by Joe Kandra and Kathie Malley-Morrison
Category: Ethic of reciprocity
CARTOON: Pillow talk
by Joe Kandra (cartoonist) and Kathie MM
Detecting the mind games, Lesson 1
by Kathie MM
In the upcoming election campaign season, you will see some candidates from both major political parties using mind games to get you to vote for them, even if you have to hold your nose to do it.
In speeches reeking of mind games, they will try to manipulate your feelings of fear, anger and resentment, distrust, pride, and despair to secure your vote, even when their past behavior or proposed agendas involve great harm to other human beings, to the environment, and/or to the future of democracy.
Among the most insidious methods for playing games with your mind are techniques for promoting moral disengagement. As described in earlier posts, moral disengagement involves the mechanisms whereby people set aside basic humanitarian moral principles while convincing themselves they are good people doing the right thing by going along with or engaging in inhumane behavior—often at the urging of people they identify as their leaders. [Click here for a summary of the basic types of moral disengagement as well as their counterparts in moral engagement.]
.Let’s consider how various moral disengagement tactics might be used in mind games regarding immigration. Separating babies and children from their parents and locking them in cages with inadequate food, clothing, hygiene, beds, etc., is clearly inhumane as well as a violation of fundamental human rights. But those moral issues can get completely “disappeared” through common moral disengagement tactics such as:
- Pseudo-moral justification, e.g., reframing harmful behaviors (like creating virtual concentration camps for children) so they seem morally justified and better than hpothetical outcomes such as letting “hoodlums and terrorists” enter into and grow up in this country;
- Minimizing negative consequences–e.g., disregarding the effects of anti-immigration/pro-separation policies on the mental health and well-being of both the victims and the victimizers, and downplaying critical international judgments concerning the declining moral character of citizens of the U.S.;
- Displacing or obscuring responsibility–e,g., blaming the victims for their inhumane treatment by arguing they should know better than try to sneak into the U.S. with their dark skins and dangerous babies; and
- Dehumanizing, i.e., devaluing the victims of the anti-immigration/pro-separation policies (e.g., characterizing them as a totally different class of human beings, or not worthy of being considered human at all).
So, be warned. Watch out for the mind games and moral disengagement tactics designed to get you to hold your nose and join obediently in campaigns wrapping inhumanities in false flags.
*”The Mouth of Truth is a renowned image, carved from Pavonazzetto marble, of a man-like face and located in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, Italy. The most famous characteristic of the Mouth is its role as a lie detector; since the Middle Ages, folklore has asserted that if one told a lie with his hand in the mouth of the sculpture, it would be bitten off.” From Wikimedia Commons.
Political mind games aren’t fun. (Watch out or the joke’s on you.)
by Kathie MM
Political mind games provided at considerable cost by tiny ruling cabals are not enjoyable forms of rest and relaxation designed to help people escape from the stresses and strains of daily living. Rather, they are dirty destructive devices deliberately developed to deceive and defraud people.
The purpose of mind games is to manipulate people into doing things that are not in their own best interests or the interests of millions of others like them. These mind games serve to increase the wealth and power of the one percenters at the top of the control tower tottering over our fragile globe and its endangered inhabitants.
Roy Eidelson has revealed the mind game strategies targeting common human concerns and inflaming powerful—and manipulable—emotions in ways that get people to engage in a wide range of immoral behaviors, including voting for legislation that:
- robs the poor to pay the rich,
- destroys public lands to enrich the fossil fuel billionaires,
- steals from social programs to benefit the arms industry, and
- undermines peace efforts to shore up the military industrial complex.
The common human concerns and their associated emotions are:
- a sense of vulnerability (fear);
- perceived unfairness/injustice to self (anger and resentment);
- distrust (suspicion);
- need/desire to feel superior (pride); and
- sense of helplessness (despair).
These mind games work, in part, by manipulating fear, anger, suspiciousness, pride, and despair in ways that get people to abandon or reject universal moral principles (e.g., the Golden Rule) in favor of what feels like the only way to survive and prosper in a dangerous world. That is, mind games work by sabotaging moral engagement in principles and behaviors that are supportive of human kindness, justice, and peace. Bottom line: mind games capitaliza on and promote moral disengagement. More on that coming up in future posts.
Pegean says, “While your eyes are open and you’re paying attention, don’t let the one percenters and their followers use the 9/11 anniversary to manipulate your fears and hatred. Rise above it.