©Tantra Bensko
The "Not Me" Myth: Orwell and the Mind
Margaret Thaler Singer Ph.D.
Orwell, as others before
him such as Defoe, Zamyatin, Huxley and Jack London, wrote about the
"negative utopias." These were places in which man's most central
capacities for reasoning creatively, scientifically and
compassionately were gradually curbed and eventually stifled. Not
only in "1984" but in his essay on Politics and the English
Language, Orwell emphasized the power of words. Words represent
thoughts and without the capability to express those thoughts,
people lost access to them.
`Writers before Orwell prophesied
centralized governments using torture, drugs and mysterious esoteric
techniques as the feared methods by which man might be controlled.
Orwell's genius was in sensing that combinations of social and
psychological techniques are easier, more effective, and cheaper
than the gun-at-the-head method of coercion. Social and
psychological persuasion are also less likely to attract attention
and thus are unlikely to mobilize opposition early and easily from
those being manipulated. Orwell reasoned that if a government could
control all media and communication, meanwhile forcing citizens to
speak in a politically- controlled jargon, this would blunt
independent thinking. If thought could be controlled, then
rebellious actions against a regime could be prevented.
As 1984 begins, various totalitarian
governments control and censor the media and squelch dissenting
individuals. Perhaps more ominously and subtly here and elsewhere in
the world, there are mini-versions of Orwell's Big Brother, Newspeak
and Thought Police. Since the early 1970's there has been a
burgeoning not of governments, but of independent entrepreneurial
groups going into the mind manipulation and personality-change
business. Myriads of faddist, cultists, quacks and "new age" and
"new-movement" groups have emerged using Orwellian mind manipulation
techniques. The groups recruit the naive, the unaffiliated, the
trusting and the altruistic. They promise intellectual, spiritual
and self-actualization utopias whereas the pied pipers of the past
promised primarily social and political new worlds. The New Age pied
pipers offer pathways to development, enlightenment and
egalitarianism. Many later subject their followers to mind-numbing
treatments that block thinking and subjugate free will in a context
of a strictly enforced hierarchy.
Just as most soldiers believe bullets
will hit only others, not themselves, most citizens like to think
that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. " Other
people can be manipulated, but not me," they declare. People like to
think that their opinions, values and ideas are inviolate and
totally self-regulated. They may admit grudgingly that they are
influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to
preserve a myth in which other persons are weak-minded and easily
influenced, but they are strong-minded. People cherish a fantasy
that manipulators confront, browbeat and argue people into doing
their bidding. They envision Big Brother coming in storm-trooper
boots, holding guns to heads and forcing persons to change their
beliefs, alter their personalities, and accept new ideologies.
Orwell drew on the wisdom of the ages -- most manipulation is subtle
and covert. Orwell envisioned the evolution of an insidious, but
successful mind and opinion manipulator. He would appear as a
smiling, seemingly beneficent Big Brother. But instead of one Big
Brother, we see hordes of Big Brothers in the world today.
Orwell's predictions have not
totally, and perhaps may never completely occur because of the
wondrous properties of the human mind when it remains free to
reason. But his ideas serve as warnings of the extent to which
people's thinking can be influenced.
The myth of mind invulnerability
needs to be examined over and over to prevent Orwell's 1984 world
from happening. In just the past half-century, the world has seen
numerous examples of the extent to which people can be influenced. A
number of these have been California-based phenomena. In the 1930's
we saw the Russian purge trials, in the late 1940's the world
witnessed the Chinese Thought Reform programs change the beliefs and
behavior of the largest nation in the world. The 1950's brought the
Korean War in which North Korea's intensive indoctrination of United
Nations prisoners of war showed the extent to which captors would go
in an attempt to win converts to their political cause. Later in the
same decade Cardinal Mindszenty, the head of the Catholic Church in
Hungary, and a man of tremendous personal forcefulness, strength of
convictions, and faith in God, ended up being so manipulated and
processed by his Russian captors that he -- as had the purge trial
victims of the 1930's-- both falsely confessed and falsely accused
his colleagues. As he later looked back on the manipulation and
processing done to him, he wrote in his memoirs, "Without being
aware of what was happening, I had become another person." These
extremes of social and psychological manipulations of thought and
conduct are often disregarded by Americans because the events
occurred for away and could be dismissed as merely foreign
propaganda, and political acts. The reasoning was based on the "not
me myth" -- not in our land could such happen. Then we had to begin
looking at certain events that were occurring the California and see
that extremes of influence and manipulation were possible here.
Charles Manson manipulated a band of middle-class youths into
believing his mad versions of "Helter Skelter" and under his
influence they carried out multiple vicious murders. Later Patricia
Hearst a kidnap victim, was psychologically and otherwise abused by
a rag-tag group of Bay Area revolutionaries. They used Orwellian
mind manipulations as well as gun-at-the-head methods to coerce her
compliance. Then in 1978, Jim Jones manipulated 912 persons
into history's largest mass murder-suicide phenomenon. Since him the
world has seen other cult leaders such as David Koresh in
Texas, Luc Jouret
with followers in Canada, France and Switzerland lead their
followers to fiery deaths. Hundreds of other cult leaders have
gathered far more followers than Jones by promising new
psychological and spiritual utopias. They have succeeded by
combining various ages-old psychological and social persuasion
techniques in an atmosphere of Madison Avenue soft-sell approaches.
Because most of the followers have been youthful or poor, little
attention and credence has been given to reports from ex-members,
families and friends who report the effects of the techniques of
manipulation used by the groups. Representative Leo J. Ryan
understood the manipulation phenomena people were describing to him
and he lost his life in a Guyanese jungle investigating how Jim
Jones "bent minds."
Were George Orwell alive, he might be
intrigued with the variety of situations in which mind-bending and
thought manipulation techniques are applied today. His genius
centered on seeing how language, not physical force would be used to
manipulate minds. In fact the growing evidence in the behavioral
sciences is that a smiling Big Brother has greater power to
influence thought and decision-making that a visibly threatening
person. As Orwell's last words in his prophetic book stated: "He
loved Big Brother."
