Human nature is so fickle, we are so greatly influenced by what we hear or see and sometimes it is so subtle we don’t even realize it is happening! The commercial and advertising industries has known this and have played on this for years! The media at large can post a number of articles in regards to a situation, take an angle of a situation, paint a story that will get you all bent out of shape and marching down the street for possibly the wrong cause! The mind needs to be kept under subjection, otherwise your body can be led around by its nose, beware!
This psychology is used by companies, political campaigns, lawyers, doctors, and many a rights groups and has been extremely successful in convincing many to compromise on what might otherwise have been a previously held conviction.
Certain campaigns can be so convincing and successful that you find yourself on the other side of the stick on a given topic, so much so that if you hold on to your convictions you are soon to be ridiculed publicly as being”narrow minded”, “a bigot”, and if you happen to be religious, then you are a “religious fanatic” or politically inclined you will be blamed for being a Democrat or Republican or God forbid, a terrorist.
I, not long ago, sat down at a table with an elderly woman at a facility since it was the only remaining place to sit at lunch time. It was during the protests in Tariq Square during the Egyptian uprising. Naturally you want to engage in a conversation to be sociable and at one point she asked how things were going in Egypt as she was not able to see the news that day. When I explained that the protests were still underway in the square, her response to my shock was, “we should just go in there and bomb the place!” Talk about ignorance, but I could not help to feel that this was her take on how things in the Middle East should be dealt with, and what is worse (and scary), she is not alone!
The masses are too easily influenced by what they are fed. It brings to mind a scene in one of the old classical movies of the depicting the Caesar of the Roman empire whilst watching the gladiators fight in the Roman Colosseum. At the end of one fight when one gladiator had won the fight the people were holding their thumbs up to say to let the losing gladiator live, however they then looked over to see that Caesar was giving the thumbs down to have him be killed. Within minutes the entire crowd “changed their opinion” or rather they compromised and turned their thumbs down.
If the general public were to interest itself in the truth, demand to know more about issues, not be afraid of standing out, then perhaps… just perhaps, we might not be in so many wars and conflicts, we might not have a huge debt, we might even be safer on the streets, have healthier lifestyles, our children might be better educated and disciplined. Be careful, if you don’t stand up for what you believe, you will certainly fall for anything.
