The Power of Story

by Jim Loehr

But one thing you can be certain of, and conscious about: Someone is vying for your story all the time. Lots of people have an interest in owning part or all of your gray matter, that part of the brain that is home to the raw material where your story was born and lives. The world is full of people whose sole professional purpose is to get you to say yes to their requests, suggestions, commands. And if they get to “own” your gray matter—that is, to own the configuration and directionality of your brain’s pathways—then they get to determine the vigor or sickness of your stories, and thus the success or failure of your life, your destiny. If we own our neural real estate, then we have control; if others own it, then they have control. Control of what we think, feel, say, do. And if that happens, then we’ve been complicit in identity theft…only the identity we’ve allowed to be stolen is our own!

  For some of those who seek ownership of our gray matter, their motivation is noble; for others, sinister. Politicians have an interest. Corporations. Media. Friends and enemies, competitors and salespeople, parents and teachers and clergy, TV producers and casino operators, bosses and military leaders, the list goes on and on. Everyone is fighting to get your belief system to conform to their needs and wants.

  How do they get to own it? Often by deception and seduction (seduction, one may argue, is merely a subset of deception, or—better yet—its prettier, but no less manipulative, twin). Let’s deal first with deception. So many forces out there are intent on tricking us. Take, for example, the source of much of our daily information. Every newspaper we read has spin, obvious to us or not so obvious. The Wall Street Journal has one spin, The New York Times another, USA Today still another. They don’t give you the “facts” or the “news,” but their version of them; they give you a story. “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed,” said Mark Twain. “If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” Whether we absorb a story’s “angle” consciously or not, it means everything that one paper’s lead, in big type and accompanied by an above-the-fold color photo, is another paper’s one-paragraph item on page sixteen, just next to the advertisement for a big linen sale. Every magazine, TV channel, radio station, and website is spin. Every book is spin. This book has spin—one you may or may not be aware of, one I may or may not be aware of. Spin simply means agenda, and it is everywhere.

  But for their vast ideological differences, the sources of indoctrination catalogued above all share a desire to shape your reality. What they want, for better or worse, is influence: influence over what you value, think, feel, say, or do. For our parents, the agenda may be our happiness and well-being; for our boss, our team spirit and productivity; for casino operators, our money; for politicians, our vote; for TV producers, our viewing loyalty; for clergy, our religious beliefs and practices, and weekly attendance.

  All too often, unfortunately, the “property rights” to our minds can be purchased outright for money. Many of us are only too willing to sell big chunks of our reality for the right price. Our values, beliefs, thoughts, and actions go to the highest bidder. Maybe we choose friends because of their station in life, or we’ll work for a company whose values we disagree with but whose compensation allows us to make that trade-off, or we take a position we abhor because we’ve received financial support from backers of that position, or we marry for money.

  What happens, though, when interested parties are unable to purchase our gray matter directly? In that case, they’re forced to seek alternative strategies for ownership.

  The word that best embraces the full range of these strategies is “indoctrination.”

  Indoctrination, according to the dictionary, is any instructional process whereby a targeted change in thinking, values, beliefs, or identity is attained. Successful indoctrination actually changes one’s neurological structure. Broadly speaking, brain mapping shows that neural architecture is shaped by each stimulus experience. Many neuronal pathways appear “well paved” because electrical impulses travel them regularly and often—in response, say, to the faces of our family, tasks we do at work, habits we follow or hobbies we love. With each repetition of these familiar experiences (often habitual, often subconscious), the pathway further increases its load capacity. So long as these roads continue to be well traveled, they will continue largely to define who we are—until new pathways form for energy to travel more easily, which would bring with it a change in our feelings and actions, a change in our reality, and ultimately a change in the story we tell.

  The indoctrination process can be completely conscious or unconscious, self-directed or other-directed. If we remain unaware, indoctrination can proceed against us unabated.

  While some indoctrinations, according to psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Susan Andersen, use “‘exotic’ technologies such as hypnosis, drugs, and intrusive assaults directly on the brain, most forms of mind control…are more mundane.” Generally, the persuader wants to keep the physical setting and social situation as normal as possible, so as to move you quite gradually toward a moment of cognitive confusion, at which point some response from you is required. Very often the persuader relies on emotional appeal, where feeling and sentiment trump reasoned consideration; this is the modus operandi of most religious evangelists. Some indoctrinators attempt to arouse guilt and fear. In most cases, the persuader tries to disguise his intent by first ingratiating himself, thereby increasing the chance that his audience, later on, will consider his point seriously, whereas at first they might not have done so. In this way, a cult is comparable to a card shark who allows a newcomer to win a few games at first in order to take their whole stash in the long run. It has been pointed out that the opening salvo in Mark Antony’s famous oration to his fellow Romans in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”—brilliantly disarms those in the audience who had pegged Antony as a lockstep defender of the flawed Caesar; only then, having edged the crowd toward him—by identifying with them—does Antony slowly and surely work toward his real argument, which is precisely as Caesar’s loyal defender; only then can he whip them into a mob that feels as he does: that Brutus and the other conspirators who murdered Caesar deserve to die.

