To control people, control their stories

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." (Romans 12.2)

To control a population, control their imagination of what is possible. Because people will not even attempt what they think is impossible.

To control their imagination, control the stories they hear and the stories they tell. Because stories paint pictures of identity and possibility which go beyond our everyday experience into what could be. So only allow stories to be told which frame what is possible in a way that is most beneficial to those who want to maintain power.


To control people’s stories, you can try using the threat of pain, welding institutional power and censorship and threats of punishment. But this creates a rebound effect, as the younger and more rebellious seek out what is taboo and forbidden. 

But you can also control people’s stories with the promise of pleasure. Advertise that some stories are exciting and fun and innovative, while other stories are boring and difficult and old fashioned. Get enough cool kids™  to frown and roll their eyes, put down books, and look up pics, and you will find the job of censorship almost does itself.

Eventually, if you can boil all stories down to "I wanted something so I bought it", then you can keep people addicted to the system of consumption that holds them in bondage. People will think there is nothing more to life than scratching their itches and gratifying their desires, and nothing greater to serve than the system which supplies their every want and need. For the more docile the animal, the better livestock it makes.

In such a system perhaps the most subversive acts are silence and reading and praying and thinking and simply saying "no" when the whole world is chanting "yes". And perhaps there are other ways of throwing a monkey wrench into the system too. But those ways are built on strengthening our imaginations, toughening our minds, and fortifying our wills, through silence and reading and praying and thinking. 

I'm not saying anything radically different from "1984" or "Brave New World" or "Fahrenheit 451" or "Galapagos" or "The Abolition of Man" or "They Live" or "The Matrix" or "Idiocracy" or "The Gospels" or "The Dhammapada" or "The Bhagavad Gita" or "The Book of Revelation" or a hundred other stories I could think of. But in order to know that we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable to hear them speak to us.