Category: Archetypes

How Corporations, Politicians & Billionaires Profit Off of the Infantilization of Mankind, September 3, 2023

This blog series is based on Joost Meerloo’s The Rape of the Mind and his warnings about modern mass persuasion, emotional conditioning, repetition, spectacle, and engineered dependency.

SUMMARY OF THE 2023 Super Hero, Terror?!

What Super Hero, Terror?! is about

In the summer of 2023, long before the phrase “information warfare” became dinner-table conversation, this blog asked a question most people weren’t ready to hear: what if the same psychological tactics used by totalitarian regimes — fear, manufactured confusion, the Big Lie, the myth of the all-powerful leader — were already operating inside our democracies, wrapped in entertainment and spectacle?

Drawing on psychiatrist Joost Meerloo’s prescient 1956 book The Rape of the Mind, Part 4 of the Marvelization of Man series traces how psychological warfare works: not through brute force, but by exhausting your capacity to think clearly. The unpredictable leader. The firehose of falsehood. The slogans of defeat whispered before a single battle begins. Meerloo documented these tactics in the aftermath of World War II. This post asked whether we were watching them repeat.

It also argued something subtler: that hollowed-out mythmaking — Marvel’s assembly-line superheroes, engineered for profit rather than meaning — leaves us psychologically undefended. We need strong archetypal stories to build the inner models that help us resist manipulation. When our myths go thin, so does our resistance.

“Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot — it confuses those who think straight.” — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind, 1956

Read it as a warning. 

From warning to diagnosis: reading this post in 2026

When this piece was published in September 2023, it read as a warning shot. In May 2026, it reads as a field guide to what has already happened.

Meerloo described the “unpredictable madman” as a deliberate tactic — a calculated performance of chaos designed to keep opponents off balance, unable to mount a coherent response before the next lie lands. What this post identified as a political style has since become governing policy. The firehose of falsehood is no longer primarily a foreign adversary’s weapon. It runs domestically, at scale, from the top.

The institutions Meerloo identified as psychological anchors — a free press, independent courts, reliable civic language — have been systematically challenged and, in some cases, functionally dismantled. This is not coincidence. It is the playbook. You weaken the structures that help people tell truth from fiction, and then the fiction wins by default.

Meanwhile, the infantilization argument this post introduced has only deepened. AI-generated content floods every platform. Algorithmic feeds are engineered for emotional reaction, not reason. Political identity has been gamified. People are more entertained, more stimulated, and less equipped for critical thought than at any point in recent memory — which is precisely what a propaganda ecosystem requires of its audience.

Most urgently: Meerloo wrote that the real goal of totalitarian psychological warfare is to win before the fighting starts — to break the will to resist. The question this blog was asking in 2023 was: are we awake enough to see this happening? The question in 2026 is harder. We can see it. The question now is whether we still believe our response matters — and whether we act before we stop believing it does.

“Only the awakened imagination can counter the machinery of deception.”— Sapience: The Moment Is Now

That line is from Sapience: The Moment Is Now, a novel I spent twelve years writing, published in 2024. The book traces a 5,000-year arc of civilization — through the rise and fall of empires, the machinery of authoritarian control, the engineered collapse of collective wisdom — and arrives at the same conclusion this blog reaches: that what is being stolen from us, above all else, is our capacity to imagine something different.

The Super Hero, Terror blog asked why our myths were going hollow and what that cost us. Sapienceanswers that question through three characters living across three moments of planetary collapse — one in 2024, watching it begin; one in 2050–2109, living through the worst of it; one in 2147, trying to remember how it could have gone otherwise. Together, they trace exactly what Meerloo warned about: a civilization that was shown the tools of its own manipulation and still could not look away from the spectacle long enough to resist.

The blog diagnosed the disease. The book maps the terrain of what happens if we don’t treat it — and what becomes possible if we do. Both were written as warnings. Both are now something more urgent than that.

The moment, as it has always been, is now.

Original 2023 Introduction to Super Hero, Terror?!

The Marvelization of Man series juxtaposes the marvelous world of Marvel and its universe of Super Heroes against the not so marvelous world of real life human beings. Sometimes the men and women who present themselves as Super Heroes swooping in to protect us turn out instead to be deceiving and manipulating us.

