PDA

View Full Version : Zombie Entertainment: Are we being conditioned to accept mass extermination?




green73
12-13-2012, 11:07 AM
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/zombie-entertainment-a-lesson-in-cognitive-dissonance-and-the-red-pill_12112012





http://www.thedailysheeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Zombies-300x199.jpg


Zombies are the new vampires in the entertainment world, but unlike pop culture vampires, they don’t sparkle, they aren’t sexy and brooding, and you don’t want to turn into one.

The most popular show in cable TV history is The Walking Dead. Dozens, if not hundreds, of zombies are slain in every episode. Head shots are taken with no more compunction than swatting as mosquito before it lands on your arm. An axe to the skull, a pick through an eye socket, blunt objects, arrows, daggers – anything goes. What’s more, it doesn’t matter if the zombie is a man, woman or child – it must be killed immediately as it staggers hungrily towards you.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=afcWyJhsBXo

Even the US military is getting into the spirit of the Zombie Apocalypse, holding mock disaster drills (http://theintelhub.com/2012/10/31/military-holds-mock-zombie-apocalypse-drill-on-halloween-in-populated-area/) with the shuffling horde as the enemy.

It’s all in the name of fun, right? Simply entertainment and anyone who says otherwise needs to lighten up, right?

Perhaps not – perhaps we need to take a look at psychological experiments undertaken in the last century to determine whether the Zombie craze is just a big psychological experiment being perpetrated on us.

In 1971, a 2 week experiment was funded by the US Office of Naval Research to study the effects of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard. A mock prison was set up at Stanford University, and 24 students took part in the experiment, half taking on the roles of prisoners and the other half, guards in the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/1).



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlIyD15KS6s&feature=player_embedded

The situation escalated quickly into a cycle of abuse and torture. The psychological reactions were so dramatic that the study was suddenly halted on day 6. Out of more than 50 people who had observed the experiment, one graduate student finally objected to the abuse and torture. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who was in charge of the experiment, wrote (http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/1):

At this point it became clear that we had to end the study. We had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation — a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically. Even the “good” guards felt helpless to intervene, and none of the guards quit while the study was in progress. Indeed, it should be noted that no guard ever came late for his shift, called in sick, left early, or demanded extra pay for overtime work.

I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was “off.” Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.

Second, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other’s shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said, “It’s terrible what you are doing to these boys!” Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it became clear that the study should be ended.

And so, after only six days, our planned two-week prison simulation was called off.

This experiment proved how fragile the human resistance is to wrong-doing under stressful sitatuations, and how quickly people who are normally considered to be “moral” and “mentally stable” can digress to behavior that is both sadistic and repugnant when that behavior is considered normal for the circumstances.

This occurs because of a behavioral theory called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance (a phrase coined in the book When Prophecy Fails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails), by Dr. Leon Festinger) describes the mental discomfort that a person feels when faced with two diverse values – the reality of a situation and the moral belief system of the person collide. When this occurs, the person must make alterations to one or the other in order to regain his equilibrium. According to Dr. Festinger theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance), “people engage in a process he termed “dissonance reduction”, which can be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors. This bias sheds light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior.”

So, using the theory of cognitive dissonance, we can understand that through popular culture, any mass of crazed, violent, hungry people may be considered no longer human. Members of the military, police forces and guards can distance themselves from violent actions by reprogramming their moral compasses and aligning them with the adjusted reality that it’s okay to kill women and children and the hungry, because they are sub-human. They are to be dispatched quickly and efficiently to quell chaos and return to a more comfortable situation.

We are being pre-conditioned by the entertainment industry to accept death on levels so massive that they make concentration camp videos look like a Disney movie. When you watch the following trailer, notice particularly at minutes 1:20, 1:56, and 2:10 – the cinematography itself dehumanizes the millions being slaughtered, making them look like little more than faceless insects to be destroyed as they seek to invade.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk&feature=player_embedded

We are being pre-conditioned to accept the inevitable scenes of death that will be flooding our evening news, so that we won’t object when we watch these real-life incidents of mass extermination. We are being socially programmed to find the unacceptable to be a matter-of-fact, everyday occurrence when we watch an axe be delivered to the head of a dirty, hungry, feral child. Forget racism – we are being taught a new kind of bias – the categorization of someone terrified and hungry as something less human than us – a threat to be enthusiastically destroyed without remorse.

During the 1950s, Solomon Ashe conducted a series of experiments on conformity. The conclusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments) of the experiments was that

“Self-categorization theory suggests that our individual functioning at any given moment is dependent on whether or not we categorize ourselves as similar or different from groups. When we see ourselves as similar to a group, we engage in depersonalization, a key concept in self-categorization theory. Depersonalization is when individuals see themselves as embodying the social category of the group rather than their own personal identities. Therefore, from this perspective the Asch results are interpreted as an outcome of depersonalization processes whereby the participants expect to hold the same incorrect opinions as others in the “group”.”

