In 1985 October I found a leaflet in my mailbox from an outfit called Smoke Enders. I was being invited to a meeting. No charge. For several years, nudged harder and harder by a mounting background of warnings against tobacco, I had struggled to wean myself from what I had long considered a dirty and expensive habit. Applying a system that I called outwitting myself, I promised I would quit when the cost of a 20-pack rose to a dollar. Then to two dollars. I would book seats on planes and trains in non-smoking sections (remember them?) sit in non-smoking sections on inter-urban buses. I had reduced my smoking to the hours I spent each night at my IBM Selectric 11 (an electric typewriter for those under 20). But that’s when I chain-smoked. And I desperately wanted to quit. So I was ripe when the Smoke Enders invitation arrived.
There were about 20 at the meeting. A good looking woman (aren’t they all?) did the talking. After about an hour she announced a ten-minute break for supplied coffee and donuts, saying we could smoke if we wanted. My mind was in high-gear analysis, I sat where I was and engaged her in interview style conversation. I was positive when I said, your system amounts to brainwashing. A man, still sitting several chairs to my right, responded with a derisive snort.
“No-no,” I said. “There’s good brainwashing and there’s bad brainwashing, When I was in United Church Sunday School I was taught the Ten Commandments. That was good brainwashing. It’s clear from what this lady is saying, that Smoke Enders is offering good brainwashing.”
The woman smiled and said, “We prefer to call it behaviour modification.”
So call it what you like: brainwashing or behaviour modification, or outwitting yourself, it all comes down to the same thing.
Every country practices brainwashing. That’s what we call it when we refer to “Communist” Cuba or “Communist” China. Here, we call it religion, moral codes, education, advertising, infomercials. By whatever name, it amounts to those with power prompting us to behave in certain ways that complement their economic and social system. And it really works if you can get at fresh minds young enough. We are all born able to exercise critical speculative analysis. Just watch the learning progress of babies. However, because we are subjected to “behaviour modification” our birthright diminishes so that even by the age of five we are beginning to think in labels. By the time we pass our so-called rebellious teens we enter adulthood with an armful of labels hungry to paste them on everything we encounter. What a loss to human progress. An end result is that we are so brainwashed into accepting labels as truth that we only whimper when gouged ever more ruthlessly by such as Big Oil.
Think about it as we approach True North No Gas Friday. Don’t be shy! Just don’t buy!
Enjoy yourself. There can be no life without laughter and since we only come this way once, he might as well be happy.
Looking forward.
Carl Dow
Editor and Publisher
True North Perpective
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