Imprisoning The Thoughts

Mukhtar Kareem

Quetta: Contemplation is very natural to human beings. It is what differentiates humans and places them above other animals.

However, the exercise of this benediction from the Almighty has never been easy throughout the history of mankind either because of self-conscious choice or being circumvented by extraneous influences of intellectuals and scholars that unconsciously impinge on the mind to stifle thoughts and reflections.

D Jones and L Flaxman argue in their book – Mind War,  that “From the dawn of humanity, the desire to control the thoughts, behaviors, and actions of others has been a pervasive one. But few people know that mind control techniques have been around since the beginning of civilisation itself”.

Motives and objectives behind such control may have varied from a situation to situation and a place to place but principles have remained the same to prevent the blossoming of human thought, throughout. This phenomenon of mind control received greater currency in the 20th century.

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In Europe, Hilter established a full-fledged machinery for this very purpose. Russian leaders prepared a book that was to be kept by the country’s citizens in order not to allow the intrusion of thoughts undesired by the state. The most technologically advanced country like the United States of America employs several means to do the same. She has all the means in her basket to pursue the objective of influencing minds toward the ideology she favours.

Nations find controlling the thoughts of their citizens very lucrative. It safeguards their ideological base by manipulating of great many people in favour of the state design.

Secondly, its spread internally and externally becomes easier and more effective whilst safeguarding the interests of people holding the ropes of power. In short, exploitation and spoliation become easy in any form.

In order to imprison the mind, according to Gramsci, the power holders use religions, books, institutions , media and ‘ intellectuals’ to control minds.  Gramci perceived these to be the actual reasons for as to why communism could not come to   dominate the capitalistic world.  But, in fact, his reasoning is also true in other aspects too.

 For example, recently the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia banned a certain type of preaching fearing that it will influence the minds of its citizens to their and the Kingdom’s detriment . it was feared this would engender  thoughts not conducive to the design of the State.

The world around us is littered with stories of mind control tactics, whether by some mysterious government machines or a Svengali-like master manipulator on a more personal scale. All this is here stay. What we need to do is to  actually rationally analyse the roots of messages and decide whether these should be owned or discarded. Otherwise, we will only be a tool in hand of government of any country, sometimes, insouciantly and unconsciously.