carrot & stick

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Well, if the stimulus consisted of anticipation of a reward, and if ringing a bell produced as much stimulus as getting fed, would a sermon about eternal life elicit a dopamine response in a parishoner akin to actually getting raptured?

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As it happens, I know something of the further adventures of Pavlovs dogs, as discussed in a book on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As a I recall, the most inteersting bit was the ditching of learned systems under catastrophic stress.Pavlovs lab became flooded and the dogs nearly died in their cages, and would have had they not been rescued by lab assistants (as I recall this was due to the shelling of Stalingrad). The rescued dogs showed none of the inggrained response patterns that were seen before the flooding experience.The book went on to argue that this developement served as the basis for techniques that were later deployed on Gary Powers. These constitute creating massive amounts of stress and dehumanisation of the subject, leading eventually to the "dumping" of a whole belief system. The speculation was that if the brain searches and searches and fails to find anything useful in its current world-model to handle the crisis, it simply erases the whole thing. This is then replaced by whatever other world-model may be available.Its not hard to generalise this to the flame-n-brimstone preachers who are always telling us we are going to hell for this and that. What they are doing is building up guilt, stress, until the only available world-model is the preachers own. Further, with the emphasis on "humility" and "obedience" in most religions, and ceretainly in christianity, there is already a whole system of dehumanisation.I think religious conversion as practiced by bible-thumpers is essentially a form of brainwashing, or at least severe psychological intervention.After a little research, the book was "The Battle for the Mind" by William Sargant, reprinted 1997 by Malor books, ISBN 1 883536 06 5....and not the similarly titled "the battle for your mind" by some conspiracy theorist calle Sutphen.This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-04-2005 10:59 AM

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Wow! Interesting....what do you think of cell phones and human interaction?

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Not much because all the good science says that they are not broadcasting in a frequency that should interract with our jellyware. OTOH I'm not confidant we understand the brains signalling well enough to claim that confidently. But that doesn't stop me using one myself.

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Also it sounds very similar to the techniques used by the so called ‘satanic’ cults (more cult of personality, power trip and cover for vicious abuse than anything religious but that’s a topic for another thread) in controlling new recruits and current members. Some of the stories I’ve hared are quite horrific.

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Yes indeed. But we don;t have to go so far afield or to such exotic cults to see these systems in every day use. One of the case studies was a chinese political indoctrination camp with certain specific features, such as isolation from the normal community, severeley limited or no contact with family, constant verbal abuse, and constant physical labour. But this sounded rather familiar to me so I read the passage - removing any reference to chinese camps - to some friends who had just been through their military service and they said "thats basic training". And it is.I think that should raise som basic questions about the close role between the military and the state, especially in the US. the military seems to be extremely influential and I regard that as frankly dangerous.