the Subtle Art of Mind-Control (Part I)

Your mind is more weak and easily influenced than you think

Let’s say you want to rule the world. 

What superpower would give you the best chance of getting there?

The power of flight? You’d probably get shot down and shackled by scientists trying to dissect you to find the source of your power.

Power of invisibility? You’d probably spook and creep everyone out and you'd have to be constantly naked for it to work. 

Laser eyes? What are you going to do? Fry everyone around you to submission until you get your way? You're gonna end up with a sniper bullet to the head.

Your campaign poster for election. "Vote for Johnny. He has laser-focus for issues that matter to you!"

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But what about mind control?

Yes, now we are onto something.

The ability to influence and change people’s minds is at the core, a fundamental aspect of all human relationships. It is found at the foundation of charisma, leadership and forms the basis for most success, and if we are talking world domination, that too. 

Mind control seems certainly like a superpower a villain would have though. 

It conjures up ghastly images of enslaved zombies that abide by their masters every whim. As crazy as it sounds, this actually exists in nature. There’s a parasitic worm (Dicrocoelium dendriticum) and a fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) that takes over the brains of ants and physically controls where they go. 

The worm forces the helpless ant to climb to the very top of a blade of grass to be eaten by a cow. In the nice warm, fuzzy environment that is the cow's stomach, the worm completes its life cycle and reproduces, coming out later in its shit to find more unsuspecting ants. 

The fungus cause little ant seizures that make them fall into the lower, more humid forest floors where the fungus can then grow after the ant dies. 

Sounds enticing to be an ant right?

"It's hat day guys! I couldn't find my sombrero so I grew my hat from my brain."

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Fortunately for you, no one can hack your brain. You are the sole owner of that squishy thing sitting in your head and you dictate what you want to do with it.

Despite what it may feel like… despite the influence you think society has over you, the rules you think you have to live by, the bills you have to pay, the boss you sell your life to, the people you want to impress… no one can make you feel, say or do anything you don't want to do.

You have full ownership of your own emotions, thought processes and well-being… or do you?

Let's say you are going about your day minding your own business when someone comes up to you and insults you. He sees you parking your car and he says you suck at it. He says you deserve to die because of how incompetent you are. He then insinuates that he had sexual intercourse with your mom. 

Hired actor paid to insult you.

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What usually happens next?

You feel like shit. You get angry. Your day gets ruined. Some variation of all the above. Maybe you want to come up with an awesome comeback. You insult them back. Tit for tat. Maybe you want to escalate and pound his face into his skull. 

So you step out of your car and you dare him to say it again but only now to your face. He steps out of his car and steps a few feet from with his arms outstretched and chest all puffed up to look even bigger. You dare him to come closer. He does. Now you are face to face. Your lips are almost touching. You can even feel his hot breath on your mouth. Nobody says a word. He continues staring at you. No one has ever looked at you this way. You suddenly feel vulnerable and naked. It's like he's staring into your soul but oddly, in the first time in your life, you feel seen. He starts unbuttoning his shirt… You start unzipping his pants… 

...oh whoa whoa, cut cut. Sorry sorry, I sometimes confuse the quirky behaviors of modern male machismo with male homoeroticism.

Okay back to our example where you are mad. Grrr. You want him feel regret. Doesn't he know who you are? Your ego is bruised.

All that negativity and ill-will generated from thin air! Where did that poison come from? Most would point the finger at the person who insulted you. The perpetrator! Obviously if he didn't say anything, you would've been fine. I mean c'mon, your parking isn't that bad.

But you are wrong. He is not the source. He is the trigger. YOU are the source of all the negativity and ill-will. 

Let's review the facts. All he did was scrunch his face and move his lips and push some air out of his mouth. Maybe he even gesticulated with his hands. That air current he created with his mouth traveled to your ear and vibrated your ear drum for a few seconds. That's pretty much it.    

Doesn't sound so devastating now does it? 

After your ear drum vibrates, the ball falls into your court. Your brain takes those vibrations, analyzes the intensity, rhythm, and pattern of them and matches it with the  the movements of the dude's red-eyed, scowling face. Some quick analysis and your brain concludes the man is angry and that he is purposefully trying to make you feel shitty and small.

You must think highly of this man because for whatever reason, you let him succeed. 

In the command center of your brain, the little mini-version of you sitting there puts the entire body on DEFCON 1. Sirens and alarms go off and your body gets rigid. Your heart starts pounding and your sweat glands start leaking. Embarrassment, social rejection, insecurity, fear, anger. Every negative emotion starts pouring out of your brain and into your body and conscious mind. 

Let us remind ourselves that the dude basically did nothing. He pushed some air at us with his mouth and moved his lips. It's not like he plugged himself into your brain and forced you to think anything or feel anything. You did that all to yourself.   

You let him mind control you.

You let this random dude take control of your brain and you let him squeeze every ounce of pain out of your amygdala. This dude wanted to make you feel shitty and you were like, sure, go ahead! Make yourself at home at the command deck. If you want me to feel like crap, all you have to do is press this button! 

