Is there a reliable way to change someone's thoughts?

[dstebbins]

In George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the main villain, O'Brien, tortures protagonist Winston Smith, not just until he started acting the way the Ingsoc Party wanted him to act, but until he thought the way they wanted him to think.

 

Two sections of that book that stick in my head, verbatim, years after reading the book is ...

 

We do not merely kill our enemies, Winston; we change them

 

 

and (while being electrotortured)

 

"How many fingers, Winston?"

"Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!"
"How many fingers, please?"

"FIve! Five! Five!"

"No, Winston. That is no use. You are lying; you still you see four. Now, how many fingers, please?"

 

 

This ultimately worked. Winston was eventually "cured," and he actually believed - he didn't just act, he actually believed - that the Ingsoc Party was perfect, that there is no reality outside what the Party recognizes, and that he was getting the execution he deserved. He loved Big Brother.

 

What's even weirder is that the villain claimed that their tactics were 100% successful. He said that no one who entered the Ministry of Love ever came out uncurred.

 

I wonder ... have totalitarian states in the real world ever devised any means of using torture to control thoughts? Not just actions, but thoughts, to the point where, once discharged from the "prison/hospital," these former drug dealers or thugs became champions of helping the police catch criminals, because they were actually tortured into thinking that crime was bad and they wanted to become good guys? Not just to avoid future torture, but because they genuinely wanted to? Because this totalitarian government forcibly instilled those thoughts into the criminal's mind?

 

For example, I remember a short clip from a short-lived TV show called "My Name is Earl." One guy that Earl framed for a theft had a flashback of him sitting in prison, reading the Bible. He found God in prison! In this flashback, everyone was about to escape, but this friend refused to go with them, even though he knew he had been wrongly convicted (the whole point of Earl visiting that friend was to confess that he framed him and apologized), but rather, solely because it was wrong to try to and escape. Because he found God, and he didn't want to break the law, even if that meant he suffered.

 

Any examples in real life of totalitarian states doing that, through torture, like in 1984?

Edited August 15, 2015 by dstebbins

[ajb]

There are many states that use torture, random imprisonments, public executions, enslavement, rape, forced abortions and so on to control their citizens.

 

I wonder if in many of these countries people do not really think of overthrowing the state. They see no alternatives other than to stay in line, there are no political groups or organisations they can join, the internet is restricted and the press is controlled. They just don't have any picture of things possibly being much different.

 

A good example here would of course be North Korea.

[dstebbins]

There are many states that use torture, random imprisonments, public executions, enslavement, rape, forced abortions and so on to control their citizens.

 

I wonder if in many of these countries people do not really think of overthrowing the state. They see no alternatives other than to stay in line, there are no political groups or organisations they can join, the internet is restricted and the press is controlled. They just don't have any picture of things possibly being much different.

 

A good example here would of course be North Korea.

Yeah, but are actually convinced, themselves, that the government is perfect?

 

Or, do they have some sinking feeling, that they don't know how to put into words (but we do, because it's a free country), that their life sucks because of their totalitarian state? Even if they don't know that the word to use is "totalitarian."

 

I'm not talking about the controlled use of access to information, in order to prevent the instillation of unwanted ideas in the first instance. I'm talking about, once the citizens have actually gotten those ideas, they are tortured, not just into not voicing those ideas, but actually physically abandoning the ideas! They had the rebellious thoughts, but they don't have them anymoer.

 

Kind of like a character in a sci-fi movie getting his memory wiped.

[cudlo1]

Changing someone's thought, a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress. Other factors include torture, emotional stress and psychoactive drugs.

[Phi for All]

Changing someone's thought, a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.

 

--from Words Can Change Your Brain by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman

 

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[ACG52]

I'd say a well framed and reasonable argument, but we know from experience on science sites that doesn't work.