Psychology

"The totalist administrators 'look upon milieu control as a just and necessary policy, one which need not be kept secret.' The assumption of 'omniscience' and 'ultimate truth' leads these administrators to consider it 'their duty to create an environment containing no more and no less than this 'truth."

"Horatio: [About reporting Eric's lost badge to IAB.] Ok, but you've done nothing wrong. Eric: Then how come I feel like I'm going to slit my own throat? Eric [to IAB Rick Stetler] That's a bunch of psychobabble...crap."

"Although milieu control is more obvious in the situation of a prisoner whose environment is forced on him, spiritual purgation often begins with a similar structuring of a person's physical environment."

"This kind of 'milieu control' can be brought about through coercion, Lifton believed, but at its most successful it convinces the subject that he or she is acting spontaneously rather than being directed by values that are alien to the self."

"'Milieu Control' involves the control of daily schedule including food intake, sleep, information and time and space for critical reflection."

"Joey: You know, maybe-- and this is just a shot in the dark-- she didn't mean to send it to the gossips at large. Maybe she's just trying to get some private closure, never dreamed she'd be subjected to the Oprah psychobabble of her life-lacking peers. Now, do you guys want something to eat, or should I just bring over a nice tray of bon-bons so you guys can hunker down and watch your stories?"

"In applying Erikson's totalism concept to the Thought Reform experiences of his subjects, Lifton famously identified eight 'themes' of the totalistic milieu: Milieu Control, i.e., monopoly of the spatial and informational environment."

"This may be called milieu control. The Chinese Communist prison is probably the most thoroughly controlled and manipulated group environment that has ever existed."

"The politically and emotionally loaded language Russian media has used to describe the new authorities in Kyiv, dubbing them 'fascists' and 'anti-Semites,' is also reminiscent of Serbia's characterization of its opponents. Croats were characterized as 'ustashi' and Bosniaks, or Bosnian muslims, as 'mujahedin.' This is how wars begin. This is how societies are mobilized to hate. Ordinary citizens are subjected to fear and propaganda eventually eroding the trust in other ethnic groups, other nationalities."

"The loaded language proceeds according to the Orwellian recipe of the identity of opposites: in the mouth of the enemy, peace means war, and defense is attack, while on the righteous side, escalation is restraint, and saturation bombing prepares for peace. Organized in this discriminatory fashion, language designates a priori the enemy as evil in his entirety and in all his actions and intentions."

"It is so easy for human thinking to become distorted that it makes sense to examine how we can keep our own thinking straight and thus avoid calamity. Importantly, we need to be on guard against the trickery of men. Make no mistake, you will encounter deceitful people who pretend to present the truth but actually distort it. To attain their objectives such people may resort to a selective use of evidence, emotionally loaded language, misleading half-truths, devious innuendo, and even outright lies.|"

"It tends to be a feature of warlike situations that opponents' actions are viewed in the blackest possible light, with morally-loaded language reflecting that interpretation, while one's own, or one's allies' actions are treated in the most favourable light."

"Loaded language provides many possibilities for obstacles to clear thinking."

"What political analysts commonly call newspeak is in fact a “formative” language that provides its audience with meaningless phrases so that people will not think about what they are hearing but simply accept what they are hearing, according to Moscow anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova."

"Loaded language about hate risks alienating the very audience that needs to be engaged with."

"To appeal to reason, you use facts, statistics, expert opinions, and examples that support your position. To appeal to emotion, you use emotionally-loaded language — language that elicits a strong positive or negative response."

"Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

"And, while it is unlikely anyone is really taken in by such doublespeak --- public opinion is not as easily manipulated as George Orwell's would suggest –- research carried out by people like Elizabeth Loftus shows that loaded language does work to influence memory and perception."

"We live in a politically polarized environment. In an ideological war one side or another will try to use language as a weapon. If you’re writing a report, one of the things reporters are taught to avoid is loaded language."

"Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously."

"Politically loaded language is inappropriate for news headlines regardless of substantive content."

"Very rare is the person who will resolve psychological dissonance by saying, "Actually, I am a monster.""

"Somewhere between the primordial soup and the dirty cell phone pic, our minds invented a sneaky way to course-correct for our mistakes and disappointments. Leon Festinger called it cognitive dissonance. Worst part is it works, if only for a while."

"Loaded words appeal to emotion rather than to reason. A copywriter using loaded language might describe a company as carrying on the tradition of free enterprise while claiming that a competitor is price gouging. A politician might call himself a progressive while calling an opponent a do-gooder."

"The thing that enabled the evolution of our high intelligence and its ability to understand and act on problems is the same thing that causes our problems and prevents us from acting on them…"

"Much of the research literature has reintroduced classic cognitive dissonance theory to provide theoretical justification for a sequence of behavior change–belief change. The focus has been upon maintenance of conversion within groups when prophecy appears to fail."

"Despite the best efforts of Stallman and other hackers to remind people that the word "free" in free software stood for freedom and not price, the message still wasn't getting through. Most business executives, upon hearing the term for the first time, interpreted the word as synonymous with "zero cost," tuning out any follow up messages in short order. Until hackers found a way to get past this cognitive dissonance, the free software movement faced an uphill climb, even after Netscape."

"As a low-level experience of cognitive dissonance, how does one maintain faith in an organization when some of the most basic claims are contradicted by evidence and ordinary experience?"

"Most people are not liars. They can't tolerate too much cognitive dissonance. I don't want to deny that there are outright liars, just brazen propagandists. You can find them in journalism and in the academic professions as well. But I don't think that's the norm. The norm is obedience, adoption of uncritical attitudes, taking the easy path of self-deception."

"He accepts scientific findings, on the same grounds we do, unless those findings challenge or refute his existing beliefs – at which point he labels them faith-based, and rejects them. Yet while claiming he won’t believe things on faith, the entire justification for his closed-minded certainty about the existence of god is predicated on faith…faith that his perception of the experience he attributes to a god are actually reliable. This is not only hypocritical, it’s a particularly nefarious bit of self-deception that results in some of the most painful examples of cognitive dissonance that I’ve ever seen. In any other area, Ray seems to grasp that independent confirmation is a grand tool for increasing the accuracy of our perceptions of reality, but on the subject of the biggest questions – his own experience not only needs no independent verification, it trumps all information to the contrary."

"Human behavior is consciously and unconsciously shaped by mental models of culture that, while mutable, impose barriers to change."

"In the state of ultimate commitment, a true believer feels better for having raised and or given money to the cause. It also aids in overcoming cognitive dissonance (the cause "must be" worthwhile to have attracted these funds). All kinds of rationales are given and accepted for the displayed wealth of the leaders, but it is fascinating to see the blind acceptance being replaced by questioning and scorn as the hypocrisies and double standards begin to make themselves felt."

"Resolving cognitive dissonance often takes considerable mental gymnastics."

"What is shown is that typical ethical argumentation in everyday discourse is saturated with emotionally loaded language, and is highly persuasive in nature. Some insights derived from the emotivist view can be extremely useful in explaining how ethical argumentation works. Ethical arguments arise out of conflicts of values in which there is a pro-attitude viewpoint on both sides. Both sides use emotionally loaded language of a kind that supports one's viewpoint and that expresses opposition to the viewpoint of the other side."

"If a given activity fails and it causes the death of a follower, it is because the rest of the group had insufficient faith or that it was done too late. Should the extraterrestrial beings not descend at the appointed time, then it may also be explained as due to their being frightened by the non-believers. Thus all plots and prophecies become possible — the capacity to reduce cognitive dissonance is the cement of the cult when it confronts reality, and this is why the layman is helpless before the nonsense that is spread by these speeches."

