The Fissure Bridge

Confirmation bias is the concept that people’s currently held beliefs bias how they process information and make decisions. Any information that agrees with or confirms their currently held beliefs will be processed and any information that doesn’t will be filtered out. Confirmation bias then reinforces people’s currently held beliefs and hinders critical thinking, innovation and invention.

Brainwashing is the concept of coercively cleansing a person’s mind of its current content and beliefs and implanting new, more desirable ideas, thoughts and beliefs that are more to the cleanser’s liking. The purpose is for the cleanser to leverage the new beliefs by using confirmation bias to control the individual’s behavior.

Indoctrination is the concept of implanting desirable ideas, thoughts and beliefs in a young, impressionable mind over a longer, more gradual period of time that are more to the liking of those doing the indoctrination. Currently held beliefs are not yet developed and don’t need to be cleansed as with brainwashing. Having matured and developed their minds in concert with these ideas for years and years, they are as real to the individual as their own existence and will not be questioned, again critical thought is suppressed. The purpose of indoctrination is also to leverage these beliefs by using confirmation bias to control the individual’s behavior later in life.

For example, if your parents belonged to a religious cult and raised you with the same beliefs on a daily basis from an early age so that you have been convinced that there is a god and he’s watching you all the time and judging you for your journey in the ‘after life’, then the fear of this judgement will influence your behavior. If the cult says you have to do A, B and C in order to spend all of eternity in a heaven rather than burn in hell’s fire and brimstone, then you will do A, B and C and C usually has something to do with money.

Brainwashing, indoctrination, social engineering are all siblings in the same family of concepts meant to psychologically condition people’s minds in order to control them. And like any control system, a car, a computer the controllers must have a method of accessing just the beliefs they’re interested in, a trigger in order to manipulate them to their advantage. With a car it’s a key, a computer has a power button and socially engineered behavioral control systems have key words and concepts. Key words and concepts that have been repeated thousands upon thousands of times in the context in which they’re used so that the words and concepts are indistinguishable from the context whether they make sense or not.

Politics has an advanced social engineering program that has evolved over the millennia in order for a small ruling class of political insiders – a few hundred or so — to control hundreds of millions without ever having to raise a fist. It is so advanced it can get otherwise peaceful, intelligent people to volunteer to go to war and kill others in some foreign land they don’t know and who have never done anything to them and risk being injured, maimed or killed themselves and be proud that they did it! The key words and concepts are invoked and the psychological fissure in the person’s mind is bridged from the rational to the irrational where the desired belief system can be accessed.

This control system is so effective and efficient people will allow themselves to endure physical pain and suffering without even knowing why and without any rational justification. For example, a crosswalk at an intersection with a pedestrian crossing light is a psychological key that triggers the fissure bridge and engages the irrational. People are conditioned to believe that when they see that light in the context of crossing the street, they must stop and wait for the light to turn green even if there’s not a car in sight and even if they crossed thousands of streets in their life without a crosswalk. The irrational conditioning prevents them from thinking independently and disengages their motor skills until the appropriate key – a green light – triggers the fissure bridge back to the rational and they cross the street. There are people who will stand in the freezing cold, rain, snow enduring physical discomfort and pain without being able to consider simply looking both ways and crossing the street like our parents taught us and how any rational adult would do.  Their psychology won’t allow it, their brains are broken but they don’t know it.

Cognitive Dissonance is the psychological state in which your mind holds conflicting beliefs which can cause confusion, agitation, anxiety, anger and even physical violence. Although the beliefs seem perfectly rational individually, they  are a source of internal conflict when they are revealed. Rational behavior is seen as a threat to the indoctrinated’s irrational beliefs, an insult to their identity and must be defended. The defense mechanism can be verbal insults and angry comments or even physical violence. This is why people can discuss almost any subject calmly and maturely but they can’t discuss politics or religion. Both politics and religion have sophisticated indoctrination programs that create the psychological fissure bridge in people’s minds and the cognitive dissonance is seen as a threat and the defense mechanisms kick in.