Hacking the Mind Hacks...

I just ran across this piece at Mind Hacks. I appreciate their general approach, but there is whole lot more to be said about this subject. Sure, many people are delusional. But what is this a reflection of? Jung argued that the appearance of archetypes like UFOs and “flying saucers” in the 1940s and 50s was a manifestation of aspects of a modernizing collective unconscious. What, we may ask, is the psychic preoccupation with “mind control” about? I don’t know, perhaps the sense of powerlessness with respect to a massive scientific and government complex cloaked in secrecy and deception…

All that aside, let’s get beyond the psychology (behavioral or otherwise) and into the facts. The U.S. government not only “tried” mind control research — in some cases, they succeeded. There is a clearly documented dark history there. So you may not want to read all the books I point out here. That’s OK. This short film gives the gist of it quite well, I think.

My persona here is conspiratorial, I’ll grant you. But I’m also a professional medical historian, and all this talk of mind control (which is sometimes little more than a refined aspect of social control…) is not only all too true, but important in understanding the relationship between medicine (particularly behavioral psychology) and the modern state. Don’t think Foucault was just flapping his gums all the time to sound postmodern and French…There was a point to all that theory…

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