Society Brainwashes Us to Conform

Thought control in 2025

Mention ‘brainwashing’ and we think of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, or the regime that enslaves North Korea. But in our own ‘free’ societies, I wonder how independent are our thoughts and actions.

We are at a crossroads with AI, I wrote in HRZone, and will take one of two broad paths: the first will aggravate societal ills; the second, much harder to follow, may allow people to flourish.

This crossroads poses for society an array of complex decisions; it also leaves us with choices to make as individuals. A doubt formed as I wrote this article: how free are we to think or act against the norms of our environments?

Clearly, we are not victims of the coercion, physical or mental, that totalitarian regimes, such as Stalinist Russia or modern-day China, inflict upon their people. But neither are we free to choose.

Forces of persuasion

Imagine, deep down, you believe AI is so bad that you’d like to pull the plug. Environmental forces conspire to make this position very hard to maintain. Here are a few illustrations (the principles apply to any issue, not just technology).

First, our economic system endorses AI. How often have you heard that people who reject AI will be ‘left behind’? Or that ‘AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will’? To eschew AI is to feel less valuable.

Second, mainstream media and almost every online rag takes AI as a foregone conclusion (sometimes, albeit rarely, with caveats). You, inevitably, are too weak to change the direction everyone is headed; it’s easier to follow the herd.

Third, all your friends chat on WhatsApp so if you are serious about saying no to, for example, Meta’s AI, some in your social circle may dismiss you as a Luddite. Employers also expect you to conform. How will you fit in, or belong?

Fourth, AI is here and you use it every day: Siri, Alexa, online shopping, your car, public transport, food supply chains, consumer banking. You may not be a hypocrite, but your own experience mocks your very stance.

Hard to be an outcast

Erich Fromm in The Sane Society shows how thoughtful individuals become outcasts, thrown out as mad, in a world whose values are at odds with human flourishing. Of course, no one wants to feel cast out.

Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz in The Captive Mind revealed the atrocities of brainwashing in Stalin’s Poland. But he was also railed against ‘unfortunate American puppets’ whose lives were governed by a ‘depressing inner stupor’.

The internet promotes and responds to network effects, where popular ideas, rather than good ones, thrive. The phone is a drug. Our current lives, surely, amplify our inner stupor? How long before we submit to the environment?