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An era of Mass hypnosis

Adolf Hitler once said "By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a person see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. "Public ignorance is certainly bliss for politicians and businessmen. Media adds fire to this fuel. From highly publicized unnecessary products to hyped frivolous political issues, propaganda is the flu that spares only a few.

Where on one hand media has been a catalyst to development and awareness, on the other it has given birth to a mad race; a race that leads to nowhere. People run because others are running. More is less here. Consumers are becoming less and less consumers and more and more buyers. Necessity is no more the mother of invention but, promotion and consumer manipulation have become the pastors of need.

An ignorant consumer wouldn't even realize the effect of repetitive threatening statements made by the advertisers of life insurance policy.LIC cash on people's fear. It is one of the most successful business models because it exploits the biggest inherent fear in an individual: The fear of death or of physical in capabilities. Many other advertisers manipulate consumers by displaying certain products as status symbol. Because the followed icon on tv uses a particular commodity, having that commodity gives consumer an inferential link to that celebrity. All that glitters is essentially gold in the new definition.

Human Subconscious brain keeps collecting both necessary and unnecessary information for future, irrespective of their utility. When a person comes across a brand ten times in a day it settles in his subconscious mind. Brain works like a thesaurus, automatically suggesting all related events and names in need. So, the next time this person goes to grocery store that brand will automatically pop out.

A collective rut planned to trap common man's pocket. The other day I read an article that says "imagine the plight of a man who has to drop his son to school every day in the same car" and "imagine the plight of a mother who does not earn much to give for her son to attend a disco party". These plights are really hard to imagine. Are we so well settled that our plights have become limited to extended luxuries?

Housewives and children being the softest target are easily caught. Maximum commodities are planned to influence women. Recently I saw a research report on the differing behavioral learning capacities of men and monkeys. The results shown were astonishing. Similar set of tasks were given to a group of 10 to 13 year old children and 1-2 year old monkeys. In the first stage a painted box filled with chocolates was given to each of them. To open it, a front seal had to be torn off and then chocolates could be pulled out by using a small scale. This process was shown to monkeys and children and, each one of them were asked to take the chocolates from that box. All repeated the tasks as shown. In the next stage the box was kept open from one side and chocolates could be taken out without taking the seal and using the scale. But this was not shown to any of them. Each child repeated all three steps shown to him earlier whereas none of the monkeys used those unnecessary steps. They simply took those chocolates out. One year old monkey exceeds in reasoning to a 13 year old child.

Following a mob simply gives most people a sense of surety of purpose. A feeling of belonging to the right aim; because so many people are running in one direction, the destination must be correct. Each person is unique here. And each has separate aspirations, visions and need. In such a case only the ones who know their goal while running will achieve it. Following peers without reasoning can certainly leave others astray.