How manipulable is the human mind?

"Reality exist in the human mind, and nowhere else". George Orwell, 1984.

Psychological manipulation has been a recurrent topic on fiction since its very beginning; From classic books such as "Republic" by Plato to "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury or "The clockwork orange" by Anthony Burgess, to the more recent ones like "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, "Divergent" by Veronica Roth and "Matched" by Allie Condie have all exposed how human mind is manipulable in one way or another. This topic is one of the basis in "1984" by George Orwell and the graphic novel "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore, where the psychological manipulation is taken to the extreme.

In the case of "1984", psychological manipulation comes from the party, which (using different strategies) is able to control the minds of the citizens of Oceania. Although this kind of manipulation from the government is also present on V for Vendetta, I will focus on the manipulation that comes from the protagonist of the novel, V, who is able to psychologically manipulate Evey Hammond (who is 16 at the beginning of the graphic novel) in order to make her *spoiler alert* his successor.

But how those manipulations presents in the novels are successfully achieved? According to Psychologist author George K. Simon in his book "In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative people", the success of the psychological manipulation depends almost entirely on the manipulator, which needs to have certain characteristic such as: having aggressive thought and intentions (a passive or active aggressive behavior), knowing the victim’s psychological vulnerabilities and finally, having a sufficient level of ruthlessness to be able to cause harm to the victim if necessary.

If you read 1984 you will be able to see that all this characteristics are present in the party, which makes use of aggressive practices in order to change the mind of the people who are against it, the people from the party also knows their victim’s vulnerabilities (this can be clearly seen in the scene when they use rats in order to make Winston Smith change his mind about the party, because they knew that Winston was afraid of rats) and, finally,ruthlessness is also evidently present since the members of the party don’t care about hurting people physically and psychologically in order to make them act as the party wants.



All this characteristics are also present in V for vendetta, since V is able to create aggressive situations (as the one in the fake jail where he puts Evey, which make her almost become crazy) in order to make Evey change her mind and have the same beliefs that V has.

Now that we have seen that the manipulator’ characteristics proposed by Simon are present in both books, is time to see which of  the techniques proposed by Richard Paul and Linda Elder in their book  "The art of mental trickery and manipulation" are used in these novels:

On the one hand, in the case of 1984 the techniques used by the party are lying, omission, negation and minimization, this techniques are used by the minister of truth which is capable of hide and change historical information with the purpose of making the citizens believe that the history that the party tells is the right one. Moreover, another technique used is the intimidation, this intimidation comes from the signs of “big brother is watching you” which aim at making the citizens feel intimidated by the fact that if they do something that is not allowed, big brothers is going to know it and they are going to be hardly punished.

On the other hand, in V for vendetta one of the techniques used by V to manipulate Evey is the evasion, since every time that Evey ask something to him he answer with a quote or a vague answer that, at the end, leaves Evey more confused that what she already was. Furthermore V makes uses of the seduction and confusion as a way to manipulate her as we are able to see in the way that he dances with her and takes care of her.

So, as you can see the acts of psychological manipulations in these two books have all the necessary factors to be successful, now the question is: could this apply to the real world? or even worse, is happening already?

We live in a society that claims to be fair and that makes us believe that we are free and we have the power to decide on our own. This is due the fact that there is no better way to ensure power that making us believe that we are the ones who have it. But who are the ones who want to do this? If we analyze retrospectively and try to look for them, we will notice that it is really difficult to identify them, it is the state? the government?. However it is, I am sure that one of the main reasons to manipulate people is to be able to keep the power indefinitely.

That money rules the world is a premise very easy to accept and, hence, I would not be wrong to suggest that are the companies -the big companies- the ones that have created the system by making their actions legal, protecting themselves, and making us believe that we -as citizens- are the ones that form a society when, in fact, they are. Because of this, we are transformed into simple little individuals, prisoners of inductive elections, of simple decisions.These decisions are materialized into the “right to vote”, which in fact is just another election made by the ones that have had the power since the beginning of the times.

Another thing to take into account is that we live our lives accepting the decisions that others made without question them. For instance, we believe that the only way to obtain free education is studying hard to get fees, this provoke nothing else that competence among members of the same group, all this with the purpose of making us believe that just a few are the ones that deserve that prize. But why we accept this? because the state said so? We believe that that is fair and correct and we denied ourselves to see other options and ask for them. Again we stop being the society and we turn into the associate because we do not coexist as equals but we are associated as competitors by living a life in which the things that matter the most are who is able to reach the best place or who proves to be the more intelligent in a pre established evaluation that turns us into a number, and numbers are disposable.

All the points mentioned above prove that we are leaving in a society that benefits just a few -very few- and that harms the majority -the vast majority- and we cope with that because in some way they have managed to make us believe that this is “fair” and even though we do not see any justice in that and our minds tell us that certainly is not, we allow it. We allow it because of something called “order”, something call “law” and breaking the law is not just meritorious of a judicial sanction but it turn us into delinquents, bad people, antisocials. Nobody questions who are the ones that made this “order” nor why this “order” is the correct one and  we accept it because we are afraid, since the fear of the consequences is enough threat to deter us from going against the current. At the end we are all just like Julia from "1984), we try to live the moment and make the best with what we have been given.

So I ask again; who is the one manipulating us? it is the media that decides what is worth of being put on tv? it is the marketing that set ways to see the world? it is the publicity that tell us what is beauty and what is not and what should be wear and what should be avoid? it is the governments that censor what they want? it is the companies that look for their own growth in order to benefit nothing but themselves? it is the schools that fell us how to understand the world? it is the church that treats us with sins and hell? it is the law that limit us and condition us? it is the money? the power? the ignorance? the pain? the sorrow? the fear? the pleasure? happiness? it is everything? or maybe it is nothing?

It Is between all this concepts that life happens, and probably is not that bad after all. Most of the times the biggest treat lives inside us, it is confused with fear and it is confused with happiness. Our minds are just slaves of what we as individuals do not consider to be worth to worry about and by knowing this we are closer to be free and, while, on the contrary,

The ones who have power only wants to increment it,

To keep it,

To protect it.

Power makes you slave of power.

And when you have everything only one thing remains: the fear, fear to lose the power, fear to stop being powerful. So there is no longer a matter of power. Is a matter of fear, the paradox of those who are too afraid to fight for equity and those who are too afraid of stop being the one who controls. A game of uncertainty, of phobia to change what it is for the simple fact of not knowing what could it be.

That’s why I prefer to be part of the ones who do not want to control, the ones who let their feelings and thought come out.

If at the end the world is being controlled and our minds are being manipulated by a power that maybe we will never be able to understand or comprehend the only things that matters to me is to defend what seems fair, what seem human to me.

After all, I am sure of one thing:

If the human mind is being controlled (and taking into account what I have mention, certainly it is) 

The fact that I think that somebody is controlling us, is also something calculated by "the big brother".

To make us believe that we have an option

When, in fact, we never had it

When, in fact, we will never have it.

Still, I can decide how I am going to dress tomorrow.

And that's more that much people have in their entirely lifes.

Sources:

Simon, George K (1996) In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People.
Paul, Richar & Elder, Linda (2004) The art of mental trickery and manipulation. 
Van Dijk, Teun (1998) Power and the News media