Television: a tool to enslave the masses

An activate mechanism for writing this article was my bewilderment on why newsreaders, journalists and reporters on TV talk quite unusually for normal people, putting a certain emotional shade into every word, a certain emphasis that excludes any objections regarding what they are saying. A totally logical question arose: why? And since this is practiced by all modern TV channels I know, I’ve decided to get to the heart of the matter and find an answer.

I addressed the question to the Internet and was very surprised to find no answer at once which would clarify the phenomenon. Only in a while, having somewhat altered the inquiry text for the search engine, I encountered one answer only. It was given by journalist Arcady Dunaev:

“There is another important phenomenon: the emptiness of 90% of news texts. If we write them down on paper, we will find plenty of propagandistic stock phrases, value judgements, epithets and senseless bureaucratisms. Following a TV channel trend, newsreaders have to add at least visibility of an emotional tinge to such nonsense. It’s funny to see how all newsreaders of one or another channel modulate texts from an autocue according to the channel’s trend. Trends change: NTV used to have “concern and anxiety” (even if a story’s about a successful sowing campaign), and now they practice “overwhelming pride for possessing exclusives” (new studios oblige). RTR used to have “tiredness, but confidence”, whereas now they have “cheerful aggression”. Same intonations are repeated by reporters, both on screen and off screen.”

According to my observations, the same situation is on TV channels of Ukraine and other countries, both neighbouring and remote.

It turns out it is no mere chance that newsreaders and reporters speak in a “voice for softheads” (as one of my friends calls such style of information communication). It has become obvious this is one of ways to manipulate viewers’ consciousness. At that, when I started searching for “mass media means to influence people”, I got whole heaps of rather comprehensive works on mass psychology, psychotechnologies of consciousness hypnotic control, suggestion technologies, and so on. Going deeper into works by S.A. Zelinsky, S.G. Kara-Murza, V.М. Kandyba, А.А. Gavrilov, etc., I recalled a statement: “Big knowledge causes big sorrow”.

Apparently, mass consciousness control and hypnotic influence over people via mass media is now a widespread everyday practice, and no TV channel in Ukraine, Russia or another country has any aversion to it. There are whole research teams dealing with development of influence methods, and somebody pays them salaries, i.e. expects results and benefits such as gaining control over mass consciousness and getting opportunities to manipulate it in any form. A question thus arises: who are the customers? The answer is simple: customers are people with an incessant thirst for power and an enormous fear to lose the power; therefore they invent ways to deceive people as intricately as possible, not being answerable for that. To me, the saddest thing has been to find out that the TV I liked so much since childhood is not actually my friend, but a tool to enslave me and my family, though any tool is just a tool, and it’s up to its owners how to use it: for people’s good or for evil ends.

In his Contemporary Manipulation Psychotechnologies, S.A. Zelinsky mentions television produces the greatest manipulation effect, being, so to say, the most convenient tool to deceive the masses.

I’ve been wondering why my relatives and many of my friends cannot tear themselves away from TV sets, as if spellbound, and some of my family members even sleep to news releases or political talk shows.

“For most individuals it’s impossible to reject TV programmes, because the specific character of television signals and presentation of materials is intended first to provoke psychopathological symptoms in a person and later on to relieve such symptoms through broadcasting, thus ensuring stable dependence (similar to drug addiction). Everyone who’s been watching TV for a long time have such kind of dependence. These people are no longer able to give up viewing TV programmes, since, if they avoid watching TV, conditions that resemble neurotic symptoms start developing in them. The powerful effect of manipulation techniques is based exactly on provoking borderline psychopathological symptoms in person’s psyche. Television encodes individual psyche via a television signal. Such encoding is based upon psychic laws, under which any information first goes to the subconscious and from there affects consciousness. Thus, television broadcasting makes it possible to model individual and mass behaviour. S.G. Kara-Murza (2007) states TV products are “goods” similar to spiritual drugs. People of the modern urban society depend on television, since the latter influences them in such a way that people lose their free will and spend much more time in front of the screen than their actual information and entertainment needs imply. Just like in the case of drugs, a person who consumes a modern TV programme cannot rationally evaluate its influence over his or her psyche and behaviour. Moreover, since the person becomes “addicted” to television, he or she continues consuming its products even being aware of its baneful influence.” (S.V. Zelinsky. Contemporary Manipulation Psychotechnologies)

In other words, people are first driven into fear, depression, anger, aggression, intolerance, etc., basically being plunged into an emotion and consequently into a narrowed state of consciousness and neurosis. Thereafter such psychic state is relieved by other programmes, e.g. frequent commercials in which a tender and soothing male or female voice offers something, and pliable viewers heed it. As they say, nothing personal, it’s just business. Hence, advertising efficiency increases several times, because people frightened by the news yearn for psychological respite after the inner fear and despair caused by frequent news releases which on certain TV channels are shown every hour...

At that, fear is one of the most efficient leverages to influence human consciousness:

“Fear is one of the most powerful hypnogenic (hypnosis-provoking) emotions, which always emerges in every human being when their physical, social or other wellbeing is threatened. While experiencing fear, a person immediately gets into a narrowed, altered state of consciousness.” (S.А. Zelinsky. Psychotechnologies of Hypnotic Manipulation of Consciousness; V.М. Kandyba. Fundamentals of Hypnology: Psychophysiology Basics).

