Why is it everyones thought that if u meet a monkey...., they will hug you?
Why when the light goes green do cars go weather or not someones crossing in from of them, are they looking at the street of just the light?
Why do poeple automaticaly think that 20% off and "Discounted product" is a better deal? or $20.99 or .99 is better than $21?
If TV dident have ADs would we watch it as much?, If a totaly ad free station became avalible to broudcast ALL programs, would it take off?
Why do we assume were worth being paid to do a job were no good at?
Why are "war Crimes" in the name of peace ignored, but a person can be sent to prison for defending their own home against burglers?
Why (this a a NZ thing, unless there have been other incedents like this) when the biggest mall in the country opens and are offering $50 TVs do people go mental and ingore ALL road rules, Police, Blocked road signs and parking is full signs, to get that tv, in so doing jamming most of the main highway?
Why do most western people assume asians are bad drivers?
Why dose the world take such a high level of aggressivness towards Violence and drugs and still allow movies to be creatated that promote and encourage drugs, war, murder, hate and more that say its "ok",?
Why is prosatution LEGAL if its taxed?
Why (lol this is so silly) do SUPER MARKETS and other shops being not satisfyed with adverts on tv have put LCD monitars in their stores promoting the products ur assumidly already buying....?
Why is it easyer to txt someone in the next room insted of walking into that room and tlaking to them? why is txt the primary language now?
Why (this is weird) do disasters make covers and frontline news, but disaster that being going on for a very long time is ignored and seen as old news or thoose annoying ADDs on TV with naked sick kids?
Why do we work only to get money to buy the latest "stuff" use it and await the next version of the "stuff"?
Why arnt health services free(in most countrys)? why are the waiting lists for people needing organ donations so long, will all the people getting killed all over the country surly at least ONE of TWO of them would donate?
Are we really doing what WE want in our lives or what other poeple WANT us to do...., buy a car....., buy shares in comanys....., get a bank account....., get a morgage...., they all benifet someone else more....
Are we happy living the life thats not in our control...., we can end our lives (illegally)
Why do most young people see the Police as "pigs" and other such things for simply upholding the "Law", just coz we got caught dose make the ones who catch us bad.....
Why if I go into town today will I see "types" of people opposed to inderviduals. theres emo's, punks, gangstas, stoners, hippies, a small ammount of people that have no catagory, and bus drivers.
I am just asking why.... but think WHY!!!!!!!! do you think this way....is it you or have you been infloenced?
Most of those seem to be just random wierd things. I fail to see what other contries health care and things of that kind has to do with the way I think.
I understand the view that society is brainwashing us. However, it can only brainwash you as much as you let it. I watch comercials too, does it ever convince me to buy a product? Hardly, only if I happen to be looking to buy something like a computer will I pay much attention to a computer add.
We all learn things from our society, things that are just common like handshakes and such. Those are social influences, some contries do them some don't it all depends on the social area you live in, and it is influenced by more than the media, it is determind by people around you as well. Is this brainswashing? Or adaptation? If you picked brainwashing, is that not the same thing as when a baby is born into a family? Do they not pick up on the language and the behavures of their parents/siblings?
Yes and its working. Not on me but on others.
You can easily see the effects. Fast food dose not taste good, yet people eat it. They could spend less money at a grocery store and make a good meal in 10 to 15 minuets and it will tastes allot better than fast food, yet they keep going to fast food places. The best example of this is Taco Bell. Now I like Mexican food (more accurately, Texmex as it developed around the Texas Mexico border) but Taco Bell tastes like shit. My mother and brother loves that place and they'll admit, it doesn't;t taste good. For a little bit ore money they can go to a Mexican restraint and get something to go that tastes good.
Well, I kind of like fast food, but I am able to draw the line at enough is enough, because it does get disgusting if you get it often. I usually get it once or twice a month, if that anymore.
