when they exit from it.
But there is another important detail, an issue that a person does not notice or tries not to delve into, again due to saving energy when thinking. The question is as follows: ‘Has the person determined his or her own choice, or have others done it for him or her? Not the circumstances, not the weather, but certain people with certain interests.’
People know that there are many methods of influencing their behaviour. They believe that within a family or small group, they also can influence, mistaking for influence their ability to give orders or the forced submission of others as a result of dependence on them.
Yet, along with this, people do not know much about how illusions, which they willingly believe, are professionally created. Similarly, they are unaware of how and in what situations they become highly suggestible. People do not understand why they tend to follow leaders and why they seek relief from stress in group cohesion or collective faith. They do not know the whole system, but they have heard about the existence of some methods used by corporations to influence employees and by the state to influence everyone. However, they do not fully comprehend the details of this system and are inevitably influenced by it.
Influence techniques are a powerful weapon in the hands of people who pursue their goals and interests. This is also a dangerous weapon if the interests of these people differ from the interests of society. Using the society itself, 'public opinion’ can be formed. Like a collective neurological imprint, the 'public opinion’ can be permanently fixed just as a photographic fixer was used in the processing of film or paper in the analogue age. Anyone who was an amateur photographer at that time remembers that the image is short-lived without fixing. Extremely short-lived.
If for a moment we imagine that every person is a kind of neurological robot, the carrier of an infinite number of constantly fixed photos, then everyone around you is an eternal prisoner of these ideas, value systems, certain scientific paradigms and mass illusions.
William Blake once said: 'I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s’. Nowadays, to create your own system of vision of the world or even preserve it is very, very difficult.
A person’s perception of reality is shaped by the information transmitted to the brain. For centuries, people communicated through gestures, shouts, drums, smoke signals, and clay plates, which can be seen as forms of technology. The emergence of a primitive printing press was revolutionary for its time.
Even in today’s digital age, people continue to create their analogue worlds through paintings, symphonies, sculptures, songs, novels, and poems. These artistic expressions not only serve as art but also as materialised information about the world. Information that all this time, as they think, has created a reality for them and has kept them safe from themselves. Everything from Renaissance paintings to Andy Warhol, from myths of the ancient Greeks and classic novels to contemporary bestsellers, contributes to a system of artefacts, concepts and judgements, which has helped people to protect themselves from the surrounding chaos and is called culture.
The words 'culture’ and 'cult’, having the same roots, are completely opposite in their meaning and impact on individuals. People are always more inclined to create a cult rather than putting in the laborious effort to maintain a higher level of culture, and the lower the level of culture, the more likely a cult is to be created. A cult can be formed around anything, even something as mundane as a mobile phone, and attract a large following of fans. It is surprising to think that more people might know about iPhones than about the Mona Lisa.
People, as depicted in films like The Matrix or Inception, use their brains to create their own models of the universe and a map of the world. This virtual map is not specific to any particular area, and it is uncertain who created it – whether it was themselves or someone else. The information age has significantly enhanced the speed and quality of replicating such maps. The widespread availability of personal impact has multiplied the range of interpretations for any phenomena or events, some of which may stem from others’ perspectives.
People have stopped deeply analysing facts and evaluating them using logic and common sense. It is easier and more economical to simply believe in the presented interpretations, consequently making it even easier to convey these interpretations to them, provided you know how.
Two out of Six
How we can be convinced of anything. What you see depends on how you see.
There are no facts, only interpretations. ― Friedrich Nietzsche
The average person looks without seeing, listens without
hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves
without physical sensation – and speaks without thinking.
In the last half-century, a significant amount of research has been conducted and numerous discoveries have been made. These findings have allowed humans to reconsider their understanding of themselves and their current experiences, even while reading these lines. Some of these studies aim to offer insights into what defines a person and shapes their self-perception. The key objective is to comprehend the factors influencing human behaviour and how it can be done.
The following study explains how people perceive, store, and use information. Canadian psychologist Allan Paivio had long been studying memory psychology, particularly how humans remember what they see, hear, and feel, and how their memory and the above-mentioned associative library are formed. Based on his observations, Paivio proposed the idea of a dual-encoding system.
Humans have two main perception systems – visual and verbal. These systems work simultaneously to create independent ideas about what they see and hear, generating specific codes for each system. The visual code created by the system handles problem-solving in the space here and now, while the verbal code works with abstract symbols, aiding in representing something in perspective, space, and the current time. Additionally, each of these systems is hierarchically self-organised in the perception of information, interacting at four levels.
Firstly, at the initial level, the information is received and sensory processing takes place. This stage is known as perception.
Secondly, at the next level, the processed information connects with the existing long-term memory system to find associations related to the incoming information.
Thirdly, at another level, elements similar to the received information are activated in memory, and therefore this level is called the associative level.
Finally, at the fourth level, the verbal and visual systems interact with each other to represent the conclusive reference of the received information, storing it in long-term memory as an image that is assigned a designation, or vice versa, as the name that the image corresponds to.
To summarise what has been said, each word in any statement has its particular referent – a notion. When something is mentioned, the symbol of the designated object is correlated with the objects of extra-linguistic reality.
The reality created and stored in a person’s mind can equally likely belong to the real or imaginary world. For memory to function, a person needs to be able to imagine and name the reality. The entire process of perceiving, categorising, memorising, and presenting information depends on a person’s experiences, subjective assessments, images, and judgements about the environment. This is also known as a person’s world view.
The
