Your Greatest Threat? Mind Rot
Protect Your Mind!
Welcome to the YouTopian Journey. Each week I will be sharing unique wisdom that can help you in the daily battles that we must all fight in the game of life. This week we discuss the hazard of hazards, the danger of dangers, the rotting of the mind.
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Now onto the good stuff.
THE ROTTING OF THE MIND
"In our epoch of too many noises and many frustrations, many “free” minds have given up the struggle for decency and individuality. They surrender to the “Zeitgeist,” often without being aware of it. Public opinion molds our critical thoughts every day. Unknowingly, we may become opinionated robots. The slow coercion of hypocrisy, of traditions in our culture that have a levelling effect — these things change us. We crave excitement, hair-raising stories, sensation. We search for situations that create superficial fear to cover up inner anxieties. We like to escape into the irrational because we dislike the challenge of self-study and self-thinking. Our leisure time is occupied increasingly by automatized activities in which we take no part: listening to piped-in words and viewing television screens. We hurry along with cars and go to bed with a sleeping pill. This pattern of living in turn may open the way for renewed sneak attacks on our mind. Our boredom may welcome any seductive suggestion."-Dr. Joost A. M Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
The threat is omnipresent.
It is insidious.
It is all around us.
You see it when you are out.
People giving you the blank stares when you try to speak with them.
People vanishing on you on a whim and ignoring your requests.
The lack of knowledge.
The servile attitude to our devices.
The gullible and easily fooled.
The human mind, our greatest weapon, the most powerful tool at our disposal, has slowly begun to rot like a corpse in the hot sun.
We have gone from the information age to the age of menticide, where our minds have become susceptible to manipulation by those who we will never meet. This is a process that dates back over a century, where Edward L. Bernays once remarked:
"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Bernays ought to know, he was a master manipulator of influencing the masses from behind the scenes. If you ever ate bacon for breakfast, you have him to thank for it, as bacon wasn’t a staple until he spearheaded the marketing campaign.
In the 20th century, the great advertisers and propaganda artists worked to control the thoughts of the masses. They never could have dreamed of social media, algorithms, and the sheer power that it wields over our minds.
This menticide has happened gradually, a slow metamorphosis of our minds into sludge. Our inner fortress, the sphere of safety that has protected us from foolish ideas, con artists, and ludicrous thoughts, has been dismantled brick by brick.