The mind is a powerful tool, yet it remains so easy to trick, confuse and manipulate. This fact doesn’t seem of much concern to most of us. I put it to you that it should be. We just laugh off the way excellent showmen like Derren Brown take control of us and distort our reality, and we don’t even notice how the advertisers or religious do it. We are not in control. They are. They are inside our minds.
The mind is so easy to trick. Even in pictures they can cause confusion. Take this one above. Can you see four people? Why? How? Or, what about this one below? Do you see all five?
After staring at the pictures for a while instead of being concerned about our perception being messed around with we simply nod, smile and murmur “Oh, yeah!” with a feeling of fascination when we see what is sometimes not there. Add to the pot our inability to work out when one thing stops and another begins and you realise just how impossible our actual reality is to fathom.
I mean, let me ask you to count the number of people here:
Or how many sailing ships are there in this otherwise charming picture?
See what I mean? People who know how to confuse and manipulate your mind have created these illusions, and yet you are still considering it just a fun game. Are you not in the slightest bit worried that you can’t tell how many houses and how many people inhabit this picture?
I can only guess that it is because you accept that life is confusing and so you don’t actually challenge it. Isn’t that a dangerous approach to life? Maybe this is something you are taught alongside the religious indoctrination and lies about Father Christmas by your parents since you were a baby.
Speaking of a baby, just where is it?
England's England 