3 Ways You’re Brainwashing Yourself and How to Stop
When your own mind turns against you, you have to take control.
Ever heard the phrase that someone is “drinking the Kool-Aid?”
It refers to the tragic mass suicide known as the Jonestown Massacre on November 18, 1978. On this day, more than nine-hundred people, led by cult leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by ingesting a poisonous cocktail of cyanide and a cheaper form of Kool-Aid called Flavor-Aid.
After a visit by U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, who investigated rumors of mistreatment at the compound where the cult’s followers lived, Jones warned his followers that violent outsiders would come and harm them. He commanded his believers to commit “revolutionary suicide” by poisoning themselves and others. Cult members followed orders to poison the children first, and parents and nurses used syringes to shoot the mixture into children’s throats.
The events spawned the term “drinking the Kool-Aid,” now used to refer to anyone who is brainwashed into believing another’s foolish views.
When we hear of such things, we wonder what kind of person could be so powerful and persuasive that people would do these unimaginable things. Psychologists also seek the answer to this question and spend much time studying the techniques…
