Mind control through mass psychosis.

 If you go through Wikipedia on mass hysteria you will find a lot of examples of cases of mass hysteria affecting a handful to hundreds. Sometimes it is related to some unknown contagious disease or a sort of mass behavior change. Though this is temporary in nature but it can be quite disturbing and may lead to mental illness.

 In most cases it is harmless to others and subsides in time. It could be collective symptoms of fits and seizures to cases of mass dancing and showing a collectively similar medical condition like flu, sneezing etc. But it can also take a serious turn when it affects a part of the population which targets a group of person with intent to harm. Such behavior has been found in cases of witch hunting in Europe and America where people killed mostly women who were thought to be a witch. It was in such a large scale that it can be said that a part of the society had actually been deluded so much that they killed females whom they considered to be witch. It is not that these females committed any crimes but they were victimized for the wrong belief of the larger part of the society.

As a mad person doesn’t know that he is mad so a large part of society afflicted with mass psychosis also fail to notice their own condition. At an individual level it can be caused by a difficult childhood, mental trauma or drug induced. Such cases can be found in cases where we hear cases of serial murderers and rapists with a deep feeling of taking revenge against a subconscious crime. It may also be that a cause of fear may bring in a panic attack leading to some sort of aggressive behavior. Now a day’s such cases have been found in mass shooting.

When this fear and panic overcomes a large population then a large part of the population can also show such behavior driven by imagined threats. But behind this mass psychosis is a person or group of people who manipulate the minds of the weak people by this fabricated threats or coercion or brain wash and propaganda. It is also not required to control the whole population by this but if a sufficiently large population is manipulated then a large part of the rest of the population will follow in order to protect themselves and not to get targeted.  Such behavior has also been found in religious cults leading to even mass suicide.

In our modern society also we have seen such cases of mass psychosis in cases of dictatorship like Idi Amin and North Korean regime, political ideology like communism by Mao, Lenin and Hitler. The aim is to create a totalitarian regime where the mass is controlled through power. The ruled class is deluded and transformed into submission and obedience. The ruler or ruler class is also deluded that they have the authority and power to rule over the subjects with an iron hand. The ruler class believes that it is they only who can bring a change in society the way they want.

This change in the society is brought by sowing the seed of thought of a better future, but by sowing the seed of fear about the current system. This fear and dream is constantly hammered in the mind of the people. This fear is often engineered by the ruling class itself to justify the need for change and submission to an ideology. Each phase of fear is followed by a period of calm. This cycle of fear and calm is run many times and with each phase of this cycle the fear factor is increased followed by the calmness. Therefore each phase of increasing fear creates a sense of insecurity and weakness among the population. The subsequent calm phase creates a feeling of relief which is attributed to the new system they want to implement.

This ‘softens’ the mind of the people and with continuous bombardment of propaganda, false news and false hope, a stage comes when the population starts believing in the totalitarian regime to bring a better future than what they are experiencing now. The sane and questioning intelligentsia is either killed or jailed. The more people are confused the more they are incapable of taking the right decision. The present day social media is such that we voluntarily expose ourselves to the propaganda that is being spammed around us by governments.  On one hand the mind is repeatedly exposed to a particular stimulus coupled with bouts of terror pushes the mind to a state of irrational thoughts and behavior. In this final stage of brainwash the totalitarian regime projects themselves as the only savior and the people accept it even at the cost of individual freedom and control. Now the masses are the obedient lot ready to accept what is fed to them without understanding how they have been brought to subjugation.

This type of strategy in a modified way is thrust upon us during the time of elections of government. The opposing party is continuously bombarding our minds with information how the current govt has made our life miserable and they want to give a better future. The ruling party does the opposite- how they gave us a better life and how the opposite party will make life bad for us if elected. The ruling party has a better chance to use propaganda during their ruling tenure of 4 or 5 years even by controlling the media.

Religion for me is also a case of mass psychosis where people lose their sense of logic and reasoning in creating disparity among people by highlighting the good and bad about each others religion.

Progressive thinking and understanding is limited by what our mind is exposed to. Such mass psychosis is happening now also and will also happen in future as long as our mind does not reach the next level of thinking.