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Brainwashing
A “Fait Accompli”
30/11/2008
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Brainwashing:
Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious,
aimed at destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and
replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
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If I was to take
this word literally, I would think “Washing is for the purpose of
cleansing, so cleansed of what?” ... from dirt? Hardly! Let me recount a
little anecdote.
The other day as
I was walking into town, I noticed a man walking along the road with a
small child. When the child suddenly started running away from him, the
man grabbed the boy and lifted him in his arms and carried him inside the
church-yard.
“This man
probably is carrying his child, otherwise the boy would walk away from
him...” I considered.
Then the thought
occurred to me: “A little child doesn’t know what he is doing. That means
he has to learn what to do: how to behave, how to talk and how to obey.
In other words, the child doesn’t know anything, as yet... because a child
is like a vacuum - everything in life has to be taught to him, until the
day he will stand on his own feet. A child has to learn from A to Z. He
has to learn things from his parents, from teachers and from other people
than himself. Why?
Thus parents have
to teach things to their children...But parents can only teach, or rather
give, their children what they know, or have. But what is it that they
know anyway? That is the question.
*******
In a society in
which Christianity is nearly defunct,
people nowadays have adopted a secular mentality, so God is not part of
their daily life. Thus, once the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been
supplanted by the “do-it-your-self new-gospel,” according to the
mass-media, society has lost the plot entirely.
So if we talk
about brainwashing today, shouldn’t we use the past tense
rather than the present tense? Because I think the actual brainwashing
occurred long ago. In other words, brainwashing is a fait accompli.
Every one of us,
to some degree, has gone through this type of brainwashing which is:
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Intensive, forcible indoctrination,
usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person's basic
convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set
of fixed beliefs.
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Today, the new
generation of parents is the product of the grandparents of today - who
have indeed been brainwashed by the government, by the state school
system, by the media, entertainment, et al. The modern parents are only
the product of past brainwashing given, liberally, to their own parents.
Even so, these people today “think” what they “know” is the result of
their own “hard-work” or “scientific study.” That is far from the truth.
On the other
hand, if we agree that a child has to be taught about everything, why do
some people still say, “This is brainwashing the children in the situation
of school hours, or watching TV, or whatever?”
There is nothing
“to wash” in them that is not already been accomplished first in their
parents. There is nothing to be done on these children either, that
hasn’t already been achieved in their fathers and mothers – except,
perhaps, to consolidate in them further new “ideas”... according, of
course, to the pre-established plan or political agenda.”
*********
And looking at it
from another angle, it seems to me that the generation born after WWII –
the baby boomers – are not cognizant of what life was like before that
period of time. Not only that, but if there was a little Christian
background in them, which would give them some strength in their Christian
lives, the new world order of the postwar period - still in its
embryonic stage at the time - took it away from them completely.
Therefore, with
no background [that is, no historical knowledge], no wonder then that the
vacuum within has never been filled by the God of revelation, only plenty
of materialistic ideas coming from family members, teachers, friends and
acquaintances, such as self-esteem, evolution theory, or the saying that
only what you can touch, feel, see and hear matters and nothing else is
important.
Wasn’t it Blaise
Pascal who said: "There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart?" A vacuum
which the new generation has never been able to fill. However, human
beings do have not only a brain, but also a soul. Thus one’s brain may be
‘washed,’ by the establishment; but to the soul this cannot be done. That
is why so many people are trying to ‘fill’ this gap [i.e., vacuum], for
example, with sex, alcohol or drug taking, and so on.
This emptiness,
or vacuum, is in the soul. As Saint Augustine described in his
Confessions:
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“Let me know
Thee, O Lord, who knowest me; let me know Thee, as I am known. Power
of my soul, enter into it, and fit it for Thee, that Thou mayest have
and hold it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope, therefore do I
speak; and in this hope do I rejoice, when I rejoice healthfully.”
(...)
“The house of
my soul is too narrow for thee to come in to me; let it be enlarged by
thee. It is in ruins; do thou restore it.”
(...)
“Behold,
Lord, the ears of my heart are before Thee; open Thou them, and "say
unto my soul, I am thy salvation." |
Akin to the great Saint
Augustine, when we will be able to utter the following prayer:
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No one
could tell me where my soul may be; I sought for God, but God eluded
me; I sought my brother out and found all three - my soul, my God and
all humanity. |
Then our soul and
heart will be at peace.
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