Our Digital Indoctrination: The Programming of Our Perceived Reality
The battle for thought control is not a new concept; it’s a story as old as humanity itself. For generations, we were taught what to believe, and those who dared to challenge the accepted truth were swiftly silenced. Today, the role of authority has shifted from religious institutions to technology giants. We’ll examine the crucial legal frameworks, such as Section 230, that have given these platforms immense power to shape our world. By diving into how these companies moderate content and curate what we see, we’ll uncover a startling reality about the state of free speech and the new arbiters of information.
From Conditioning to Convention
Everyone on this planet has been programmed. It is what allows humans to act human. We are taught right from wrong and what is safe, versus perilous. We are taught our native language, making it possible for us to communicate with others. We are also taught how to put on clothes, brush our teeth, and eat with a knife and fork. Everything tied to a civilized society is a result of our programming.
The majority of our thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and notions did not come to us naturally. These concepts were instilled in us starting at an early age. This conditioning begins with our parents and family of origin. As we grew our schools, friends, and society in general added to the rules of polite society and the depth and breadth of programming we carry. We live by a set of conventions and rules that act as lenses and filters, shaping how we see reality, whether it’s right, wrong, or somewhere in between.
Challenging the Default: A Case of Programming
To exemplify the indoctrination we received, let me ask you this. “Who discovered America?” Now, if you are like me, the first thing that comes into my mind is ‘Christopher Columbus.’ Of course, who else could it be? My programming tells me this is the obvious answer to this elementary question. It only takes a few moments for my cognitive mind to regain control and recall the visit to the northern tip of Newfoundland by Leif Erikson around 1000 CE. Oh, and then there are the Native Americans who seemed to have found the New World several thousand years before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed across the ocean blue.
Even though these more recent findings regarding the discovery of America superseded what was originally propagated by society at large, my mind and perhaps yours still automatically respond ‘Christopher Columbus.’
The Arbiters of Truth: The Price of Independent Thought
Many people live their lives without ever asking, “Is this true for me?” We see this in our religious views, our views on race, class, or color. Many times, we don’t ask ourselves this simple question because we want to fit in, be liked, or not stand out in a crowd. We chose to conform to the societal norms. This compliance reduces the potential rejection we might experience if we stepped outside the box society created.
But who are the arbiters of truth? Who are the people pulling the strings, identifying what is right or wrong, truth or fiction? In the Western world, ‘reality’ was controlled by the Catholic Church for centuries. They were the deciders of what was fact and what was heresy. Their longstanding reign over the truth crossed multiple generations, causing people to believe information that we now know was misguided.
Those who held an opposing view were often wise enough to keep their thoughts private, understanding that to speak up would mean standing before the Inquisition.
Case and point… Before the late 17th century, it was believed that the sun, moon, and stars revolved around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a theory, based upon his observation of the sky, that the Earth revolved around the sun. He was a brave man of science and dared to question the science of his day. His courage only went so far. It wasn’t until the final days of his life that he stepped forward and published his revolutionary work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which first presented the heliocentric theory to the public.
His work was described as being philosophically false and theologically heretical, or at least erroneous, by his biggest critic, the Catholic Church. Detractors claimed that he lacked conclusive proof to support his theory. The Church piled on, minimizing his findings by spouting scripture and verse. Having the planets revolve around the sun took away humanity’s unique position as being the pinnacle of God’s creation. And since the Bible is the one true word of God, anything that contradicted it was seen as dangerous and considered sacrilegious.
Years later, Galileo, adding onto Copernicus’s work on heliocentrism, was tried by the Inquisition and found ‘vehemently suspected of heresy.’ He was forced to recant his claims and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took around 150 years for the scientific community to recognize the merits of their work and well over 300 years for the Church to finally knuckle under and accept it as fact.
The New Inquisition: Social Media and Thought Control
Things have changed, and the Church no longer controls our worldview. Traditional media outlets, such as newspapers, television news, and magazines, also do not have the same clout on framing the narrative as they once did. The new promoters of our approved cognitive reality, according to Google Gemini, are “social media and the internet, particularly the algorithms that control what we see.”
