The Conspiracy Taking Place Within Your Own Mind

I found this article on Cracked.

I thought it was very interesting, and unintentionally exposes some of the tricks used on us every day. I personally can say I have been the victim of some of these very tricks.

For those of you who doubt "mind control", this article will no doubt show you how easy it is. It really is not that difficult to convince a mass of people, or a single person of anything whether it be true or false.

Please really do take a moment to read this article. It shows some of the things that "debunkers" and conspiracy theorists run into every day--on both sides.

5 Mind Blowing Ways Your Memory Plays Tricks On You

Everybody will tell you that memory can't be trusted. When they say that, of course, what they mean is other people's memories can't be trusted. We don't like to think that everything we know about the world is based on a deeply flawed and illogical storage system. We're not talking about being bad at matching faces with names here. Science has found that your memory is basically a pathological liar, just making it up as it goes along. For instance ...

#5 Other People Can Manipulate Your Memory With Repetition

There was quite a stir recently when it turned out that a growing number of people believe the President of the USA is a Muslim. Regardless of whether or not you intend to vote for the man, this is just an issue of fact, and the fact is that at various times we have all seen video clips of Mr. Obama drinking alcohol, eating pork, getting sworn in on a Christian Bible and sitting in a Christian church.

#4. Your Brain Is Half Blind

#3. Your Brain Just Makes # Up

There are two famous cases, involving Nadean Cool and Beth Rutherford. Cool, despite having a Fonzie worthy name, was convinced by her therapist during regular sessions that she had, among other things, been in a satanic cult, eaten babies, been regularly raped as a child, watched her friend get murdered, and that she had sex with animals. In reality none of that actually happened, yet she was completely convinced that it did. All it took was enough prodding from a therapist insisting that she had merely repressed the memory. The act of inventing the ludicrous scenario from whole cloth felt to her exactly the same as "uncovering" something she had forgotten.

#2. Your Memory Can Be Fooled By Manipulated Images

Slate.com found the same thing; using an elaborate system of showing people fake images and asking them if they remembered them, Slate found that fifteen percent of people that took the survey "remembered" the faked images as real. And when asked if they remembered the event, if not the photo, they had responses up to 68% remembering certain events happening that never happened. Their brains just manufactured the memory spontaneously, because somebody showed them a picture of it. They could photoshop an image from a famous protest to add in riot cops and violence. People would swear they could remember hearing about the riots. It doesn't matter that photo manipulation has literally been around as long as photos have been around. A good fake can set itself up in our memory right alongside the real stuff.

#1. Your Mood Skews Your Memories

At least once this month you've heard an old guy, either in life or on your television or on talk radio, talking about how we need to get America back to the good ol' days. You know, the way it was when he was a kid, when everyone was honest and worked hard and people cared about each other. It doesn't matter that the history book say he was growing up during the Holocaust, and it doesn't matter that his grandfather was saying the same thing when he was a boy. This guy knows he can remember a time when everything was wonderful.

I didn't want to plagiarize the article because that is not fair to the website. I only took very small snippets. I hope everyone takes the time to actually read the article. It is very interesting.

I hardly ever use bold.

It's interesting. I remember that "Count the passes...but did you see the gorilla!" video in one of my high school psychology classes. I think 70% of the class - including myself - responded with a, 'What the hell, there was a gorilla in the video!'

I do not agree with the overall message of that article, though. I believe it is our understanding of memory that is severely lacking, not necessarily the infallibility of our memory systems.

ETA: In terms of the Conspiracy Side of your post, I agree. The thing is we are all implanted with these Mind Control devices from a time before we are old enough to resist or even understand its effect on us and our mindset. To escape this programming is impossible in the practical sense. The best we can do is educate ourselves that these devices have been used successfully against people we love AND ourselves and to try change its effect on us. An extremely difficult task.

reply to post by Dark Ghost


The reason I found this so interesting was not so much for the scientific factor as it was the demonstration factor it has.

I believe this shows that with subtle manipulation people can be lead to believe anything. It doesn't take a manchurian candidate style of brainwashing.