Trained by Trauma- from shamanism to mind control

Trauma is unavoidable in life.  The act itself of being born is an experience of being ripped from a comfort and life support- to be dragged into a harsh realm of overwhelming sense stimulation which steadily molds the mind into an ego.  As the sense of self develops, it becomes vulnerable to ever more elaborated forms of trauma.  The fear of death is no longer attached only to the immediate sensation of dying, but also the associated mental phenomenon of personal identity.  The ego could be seen as a shell formed from the trauma of separation from amniotic oneness, but the formation of the ego can be guided through intentional application of trauma.

When the sense of self is threatened early in life it can result in a higher malleability of ego.  Tendencies to dissociate and enter into non-ordinary experiences increase in those who have undergone additional trauma.  In some cultures those who experienced serious illness as children ,and came close to death, would often became the shamans, medicine men, and vision seers for their society.  Ritual practices that used methods like sensory deprivation were developed to further enhance the dissociative powers of the individual.  In these instances the person was considered a source for wisdom and guidance, someone who could pull away the exterior of the phenomenal world and see into inner realities.  This would take the form of communication with gods, ancestor spirits, animal totems, or other figures depending on the cultural vocabulary.

All of the techniques of  mysticism- drug inducement, sensory deprivation, sensory overload- are also the most pernicious techniques of tyrants.  As much as natural  traumatic circumstances can open an individual to non-ordinary states of awareness, and and ecstatic techniques used in a self directed manner- Trauma can also be intentionally induced, and the same techniques used against the individual to hijack their direction.  Like anything, any technology can be used for creative or destructive purposes.  Sex can be an experience of wholeness or an experience of rape and powerlessness at the hands of a malevolent other.

Sexual abuse is perhaps the most pertinent demonstration of intentionally induced trauma.  Someone doesn’t accidentally get raped or molested.  The experience of being violated in this way, especially as a young child, often results in repressions which manifest as various symptoms and tendencies throughout life- depending on the circumstances and the degree of repression.  Where one person could adopt the defense of embracing open sexuality to reclaim a lost sense of personal control over sex, another person might withdraw entirely from sexual experiences as a way to avoid reliving the trauma which they knowingly or unknowingly repress.

Sexual abuse is something which has probably occurred for a long time, and at one point people must have noticed the tendencies of repression and its formation on identity.  Techniques were devised to intentionally induce trauma in children and attempt to steer their identity formation entirely.  To protect the sense of self, the ego withdraws in experiences of extreme trauma.  When this is combined with drugs and hypnotic induction, the mind can be opened up by a facilitator and the personality be rewritten.  Because of the repressive tendency it can be easy to insert conditioning without the conscious ego of the individual to apprehend what has occurred.

This sort of technique has been extensively explored by government, military, and private interests in the 20th century.  Though its most extreme forms are perhaps too grueling for many people to even consider, especially if they are themselves repressing trauma, the theories which developed from this research into trauma induced mind control were formative to the development of modern popular culture, news, and entertainment.  Many motifs of popular culture come directly out of psychological imprinting manuals, and many have been led to suspect that a great majority of popular entertainers have been victims of trauma induced mind control.  Perhaps the tendency for the victim to become the abuser is demonstrated in the case of mind control victims becoming mind control agents.  I shutter to think of the possibility that this chain of mind fuck has become entirely self directed through the process of being developed- that humanity is at war with a mental manipulation which has detached itself from human intention entirely.  And when one projects this trend into a transhumanist future… it looks pretty fucking bleak.

When we pathologize the effects of living in a society sick with manipulative trauma, we collectively repress the trauma, and it becomes all encompassing.   Trauma has become business as usual.  Obedience is easily bought off through glittering distractions- glittering distractions which glaringly reenforce the trauma, while diverting attention away from it.  We live in a state of terror. The war on terror is the war by terror, and entertainment primes the collective identity formation- progressively and steadily guiding through imprint.  Where are the shamans, the medicine men, and the vision seers?  Have they all been replaced by the spook, the handler, and the government funded remote viewer?