It’s a lot harder to brainwash (http://lifehacker.com/5886571/brainwashing-techniques-you-encounter-every-day-and-how-to-avoid-them) people who know they are subject to manipulation. By your very awareness of the motives behind entertainment and media patterns, you can protect yourself. Don’t allow yourself to be mindlessly “entertained” by death and violence – don’t allow this to become the social norm. When/if you watch things like this, do so with an engaged mind – don’t be a passive recipient.

Fight the cognitive dissonance by thinking critically and allowing yourself to be uncomfortable with the reality being forced upon you by the media. That’s what taking the red pill is all about.


This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Morpheus – The Matrix (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes)

Brian Coulter
12-13-2012, 02:40 PM
I've thought this for years. I really enjoyed Resident Evil back in the 90's but the zombie craze has become more than a little disturbing.

VoluntaryAmerican
12-13-2012, 03:22 PM
"We are being pre-conditioned by the entertainment industry to accept death on levels so massive that they make concentration camp videos look like a Disney movie."

This is a pretty ridiculous premise.

I've said this before in other threads, in my opinion zombie entertainments popularity is a product of the subconscious realization that shit could hit the fan (or is imminent). It's a safe way for the average person to have a thought experiment on how they would survive during civil unrest without analyzing or bothering themselves with the political knowledge involved in being prepared. The walking dead deals with social morality breakdown during civil unrest. There was even a 3 gun "zombie survival" thread on RPF, I've seen this type of thing other places too.

The Mayan calendar is another example of this same phenomenon.

And I don't think the zombie movie/show phenomenon is a bad thing, either.

TonySutton
12-13-2012, 03:33 PM
I look at zombies as those who fail to prepare for collapse. When things collapse there will be plenty of people acting like the zombies and if they get to you, you will have no choice but to act like them. :(

thoughtomator
12-13-2012, 03:38 PM
I think it will take weeks for most people to even be able to mentally come to grips with the collapse, no matter how compelling the evidence. The behavioral conditioning is really quite strong, and such a scenario will be outside even the most remote expectations of your average TV/Facebook user.

Jingles
12-13-2012, 04:32 PM
I hate this stuff. OMG I ENJOY A TV SHOW OR SOMETHING SO THAT MEAN X, Y, Z, Q, R T, etc...

I like playing GTA, Halo, (older) Call of Duty, whatever, then that = I must endorse murder, war, etc, etc, etc...

Fiction vs reality. Learn the difference.

bolil
12-13-2012, 04:34 PM
Meh, if the food runs out its not the undead that will be trying to eat you.

BenIsForRon
12-13-2012, 04:47 PM
Dumb post. People have liked zombie movies for half a century at least.

mad cow
12-13-2012, 04:53 PM
This might turn out to be a bigger crisis than boys and girls dancing with each other to Boogie-Woogie music without chaperones.

NIU Students for Liberty
12-13-2012, 04:55 PM
Give me a break. Many zombie films were created to serve as social critiques of the state (28 Weeks Later comes to mind) and consumerism (Dawn of the Dead). Zombies just happen to be the latest trend within pop culture just like ninjas, aliens, slashers, and buddy cops of the past.

V3n
12-13-2012, 05:01 PM
I've been waiting for a giant, fire-breathing lizard to climb out of the Pacific Ocean since 1954!

mad cow
12-13-2012, 05:15 PM
I've been waiting for a giant, fire-breathing lizard to climb out of the Pacific Ocean since 1954!

Well,I was raised on the Lone Ranger and fifty odd years later I'm still pissed I never got my Indian Sidekick.

Deborah K
12-13-2012, 06:33 PM
I think we ARE being conditioned. I have no doubt of it, especially after studying Bernays and his affect on certain world leaders, controlling the masses and so on. There's evidence that the 'War of the Worlds' radio show hosted by Orson Wells in 1938 was an experiment to see how the public would react to an alien invasion. About 15 years ago, there was a shortlived weekly TV show called: Phenomenon: The Lost Archives, it would be considered a conspiracy theory show nowadays, which is probably why it got canned. The show exposed a lot of stuff we, in our movement, just accept today as truth. Here's an episode that goes into mass experiments (about 4 min. into it).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sXFAVlz6mc


Anyway, I do believe that not only are we being conditioned but the military is too. Those who aren't prepared for an economic/social collapse will begin to starve after a few weeks, and starvation and dehydration cause zombie-like physical and mental effects.

KingNothing
12-13-2012, 06:39 PM
Give me a break. Many zombie films were created to serve as social critiques of the state (28 Weeks Later comes to mind) and consumerism (Dawn of the Dead). Zombies just happen to be the latest trend within pop culture just like ninjas, aliens, slashers, and buddy cops of the past.


Exactly, on both counts. The Alex Jones crowd likes to link everything to a Grand Conspiracy.