  Of course, some organizations do use unabashedly “devious psychological techniques,” in Zimbardo and Andersen’s words. For example, the Scientologist policy regarding “suppressed persons”—those who are de facto excommunicated from the group for, say, quitting the church without undergoing an extensive security check (such as an extremely invasive exit interview)—prevents former members from telling any story about the organization except the one the church tells. Some brainwashing brilliantly exploits basic human physical and psychic needs—for example, subjects may be forced not to move or use the bathroom for extended periods, or they’re deprived of liquids or nourishment; with the accompanying drop in blood sugar level (to give one consequence), the subject becomes less able, and eventually disinclined, to act, speak, and even think authentically. Subjects accused of false acts over and over and over again eventually break down and confess. “Disordered brain function is indeed easily produced in any man,” wrote Denise Winn in The Manipulated Mind. “No amount of ‘will power’ can prevent its occurrence.” In short, no matter how much we believe in ourselves, our independence, our intestinal fortitude, it turns out that our beliefs and actions are, in fact, deeply influenced by circumstance; to an extent, they are for sale. How else to explain the phenomenon of Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages often come to identify with their hostage takers, no matter how illogical and potentially self-negating such identification may be?

  But here’s the startling and unseemly truth about really good brainwashers: Most of the time, they’re not lying to you but, rather, telling you only truths they think will be acceptable to you. The persuader says or does something meant to influence your beliefs…yet the actual controlling of the mind is done by you, the subject. Thus the term “mind control” can be misleading: It suggests that a person’s mind can be roboticall
y manipulated by some outside agency, or that thoughts can be somehow hypnotically implanted in a person’s mind. But that’s not really how it happens. In cult mind control, it is the belief system itself that is the primary active agent; effectively, a cult uses a person’s own energy and aspirations against him. In the 1960s, after social psychologist Stanley Milgram did his legendary experiments in which volunteers were asked to administer near-lethal electric shocks to subjects—and did so (or thought they were doing so) at an alarmingly high rate—it was concluded that this didn’t so much prove that man desires to inflict pain on his fellow man but that we are so obedient to authority and oppressed by groupthink that we can be dangerously manipulated. Broken down further, the experiment may be said to show that, out of mere politeness, out of a mere wish to keep one’s promise and merely to avoid embarrassment at backing out and discomfort at standing alone, few volunteers were willing to take reasonable, independent, perfectly available action to stop the experiment and do the right thing.

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the culture of Tyco, of WorldCom, of Enron.

  In the end, brainwashers and cults very often simply allow us, admittedly under their guidance, to bring about change on our own, usually through small, continuous modifications. They use our deeply ingrained belief in etiquette, protocol, and social convention against us. They use deception—unquestionably—but deception that would be ineffectual if human nature were not as it is. But is that a satisfactory explanation for our actions or inaction? For example, while it was beyond reprehensible that federal officials failed to warn the American public about the risks of radioactive fallout during the atomic-bomb tests in Nevada in the 1950s, evidence did exist—such as “frost” on surfaces that were not cold to the touch; heightened incidence of cancer and cancer deaths in area residents—that something very wrong was happening. Yet most residents, burying alarm and embracing ignorance, remained in the region for a very long time, with further widespread tragic results.

  Ignorance can be bliss, for a while. But a life that deeply engages and fulfills us demands that we remain vigilant and conscious about the powerful, unseen forces working to influence and even steal away our sense of who we are, our values, our beliefs, our vision of the future. In simple words, what we’re fighting against is the most tragic form of identity theft.

  LESSONS IN STORYTELLING 101: COMMUNIST CHINA

  To understand the process by which an actual indoctrination takes place, let’s look at a sinister application that affected tens of millions of people. The closer we examine how this particular indoctrination occurred, the better equipped we’ll be, I think, either to accelerate the process on our behalf (when it’s good for us) or rally our forces against it (when it’s bad for us).

  In his 1951 book, Brain-Washing in Red China, Edward Hunter describes in great detail how the Communist Party of China set out to reform the hearts and minds of an entire nation. In September 1949, China’s ruling party implemented a powerful indoctrination program to restructure the thinking of every man, woman, and child. Under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung, the program was designed to alter the reality of the Chinese people in three ways, by getting them to (1) fully embrace Soviet-style Communism; (2) abandon religious beliefs, particularly Christianity; (3) develop an intense hatred and distrust for anything American.

  Was the program successful?

  The good news is that no foolproof way of brainwashing, according to those involved in the CIA’s mind-control unit, has ever been found. The bad news is that a vast number of people, easily the majority, are brainwashable. And the method the Chinese government chose to transform the core beliefs and values of its then half-billion people?

