The Mis-Forming of the Modern Mind
How Consciousness is "Managed" Through Media Manipulation (Vol. 5; Issue 10)
Here’s a mind-blowing concept that invites an entirely new way to think about consciousness:
What you think of as “reality” is nothing more than a well-organized dream.
In other words, what think you see, hear, taste, touch and smell while “awake” is filtered by your central nervous system. It turns your “experience” into, essentially, a systematized hallucination, an organismically and culturally shaped delusion.
I know, it’s a bizarre, even potentially frightening, concept. However, it’s hardly a new one. Immanuel Kant (1788) revolutionized Western philosophy by observing the same thing:
Our nervous systems, in combination with our sense perceptions and memories, create what we call consciousness. Kant classified these personal subjective experiences as phenomena; he identified the “things-in-themselves,” whatever “really” exists “out there,” as noumena.
The way the mass media has evolved, of late, makes the idea of our living daydreams particularly important. These daydreams, constituting what we experience, are created in large part by IN-FORM-ATION. We ingest, take IN, and receive things that FORM us. Think of the daydream, then, as significantly formed by the mass media.
Jacques Lacan’s (Lacan, 2002, 2008) idea of the Big Other speaks directly to this concept. The Big Other shapes us into culture, teaching us how to adhere to social norms and appearances. The mass media, also known as the fourth estate, contributes to the shaping of our minds. It is the spokesperson of the Big Other. It represents one of the major ways we humans consume in-form-ation.
The shameful status of the American media, combined with the recent initiatives of the current presidential administration, shows just how easily our minds can be mis-formed. For example, and despite his oft-spoken support for the constitutional right to free speech, Elon Musk owns one of the largest sources of in-form-ation on planet Earth. As of early 2025, X (formerly Twitter) had approximately 650 million monthly active users. No other source of in-form-ation comes even close—not the New York Times, not the UK’s Financial Times, not the BBC, not the standard broadcast or cable news networks, not anything. Some 300 million people use X daily. Musk’s own 200 million followers give him one of the Earth’s largest metaphorical megaphones. His control of that one platform, alone, demonstrates how in-form-ation can be perverted.
Not only can Musk transmit any kind of in-form-ation he desires, but X intentionally communicates with brevity. The average tweet is around 28 characters long. The simplicity, in combination with frequent mis-in-form-ation, places the status of minds around the globe in danger.
In a February 2025 article about science, fascism, and the restriction of information, Caltech mathematician Matilde Marcolli* (2025) notes that Physics Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi proclaimed:
The denial of complexity is the essence of tyranny.
Platforms like X, or Facebook, or Bluesky, and so on, validate global society’s preference for simplicity over complexity. Can people see, however, how such apparent clarity also invites tyranny?
In her recent article, Dr. Marcolli expresses passionate concern over “the looming end of science (and likely of democracy as well) in the US.” These trends also represent a “violent reaction against the rapidly growing complexity of modernity.” Marcolli adds:
Fascism, old and new, rests upon the dangerous delusional idea that a strongman leader can, by share willpower and violent authoritarianism, replace and eliminate the deep, widespread, interconnected network of human competence that is modernity.
The “interconnected network” to which Marcolli refers concerns not only competency, but also in-form-ation. The easily consumed messages from social media platforms oversimplify and mis-shape persons’ minds. Consider just these recent examples:
On February 14, 2025, Musk posted:
Zelensky killed an American journalist!
This is an untrue albeit simple statement.
In another post, Musk called Zelensky, a dictator without elections, another easily digestible but incorrect statement.**
In support of Marcolli’s argument that fascism runs counter to complexity, note that Donald Trump, in calling for the end of the US Department of Education, proclaims that he:
Prefers uneducated people.
Marcolli continues:
A society in which there are treatments for cancer and airplanes fly safely, where your everyday bank transactions are secure, where communicable diseases do not decimate the population as they regularly did in pre-modern time, require a continuous influx of highly educated people.
Not all people are interested in, or can achieve, high levels of education. However, it is crucial that global citizens ingest accurate information. We humans need to obtain as truthful a view of political situations as possible. More often than not, the various social media sites as well as the legacy media, spread delusions. No wonder we increasingly hear about absurd conspiracy theories like “pizza-gate” or “Jewish space lasers.”