And I do agree that we, as a human race, are becoming complacent and relaxed on ourselves. I believe this is the basis of H.G. Wells' book "The Time Machine." I can't really explain it without going into much detail, but it basically suggests that there will be a point where humans will reach their maximum, and eventually our "evolution" will move back, and we will retrogress to primitive humanoid species.
Alot of that isn't brainwashing.
you want brainwashing look at groups.
(actually groups are victims of self delusion but still)
Tough guys in there old cars: Call people who care for the enviroment pansies. They have no argument, they are idiots, and yet they still come in packs. Why? Self delusion.
Hippies who think drug culture somehow makes them individual and helps them be "real" are just selling out in a different way to a different thing,
anyway yeah ...
I believe personal freedom will always be available for those who seek it, but there are a great deal of institutions working hard to take out pieces of it. Our governments, to take an obvious example, continuously erode civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism/ drug wars/ fear-mongering. TV and radio conglomerates have for decades fed on each other to become mutlinational syndicates beholden to their own interests and effectively ceased to serve the public in any meaningful way a long time ago, instead spreading a mixture of extreme consumptionism and government propaganda. Our education systems are filled with distortions of history that hide obvious truths, and routines passify and prepare us for the conformity of a consumer existence later in life.
Cynical, but not unreasonable talk. So our own expressions of freedom (however they are expressed, and parts many subcultures, including the hippy culture, are in my opinion contributing a great deal to oppose conformist ideology) become increasingly important in a world that seeks to pigeonhole us where we are unwilling to live.
Andy
I can actually think of reasons why most of these things happen, and most having nothing to do with a brainwashed society. Alot of these are isolated things too. For example, I (and most of my friends) would rather walk into a room and talk to someone then text them, and I don´t think that texting is a primary form of communication either. The world is just evolving and it lets us come closer together, anyway I´m going a tad on a tangent. >_<
some people are like what you´ve discribed... but I think for the most part that society CAN tell the difference between Reality and this brainwashed world that you are talking about...
its all stereotypes, if you ask me
Societal norm... Brainwash... are they synonyms?
To a large point I believe that they are but then again it can all come back to the age old philisophical discussion of "how do we know that the sky is blue" or "Is the grass really green". These and many other things are taught to us from birth almost so we are conditioned to believe they are true. If you were to take a baby and tell it from the very begining that it was a puppy then it would believe that it was a puppy not a humanbeing.
So, I guess what it all comes down to in my opinion is that we are all conditioned/brainwashed (one in the same) for many things throughout life and no matter where you live it will always be that way. There is no escaping it not really even if you lived in the middle of nowhere from the time you were born your parents would teach/condition/brainwash you to their beliefs and ways. Can this be changed, I don't think so because there will always be some form of it. Yes we do have our own free will to accept or not accept the way things are and to an extent we all do this because if we didn't we would not even be talking about it here... 
You can try telling yourself everyday multiple times a day that the sky is green and the grass is blue or that the table is really a ball or what ever you would like but it has been conditioned into your brain that it is what it is and it will take a long time to change it.
Society teaches us many things such as stereotypes we hear it all the time, we see it all the time so we learn to accept it as the way it is so the bottom line is that yes I believe that we are brainwashed every day of our lives but that is part of this life and there is not much that can be done to change that. I wouldn't be so quick to equate acculturation with brainwashing. You do that, and guess what? Every single person on the face of the planet is brainwashed, and the term loses an awful lot of value. Brainwashing can be characterized separately from the simple learning of societal norms. It is:
- Often carried out either without the knowledge of or against the will of the person being brainwashed.
- Coercive: The subject does not have a choice in the matter of whether or not she will accept the teachings.
- Aimed at indoctrination: The point of brainwashing is to get the subject to believe a certain doctrine or set of doctrines, dogmatically through rote repetition rather than through reasoned argument or demonstration.
- Carried out for the purpose of increasing conformity amongst a group of subjects that might not otherwise identify with one another or with the power figure doing the brainwashing.
Acculturation may or may not also have all of these features, though it generally does have at least the last feature in multiracial and multiethnic societies such as those of the western industrial nations and Russia.
