In Buddhism, it is said that thoughts run this world. Currently, the habituation of thoughts and re-circuiting of the brain is happening in the name of education, advertisements etc. Humanity has been enslaved by the elitists who run this world to divert the wealth of humanity to a small group that essentially controls money. From a neuro-scientific perspective, the human brain has been re-circuited to behave like robots and thus do not have the power of wisdom that human beings are endowed with. The lack of wisdom prevents humans from asking the simple question - Why?

Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society; it’s the most precious conservative agent. It alone is the one that keeps us all with in the bounds of ordinance and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprising of the poor - William James, The Principals of Psychology, 1890

Neuro scientific analysis

Primitive animals use certain strategies for survival: (1) Separate what is actually connected to create a boundary between itself and its surroundings, (2) Stabilize what keeps changing in order to maintain the internal systems within tight ranges, and (3) Hold on to fleeting pleasures and escape inevitable pain in order to approach opportunities and avoid threats.

Unfortunately for humans, this strategy is a format for control and unrealistic because everything is connected, everything keeps changing, and opportunities remain unfulfilled. The reality of the present can be assessed with wisdom, with which humans are endowed. Arrest them at the level of the primitive animal and you achieve complete enslavement. This is done by habituation or brain washing by continuous propaganda by education, propaganda by media, and fear psychosis if ever you decide to think outside the box created by the elite.

Education

Whatever education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die - John Taylor Gatto

When Lord Macaulay became the first colonial commissioner of Education in India, he said the main aim of education was to produce an Indian brown in colour, who talked, thought and dressed like the English, to serve as go-between us and the rest of the Indians. If this is not brain washing what is? It is ironic that some of the institutions created by the colonial power to achieve its aims continue to churn out these robots in modern independent India as well as in all other former colonies.

Students get around 15000 hrs of education which is data-based and are given the mindset that they have achieved sufficient knowledge of the subject with a degree. They are ideal subjects to continue the agenda of the elites. They are never taught to think outside the box and are taught to think between the parameters set by the degree - ideal slaves to continue the status quo.

In 1972, the erudite Sri Lankan Minister of Finance Dr NM Perera was asked, “Dr Perera, as a graduate of the London School of Economics, what is wrong with the world economy?”  His reply was - LSE! How right, the world economic policy is dictated and implemented by the west, be it Friedman, LSE etc. There is no knowledge or understanding, for instance, of Buddhist economics. How can an Economics graduate contribute to society if his knowledge is confined to Western economic thought? I was surprised that a Vietnamese Economics graduate at Sorbonne University had never heard of Buddhist Economics. Hijack knowledge and you hijack humanity. It is sad to see that wherever I travelled in Sri Lanka or India the advertisements for Western degrees was so widespread that one wonders whether Independence was nothing more than colonialism enhanced.

New Technology

It is said that a 13 year old in the United States is bombarded by 360 hours of television advertisement per year. This would completely re-circuit his brain to enhance what is called instant gratification - a neurological process that addicts a person to products he may not necessarily need in his day-to-day life. Money is not an issue as the banks re-circulate liquidity that has entered the market by printing etc.

It is interesting that this is no different to giving drugs to a drug addict. A process portrayed as a social need is used to enslave people who are literally enslaved by debt. People who have this condition of instant gratification have poor concentrating ability and hence poor meditation powers - a clear indication that they are not living in reality and their actions are dictated by greed rather than need. Unnecessary goods are not only an enslavement of the buyers of these products, but the producers as well. The beneficiaries are the middlemen. An unnecessary need that consumes raw material, which is a limited resource, essentially is poor economics.

The media continues to bombard humanity with information overload that is not completely correct. The Iraq war and the false propaganda of weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to America turned out to be a lie. False jingoism of democracy, patriotism and justice are other parameters used to justify war. Ten years down the line, the only beneficiaries have been the corporates. The American lives lost, the disabilities and mental agonies of the war veterans are not even talked about, let alone the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. There has been no accountability, but they use the weapons of accountability and human rights on other countries for geopolitical advantage. Humanity has been so controlled that no one questions the double standards. The moral high ground has been virtually snatched from humanity.

Economy, development and environment

Development today is nothing short of destruction. The hubris that the environment is there for exploitation by humanity with no price to pay has been the policy. The consequence has been global warming and its detrimental effects on agriculture, environmental pollution and changes in biodiversity with introduction of new diseases. It is ironic that the path of the world economy has not changed one bit in spite of many attempts to address the problems. The policies have been to the detriment of humanity and the beneficiaries have been the corporates who now control 70 per cent of the wealth of this world. The natural consequences of this policy are (1) Demographic change - small families, increased mortality of the poor etc; (2) Environmental damage; (3) Ever increasing wealth gap between the rich and the poor.

