We think of mind control as an external thing. People try to control us. Propaganda. Advertising.
Really, mind control is an inside thing. We control our own minds. And we reap the rewards.
Or we don’t control our own minds, and reap those rewards.
What is the difference between the person who thinks that someone outside will make him happy and the one who decides that it’s up to him to make his own life? It’s the difference between a ship with no crew, drifting with wind and tide, and a ship with a captain carefully guiding vessel and crew toward a faraway harbor. Waves, wind, and currents affect them both, but one will arrive safe in port, while the other will eventually founder on a rocky shore.
If you want the government to make conditions so you will be happy, you are a lost soul. Because sooner or later a government action (that you think is a pre-requisite for your happiness) requires a person inside government who controls his own mind and steers his own course.
Without that first actor, government is just an infinite regress of people all waiting for a prior condition external to them before taking action. Causation must start with a self-directed person.
And if you are relying on government to make your life good you had better hope that the self-directed person is a Cincinnatus and not a Nero. A Churchill, not a Stalin. Let’s leave it at that — long-ago examples where your prejudices about current politicians won’t blind you.
It’s not just government. The same holds true for your school, or your job, or your church, or your family, or your friends.
So what are you going to do? Wait for someone else, who is a stranger to you, who doesn’t know you and does not care about you to do something to make you happy? Or take responsibility for yourself?
Everything is finally good now that Trump is President? Or everything is good because Biden replaced Trump and now things will be good and you will be happy?
This kind of thinking marks you as a piece of broken styrofoam floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Take control of your own thoughts. It’s the only thing under your control anyways. And then watch what happens to your life.
Of course there are people who want to exercise mind control over you. Political propaganda. Economic propaganda we call advertising. Subtle behavioral cues to drive us this way and that.
Be aware, call it out, and reject them.
But it’s not enough to reject overt attempts at control. It is necessary to fill the mind with truth, virtue, principles. If you fill your mind with truth, you make a mental umbrella so that the shower of lies cannot affect you.
Here is what my day looks like today.
Read. This morning it was Meditations, book 2.
Write. I did that just now.
And then go to work, keeping my actions in line with truth and honor. Knowing that all of the externals seeking to push me this way and that will decay and fade away. All of them.
Run at lunchtime. Because a long run is magic.
Then in the evening celebrate another good day with my family. Because today is, indeed, a day of celebration.