From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Jul 29 2005 - 16:26:43 BST
Hi Ant,
> Ant McWatt comments:
>
> Platt, glad to see you’re still awake!
What's that supposed to mean? Should I take offense?
> I’ll have a crack at answering my own question though. Derren Brown – the
> hypnotist I mentioned previously who is interested in religious frauds has
> probably uncovered an important point to keep in mind, namely that many of
> our social and intellectual values are absorbed unconsciously from an early
> age (via parents and schooling) and when we are adults through the media.
Wow? Dick Tracy. Duh.
> For example, in another TV program/me “Mind Control” originally broadcast
> in 2001 by Channel 4, Brown played with the heads of two London advertising
> executives (Bill Hick’s favorite people – I love them as well – especially
> boiled…). This was done by him deciding a theme for the executives of an
> animal sanctuary he predicted the exact campaign that two advertising
> executives would produce for this theme. This was done by Brown and his
> team by placing certain pictures and phrases on shop windows, pedestrians
> wearing T-shirts, and even pub signs that the executives would see
> fleetingly on their route to the office. The executives were unconscious of
> the information provided by the pictures and phrases that they had absorbed
> on their journey, and therefore provided pictures and phrases very similar
> to those that Brown had given to them beforehand in a sealed brown
> envelope.
How does Brown know the excutives where "unconscious of the information
provided." Does he read minds, too?
> Now the executives were amazed at Brown’s supposed prediction skills when
> they opend the envelope after their journey but they shouldn’t have been
> because that’s what their industry does to people’s minds every day.
>
> One of Brown’s typical tricks is to make people mysteriously fall asleep in
> public phone boxes. Now read carefully how he does this in connection with
> how politicians work:
>
> “Have they fallen prey to a disease or am I carrying out some trick of the
> mind on the other end of the line? There are two factors at work here.
> First, the group of people subjected to the stunt are particularly
> suggestible. I know this simply because they chose to answer a public phone
> that happened to be ringing as they walked past. Most people would ignore
> it, assuming it was nothing to do with them.”
>
> “Secondly, once the person answers, I immediately bombard them with a rapid
> set of confusing instructions and facts. I do this for several minutes
> without giving give them a break, then follow it by telling them to fall
> asleep. As seen on the shows, this works.”
Brown sounds like a typical charlatan. I'm surprised you fall for a
hypnotist's tricks. Next you'll be citing the Amazing Kreskin.
> “Public speakers often capitalise on the same response. Have you ever
> listened to a politician giving rapid-fire statistics so fast that the
> audience can't possibly take them in, only to end the speech with a simple,
> memorable phrase? The soundbite comes as such a relief after all those
> facts and figures that this is all the listeners remember.”
Good description of George Galloway and Noam Chomsky.
> Though it didn’t have an immediate effect, the critical analysis of
> politics and capitalist society provided from my education studying
> sociology, did eventually have the affect of making me more sensitive/aware
> of how politicians, religious organizations and the media surreptitiously
> works. In other words – as long as you also turn your critical faculties
> to what you learn from sociologists - you learn to be critical of
> everything, what you read in the paper, see on the TV, the adverts in the
> local shops and what other people say to you i.e. you eventually free your
> mind.
Also critical of everything you read on the MD site. :-)
> Now this is why I go on about being critical with the mainstream
> media and recommend the value of critical texts such as those written by
> Chomsky and Pilger. It doesn’t mean that the latter don’t have their own
> agenda and biases (I know they do!) but they can help (as with even a
> two-bit hypnotist) to analyse what really is going on in this planet of
> ours.
If you rely on Chomsky and a two-bit hypnotist to find out what's going on
in the world, that explains a lot about your political beliefs.
Best regards,
Platt
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