Self-Deception and Mind Control

'I'll wrap my wire around your heart and your mind.' - from the song 'Stand Inside Your Love' written by Billy Corgan

'Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds.' - from the book "The teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui way of knowledge" by Carlos Castaneda

Rights of individuals cannot be violated merely by the use of physical force. The use of insidious mind control techniques serves the purpose of an unseen destruction, and violates rights on a massive scale.
Flaws in human nature make it easier for individuals to fall victim to the attempts to limit their mental freedom.
In most societies, those who question the existing state of affairs are a small minority. The majority, on the contrary, suffer from mental sloth. They do not question the way things get going, live in an uninspiring routine, and consequentially, happen to go by the flow by submitting to prevalent views - whatever they may happen to be.
There are both conscious and unconscious attempts to limit the mental freedom of individuals - depending on the nature of norm-setting. Attempts by governments and interest groups are conscious attempts, which are dictated through a systematic process, while unconscious attempts by the society come from those who have previously been subject to mental programming.
Conscious attempts usually impose seemingly consistent philosophies - built on false premises. These emotion coated indoctrinations have nothing to do with the essence of philosophy, and have never been mentioned (and are never to be mentioned) in the history of thought. They are simply self-evident assertions with a manipulative nature, and are blended with emotional symbols. A great deal of blind nationalism and collectivism is used to affect the individuals' process of thinking, and consequently, their view of existence. This inconsistent state of mind and heart produces irrational thinking, resulting in square thoughts which resist circles. Victims start to exhibit a blind hatred against social or political enemies, who, in most cases, do not exist.
Unconscious attempts by the society impose inconsistent pseudo philosophies built on no premises at all. The question that the proponents of such public philosophies hate most is ‘why’, since, their so-called philosophies which lack premises have no answers to give. This is primarily because people who are not capable of thinking in terms of concepts (which requires a process of abstraction), have to think in terms of preset rights and wrongs. And thinking in terms of preset rights or wrongs, they are not fully aware of the premises they have unconsciously subscribed to. Therefore, when the basic premises of the status quo philosophy are challenged, they cannot discuss with others by utilizing a process of reason. They simply react. These reactions vary depending on the level of the attack. They frown upon the opponents and tell themselves (and their kids) to be skeptic of such people. Or, if the challenge is to a more sensitive issue, they exhibit a hysterical hatred and defend the self-evident public philosophy - in a manner which, most of the time, is under the influence of blind national, religious or traditional emotions.
After being subject to these attempts, the cloned individuals tend to protect the visions imposed on them, and unconsciously filter out information they don't want to receive. They can't help but subscribe to the prevalent ideas, and they perceive all the changes to the widely accepted self-evident views skeptically. A sense of guilt erupts when they contemplate widely opposed views. Not being aware of the fact that they are programmed, victims cannot escape this unseen cobweb, and find the solution in deceiving themselves. This self-deception and the psychological defense mechanism of justification become a part of their lives.
Regardless of what regime prevails in a state, the use of mind control techniques will shift it to collectivism, which perishes individuals in almost every possible way.
Collectivism strips individuals off of their identities and creates selfless, easy-to-control clones whose brains are subjected to certain restrictions and are no more capable of free thinking.
Throughout the history, only free minds made human progression possible. However, mind control techniques switch this process backwards by generating selfless clones with slave minds who are, in so many aspects, no different from one another. Mind control techniques waste incalculable potential of human ability, costing humanity a significant slow down in the advancement of arts and sciences. All for the sake of producing clones: Clones with malfunctioning brains and slave minds… Clones who are helpless and unhappy; and don’t even know why it is so… Clones who can’t help but feel a sense of guilt when they happen to step outside of the mainstream… Clones who suffer internally, and are inwardly unfulfilled… Clones who wonder why they are never satisfied at heart even when they are considered successful and happy… Clones who have self-deception and justification as their only relief… Clones who became as disgusting as those who produced them… Clones in their homelands…
Or to put it another way: Clones, as opposed to those who refuse to subscribe to the prevalent only because it is prevalent… Clones, as opposed to those who choose to go not with but against the flow. Clones, as opposed to those who refused to be what the society wanted them to be, and did care about being themselves first.
On one hand there are clones, and on the other, there is just one free man.
Years ago, a brief television story of The Twilight Zone gave a symbolic projection of how normative the majority can be about its self-evident concepts (whether the author intended it or not):
In some indeterminate world of another dimension, the shadowy, white-clad, authoritarian figures of doctors and social scientists are deeply concerned with the problem of a young girl who looks so different from everyone else that she is shunned as a freak, a disfigured outcast unable to lead a normal life. She has appealed to them for help, but all plastic surgery operations have failed - and now the doctors are grimly preparing to give her a last chance: one more attempt at plastic surgery; if it fails, she will remain a monstrosity for life. In heavily tragic tones, the doctors speak of the girl's need to be like others, to belong, to be loved, etc. We are not shown any of the characters' faces, but we hear the tense, ominous, oddly lifeless voices of their dim figures, as the last operation progresses. The operation fails. The doctors declare, with contemptuous compassion, that they will have to find a young man as deformed as this girl, who might be able to accept her. Then, for the first time, we see the girl's face: lying motionless on the pillow of a hospital bed, it is a face of perfect, radiant beauty. The camera moves to the faces of the doctors: it is an unspeakably horrifying row, not of human faces, but of mangles, distorted, disfigured pigs' heads, recognizable only by their snouts. Fade-out.1

1 Ayn Rand; The Romantic Manifesto - p.120 (Penguin Books, 1975)