Regarding the OP itself, however, I would need substantion of the claim that "people" automatically think or do the things the member is claiming. Nobody I know thinks that a monkey gives hugs (in fact, monkeys don't even have brachiating arms that can give hugs), nor do they go at the sight of a green light when there is someone in the crosswalk directly in front of their vehicle, nor do they automatically think that a discounted product is cheaper than one being sold at full price. Although, obviously that last one must have a significant effect, simply assuming that marketers know what they are doing (and I do make that assumption). I also have a question. Why don't YOU have anything better to do???!! (Just kidding eh!)
| Quote: |
| If TV dident have ADs would we watch it as much?, If a totaly ad free station became avalible to broudcast ALL programs, would it take off? |
We have the BBC in the UK, completely Ad free and paid for by the people directly. In my opinion it produces some amazing programming, especially comedy, which is througherly british. I have heard many foreign people who ahve spent time in the UK say that the 2 BBC channels (now about 5) produce far better programming than all the channels they have in the US...
check out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Finance
| Quote: |
| Why arnt health services free |
well because it costs money to do medicine, it costs alot. It takes alot of man power to treat people.
if you mean free as in universally available, well generally this is due to a lack of will on the part of those in power, more than impossibility. The UK NHS provides reasonable universal care, paid for via universal tax (national health insurance), it is the third largest organisation in the world in terms of staff after the chinese army and the indian railways.
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS
Last edited by mgumn on Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:31 pm; edited 1 time in totalalso i might add "we r the s y c" that your english is appalling in the strangest way, it just appears (to me at least) that you are lazy, not that english is a second language...
| Quote: |
| Why if I go into town today will I see "types" of people opposed to inderviduals. theres emo's, punks, gangstas, stoners, hippies, a small ammount of people that have no catagory, and bus drivers. |
it is quite possible that it is human nature to group people and to feel the need to be part of a group, we are after all a social animal and it is likely that we are loaded with apperatus to compell us to form groups and alliances.
I notice that the people who have "no group" have a group, "no group". this grouping has as much to do with you as it does with the groups perceived or not.
i remember from my psychology subsid at UNI that instead of breaking a preconception or prejudice you have about a perceived group, you would rather create a new one, so as to avoid congnative dissonance (that uncomfertable feeling you get when you wrestle with two contradictory ideas). Apparently there was a "Black Buisnessman" phenomenon in the US, people would rather say "these succesfull african american buisnessmen are a distinct group who are completely different from normal african americans"Nope! It's not working on me! 
Okay, I've read it alot in this thread already, What is the difference between conditioning and brainwashing. Newborns have a choice, be-it not very good- between learning what their parents teach them or not learning. How is that different from brainwashing? Its accepted in society. In different courses you are "conditioned" to think in a certain way. Again, strangely similar to brainwashing. Your choice? Think that way or fail. In my opinion, society brainwashes everyone, you cannot excape it. You are brainwashed from birth to see things one way or another, and generally don't have free-will to choose not to. Adapting to society is brainwashing yourself to think the way others want you to. Even if you think you are doing it to be different, there is a society standard for those that are different.
Do people trying to control brainwashing use systematic methods of "brainwashing"? yes.
Another point which seems to have been overlooked here...is any form of attempting to influence a person towards a belief they are not used to (notice I did not say normal) an attempt at brainwashing?
It really makes a person wonder what exactly is "brainwashing" anyway? Is it the attempt to live your life by (so-called) acceptable beahavior, thereby following the [rules]? Or is it following someone else's beliefe that is not consistant with the [acceptable norms]?
Brainwashing is the intentional manipulations of a persons beliefs and or actions, against the persons will.
| The Conspirator wrote: |
| Brainwashing is the intentional manipulations of a persons beliefs and or actions, against the persons will. |
So would that mean trying to change someones mind, or opinion, to follow a differant opinion, or set of guidlines, could be construed as an attempt at "brainwashing"?
Interesting.