Healthcare, like all other projects, believe in creative destruction. High technology agriculture creates resistant bacteria that need ever-increasing numbers of antibiotics or creates high dietetic cholesterol that needs medication for control of high cholesterol. Never do they think of refining agriculture. The ruling elite has no interest in it as it does not create any wealth. New drugs and new diseases are the name of the game. These policies do not make any sense except to create new markets to enrich the elite at the expense of humanity.

The Arab Spring is a perfect example of how the frustration and anger of the populace has been used to impose violent military dictatorships and subjugate the people to carry out the same policies that led to the uprising in the first place. The people are trapped in this never-ending human predicament. Beneficiaries are the corporates who have divided the oil amongst themselves as in Libya, but the people suffer from social disruption, violence and the disruption of their livelihood. Not a word is heard from the intellectuals and the ordinary masses; at most a mumble that no one hears, a reflection of the enslavement of the mind. Human rights are now confined to minority rights, women’s rights; but human rights are human rights. The majority too has rights. But this is another mechanism for control via divide-and-rule. The limitations imposed are no different from the parameters set in other policies.

Today the whole of humanity is under mass surveillance. Security checks are the norm in any society. Unfortunately the political class that plays an integral part in this exploitation of humanity and the powerful elite who are essentially the crooks that run this world do not have security checks and instead get security; the law-abiding citizens get security checks. It is interesting that the 4th amendment in the USA is blatantly broken in the name of security. The Internet giants are part and parcel of this mass surveillance. Humans are thus confined in their thinking to parameters dictated by the elite. If you think otherwise you are considered a terrorist.

This system is energised by the creation of money by an elite that lives in obscurity with the corporates and the banks, IMF and the World Bank being the driving mechanisms. The local politicians are very much a part of this system of subjugation. The middle classes never question this system; their thoughts are arrested within the same parameters. They do not even question why both husband and wife have to work today when in 1970 only one person in the family worked for the same standard of living. The result is that the children suffer and so does the next generation, but more importantly the middle classes do not have the ability to question their own predicament. The process by which women were gradually introduced into the work force was by a relentless media propaganda of equality of sexes, not the welfare of the family or for that matter the child’s need of a mother at home, an essential element for stabilising society.

Simple questions like how did Obama create $4 trillion out of nowhere for his quantitative easing policy, who owns the Federal Reserve, etc, are never asked. Increasing liquidity only devalues the currency with the salaries of ordinary people virtually static. Isn’t this stealing from the people? The liquidity is absorbed by corruption and the corporates, leading to social destabilisation, religious extremism, etc, by pauperising the majority. The liquidity has only created a false development programme, destruction of the environment and the detrimental effect on humanity - a negative equity.

Religion

Religious institutions have always been a part and parcel of this enslavement of humanity. This is best exemplified by Jomo Kenyatta: “When the white man came he had the bible we had the land. Then he said let us close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes we had the bible he had the land.”

Most Abrahamic religions believe that god is well in control of the destiny of society. Everything god does has a purpose. This is acceptance of the status quo and the immorality of the system. No wonder this system invests heavily in the conversion of people who follow non-Abrahamic religions.

When Buddha was once questioned by the people as to whom to believe amongst a multitude of preachers, he said do not believe tradition, religious leaders etc; the truth, he said, is what you believe as long as it is moral, does not harm anybody and is not destructive, ie, the humanity within oneself. Thus individualism was given prominence. If we all think differently how can we be made to think alike? [1] By hijacking thought and enslaving the mind. [2] By taking action that is for the benefit of the many that creates “Freedom of the Mind”.

The brain has 1.8 trillion cells, 800 billion nerve cells and each nerve cell has 5000 stimuli per second; these are amalgamated to give thought. Thus the probability of each person’s thought being the same as the other is almost nil - an inherent system that emphasises individualism. Interestingly, the most developed part of the brain is the neo-cerebrum, distinct from the primitive brain that has developed over millions of years due to social interaction and appropriately called the social brain. The frontal lobe of this brain is stimulated when you practice selfless activity that has a calming effect i.e. the humanity in oneself as opposed to the self which stimulates the primitive brain causing a flight and fright response.

This is only a microcosm of what is happening. In the present world order, the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer, humanity is suffering, wars are never ending, environment is damaged and human survival is at stake. Future generations are sacrificed and the thoughts of humanity are enslaved. Human beings who have the ability to think outside the parameters set must now use the resources available to them to get rid of the shackles of slavery.