Before you watch the video below I want you to have someone read a short poem by Robert Frost to you.  If you read it to yourself it may not have the same effect.  So go ahead, ask whomever is closest to you right now to read this to you:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
And I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Now think of a playing card.

Okay, you can watch the video now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you think of that card or were you influenced to think of that card?

Remember this the next time you or someone you know clings to a belief of ‘knowing’ something.  …especially if that ‘knowing’ is of the religous variety.  Yes, church and spiritual leaders are very good at mind control techniques.  It ain’t just for magicians, marketers, politicians, parents and con artists and never was.

Where there is a concentration of wealth, power, and especially followers, you can usually find a trail of someone or a group of someones selling people on what they want them to believe so that they can get what they want.

If you’re interested in how we are fooled, even by ourselves, and how our brains work check out some of the books on the ‘Book’ page of this site.

Tonight is the night of the second presidential debate.  This seems like as good a day as any to launch a blog on how you are marketed to by advertisers, politicians, experts, media, and sometimes even your friends. If you think you might hear at least one lie, fabrication or stretching of the truth by Barack Obama or John McCain tonight raise your hand.  (Wow!  That’s a lot of hands!)

Even better, we’ll sometimes cover ways you influence, sell to and market to your friends and sometimes even to yourself.

You are blindly influenced many times a day and you blindly influence others at least a few times a day.  Have you been told an interesting “fact” from a friend today that fit into your beliefs?  Maybe it was about Barack Obama, or John McCain, or Wall Street or any number of newsworthy topics.  Chances are that the “facts” you heard were somewhat truthful and somewhat dubious.

This isn’t a slam on you or your friends.  It’s simply a result of how the human brain works and how our marketing-saturated culture operates in 2008.

Blind patrotism is an obvious example of this.  The first few years after 9/11 we witnessed blind patriotism on steroids.  Emotions ran high which concurrently made critical thinking run low.  This resulted in Americans swallowing gallons of lies that fortunately became obvious in only a few years instead of a few decades.

Again, this is nothing personal, it’s how the human brain operates. Why do you think Tony Robbins and others using NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) have done so well?

As this blog grows we’ll explore how our minds deceive us and how others can use this against us.  By realizing how this happens you’ll be one of the few who isn’t going to fall for the B.S. – well, at least not as much of it as your neighbors.

So as you watch the debate tonight, and politicians speaking on any night, keep your critical thinking hat on and put on your glasses to see through the blind influence.