What he describes is a subcultural psycholinguistic and psycho-semiotic cage.
It has its own signs and symbols and like most subcultures stands in opposition to their caricature of the larger culture in which they live.
Mind-control works largely through manipulating these and many other subcultures and then manipulating our responses to them.
I hope all FIML practitioners can see this and also see outside of these semiotic cages, something very difficult for all humans to do no matter how smart you may be.
Psycholinguistics and semiotics have an enormous psychological and emotional component, which has a very strong hold on all of us.
Many people who grasp this only understand how to use it to manipulate other people. There are hundreds of books and videos on how to do this.
You can do stuff like that and it sort of works, but it’s horrible morality and goes against Buddhist practice because it is a form of deception, of lying. It’s a cheap exploitation of a universal human weakness.
The big problem here is that while individuals in pairs and small group can free themselves from their psycholinguistic cages, large numbers of people cannot.
I do not know how to fix that. Maybe AI or some other new tech will help.
For now, we are stuck with a variety of metacognitive cages that hold large groups of people together.
These are our religions, ideologies, races, ethnies, and subcultures, like the one described above.
There is no power or authority on earth that can control metacognitive group identity, which is why conflict and war is inevitable.
Humans are too simple-minded to see a way out in large numbers, so large crazy groups will continue to rule the world.
The crazier they are, the stronger their hold on their members because it is very hard to get out of a crazy cage in which you have invested everything or were born into.
Look around you. Is there any culture that is not insane? ABN
American Buddhist Net 