[jcynix]

And then there's Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" published about 30 years afterwards, with twelve essays to look at the world in 1958. He concludes (iirc) that a lot of the changes he expected to appear in a hundred years after "Brave New World" took shape already.

[WriterGuy2021]

If he had predicted that the primary means of conditioning the public would be T.V. instead of hypnopedia, there would be no doubt that we're living in something like BNW -- or at least one of its spiritual progeny.

[XorNot]

Hypnopedia was really just continuous repetition of "facts" until they were an autonomous response.

I'd say he was pretty damn close.

[WriterGuy2021]

That's a very good point... and are we really awake when we watch T.V.? Or are we in some type of suggestive state?

I wrote the above and then did some googling. Found this article: https://www.fastcompany.com/3060491/what-happened-to-my-brai.... I don't know how reputable it is, but here's a quote relevant to this discussion:

"There have been EEG studies that demonstrate that television watching converts the brain from beta wave activity to alpha waves, which are associated with a daydreaming state, and a reduced use of critical thinking skills."

[beaconstudios]

a lot of people seem to source their opinions directly from their preferred flavour of news or opinion show.

[WriterGuy2021]

What a nightmare. How could we let it get to this point? People that have no direct interest in our well being are informing our worldview.

[jl2718]

We don’t use repetition. We use behavioral thought control by giving rewards (good grades) for demonstration of belief (test taking) at early ages. These are nearly impossible to reverse at any age once embedded.

Kids believe in the tooth faerie, but can reconcile this belief later because it never showed up on a test. Now I’m going to piss off everybody. Try to reconcile your beliefs with observable facts about King Leonidas or Helen Keller. Or if you went to a fundamentalist school, try any religious figure. Those are minor beliefs that have little consequence for society. There are major ones too.

At some point, you should realize that you live in a fictional belief system. And I mean you, not just people who you think have been brainwashed. If you’re really truly brilliant and skeptical, you may reconcile 0.1% of these beliefs, but even then subject to “Murray Gell-Man” amnesia for 99.9% of your beliefs. The only people who can possibly escape this are those who are labeled as imbeciles for their inability to convert between memory of fact and assumption of belief.

For instance, there are ‘idiot savants’ that can memorize an entire book just for fun, but will never assume that anything written in any book is actually true. These people are completely unable to assimilate culturally, and we institutionalize them for that reason.

A a side note, just as soma (and nearly all popular drugs) create suggestibility, I think it should be possible to reverse this and become more like an idiot savant. An example might be an antagonist of dopamine, serotonin, or opiate receptors, but I’m not sure. If anybody has any other ideas or experience with currently-available compounds, I would like to hear them.