You relinquished responsibility of your brain to a stranger. You let him hijack your emotions and take you for a ride. You wouldn't give the keys to your car to a stranger. Why would you give the keys to your brain to them?

"Okay Barbara. It's your first time here so listen up. If you want the ship to self-destruct and burn us all alive, all you got to do is press this button. Great! Good talk. You know all you need to know now. You're in charge now."

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I began to understand the subtleties of this phenomenon in the emergency department. There is ample opportunity for bad emotions and high stress to eat us alive in here. Sick patients are being wheeled into my department every ten minutes. Not so fun when I'm already trying to keep multiple balls up in the air. 

When one ball is labeled "Don't let Nancy's heart stop beating!" and another is "Let's put a tube into Terrance's chest to re-inflate his lungs!" and of course, who could forget the classic, "Don't let Bob bleed to death from his anus," I don't really have the luxury nor the time to process someone's words when they tell me to "go fuck myself."

Sometimes it's a drunk dude purposefully trying to act belligerent or a 90-year old demented Russian grandma who has no clue what is going on. Am I really going to let these chaps rile me up?

Ms Spencer just called me a cunt? Jessica, unsure of how to respond, calmly types the word into google to figure out what that word means.

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Maybe. Sometimes. I'd like to say never. I have something on my side though. 

Desensitization. That's the key word here. When someone is screaming at you every hour of every day, the silver lining is after the 1000th time, those screams don't really faze you anymore.

In contrast to the above example of someone insulting your parking skills, let me illustrate what happens after this desensitization process and just how surreal it can get.

Meet Karen. She's a lovely patient I am about to introduce you to.

I'm standing at the foot of the door of the yellow zone. This is the part of the ER that houses our beloved psychiatric patients. Karen was in this specific unit. For whatever reason, Karen was particularly disheveled today and in this moment in particular, she was walking towards me in an attempt to get to the exit and get the hell out of there.

Normally, I wouldn't blame her. I wouldn't want to stay myself either but in this case, she was either psychotic or suicidal. Probably both.

Her hair was wildly askew and draped over her face like she just came from the set of the Ring. Telling her to go back to her bed, I finally caught her attention and soon became the sole focus of her rage. Keep in mind I am now a mere two feet away from her screaming, enraged face. 

I could see that her eyes were wide-eyed and bugging out. If it weren't for the mask and shield covering my face, I'm sure I would've felt the frothy spittle spraying out of her mouth like a rabid dog. 

I was attempting one last Hail Mary to verbally calm her down before we would inject her with what we endearingly refer to as, "chemical restraints." 

Typical ER encounter: "Ma'am can you please calm down and sit back on your stretcher. The nurse will be right with you. Standing there menacingly will not get you your apple juice any faster."

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I don't know if I was calm because of the squad of security guards behind me waiting to bum-rush the room at a moment's notice or the nice nap I had taken earlier in the day but I felt eerily at peace staring into the lioness's mouth. 

It was almost as if I had turned the volume of the room to zero. Instead of letting her crawl into my skull, I heard what she had to say, but they had no effect on me. Instead, I was laser-focused onto her features. 

Her mouth took on interesting shapes as she yelled at me. Ovoid, ellipse, a flattened line… wow, now a perfect circle! 

Some funny wrinkles would appear at the edges of her lips as she screamed. Interesting. I have to remember to check if those wrinkles stay there when she isn't yelling. 

I moved up her face and noticed that from her flaring nostrils, a few strands of hair was sticking out. Damn, I wonder if I need a trim too. Gotta check the mirror after this. Got a date later tonight, aw yeah. 

Moving up further, I noticed the piercing green color of her eyes. Hm, that's a nice color. I wonder if those are colored-contacts. I should probably wear contacts again myself. 

I focus in on her screams again. Damn, she's got a powerful set of bagpipes. If she learned to control that power, she could be the next Adele or something. If only Terrance's lungs were that powerful. Aw poor Terrance. His heart isn't pumping very well so all the blood is backing up into his lungs. Hope he makes it. Seems like a good guy.

One minute later, she is strapped to the bed and after some haldol and ativan, she is sound asleep like a baby. My shift ends and I am on my way home humming "Set Fire to the Rain."

To survive in this environment, you just can't afford to let someone take over your emotions. Being mentally compromised can spell disaster not just for myself, but for everyone under my care. 

Though the above examples showcase forms of emotional mind-control, mind control and brain manipulation exists in many other forms as well. Some of it can be very subtle and very much hidden. Consider that the mere instance of communicating with another human being results in a temporary hijacking of your conscious thoughts. I'm doing it right now in fact.

And just like what you decide to do when someone insults you and calls you a twat, what you decide to do with the thoughts someone transmits to you, is entirely up to you as well.

Your brain, in the end, is protected by Loneliness. 

It is what I like to call the Lonely Brain Problem.

Stay tuned for part II of the Subtle Art of Mind-Control: "the Lonely Brain Problem!"