Do you believe we are all brainwashed?

Only the people following Trump.

Everyone except for me.

Sure. That’s what parenting is all about, brain washing your kids! Hopefully for the good. Anyone who claims to be religious has been brainwashed.

Yes. Society, and especially religious society, brainwashes us all from an early age. Some of us figure it out, a lot of us don’t.

We’re all conditioned to think in habitual ways. Developing your ability to self-observe and detect one’s own patterns and habits of thought and feelings, and to expect and find one’s blindspots, can open up all sorts of possibilities.

To be truly brain washed you have to have the desire to please others first. Most people desire to please themselves first. For instance. The person who wants to believe that minorities are the reason they can’t find employment. It’s less painful and less embarrassing to blame someone or something that is beyond your control for your failure than to admit you may be a failure.
Same for religions. I’m not rich because God doesn’t want me to be or I didn’t get a job because our nation has offended God.

People who are totally brainwashed do so because they want to be free of all responsibility of their life. I believe for the most part, for those of us who have good self esteem and who question everything, we have no desire to follow.

Whaaaat? ^^
You are mixing up brainwashed with hypnosis.

Look at the word.
Brainwashed means to erase some or all of what you know/believe, and forcing you to adopt entirely different thoughts.
The main element of beginning the process is to strip the individual of all comforts and securities, and force them to be completely dependent on one controlling person or group for every little need.
Pain and deprivation are involved.
Brainwashing has nothing to do with being lazy and choosing to not choose.

The closest we come, as a society, to being brainwashed is advertising. Advertising frequently attempts to convince us that without their product we are at peril of some type of suffering.

Boot camp is based on the principles of brainwashing. Isolation and sleep deprivation are used to keep recruits focused in a particular way, so training is faster and more effective.

And seriously, y’all have taken to throwing the name Trump at anything you perceive as “bad”.
It really makes you look very uneducated to be so quick to throw the name out as some ironic punchline to all unpleasantness past present and future.
It is the precise sort of behavior which prevents learning and intellect.
I am rapidly losing respect for people over it.
Try to be more faceted.

I am not brainwashed. I think Donald Trump is the best damn president this country has ever had. Why else would he have such strong support among evangelicals? Trump is a stable genius. Just ask him. He never lies or acts childishly. He is not a racist or a misogynist. He loves transgender people. He is absolutely right in saying we must build a wall on the Mexican border keep out all those killers and rapists.

Yes. There is no avoiding information “washing over your brain”.

verb
past tense: brainwashed; past participle: brainwashed
make (someone) adopt radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible pressure.
“the organization could brainwash young people”

I can’t possibly know who has been brainwashed in the general population, as by definition, it is normally a ‘forcible pressure’.

Unlike others here, I don’t believe religion, society or even Trump a/k/a any political figure FORCES us to believe anything we don’t want to believe. And any of those three usually have a large percentage of the population following them, too, which also goes against the definition.

@Patty I agree with you.

@Patty_Melt well, take a new born. Blank slate. Write whatever you want on that blank slate. Brain washed.

@KNOWITALL You are concentrating too much on “often forcible” in the definition above. Think more about the “systematic” behind such efforts as the 30 year vilification of the Clintons. Or finish this sentence. “Winston tastes good like….” You and Patty should consider the profits
raked in by the advertising industry before concluding that you are immune to brainwashing. We are ALL susceptible, and you’d be a fool to allow yourself to believe otherwise.

@stanleybmanly If any religion or opinion is adopted in society by a large population, it no longer fits the definition either.

30 year vilification of the Clintons? Well deserved imo, they did it to themselves by their own actions.

Let me put it this way, if you convinced someone to hate Trump who formally did not, then that still isn’t brainwashing, as it wasn’t forcible (assuming) and it’s a popular opinion (pretty much every liberal and half the other two parties haha.)

I don’t know who or what Winston is so hard to complete that sentence.

Wait a second. “If any religion or opinion is adopted in society by a large population, it no longer fits the definition.” Is this true? Isn’t it just as likely that the group in question has been successfully brainwashed. The citizens of North Korea, followers of Jim Jones, Moonies, etc.

Well, at that point it becomes “mass hallucination.” Or “mass hysteria.”

^True story. A moony grabbed me at an airport when I was 9 years old while my mom was in line buying tickets. He was leading me away and my mom caught him and yanked me away.

Oh God.

@stanleybmanly The definition is ‘radically different beliefs’, so if society at large believes the same, it’s not really brainwashing is it?

So in your example, the followers of Jim Jones would probably be considered brainwashed, as they CHOSE to believe differently.

The citizens of North Korea are living under a dictator, so they have no choice, so I would NOT call that being brainwashed.