Way too often in our Modern Era the men and women presenting themselves as the Super Heroes saving civilization are hiding behind lies and madman tactics designed to intrigue, confuse and shock us into their mesmerizing realm of thought control.

Recap of The Marvelization of Man Series

My series begins with Marvel origin story of Morbius who as a “living vampire”, which is an archetypal character for real life narcissists. Morbius flopped even though it should have racked in the bucks as discussed in depth in Part 2 of The Marvelization of Man.

Part 3 of The Marvelization of Man dives into how our minds work and why when a conglomerate company like Disney absorbs the universes of Marvel, Star Wars, Predator, and so many others, the movies they spin out can fall into the trap of creating transactional characters who are made to fit into a highly formula movie that is calculated to do one thing: make lots of money.

This results in weak storytelling and weak Super Heroes. Lacking strong Super Hero stories can water down our inner ability to resist mass manipulation of the kind Joost speaks about in his book: The Rape of the Mind, published in 1956. Super Heroes are our modern versions of archetypal stories and when we tell weak archetypal stories, we lack strong models to base the development of our own inner archetypal stories impacting every aspect of our ordinary lives.

Part 4 of The Marvelization of Man is delving deeper into the subtle art of mind control. It is something our Modern world has excelled at doing and perfected regardless of whether you live in a totalitarian system of government where overt mind control is used by nation-state like Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia OR if you live in a free-wheeling, capitalistic nation-state like the United States, Britain, Australia, or pretty much any nation aligning themselves economically and politically with the Western values and civilization.

The Rape of the Mind

Joost Meerloo describes Chapter 5 of his book Rape of the Mind in this way:

The purpose of the second part of this book is to show various aspects of political and non-political strategy used to change the feelings and thoughts of the masses, starting with simple advertising and propaganda, then surveying psychological warfare and actual cold war, and going on to examine the means used for internal streamlining of man's thoughts and behaviour. Part Two ends with an intricate examination of how one of the tools of emotional fascination and attack -- the weapon of fear -- is used and what reactions it arouses in men. 
                   -- page 65 | The Rape of the Mind

I will highlight parts of Chapter 5 discussing Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror (Page 69 — The Rape of the Mind) and provide current models of how this continues to take place today.

Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror

Rape of the Mind, Chapter 5: The Cold War Against the Mind.

Every human communication can be either a report of straight facts or an attempt to suggest things and situations as they do not exist. Such distortion and perversion of facts strike at the core of human communication. The verbal battle against man's concept of truth and against his mind seems to be ceaseless. For example, if I can instill in eventual future enemies fear and terror and the suggestion of impending defeat, even before they are willing to fight, my battle is already half won.  
            -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

The strategy of man to use a frightening mask and a loud voice to utter lies in order to manipulate friend and foe is as old as mankind. Primitive people used terror-provoking masks, magic fascination, or self-deceit as much as we use loudly spoken words to convince others or ourselves. They use their magic paints and we our ideologies. Truly, we live in an age of ads, propaganda, and publicity. But only under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes have such human habit formations mushroomed into systematic psychological assault on mankind. 
            -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

The weapons the dictator uses against his own people, he may use against the outside world as well. For example, the false confessions that divert the minds of dictator's subjects from their own real problems have still another effect: they are meant (and sometimes they succeed in their aim) to terrorize the world's public. By strengthening the myth of the dictator's omnipotence, such confessions weaken man's will to resist him. If a period of peace can be used to soften up a future enemy, the totalitarian armies may be able in time of war to win a cheap and easy victory. Totalitarian psychological warfare is directed largely toward this end. It is an effort to propagandize and hypnotize the world into submission. 
            -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

Consider Russia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with journalists after a live broadcast nationwide call-in, Moscow, April 14, 2016

Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model

Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It — by Christopher Paul, Miriam Matthews — RAND

We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”2

Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.

Or…

Russia’s years-long information war was instrumental in informing Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. This effort has failed to build support for Russia among Russian-speaking Ukrainians, especially in Donbas. 

A key example is the myth of “Novorossiya”. The term, which means “New Russia”, is meant to conjure up feelings of a restored Russian empire and righting the historical “wrong” of assigning Russian lands under Ukrainian jurisdiction. 

Since 2014, Putin, the Kremlin’s propaganda strategists, and insurgents in the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk repeatedly referred to “Novorossiya” as one of the justifications for Russia’s invasion. 

