No mind games

www.guba.com/watch/3000097498   (Derren Brown: The heist)

13 people. Good, standing, upright citizens. Obeyed the law, payed their taxes, would never even think of committing a crime. And they were all British. (If that doesn't say something about their characters, I don't know what does.) 

One man, on a mission. To persuade these people to commit an armed robbery, to steal 100,000 pounds. Would they do it?

It was narrowed down to 4 people. The results: 3 out of the 4 held up a toy gun, told the man to get down on the ground, grabbed the money, and ran. Normal behavior?

They were not hypnotized. In the words of Derren Brown, "hypnosis doesn't exist. It just works on peoples natural suggestibility, their expectations and capacity to unconsciously role play."

This is mind control. It's not telling someone what to do. It's suggesting it, so that the person himself will make a conscience decision to do it.

A man from 'Yad LeAchim' came to talk to us about their organization. They do many things, among them, they help families who were targeted (and 'converted') by missionaries. The man used this film to show us how it works. 

If a missionary just walked up to someone and said, 'hey, wanna become christian?' it wouldn't work. So they use mind control on people. Specifically through videos and reading material that contain hidden pictures, and this stuff 'suggests' the message of conversion, until the person himself actually makes the decision to convert.

The man said something that gave me food for thought. There is mind control in our day and age. It's so easy to say, 'ha! brainwashing, hypnosis, mind control? That stuff will never effect me!' But in fact it does. The media, the fasion industry, friends. 

If the world says red shirts are 'in', and you run out and buy 10 of them, you are falling for a certain form of mind control. 

If your 'friend' looks down upon you for only listening to Jewish music, and you stop because of what she says, you are letting her control you.

It's not easy. Especially today, living in a world that we do, we are very succeptable to all forms of outside influences, peer pressure, etc. We find ourselves making decisions, not necessarily good ones, that we would never have made if not for what that person said, or what I read in that magazine.

So what's the solution? To live on a little island, with no billboards, magazines, people who will negitivly effect you? Obviously not, otherwise G-d would have created a little island for each of us. (That would have been cool, to live on my own little island. How peaceful...)

G-d put us in this world, with all these temptations, and bad influences all around us so we should fight it. So we should stand above the world, and do the right thing, in the face of all this evil.

Before you make a decision, think. Am I doing this because it's what I want, because I think it's right, and I'm following G-d's command? Or am I doing it because someone else said it's right? Think about it.

It's not easy. But then again, who ever said it was supposed to be easy?