We thought we lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where free speech was our right and our ability to share our thoughts and ideas was protected. But what if that is not the case? What if, the only opinions presented to us in this new electronic landscape are those that are preapproved by some unknown source or entity? What happens if what we talk about or write about or share online contradicts the storyline they fought so hard to create? Sadly, that material is suppressed.
I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself, “This can’t possibly be true!” But it is! I would like to say our world has changed. Yet the reality is, it is just more of the same. Someone, somewhere, working behind the scenes, is looking to control the accepted and collective viewpoint of reality in an attempt to brainwash all of us into thinking what they want us to think and feel what they want us to feel. Step outside of the prevailing consensus, and the modern-day Inquisition for you!
“In Seeking Truth, You Have To Get Both Sides Of A Story” – Walter Cronkite
Legacy media is the place millions of Americans went to keep up to date and informed. It includes mediums such as print media, film studios, music studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television.
During the Cold War, as a way for the U.S. government to disseminate propaganda produced under the guidance of the State Department, the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (the Smith-Mundt Act) was ratified. This allowed the government to produce carefully crafted material and distribute it to foreign countries as a way to sway public opinion. The Act explicitly prohibited the broadcasting or distribution of this one-sided material to American audiences.
In 2013, during the Obama presidency, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban. This law opened the door for the government to directly and covertly influence domestic audiences, thereby increasing the federal government’s power to shape public sentiment. Legacy media, once the cornerstone of our perceived truth, has increasingly become a conduit for government-issued propaganda.
Publisher or Platform? The Legal Conundrum of the Early Internet
Things shifted with the introduction of the World Wide Web. The early days of the internet were a bit like the Wild Wild West. Before social media platforms existed, online forums and bulletin boards were the main way users shared content. A question came before the court. Should the companies that host these forums be held liable for defamatory or illegal content posted on their digital platform?
The first major published case on internet liability was Cubby v. CompuServe (1991). The court held that CompuServe, an online service provider, was not responsible for defamatory content posted on its site because it acted like a distributor of information in the same way a bookstore sells books, but doesn’t edit them.
In the second case to reach the court, Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. (1995), the court ruled that Prodigy was legally responsible for offensive content on its platform. Prodigy had a content moderation policy where they would review and remove derogatory posts. In this instance, the court viewed Prodigy as a publisher because it edited content.
This left the online world in a conundrum. Choose to leave all of the content up as is and be safe from liability, or try to be a do-gooder and remove harmful or offensive content and expose the company to legal liability.
Enter Section 230. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was enacted in 1996 as a part of the Telecommunications Act. Its creation was in direct response to the legal dilemmas that threatened to stifle the growth of the early internet.
Section 230 was designed to provide wide-ranging immunity to content providers. It acts as a shield for search engines and social media companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, X, and TikTok, as well as sites that allow user-generated content like Reddit. This legislation encouraged digital platforms to engage in “good Samaritan” moderation. It gave them legal standing to remove content they considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable” without losing their immunity. The thought was it would make the internet a safer space, especially for children, the children…
In essence, Section 230 grants online platforms the right to edit content and still be considered a distributor, not a publisher. But what happens when these service providers promote certain views over others? Are they still a neutral conduit of information, or are they acting like the thought police?
Heresy in the Digital Age: The New Guardians of Truth
There was an escalation in content moderation with the outbreak of COVID-19. How could we forget the many people whose accounts were taken down from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? Many people I know spent time in Facebook jail for saying the wrong thing or posting a funny, abet cantankerous image. It was contended by these platforms that they were helping us by cracking down on the dissemination of misinformation and potent disinformation. They didn’t want anyone to offer an opinion that might ‘mislead the public’ and cause harm.
In addition to what was going on in the world of social media, websites that had content that went against the widely accepted storyline were devalued. It affected the thousands of alternative health providers and extended to anyone who made claims that could not be backed up by ‘rigorous scientific evidence’ or ‘peer-reviewed studies’.
