by trod1234 | 2025-05-10 20:10:54+00:00
Robert Cialdini is probably the lightest book and covers most of the different blindspots we have, except distorted reflected appraisal in his book on Influence. He provides the principles but leaves most of the structure up to the person's imagination.

The coursework in an introduction to communication class may provide some foundational details (depending on the instructor), Sapir-Whorf has basis in blindspots.

Robert Lifton touches on the detailed case studies of torture from the 1950s (under Mao), in his book "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", and I've heard in later books he creates a framework that classifies cultures as Protean (self-direction, growth, self-determination/agency), or Totalism (towards control which eventually fails Darwin's fitness).

I haven't actually read his later books yet though his earlier books were quite detailed. I believe the internet archive has a copy of this available for reading as a pdf but be warned this is quite dark.

Joost Meerloo in his, "Rape of the Mind" as an overview touches on how Totalitarianism grows in the setting of WW2 and some Mao, though takes Freudian look at things (dating certain aspects which we know to be untrue now).

From there it branches out depending on your interest. The modern material itself while based on these earlier works often has the origins obscured following a separation of objectionable concerns.

There are congressional reports on COINTELPRO and you may find notice it has modern iterations (touching on protest/activist activity harassment), as well as the history of East German Stasi, and Zersetzung where governments use this to repress the population.

There are aspects in the Octalysis Framework (gamification/game design).

Paulo Freire used some of this material in developing his critical pedagogy which was used in the 70s to replace teaching method from a reduction of first principles (based in rome and the greeks) to what's commonly known as rote-based teaching, and later called "Lying to Children", which takes the reversal of that approach following more closely to gnosticism.

The approach is basically you give a flawed useless model which includes both true and false things. Students learn to competence, then are given a new model that's less flawed, where you have to learn and unlearn things already learned. You never actually unlearn anything and it induces frustration and torture destroying minds in the process. Each step towards gnosis becomes more useful but only the most compliant and blind make it to the end with few exceptions. Structures that burn bridges induce failure in math, and the effect is this acts as a filter to gatekeep the technical fields.

The water pipe analogy of voltage in electronics as an example of the latter instead of the first principled approach using diffusion which is more correct.

Disney and Dreamworks uses distorted reflected appraisal tailored towards destructive interference of identity, which some employees have blown the whistle on (for the latter), aimed at children and sneak things past their adult guardians. There's quite a lot if you look around but its not under any single name but scattered. Hopefully that helps.

The Dreamworks whistleblower interview can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvNZRUtqqa8

All indexed references of it seem to now have been removed from search. I'm glad now that I kept a reference link in a text file.

Update: Dreamworks isn't Pixar, I misremembered,they are owned by Universal Studios, whereas Disney own's Pixar. Pixar and Disney appear to do the same things.