Do you think reality plays a role? If the people of North Korea had any idea of how much better life was just across the border, they would be up in arms. I would say that they have been brainwashed.

@Lost Again, not a choice, you have to find a way out and people die trying. Rumor is some people resort to cannibalism because of hunger. It’s very sad, but not everyone is brainwashed for sure.

Yeah, North Korea is kinda big, and varies a lot from one person to another.
Some are brainwashed, tortured into submission.
Most are just victims of habit, tradition. If they knew, there would likely be lots more dying at the border.

@KNOWITALL “From a very early age” implies that a child was brought into a belief or chain of thought without force, but rather, taught that belief or chain of thought before they could ascertain that there was any other way to believe.
For example, I was baptized into the Catholic church. I didn’t choose. I went to a catholic school because it was chosen for me by my parents. I didn’t choose. I did my first confession and first communion because that’s what everybody else in my class was doing and I didn’t know otherwise because no one told me. I was confirmed at age 14 for the same reason, still, no one telling me any different.
I can’t blame my mother or her parents because they were staunch Catholics and didn’t seem to know (or care) any different.
No one was “forced” to be brainwashed. It happened naturally as if by design, by and through constant, family and church led brainwashed victims, time after time, generation after generation.
There were no “radically different beliefs” imposed, no old thoughts or beliefs to be washed away.
There’s not much difference, in this case, between being “brainwashed” and “pre-programmed.”
But the result is the same despite the actual terminology used.

“Winston tastes good like a . .
cigarette should.”
(An old cigarette commercial for Winston cigarettes.)

“What I tell you three times is true.” Lewis Carroll

@kritiper That’s indoctrination. I do understand your point, although I feel differently about it than you. I was raised Southern Baptist, in the church family, and converted to Catholicism around 17 yrs old. I never felt forced to believe anything personally, although I was encouraged to do so.

The word ‘brainwash’ comes from Chinese, and is better translated something like ‘Thought Reform.’ ... Essentially they both refer to mind control , while indoctrination usually undergo some time and some slow , gradual procedures to take effect. Brainwashing is like a forcefully injected version of indoctrination.

the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
“I would never subject children to religious indoctrination”
archaic
teaching; instruction.
“methods that were approved for indoctrination in divinity”

You are always the same religion as your parents. Interesting, no?

It is indeed interesting, and most of us must agree that the result could only be achieved through indoctrination. The trouble is in determining where indoctrination ends and brainwashing begins. All of us are going to have different opinions on that line.

I think there is a very fine line between “indoctrination” and “brain washing.” I think we’re defining indoctrination as working from the ground up, but brain washing as changing currently held beliefs. They’re both the same thing, really. It’s just a matter of degree.

@KNOWITALL Again, you’re dealing with trivialities. To believe in something that isn’t true because someone told you that it was true (and vise-versa) is still a form of brainwashing, in most people’s opinions, regardless if there was some other thought in place to be “forcefully” replaced with some other concept, or a concept that wouldn’t have been there in the first place had the subject been left to form their own opinion on the topic. “Forcefully” or not, the thought process has been altered and/or manipulated.
(My prior use of the term “pre-programming” is incorrect because a pre-programmed infant would have those ideas in it’s head when it was born.)
“Brainwashing” may not be the most accurate term but I think it would serve the OP’s purpose adequately enough.

OK, what would you call this. I dated a guy who was born and raised in Selma, Alabama. He was black. He was 10 when the march to went down. He was a pretty bad racist himself. One time he was making fun of the Asian language, calling it gobblety gook. Then he said, “And they aren’t even real Americans.”
I said, “Who is a ‘real’ American?”
Without hesitation he said, “White people.”
So what you call that, besides just plain stupid? Somebody planted those idea in his head.

Here is another definition of the word “brainwashing” as found in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.
”...2 : persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship ”
Again, I think this serves the OP’s purpose.

It’s much closer to my definition

@Dutchess III You missed the point with your boyfriend. He was absolutely correct. And it was living in Selma Alabama that “planted that idea in his head”. Had he been caught walking down the street with you in Selma Alabama, you would soon understand the life and death reality in failing to understand what is implied by “real American”.

What do you mean he was correct? I know why he said it, I know where it all came from, but it wasn’t true.
And yes. Even in the 90’s he didn’t want to take me home to meet his mother. But I DID meet her when she came to visit. She kept dropping hints about grandkids. Sorry Mom. Not happening! I have all the kids I ever plan to have!

@kritiper Call it whatever you like, I simply don’t believe being raised in church is brainwashing.

Of course we would not be able to opt out until an older age, but I’ll never regret my foundation in church, regardless of my decisions today about any of it.

@KNOWITALL I believe it is so that’s one for you and one for me. To each his or her own! Case closed.