Mind Control
How we’ve lost our imaginations
I think about fantasies — our inner worlds — and how much time we spend looking at our screens, the other realm of reality and how the two are becoming interchangeable. Maybe that’s the goal, a seamless transition between imagination and the curated pages sent to us from the internet.
How they watch our moves, watch our minds and then essentially produce our imaginations for us, bringing them to life without our awareness. What was in our heads before someone guessed what was in our heads and then placed their guesses there? Do we know? We think we do.
We believe, because we have to believe, that we are still in control of our thoughts. That we are in control of our imaginations. But isn’t it jarring every time an ad crosses your stream for the very thing you had just been absently thinking about.
Maybe we never have been in control and maybe we don’t care. I am thinking of all of this because of the true crime podcast I listened to which discussed implanted memories and how simple it is; how quickly and certainly people adopt suggested events as concrete. The fear pricks at my skin as they hint at how malleable the past actually is. Was it so important that history be written because we knew we couldn’t rely on the mind? The mind will keep living, keep building layers and layers on top of our memories until they are different characters in different plays altogether.
This leads to the idea that maybe it doesn’t even matter. Is creating our own past detrimental or is this fluidity an untapped human gift? Why are we so rigid about the truth. Truths have to match in order to hold people accountable for their actions sure, but is that even relevant anymore? People’s actions. I’m not convinced.
I guess as products of our environments, as creatures of habit, as sentient beings, we must be held accountable and identified as dangerous or not. I wonder though, if that’s becoming harder to discern. Because history wasn’t written correctly, but guided. Guided by people put in the positions to guide. Guidance is something that can be so insidious and yet is not investigated really at all. The inferences that are made, the directions casually suggested, which can manifest and manifest until an entire life has been imagined from one small word. How fucking scary is that?
My distrust of the human being has brought a lot of conflict into my life and my relationships. Particularly if I distrust someone because they have caused perceived harm to me or someone that I love. I then, certainly, assume that they’re implanting negative thoughts whenever possible. Guiding the person away from me. And that is probably a perfect concrete example of paranoia. Or is it? Every word said or written, a tiny seed waiting for water. And all this leaves me with, is once again, a knowing that I can control no mind, not even my own.
