By Iris Lei

Brainwashing is one of the most popular terms these days thanks to the campaign against the national education in Hong Kong. The “brainwashing education", as it is termed by protestors, is believed to be harmful to the younger generation. But what is brainwashing? How do people categorize events into brainwashing? How does brainwashing function?

According to Merriam-Webster, “brainwashing" literally means a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Steve Sam, a form-one student, has slightly disputed idea with the standard one. When he was asked what brainwashing is he responded it is with education, to be more specific, pro-China education in which he believed some truthful historical events would be veiled whilst “untruthful" or “exaggerated" events would be delivered in lectures. How do you know these would happen when Sam was asked, he said from those protestors.

In broader terms, brainwashing is also defined as persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship which applies any method of controlled systematic indoctrination, either based on repetition or confusion. Therefore, it can be found imbedded in many things, such as education, religion, advertising, mass media, government policies, uses of technology, etc. Without the “brainwashing" effects of education, students might not be able to turn from naive to literate. Without advertisements’ “brainwashing" persuasion on audience and consumers, businesses might gain no profit and very likely workers might be unemployed.. It seems that “brainwashing," as it is broadly defined, takes an important role in our daily life, but surprisingly, most people are just unaware of the fact that we are being “brainwashed" every single day of our lifetime. The younger the age, the easier the indoctrination could take place. This might be the reason why laws are enacted preventing and protecting youngster from legitimate voting rights.

Such “invisible" brainwashing would penetrate us and set roots deep down in our minds, gradually becoming our intuitive framework knowledge or habits and evolving into our social norms and attitudes. In fact, we are pretty much granted to be penetrated in this way. At Christmas, most people are busy doing shopping because we are “told" to do so. We have been “educated" to expect gifts from someone and to give gifts to someone in need. The uniform in primary school also takes part in “training", how to define the world in dualistic ways, dresses or trousers, either male or female, either good or bad. The younger we are, the more deeply is the indoctrinated ideology rooted.

The devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist. If people do not filter the information they receive everywhere, the seed of “blindness" is resting on the heart. Think about your life, do you want to have it under your own control or being controlled by sophisticated “brainwashing" institutions?