In my article, Google’s Health Crackdown: How Big Tech Silences Alternative Medicine and Limits Your Wellness Choices I detail how Google updated their secret policy guidelines, ensuring that anyone with a dissenting voice were squirrel away in Google website rankings, never to be seen again, that is unless you were patient enough to scroll down to page 17.
I asked Google Gemini what kind of non-mainstream narratives would get your website devalued by Google. This is the list it returned. I’m sure if questioned further, the list of offensive rhetoric would grow.
- Anti-Vaccination Websites: Sites that spread false claims about vaccine safety, efficacy, or ingredients have seen significant drops in their search rankings.
- Alternative Health and Pseudoscience: Websites that promote unproven “cures” (herbs, supplements, diet, and exercise) for serious diseases or provide dangerous medical advice have been heavily devalued.
- Election and Voting Misinformation: Websites that make false claims about election integrity, voting procedures, or the results of a democratic election have been targeted.
- Mass Casualty “False Flag” Narratives: Conspiracy theories that claim mass shootings or other tragic events were “staged” or “false flag” operations have been devalued.
- Ancient Aliens and Pseudoarchaeology: Narratives that claim ancient civilizations were guided by extraterrestrials or that major historical sites were built by ancient humans dropped in placement.
- Climate Change Denial: Claims that climate change is a hoax or that human activity does not contribute to it have been heavily demoted.
- Genetic Modification Denial: Narratives that make scientifically unfounded claims about the inherent dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or link them to specific diseases without peer-reviewed evidence lost ranking.
And while the Earth can now go around the Sun, if you claim the Earth is flat, your site will be downgraded by Google as well. Thankfully, social media platforms like Facebook and X have lessened their stranglehold over what they consider consensual reality and have increasingly allowed alternative voices to be heard.
This doesn’t change the fact that if you are looking for information that might be considered controversial, the results from online searches have become increasingly limited and one-sided. Even inquiries using AI, while they offer a less censored perspective, always caveat to pushing the dominant narrative while downplaying opposing thought. This leads me to believe if Galileo or Copernicus were to share their scientific theories today, they would be dismissed, discounted, and devalued as well. Not by the Church, but by online providers.
The Nature of Programming: The Dangers of a Single Voice
This brings us back to the concept of programming, brainwashing, and the mainstream narrative. When someone tells us something is a fact, and we are hearing the same bit of information being shouted from every rooftop in the land and is being regurgitated everywhere we turn, our mind will often accept the claim as being true. If access to alternative information is denied, then there is only one voice and one view – theirs.
Our brains are wired with something called cognitive biases, which make us susceptible to certain types of information. We create our own subjective reality from the input we receive. Search engines and modern social media algorithms are built to feed us content that reinforces what we might already think, or what they want us to think. Our cognitive bias makes it difficult for us to accept any new or contradictory information we may encounter once the programming is complete.
The use of expert opinions or plain folks attesting to a subject’s veracity builds credibility in the information being offered, even if what they are promoting is a falsehood. The belief that “everybody is doing it” or “everybody believes this” taps into our ingrained desire to fit in and drives us toward conformity. This bandwagon effect encourages our acceptance of a certain belief without evaluating it first.
It’s not a matter of whether the media or digital sources can manipulate us, but rather how deeply and pervasively that influence goes. This is the nature of programming.
The High Price of ‘False Information’: The UK’s New Law
The control of what is deemed acceptable versus unacceptable thought took a giant step forward in the nexus of censorship and mind control. The United Kingdom ratified the Online Safety Act (OSA) in 2023. This Act puts the burden of responsibility for the dissemination of illegal or harmful content squarely on the shoulders of online platforms. They are now required to take down Illegal material and allow users to filter out anything that might be viewed as being harmful. If the online host fails in this duty, they can be fined up to 24 million dollars (£18 million) or 10% of their worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.