Meanwhile, attacks upon the media’s efforts to share factual information continues apace. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating CBS’ editing of its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. All broadcast networks edit interviews and film clips; it’s a staple of their work. Trump and other conservatives consider it election interference, and the dispute is making its way through the courts.
In their recent article in Foreign Affairs, political scientists Levitsky and Way (2025) predict that “US democracy will likely break down during the second Trump presidency” (p. 38), partially because of such attacks on the press. They cite “the ample use of a variety of legal actions to wear down media outlets,” adding, “a suit against The New York Times or Harvard would have a chilling effect on dozens of other media outlets or universities” (p. 45).
Furthermore, never before in human history have A FEW INDIVIDUALS had such control of in-form-ation. Trump, like him or not, is a master propagandist. He knows it. He deliberately uses it. Of late, Trump uses Musk like Hitler used Goebbels to spread mis- and dis-information. He has targeted ABC News, CBS News, The Des Moines Register, and Simon & Schuster—outlets that dared to publish what they perceived as critiques of him. Even if Trump loses these spurious attempts to silence opposing voices, they begin censoring themselves out of fear. Defending lawsuits requires attorneys, time, and money. It drains the resources of the press.
And, of course, a free press is the foundation of a democratic country. Democracy, competently practiced, also requires access to truthful in-form-ation. It is no accident that the right to free speech earned a proud place as the FIRST amendment to the constitution.
As I mentioned in an earlier essay, competent, fact-based mass media (oddly) mirror the work of psychoanalysts. Those clinicians help their patients uncover in-form-ation ranging from secrets they barely tell themselves to deeply unconscious truths. The in-form-ation alters their body-minds, increasing their personal freedom.
We live in a dangerous era in which Musk dominates social media and Trump controls the legacy media, e.g., the above-noted legal actions and the recent banning of the Associated Press from the White House press pool. We live in a dangerous era in which billionaires Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Rupert Murdoch, owners of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal respectively, bend to the will of Trump—validating the presence of an oligarchic government. We live in a dangerous era in which Trump literally compares himself to a king. As a result, our access to truthful information is more compromised than at any other time in human history.
Critical thinking has always been an asset. But, now, it absolutely required if you wish your living daydreams to be in-formed instead of de-formed. We should ingest reliable sources of information like the Economist, BBC, or Reuters. Blind trust, as in Walter Cronkite’s once-enjoyed stature as “the most trusted man in America,” is long gone.
Even when viewing or listening to reliable source of in-form-ation, you ideally approach it with doubt, with a questioning of authority, and with an intention to carefully check “facts.” We can empower ourselves by listening to or reading about world events using analytical, penetrating, determinative, and conscientious ears and eyes. We can exercise prudence, rigor, and vigilance. None of these are easy or simple, but they ensure the clearest possible way to competently IN-FORM ourselves.
Many aspects of the daydreams we call “consciousness” lie outside of our control. Psychophysiological temperament, exposure to trauma, and early childhood environment illustrate uncontrollable variables. However, by carefully weighing the in-form-ation we consume, we increase our capacity to make our daydreams clear and truthful. We can thereby increase our personal freedom.
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*Dr Matilde Marcolli is the Robert F. Christy Professor of Mathematics and Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She received her PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago, subsequently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, the University of Toronto, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the California Institute of Technology. She is author of 7 books and over 150 research papers in mathematics, theoretical physics, cosmology, information theory, and linguistics.
**The Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections when the country is under martial law; martial law was instituted since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
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References
Kant, I. (1788). The Critique of Practical Reason [Kritik der Praktischen Vernuft]. M.Gregor (Trans. And Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lacan, J. (2002). Ecrits. Trans. B. Fink. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Lacan, J. (2008). My Teaching. Trans. D. Macey. New York: Verso.
Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A. (2025). The path to American authoritarianism. Foreign Affairs, 104(2):36-51.
Marcolli, M. (2025). Fascism, the war on complexity, and the end of science. Zmagazine, February 17, 2025, https://znetwork.org/