Now the plot thickens. Based on the thesis “forewarned is forearmed”, let’s disclose details of human consciousness manipulation through television:

“1) Fabrication of facts

In this case a manipulation effect takes place as a result of little deviations used when a material is communicated and acting always in the same direction. Manipulators tell the truth only when the truth may be easily verified. In the rest of cases they endeavour to present material in a manner they need. At that, a lie becomes the most efficient when it rests upon a stereotype put in the subconscious.

2) Selection of real events for a material

In this case an efficient way to programme people’s thinking is to control mass media for the purpose of communicating one and the same information in various words. At that, the activity of opposition mass media is allowed, however such activity must be under control and kept within the bounds of permitted broadcasting. Furthermore, mass media use the so-called sound democracy principle, when a message not desirable for a manipulator must simply perish under the powerful load of diverse information.

3) Grey and black information

In the second half of the 20^th century mass media began to use psychological warfare technologies. The American Military Dictionary of 1948 provides the following definition of psychological warfare: “It’s planned propaganda activities influencing views, emotions, opinions and behaviour of hostile, neutral or friendly foreign groups with the purpose of supporting the national policy.” The Guidelines (1964) say that the warfare goal is “to undermine a country’s political and social structure… to such degradation of the national consciousness that the state becomes unable to resist.”

4) Spread of psychoses

Secret tasks of mass media include transformation of the country’s citizens into a single mass (crowd) in order to regulate dissemination of information imposed on people’s consciousness and subconscious. Hence, such crowd is easier to control, and an average person unquestioningly believes even the most absurd statements.

5) Assertion and repetition

In this case information is presented in the form of ready clichés which actuate stereotypes existing in the subconscious. An assertion in any speech means rejection of discussion, for the power of an asserted idea, if discussed, loses any creditability. According to Kara-Murza, a so-called mosaic type of culture has formed in human thinking. Mass media represent the factor which strengthens such type of thinking, training people to think by stereotypes and not to involve intellect to analyse mass media materials. G. Le Bon mentioned that by means of repetition information penetrates the depths of the subconscious where motives of person’s subsequent actions are generated. Excessive repetitions dull consciousness, permitting any information to be deposited in the subconscious almost unchanged. And after a certain while such information is moved from the subconscious into consciousness.

6) Fragmentation and urgency

In this manipulation method used by mass media, integrated information is split into fragments so that a person would be unable to combine the fragments into a single whole and comprehend the entire issue. (For instance, newspaper articles are split into parts and placed on different pages; texts and TV programmes are split by commercials, etc.) This is how Professor G. Schiller explains the method efficiency: “When an integral character of a social issue is deliberately passed over, while fragmentary data are offered as “reliable information”, the outcome of such approach is always the same: misunderstanding… apathy and, as a rule, indifference.” By splitting information about an important event into pieces it is possible to decrease the message effect or eliminate the message meaning as such.

7) Simplification and stereotypization

This kind of manipulation is based on the notion that a human being is a mosaic culture product. One’s consciousness is created by mass media. Unlike the high culture, mass media are intended for the masses. Therefore, there are tough restrictions as to complexity and originality of messages. This is justified by a rule that a representative of the mass is able to digest only simple information, and so any new information is adjusted to a stereotype in order for people to perceive it with neither effort nor inner analysis.

8) Sensationalism

In this case, the same principle is adhered to that information is communicated in fragments, and it’s impossible or very difficult to make a single whole of separates pieces of such information. At that, a pseudo-sensation is highlighted, while truly important news is kept silent about (if for some reason the news is dangerous for the circles that control mass media).

Persistent bombardment of consciousness, especially by “bad news”, performs an important function of supporting a relevant level of “nervousness” in the society, Prof. Kara-Murza emphasizes. Such nervousness and feeling of permanent crises drastically increase people’s suggestibility and decreased their aptitude for critical perception.

9) Change of the meaning of words and concepts

In this case mass media manipulators freely interpret any person’s words. Thus, a context changes, often becoming opposite or at least distorted. Prof. Kara-Murza gives a vivid example: when the Pope visited a country and was asked what his attitude to brothels was, he got surprised that brothels existed at all. Thereafter an extraordinary message appeared in newspapers: “The first thing the Pope asked when he stepped on our land was whether we had brothels?” (S.A. Zelinsky. Psychotechnologies of Hypnotic Manipulation of Consciousness)

Am I the only one to have such an impression, or have modern TV channels taken all the aforesaid as their editorial policy principles? Uninterrupted psychological violence against people has become normal and is not censured in society. Why? Whose psyche can stand this? Permanent hypnosis, permanent slavery...

“Absolutely correct,” Sensei answered, “because hypnosis is a clear manifestation of the animal nature in a human, it is “liberation” from intellect and disconnection from the soul. Hypnosis is only a function of the subconscious. In hypnosis a human being becomes who he or she really is when completely overwhelmed by the animal nature, a zombie, or, simply saying, an obedient piece of meat or, as Omar Khayyam correctly remarked, “a bag with bones, tendons and bloody mucus”.