In reality, there never was a Novorossiya. As an ideological project, it has failed to take hold in the minds of those living on its supposed territories in eastern and southern Ukraine, and was abandoned by Russia and the authorities of the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk as soon as it became politically inconvenient.

As far back as the early nineteenth century, Napoleon organized his Bureau de l'Opinion Publique in order to influence the thinking of the French people. But it fell to the Germans to develop the manipulation of public opinion into a huge, well organized machine. Their psychological warfare became aggressive strategy in peacetime, the so-called war between wars. It was as a result of the Nazi attack on European morale and the Nazi war of nerves against their neighbours that the other nations of the world began to organize their own psychological forces, but it was only in the second half of the war that they were able to achieve some measure of success. The Germans had a long head start. 
         -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

Hitler's psychological artillery was composed primarily of the weapon of fear. He had, for example, a network of fifth columnists whose main job was to sow rumours and suspicions among the citizens of the countries against which he eventually planned to fight. The people were upset not only by the spy system itself, but by the very rumour of spies. These fifth columnists spread slogans of defeat and political confusion: "Why should France die for England?" Fear began to direct people's actions. Instead of facing the real threat of German invasion, instead of preparing for it, all of Europe shuddered at spy stories, discussed irrelevant problems, argued endlessly about scapegoats and minorities. Thus Hitler used the rampant, vague fears to becloud the real issues, and by attacking his enemies' will to fight, weakened them. 
         -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

Not content with this strategic attack on the will to defend oneself, Hitler tried to paralyze Europe with the threat of terror, not only the threat of bombing, destruction, and occupation, but also the psychological threat implicit in his own boast of ruthlessness. The fear of an implacable foe makes man more willing to submit even before he has begun to fight. Hitler's criminal acts at home -- the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the mass murders, the atmosphere of terror throughout Germany - were as useful in the service of his fear-instilling propaganda machinery as they were a part of his delusions. 
        -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological shock. Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval. They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot - it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another. 
          -- Page 69 - 70 | The Rape of the Mind

2026 Postscript

What this essay identified in 2023 has not diminished. It has accelerated.

The machinery of psychological warfare no longer operates only through state propaganda ministries, television broadcasts, newspapers, or carefully staged political spectacles. By 2026, it has become embedded in algorithmic feeds, attention markets, viral video loops, targeted persuasion systems, and synthetic media environments that operate continuously. Fear no longer arrives in discrete political messages. It now circulates as a permanent atmosphere.

That matters because Joost Meerloo was describing something deeper than propaganda alone. He was describing how confusion, repetition, shock, emotional overload, and distortion gradually weaken the mind’s capacity to distinguish reality from performance. That process has become industrialized. The contemporary information environment rewards velocity over reflection, emotional arousal over understanding, symbolic identity over structural analysis, and outrage over orientation. The result is not merely misinformation. It is psychological destabilization.

The old totalitarian insight remains brutally modern: if you can keep populations frightened, disoriented, exhausted, and continuously reacting, you weaken their ability to think clearly about actual causes, actual power, and actual danger. While citizens chase spectacle, the deeper architecture of political, economic, technological, and institutional power becomes harder to see.

This is where the “super hero” dimension of this essay becomes more important now than when it was first written. Heroic spectacle trains the imagination toward simplified moral theater—heroes, villains, saviors, enemies, dramatic confrontations, and emotional resolution. But real civic life rarely works that way. Real democracy demands attention, patience, complexity, memory, and collective responsibility. A population trained to seek theatrical emotional certainty becomes more vulnerable to those who know how to weaponize fear, grievance, myth, and spectacle.

In 2026, the danger is not simply that people believe false things. The deeper danger is that many people now live inside engineered emotional environments where fear, shock, tribal identity, symbolic conflict, and perpetual crisis continuously shape perception itself. This is precisely the terrain Meerloo warned about: the battlefield of the mind.

Super Hero, Terror?! Archetypal Animations

Images created on Genlove.

Feature Archetypal Animation

Music: Superhero — Daze

(Album: Super Heroes)

Music: Succession: Season 1 (HBO Original Series Soundtrack)– Nicholas Britell

Music: Books of Blood: The Coming of Tan — Jedi Mind Tricks

(Album: The Psycho-social, Chemical, Biological, And Electro-magnetic Manipulation Of Human Consiousness)

Music: Big Lie – Johndavid Bartlett