This bill also created a new offense, the “false communications offence”. The platform, as well as the user, could be held liable if a user posts information that is known to be false and there is an intent to cause physical or psychological harm. In the UK, it is now a criminal offence to deliberately spread ‘false information’ online. A person found guilty of a communications offense could face a fine or up to two years in prison. Imagine serving time for posting a silly meme that says, “The Earth is flat?”
When Your Online History Becomes Your Reality
Now consider a future where your digital footprint, information about you compiled from content you’ve liked or shared, shapes your real-world opportunities. Every word, every transaction, and every click you make adds to your footprint. What if this online history determined whether you could qualify for a mortgage, secure a job, or even pass a security screening for travel? Well, this is already happening in China.
China has established a social credit system that merges data from both government and business sources. The resulting score acts as a public record of a citizen’s behavior and can be used to either grant or restrict access to a variety of services and opportunities. Individuals are rewarded if their behavior conforms to the government mandates or are punished, and their rights and freedoms are taken away from them if they don’t.
There are several ‘conspiracy theorists’ who suggest a similar system may be coming to the United States. Social media platforms already analyze their users’ behaviors. Imagine pairing this data with financial oversight and the incorporation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) where cash is no longer king.
Companies could monitor your online activities and, as a result, cancel your credit cards, block online transactions, or restrict your ability to purchase certain products – all because of an old tweet. This scenario isn’t as implausible as it sounds.
From automated regulatory reports to algorithm-driven profiling, the world we’re stepping into raises unsettling questions: Are we freely expressing ourselves, or are we unwittingly building the foundations of a social credit system? And if AI is the arbiter of this new reality, who holds it accountable?—
The Rise of America’s Social Credit System | Your Tweets Could Cost You
What does this do to free speech? Could sharing what you think, feel, or believe cause you to become a target in this new system?
The New ‘Conspiracy Theorist’: The Great Awakening
Since the 2016 election cycle and the utterance of the term ‘fake news’, people are beginning to suspect a man is standing behind the curtain controlling the show. He is actively working on building his version of reality by creating the material we innocently digest. The crackdown on free speech has exposed legacy media, social media, and the draconian changes made to search engines like Google for what they are – the new Inquisition.
This has caused ordinary people, who once accepted the status quo, to suddenly question what is true and what is a falsehood designed to control them. Their reward for this independent thought is to be dismissed and branded a conspiracy theorist. While they may not see the face of the man behind the curtain, they now believe with certainty that forces are at work to manipulate our perceived reality.
Are they right? Are the changes in online platforms being made for some diabolical purpose? Some would say it is certainly so.
The Illusion of Freedom: How Our Quest for Connection Led to Control
The irony is not lost on us. Many of us willingly step into a reality of our making, often without questioning if a different truth exists. We are being shaped by a new set of gatekeepers who wield tools far more powerful than the Church ever had. Likewise, we unknowingly feed the very platforms that filter our worldview, restrict our choices, and punish us for independent thought, the means to ultimately curtail our freedom of choice and freedom of expression.
In our quest for a world devoid of the dogmas of the past, we have enthusiastically built a new one defined by code and algorithms. The old arbiters of truth, who once spoke from pulpits and printed pages, have been replaced by faceless, ever-evolving digital platforms. They don’t burn heretics at the stake; they simply demote their truth to page 17 of a search result. It’s a new, subtle form of control that preys on our need for connection, while quietly directing our thoughts, all under the guise and illusion of freedom.
About The Author
Dr. Rita Louise is the founder of the Institute of Applied Energetics and the former host of Just Energy Radio. She is a Naturopathic Physician and a 30-year veteran in the Human Potential Field. She is the author of the seven books as well as hundreds of articles that have been published worldwide. She is the producer of a number of full length and feature videos. Dr. Rita has appeared on film, radio, television and has spoken at conferences around the world. Dr. Rita created her first webpage in 1996. Over the years she has created and actively maintained multiple sites covering a variety of topics. For more information about Dr. Rita and her work, please visit her site https://soulhealer.com