  Storytelling.

  The Chinese indoctrination process focused fundamentally on two things: (1) controlling what people said to others—that is, their public stories; and (2) controlling what people said to themselves—that is, their private stories. Of the two, controlling the private story was considered by far the more important. Typically, the control process began with “Idea Training.” It was here that beliefs about Communism, religion, and America were systematically laid out, in a simple story-rich lecture. After each lecture, the inductees (as I’ll call them) would be broken into small groups, where each person had to express the ideas just told to him or her. In effect, they were to retell the story they’d just heard. Inductees then had to write a report about the lecture, a report that would be graded for accuracy of content and sincerity of expression; a poor grade meant repeating the lecture until they got their story “right.”

  To me, it is this “grading for sincerity” part that was the truly ingenious ingredient: In this way, the government could gain control of the inductee’s private voice.

  Idea Training was designed to build the neural pathways that would profoundly alter the beliefs and values of every inductee, no matter the content or apparent strength of his or her old stories.

  Another strategy for controlling the inductee’s public and private voices and their emerging new stories was to require everyone to maintain a detailed daily diary. Again, the diaries were collected and reviewed for both accuracy of content and sincerity of expression. Repeated failure to meet the standards meant a return to more Idea Training, more lectures, more reports. Inductees came to dread returning for more Idea Training.

  Inductees were also required to make regular, public confessions of guilt. Standing before peers and Party officials, they would confess to thoughts and feelings that were contrary to the best interests of the Communist movement and the Chinese people. These public confessions gave indoctrinators access to the inductee’s “faulty” old story and the public and private voices they used to support them. By suffering public humiliation for allowing any remnant of his old story to surface, the inductee eventually silenced himself. Successful indoctrination required that the old, unenlightened stories about Communism, religion, and America be totally extinguished and replaced with the carefully crafted new doctrines.

  Yet another ingenious component of the indoctrination process was the policy of making every inductee the keeper of everyone else’s thoughts. Inductees were instructed to listen carefully to what others said and, if any idea or thought expressed was contrary to the Party line, the listener was to correct it immediately. If violations continued, inductees were required to notify Party officials, and the wayward member was made to return to basic indoctrination school.

  Indoctrinators also used skits and plays to accelerate the brain reform process. Inductees wrote and acted out themes like “the stupidity of religion” or “the ugly, self-centered American.” However crude and clumsy the acting and writing skills of the inductees, the skits stirred powerful emotions in the actors and audience both, which reinforced the targeted neurological changes. The repetitious singing and chanting, a frequent element in the plays and skits, accelerated the indoctrination process.

  The last but perhaps most critical step in gaining control of the inductee’s mind was the constant linking of the Communist movement, and this new methodology for thinking and acting, to a noble purpose, one that transcended mere self-interest. The Communist movement was “for the people of China,” so that all Chinese people could experience “a better life.” Sacrifice and hardship were to be endured for the welfare of future generations. Thus, they felt that what they did was for the well-being and happiness of their own children. The new story was orchestrated so that nothing could seem more noble, just, and worth fighting for than Communism.

  How successful was the indoctrination program?

  The numerous interviews that Hunter conducted for his book confirmed the power of the government’s techniques. Here’s one representative fragment from a subject who’d been exposed to the techniques for just ninety days:

  I finally decided that religion was altogether bunk. We don’t need any religion…At last I had rid myself of the poisonous thing called religion. I was convinced that religion was selfish…so at last
, after 2 or 3 months, I have given up my religion, something which I had held sacred and had cherished all my life…Christmas came, and for the first time it held no meaning for me…I always had spoken so highly of the United States…now I have developed an extraordinary hatred for America, which I now consider to be the worst country in the world…

  Obviously, the program worked in the short term. What about the long term? Well, anyone who has spent time in China, as I have, can feel that more than a half-century later the effects of this widespread indoctrination continue to permeate Chinese culture, particularly among the older generation. As expressed personally, in their culture and in their literature, the views of many Chinese on religion (particularly Christianity), Communism, and American culture still reverberate with beliefs instilled generations before.

  EVERYDAY INDOCTRINATIONS

  Many elements central to the Chinese system of indoctrination, as well as other “extreme” programs of “mind control” (such as est or pyramid schemes), also happen to be cornerstones of training and education programs that most of us hardly consider “out there,” social and cultural institutions of great value and integrity, of noble purpose. We’ve all encountered one or more of these institutions. Belief in them and their tenets can be healthy, constructive, transforming.

  And yet the parallels to the indoctrination program just discussed are striking.

  Higher Education

  Idea Training (new story preparation and public/private storytelling voice control) through lectures, small group discussions, and the requirement that each person express the idea and then write a report, which is graded for accuracy and, in some cases, sincerity

  If you don’t acquire the learning, then you must return to basic indoctrination school (if the student fails, he must return to retake the class)