A new episode comes out tomorrow, looking at news disasters including: NPR on SCOTUS; a NYT sports reporter’s interaction with police; and the continuing Graham Platner fiasco.
The news should be presented in ways that help people learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But today’s media giants frequently do the opposite. They actively trigger responses in people’s minds that shut down thinking.
A world-leading clinician and neuropsychologist has diagnosed this. In the latest episode, she joined me to explain.
Orli Peter watched it happen in real time.
In 2009, there was a retreat in northern California aimed at helping people from a global conflict heal together. Traumatized Arabs, Muslims, Jews, and Druze from Israel were there to be treated together.
But across the world, Hamas and other terrorists started yet another war with Israel. TV screens at the retreat showed CNN, which was “playing what was referred to later as war porn over and over again nonstop,” Orli says.
Images, fed to the media by terrorists, overtook people’s minds. “I watched how people’s brains got more traumatized from this.” It defeated the purpose of the retreat. “Part of what trauma treatment is about is reducing the activation of the brain so that you can bring in new material.”
The parts of the brain that question what we’re seeing and seek out truth have trouble functioning.
“It’s like the Trojan horse. If you read a story, it takes a lot of cognitive effort to read. And you’re getting more brain networks online that can process the information that’s coming in. But when you’re seeing this imagery, the imagery comes in without your permission. You see it and boom, it’s inside you.
“It takes so much energy to metabolize that. It starts drawing resources away from the higher level parts of the brain. So being able to assess, analyze, put things in context, all of that kind of stuff, there’s less resources for that. You’re just activated.”
The benefits of maturity
Propagandists use this to their advantage. They especially target younger people, who are more susceptible. People with more experience “have been able to refine” the mental models they use to understand things, she says. That’s why surveys show younger people supporting jihadist groups in larger numbers.
“As you age, the brain tends to not be as susceptible to as intense an activation. That’s why people kind of ‘mellow.’ When the brain is less activated emotionally, now it has resources that can spread more evenly as needed.”
Learn how a story from M*A*S*H fits in, and how Orli called out New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji, in the episode.
JL
P.S. Join me and USA Facts in demanding truth from the government. We need leaders to bring government data into the 21st Century.