It has never been more important to acknowledge "the elephant in the room"
An article by David Charalambous to support our conversation on MIND CONTROL
The Adaptive Unconscious is our hidden influence. This brief article by David Charalambous provides additional resources into the topic of mind control that David and I discussed in our Tess Talks 2 David Charalambous episode last week – well worth watching today if your missed it!
“Is it the elephant in the room?” by David Charalambous
“Elephant in the Room” is a metaphor referring to an essential or enormous topic, question, or controversial issue that everyone is aware of but no one wants to talk about. It represents an obvious problem or difficult situation being ignored or avoided in conversation.
There are many elephants in the room today; it is as though the media conditions the public to ignore the elephants and discuss everything else.
Imagine if, in 2019, I were to try to explain hidden motives and drives that could create behaviour change on a scale never witnessed or imagined. Not many would think it a reasonable suggestion. With most having a front seat over the last four years, it has become an archaeological exercise.
What drove this? How did it happen?
The unconscious mind is ordinary in language today, but I will discuss a more specific part of the mind that few have heard of and even fewer have studied. Yet, it may be one of the most important aspects of understanding where we are today and may be critical to implementing successful solutions to our problems.
Voltaire famously said that if you can convince me of absurdities, I can commit atrocities. If large numbers of people can believe things to be true when compelling evidence suggests they are not, then undesirable outcomes are liable to come into reality. Events include a lady taking her son to the vet because he identifies as a cat. This is nothing new; pick up a history book for crazy things people have believed.
This part of the mind is known as the adaptive unconscious, and Timothy Wilson describes it well in the book Strangers to Ourselves. In it, he states: You can change people’s attitudes without knowing they have been changed.
The adaptive unconscious, as social psychologist Daniel Wegner describes it, is a set of mental processes that influence judgment and decision-making beyond conscious awareness. It aids in survival by quickly interpreting information and guiding actions efficiently. This unconscious thinking is faster, effortless, and focused on the present, playing a crucial role in learning, pattern detection, and information filtering[1][2].
.Overall, the adaptive unconscious plays a crucial role in human cognition and behaviour by enabling individuals to operate effectively in their environments through automatic and efficient mental processes that support various aspects of daily functioning and social interaction.
The key here is that if these processes operate outside of conscious awareness if they were changed, it is possible we would have no knowledge of this and, therefore, would dismiss the effect of influence if it affected this part of the mind. This is precisely what happens in many social science studies. Specific data in the environment is manipulated to alter behaviour or decisions and then excused as having any effect by the participants. This leads to stealth influence, possibly one of the greatest threats to our freedom.
The adaptive unconscious regulates perception in ways you are unaware of through a series of unconscious processes. This can lead to some strange behaviour, but other mental processes within this can cover up knowledge of this for ourselves if the drive is strong enough. Just look at the hubris of the World Economic Forum: “We elites are getting on better, but the public trusts us less now.”
If we then look at the adaptive unconscious as something that's been extensively studied over the last few decades and that its processes are unconscious, it's not hard to imagine that if we have processes in our mind that we're not aware of that are very important to our behaviour and someone else can influence the information in the adaptive unconscious. We could find ourselves in a challenging position.
Another part of the brain known as the reticular activated system acts as a filter and, in tandem with the adaptive unconscious, leads to such phenomena as confirmation bias, which
Thomas Jefferson describes it as “the moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees every object only the traits which favour that Theory.” Many people throughout history knew that if you hold beliefs deeply, this colours all information that's coming into your awareness. It literally will influence what you see. For instance, someone who believes the mainstream narrative will generally not accept anything that doesn't appear in a mainstream news organization, and the same is true for anyone there's started to distrust mainstream news organizations. They will generally distrust anything in that arena. This leads to almost two worlds having much difficulty communicating.
This can lead to a problematic state of mind when believing something and having certainty about that belief. Our adaptive unconscious will have a way of filling in the blanks and colouring the information to lead many to conclusions based on the incoming data. If that data is manipulated, one could almost predict a decision the person could make. Much like films such as Ocean’s Eleven, the mark or consumer of that information has their reality distorted to such a degree they think it is accurate to arrive at conclusions and have absolute certainty they are correct in their views.
Links to demonstrate the effects of influencing the adaptive unconscious
Derren Brown uses knowledge of the subliminal effect on the adaptive unconscious to implant ideas.
Split Second Learning – Dog spits out a treat if thinks it has been poisoned
A paper published by Matt Hudson on split-second learning https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.716535/full
Invisible Influence
Resources to study
The Elephant in the Brain
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/B07H8K69M6/
Stranger to Ourselves
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strangers-Ourselves-Discovering-Adaptive-Unconscious/dp/B006C1T93A
Before You Know It
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Before-You-Know-Unconscious-Reasons/dp/B071FBKQHF
Subliminal
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Subliminal-New-Unconscious-What-Teaches/dp/0241960541
Predictably Irrational
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/B01ITP2CGW
Books on how the mind changes
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Minds-Change-Science-Persuasion/dp/B0BLJ2TFXL/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Others/dp/B06Y261483/
Citations
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_unconscious
[2] https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/control/adaptive-unconscious/
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This morning, I was thinking that the elephant in the room is that the NIH and the US funded the Wuhan Lab and risky Gain of Function and bioweapon research around the globe. We have known the risks of this research for decades. It sounds to me like millions died unnecessarily over the past four years, and death rates will continue to increase based on the adverse events associated with mRNA vaccines, the lockdowns, the masks, the Opioid drug overdoses, etc. Where is the accountability for the root causes of all these deaths? Is this another genocide hiding in plain sight? And, as we know, "Mistakes were not made". https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem-57a Thank you, Dr Lawrie, for another important and insightful article.
It's easy to see how subliminal messaging has been used to get buy-in to the mainstream narrative. It is more difficult to assess to what extent I have been influenced by what others shaping the counter narrative say. Of course we all think we are independent critical thinkers and I hope I really am, but must continually do a system check.