"By turning over all their possessions, members were making an irreversible commitment to the cult. Once such a commitment is made, people are unlikely to abandon positive attitudes toward the group (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1982). After expending so much effort, questioning commitment would create cognitive dissonance (Osherow, 1988). It is inconsistent to prove devotion to a belief by donating all of your possessions and then to abandon those beliefs. In other words, to a large extent, cult members persuade themselves."

"The Court finds, based upon the evidence introduced at trial, that Marlboro Lights and Cambridge Lights were introduced into the market by Philip Morris with the intent to provide smokers who were concerned about their health with a product that could reduce the cognitive dissonance associated with smoking and thereby allow them to continue to smoke cigarettes."

"He didn't want to hear any new-age psychobabble, like 'find your inner peace."

"For the various psychological and self-help theories that abound among educated upper-middle class circles is called psychobabble."

"Just as bad, to declare everyone an addict may be even more psychobabble about people's compulsive, self-indulgent habits in need of the one true cure from the latest self-help regimen."

"A second way in which milieu control is affects group members is linked to groups' conscious efforts in that regard. That is, the groups maintain milieu control especially by way of labeling recalcitrant members as 'subjective' or 'objective agent.' The former term is used for those who are thought to have harmed the organization by their mistakes or failures in groups' operations."

"Such accounts are consistent with what Lifton described as 'milieu control', a key aspect of ideological totalism. As Lifton postulated it, this is primarily the use of techniques to dominate the person's contact with the outside world but also their communication with themselves."

"The first is that of total milieu control — control of all information exchange and imagery in an environment that seeks to extend itself to internal controls of every kind."

"One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability."

"And a certain teacher of the law got up and put him to the test, saying, Master, what have I to do so that I may have eternal life? And he said to him, What does the law say, in your reading of it? And he, answering, said, Have love for the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and for your neighbour as for yourself. And he said, You have given the right answer: do this and you will have life. But he, desiring to put himself in the right, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus, answering him, said, A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he got into the hands of thieves, who took his clothing and gave him cruel blows, and when they went away, he was half dead. And by chance a certain priest was going down that way: and when he saw him, he went by on the other side. And in the same way, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, went by on the other side. But a certain man of Samaria, journeying that way, came where he was, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity for him, And came to him and put clean linen round his wounds, with oil and wine; and he put him on his beast and took him to a house and took care of him. And the day after he took two pennies and gave them to the owner of the house and said, Take care of him; and if this money is not enough, when I come again I will give you whatever more is needed. Which of these three men, in your opinion, was neighbour to the man who came into the hands of thieves? And he said, The one who had mercy on him. And Jesus said, Go and do the same."

"Be yourself one hundred and one thousand percent. Everybody man, from the sides to the back to the middle to the sides, you might not even know people, but if you rock with Lil B music and respect me from the core, you should know that based means you have someone you can trust, because we all have a common courtesy. It’s about having empathy now. What I mean is really caring and paying attention to somebody else’s feeling. You gotta have empathy and know we all on this common vibe. It’s all peace. It’s saying, hey, you know what, you can hit me and I’m not hitting you back. And that takes a very big person to do that."

"When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival."

"Empathy inflation can also lead to the lesser, but still substantial, evils of incompetence, trivialization, dishonesty, and narcissism. You cannot live, for example, without killing bacteria. Wouldn't you be projecting your own fantasies on single-cell organisms that would be indifferent to them at best? Doesn't it really become about you instead of the cause at that point?”"

"What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people."

"An imaginary circle of empathy is drawn by each person. It circumscribes the person at some distance, and corresponds to those things in the world that deserve empathy. I like the term "empathy" because it has spiritual overtones. A term like "sympathy" or "allegiance" might be more precise, but I want the chosen term to be slightly mystical, to suggest that we might not be able to fully understand what goes on between us and others, that we should leave open the possibility that the relationship can't be represented in a digital database."