Mind Your Mind
Are we really in control of our own thoughts?
In the past, governing powers used obvious methods to gain control: weapons, blatant propaganda, brute force. Now we feel free to make our own choices about what we believe and how we choose to live our lives. But we are not as free as we think Neurologists and psychologists have discovered how vulnerable our minds are to manipulation and suggestion, and how easily our own psyche can be taken out of our control. The future of our free will is under serious threat.
This documentary is a primer for psychological independence, teaching us to process more than our minds are comfortable with. From the glamorous, sex-obsessed world of advertising to the vacuous speeches of leading politicians, our responses are being silently but surely manipulated. Images of nude women appear hidden in Coca Cola adverts. Television channels flash up messages from their sponsors too fast for our conscious mind to catch. Lawyers twist the ambiguities of language to distract us and force us into a more suggestible mental state.
Our minds are constantly missing the obvious: "we don't perceive what's there, we change what we perceive, and we perceive what's not there." Though subliminal messaging is illegal in most countries, it is still used more often than we may ever know.
Neuro-linguistic programming can help us to protect ourselves against the manipulative forces that control consumers, pulling these forces apart so that we can see how they work. After all, as terrifying as this new neurological information is, "we are bound by it only to the degree of our ignorance to it". If we can open our eyes to the techniques used to control us, we can move these processes from our unconscious to our conscious mind. This film reminds us that "in this game, our only enemies are ignorance and complacence", and provides us with the psychological tools to fight them.
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Official Selection - London International Documentary Festival