“And who are zombies?” Tatyana asked.

“Zombies” is how people in African tribes were called whose mind oppressed by certain narcotic substances and special psychic influences was programmed in a certain way; they implicitly executed any order of the tribe chief and could kill not only themselves, but their own mothers, their children… Shortly saying, “zombie” is a body of a human whose soul has been “taken out” or “disconnected” and who has been deprived of intellect,” Sensei answered. And already addressing Nikolai Andreevich he continued: “Hypnosis means “cracking” of an individual, it is aggression and slavery. And you will find no knowledge there except dumb, animal obedience.” (Anastasia Novykh. Sensei of Shambala)

As a matter of fact, our favourite TV is a real “eye of the devil” which controls everyone, instilling various demons into people, such as fears, depressions, desires and other compulsive conditions, whereas those who make contemporary TV products are true devil’s servants, not disdaining anything in order to satisfy the Ego’s insatiability and all-absorbing thirst for power, control, domination and manipulation. The evil done by modern mass media is difficult to compare to anything as destructive, because such evil kills the human essence, imperceptibly, routinely and right on the spot, and for that a person even doesn’t have to leave his or her home, but should only be sitting comfortably in an armchair. Thus, a human being is gradually turning into a fierce beast that hates other people and with its own hands creates hell on the Earth for itself, its children and grandchildren...

Contemporary reality is such that 99.9% TV channels use the aforesaid arsenal of methods to manipulate society’s mass consciousness, and the methods are permanently upgraded and tested on our television. Thus, while watching TV, in total unawareness people undergo massed hypnotic suggestion and are turned into zombies, taking alien guidelines and patterns as their own. Being emotionally hooked, they become unable to give up addiction to watching terrifying news, emotional talk shows and endless TV series with empty plots. When a person is in emotional state, he or she has no critical thinking and can be told any nonsense, while newsreaders’ intonations further aggravate the emotional background of an ordinary picture: violence, blood, murders, robberies, warfare, lechery, etc. Only evil... Oh, TV ladies and gentlemen, why do you keep projecting this madness on the whole society? Do you really expect to avoid consequences of such violence against human souls? You still have time to stop, for television is just a tool, and the ultimate consequences will depend on how you use it.

Yet, dear readers, all of us are also responsible for the current situation. And our share of responsibility is quite substantial. They show us all the nasty stuff for a single reason: because we watch it and voluntarily participate in the entire mess ourselves, even boasting of having longer TV set diagonals. At that, we should do just one simple thing: stop watching the madness streaming from the screens. In such case managers of TV channels will have to change their editorial policies from those destructive for the society to constructive.

And, finally, let’s refer to how contemporary psychologists describe those who are not subject to the destructive influence of TV zombieing:

“The fifth type: people with “expanded state of consciousness”, those who have developed a highly spiritual personality in themselves. Such people are called “enlightened” in Japan, “Mahatmas” in India, “perfectly wise Dao people” in China, and “saint prophets and wonderworkers” in Russia. Arabs call such people “saint Sufis”. According to V.M. Kandyba, manipulators are unable to influence such people, since manipulators “are inferior to them in professional knowledge of the human being and nature.” (S.A. Zelinsky. Psychotechnologies of Hypnotic Manipulation of Consciousness, V.М. Kandyba. Fundamentals of Hypnology: Psychophysiology Basics)

Therefore, being guided by the Primordial Knowledge brought by Rigden Djappo to the world, it’s totally realistic for every person to get out of control of the Animal Mind System and its conductors-manipulators. For the one who has become Human, all issues associated with manipulation of consciousness fall away. Everything is in our hands. One who is walking will overpower the road!

P.S. For those who want to extend the information given in this article and further aggravate “the sorrow of knowledge”, we have prepared a list of supplementary literature (see below).

Supplementary literature:

S.A. Zelinsky. Manipulation of Mass Consciousness by Means of Mass Media (Modern Manipulation Psychotechnologies) http://psyfactor.org/lib/zln1.htm

S.A. Zelinsky. Psychotechnologies of Hypnotic Manipulation of Consciousness http://psyfactor.org/lib/zelinski2-11.htm

А.А. Gavrilov. Mass Media Methods of Influencing Public Consciousness in the Information Society // Young Scientist. — 2012. — No.8. — p.152-155 - http://moluch.ru/archive/43/5220/

S.G. Kara-Murza. Manipulation of Consciousness. – Moscow: Algorithm, 2004.  http://www.kara-murza.ru/books/manipul/manipul_content.htm

S.A. Zelinsky. Contemporary Manipulation Psychotechnologies, in 2 volumes. http://lit.lib.ru/z/zelinskij_s_a/text_0670.shtml

V.М. Kandyba. Fundamentals of Hypnology: Psychophysiology Basics. St. Petersburg, 1999. http://www.koob.ru/kandiba/osnovi_gipnologii_k

A. Novykh. Sensei of Shambala. http://books.allatra.org/en

Prepared by Yuri Ignatov (Ukraine) and Max Vorontsov (Norway-Ukraine)