The Noble Lie

(Or subliminibuble if you ask our President)

Do you watch any of the 24 hour news networks? It’s been a while for me but there is one feature of the broadcast I really remember, which I think started with FOX but has been widely mimiced at this point.. it is the scrolling “ticker tape” of news along the top and the bottom of the screen. The more I learn about the unconscious and subliminal techniques, the more I think about those ticker tapes.. especially since they tend to have the highest number of FACTUAL ERRORS. The most egregious one I remember people screaming about is when they labeled Mark Foley a Democrat again and again after his pederastery was brought out into the open.

What propagandists, psychologists, and public relations people understand, that most of us “normals” don’t, is that many people’s actions are driven by the unconscious mind, the part of their brain that does not use logic, deduction, analysis of facts or comparison to reality to make decisions. The unconscious mind is important because it regulates our body and it can “bubble up” to our conscious mind as the source of emotion, creativity, inspiration, and spirituality, all very human traits which we can consciously act on. However, it is also hijacked easily by people who understand how it ticks.

The whole point of the news ticker is for you not to read it. Like a jackhammer, it will repeat the same messages over and over, which your conscious mind will not engage but your unconscious mind will pick up on. Since you aren’t paying attention, and since repetition works repetition works, you will not even critically engage the content of the message and it will bypass all your logic filters and deposit straight into your subconscious. However, you WILL be affected by it as it “bubbles up” into your conscious thoughts and decisions. It becomes part of your world.

This is why Hitler famously gave all his important speeches in the evening, when people had been working all day and were tired and worn down. It is the whole idea of subliminal advertising where images are flashed too quickly for your conscious mind to register. It is also why so much social programming takes the form of fiction — we think of it as entertainment and don’t critically engage the content, even though it may influence us.

Interesting side note, the words subliminal and sublime come from the same roots. Makes you wonder if advertising has picked up where the priests of old left off, coding “morality” into people.

From etymology.com:

subliminal
1886, “below the threshold” (of consciousness), formed from sub “below” + L. limen (gen. liminis) “threshold.” Apparently a loan-translation of Ger. unter der Schwelle (des Bewusstseins) “beneath the threshold (of consciousness),” from Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), author of a textbook on psychology published in 1824. The scare over subliminal advertising came in 1957.

sublime
1586, “expressing lofty ideas in an elevated manner,” from M.Fr. sublime, from L. sublimis “uplifted, high, lofty,” possibly originally “sloping up to the lintel,” from sub “up to” + limen “lintel.” The sublime “the sublime part of anything” is from 1679. Sublime Porte, former title of the Ottoman government, is from Fr. la Sublime Porte, lit. “the high gate,” a loan-translation of Arabic Bab ‘Ali, title of the Ottoman court at Constantinople (cf. mikado).