virus: Manipulation Lesson 14

David Rosdeitcher (76473.3041@compuserve.com)
24 Feb 97 22:54:12 EST


Corey, in response to Tad, began his post with:
Let me see if I understand. Richard Brodie is evil...

In other words, is it possible that a smart and likeable guy, who appears to be
benefitting others could really be ripping people off in a way that no one can
detect? Well, it might sound bizarre, but as OJ Simpson's attorney, Johnnie
Cochran Jr. said to the jury, "Keep an open mind!" While keeping an open mind,
take a look at--

Lesson 14 Manipulation Through Specialization and Disintegration

Once I worked as an artist for a large entertainment company. This company,
which everyone would know, is highly successful through spreading its icon memes
such as popular cartoon characters. Many artists want to work for this company,
thinking of it as an opportunity to develop as an artist and get paid at the
same time. But it turns out that artists who work there are not encouraged to
develop new ideas, but to stick with their old routines, which are known to
work. This company, while built by creative entrepreneurs, has been taken over
by lazy management people who keep their status quo postions. They do this by
promoting established cartoon characters that potential customers would already
recognize, instead of concentrating on developing new and better ideas. There is
cult-like devotion to these cartoon characters, in which memes like "the cartoon
characters created our jobs" are spread. The artists are each assigned a
specialized function that ultimately supports the cartoon characters in the
"grand scheme". Artists get stuck doing a specialized task that, in and of
itself, leads nowhere.
If you were to ask most of those artists how they feel about their jobs and
their company, many would say that their jobs are fine since they are making a
decent salary and many would even say that they are loyal to the company.
However, these artists are feeling a sense of frustration that they are not
really developing as artists since they are doing just the same specialized
tasks everyday. The management calls this kind of specialization, "teamwork".
And no one detects anything wrong. If you were to tell those artists that they
were victims in a sophisticated scam designed to promote the power of lazy
individuals in upper management, they would accuse you of some form of heresy
before you got a word in edgewise.
The technique of specialization is an old form of social control, in which
people are placed in an environment where they cannot integrate and develop
their ideas. It is a very subtle and consciously designed form of manipulation
which has swallowed up millions of people who could only respond with a muffled
sigh of frustration. And, just as it is possible to control people by
disintegrating their actions, it is possible to control people by disintegrating
their thoughts.
A way to disintegrate people's thoughts is by infecting them with a system
of beliefs in which each idea is inherently contradictory, but each idea is also
consistent with the other ideas in the system. Such a nonsensical yet
self-consistent belief system prevents people from making proper integrations
about reality and then it becomes likely that the believer of that belief system
would turn to the person who spread the belief system as an authority figure.
Such a person who spreads false ideas and gains a following, would become
parasitically dependent on that following and would encourage that following to
stay mentally disintegrated. Any attempt to integrate reality by a "disciple"
would be met with a counter attempt by the "guru" to disintegrate the person.
This is shown in various posts on this list as individual ideas within an
integrated post are each distorted in various ways, such as:

1) A joke:

>> Brodie and his victim/supporters are getting their asses kicked
>>in
>>cyberspace.

>I have victim/supporters? Cool! Hey guys, send me money and virgins!

2) Shifting focus away from THE point:

> > People did not have the word *non-sequitur*
>> (meaning--it does not follow logically) to help them understand that
>>there
>> really was no logical connection between, say, Michelangelo's work and a
>>silly
>> religion.

>Good concept but bad example. The works of Michelangelo are not logically
>independent of the Catholic church.

-David Rosdeitcher