inefficient as the American implementation of the program is, it still does achieve some goals. The wolves are still identified early and separated from the sheep. The kids still get to practice reporting on their parents and teachers. Then on the other hand, the American system just might be an improvement over the Soviet one. The key weakness of the Soviet system was an exceptionally smart wolf who would learn the system early and manipulate it the same way double, triple, and quadruple intelligence agents do. Perhaps the goal of the American program is limiting the development of wolves to selected “elite” environments. (This is a story for another day though).
Poster Comment: I found some old LF posts and wanted to share 'em. I always liked Polak's take on things. I wonder whatever became of him. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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