Brainwashing: Education's Indoctrination
Four Ways To Determine Whether Or Not You Were Brainwashed & Indoctrinated Into A Cult By Education
Four Ways To Determine Whether Or Not You Were Brainwashed & Indoctrinated Into A Cult By Education
Nearly everyone today has heard today’s education referred to as “brainwashing” or an “indoctrination,” but no one has given the public the tools to determine whether or not they were victims.
First, how did this happen? Teachers have access to children from kindergarten through college, giving them years to instill their beliefs rather than allowing the young to, over time, discover and choose their path independently. By encouraging groupthink (which has long been recognized as a method of brainwashing) they established the faulty belief that there is only one way to think, feel, and be. Groupthink causes internal-discord in group members that manifests as anxiety and, often, as an urge to control or destroy non-members. It is common for cult members to claim that outsiders make them feel unsafe.
It is important to note that there is a difference between someone that has a strong interest in a subject and a fanatic. Those with strong interests do not lose their multi-dimensional perspective (the ability to understand and empathize with others’ viewpoints). They also do not abandon their free will or dreams to work solely for the group’s goals. Fanatics do because they are filled with an excessive and single-minded zeal tied to a political or religious cause.
The educators use the same methods earlier Democratic Socialists, such as Hitler, and communists like Mao and Stalin used to control the masses in their day. By selling their manipulations as “good for the whole,” and “a way to right the wrongs of history” they can create virtuous feelings in members that assuage or remove uncertainty.
To successfully brainwash people, the educators reduce the self-esteem of the majority by calling them “privileged,” “inherently racist,” “fragile,” “selfish,” etc. Shaming is constant, particularly with regard to factors that cannot be changed, such as race or heritage. The immutable traits of those being brainwashed become an emotional burden that drives them to seek absolution through the group’s cleansing rituals of self-punishment or by group attacks that punish others that have not conformed to their ideology.
Children in K-12 and college are particularly susceptible to the indoctrination because they trust that educational authorities. Many may never discover that they were misled until they reach adulthood, if ever.
For centuries, education taught students how to think, not what to think. It created intellectuals. Then it shifted from education to brainwashing and intellectual enlightenment went the way of the dodo. Now schools produce political zealots that do not tolerate free thought or individualism. For them, groupthink and codependency are the norm.
Four ways to determine whether or not you were brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult by education.
Fanaticism and dependency. Brainwashing victims focus on the group, ideology, and leader to the point of obsession. Once indoctrinated they lack the ability to solve problems without the help of the group members, its leaders, or referencing the ideology.
In the educational indoctrination, the brainwashed cease to question the ideology because it is considered supreme and beyond reproach. Questioning also is associated with punishment, shame, and threat of exile from the group.
2. Being in full agreement, a “yes person.” Brainwashing victims will agree unquestioningly with whatever their group or leader(s) dictate, without regard to the difficulty of following in lockstep or the consequences of doing so. They typically withdraw from people who don’t share the interests instilled by their brainwasher.
One result of the educational inculcation is a rise of young people posting hateful videos that disavow their parents if their parents hold a different worldview than their brainwasher.
3. Withdrawal from societal norms, responsibility, or life. Some brainwashing victims withdraw from life, becoming devoid of whatever personality traits they expressed before their brainwashing. Those in this group internalize anger, which can lead to depression or physical disorders such as anxiety. Some become despondent enough to commit suicide.
Others lash out and vent their anger on anyone they see as the cause of their problems, often through verbal or physical confrontation. Many of those brainwashed in educational indoctrination fall into this category as witnessed by widespread protesting, rioting, and unrestrained rage towards everyone not committed to their ideology. The intolerance and over-certainty seen in this group can blind them to their dysfunction.
4. If the brainwashed person is told that they are brainwashed, the realization is accompanied by denial and anguish. Denial because the subject begins to question things with a mind not developed to question, and anguish because it is the first recognition of betrayal by those they trusted. Gradually, brainwashed individuals can become aware of how they were manipulated and reclaim their minds.
To reclaim your mind from those controlling you, stop the programmed behavior, and replace it with new skills of empathy, respect for other’s views, self-love, and individualism. In so doing, you will discover how brilliant life is when you live it to fulfill your dreams rather than the dreams of one’s puppeteers.
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Sources
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (Oxford Landmark Science, Kathleen Taylor).
The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America (Smithsonian, Lorraine Boissoneault, May 2017)
How To Recognize and Avoid Brainwashing (multi-authored WikiHow) Note: Credit with order and titles of points.
Kelle Grace Gaddis has worked as a counselor for twenty-five years and has witnessed the decline of education’s impact on society.