Same Elephant from Different Angles

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 I've been interested for years in how people come to believe what they believe, particularly when those beliefs become so familiar that we stop questioning where they came from.

We are all shaped by our experiences, relationships, cultures and the information we encounter. That's part of being human. But what happens when someone deliberately uses that process to influence how we think, feel or see ourselves?

Recently, I came across historical research that gave me another angle on something I've been exploring for a long time.

Rebecca Lemov's The Instability of Truth examines the history of brainwashing, mind control and persuasion, from coercive practices involving prisoners of war to more subtle forms of influence in modern media and technology.

It didn't feel like discovering a completely new subject. It felt like looking at the same elephant from a different angle.

When Influence Becomes an Environment

Historical research into coercive persuasion has examined conditions such as isolation, repetition, emotional pressure, uncertainty and dependency. In some circumstances, these conditions can make people more vulnerable to adopting beliefs they might otherwise question.

Over time, researchers have also examined less overt forms of influence, including advertising, mass communication and digital platforms.

These situations aren't equivalent. Being exposed to persuasive advertising is not the same as being subjected to coercive control. But looking at them together raises interesting questions about how our surroundings influence what we come to accept as normal.

We don't experience information in isolation. We encounter it repeatedly, often through people and institutions we've learned to trust. Eventually, some ideas become so familiar that we may forget there was ever another way to look at them.

When Influence Becomes Identity

One of the more interesting questions in the history of persuasion is what happens when an adopted belief becomes part of someone's identity.

An idea may originally come from a family, community, authority figure or institution. Over time, it can become so closely associated with our sense of self that questioning it feels strangely personal.

We might say, “That's just how I think,” without remembering when we first began thinking that way.

Of course, having strongly held beliefs doesn't automatically mean we've been manipulated. We all learn from our environments, and some of those influences are valuable.

What interests me is our ability to recognize them.

Can we consider an idea without feeling that our entire identity is being challenged? Can we change our perspective when new information comes along, or have we become more invested in defending the belief than examining it?

Life Inside Constant Persuasion

Today, we're surrounded by an extraordinary amount of information competing for our attention.

Every scroll, notification and headline presents another opportunity to engage. Advertising, media and social platforms all have reasons to understand what captures our interest and keeps us coming back.

That doesn't mean every message is designed to manipulate us. But it does mean we spend a considerable amount of time in environments where influencing attention and behaviour has commercial value.

Sometimes we're not short of information. We're simply overwhelmed by how much of it is arriving.

We can find ourselves reacting to stories before we've had an opportunity to examine them, defending opinions we haven't fully considered or moving straight from one emotionally charged subject to the next.

I've become increasingly interested in what happens when we give ourselves enough distance to notice that process rather than automatically participating in it.

What the Body Can Tell Us

Our experiences don't happen separately from our bodies.

Stress, uncertainty and emotional pressure can affect breathing, muscle tension, attention and sleep. We may notice ourselves becoming restless during a difficult conversation or physically bracing when something feels threatening.

Those responses are worth paying attention to, but they don't automatically tell us what caused them. A tense body isn't proof that someone is lying to us, that a particular belief is false or that an environment is deliberately manipulating us.

It tells us that something is happening in our experience, and we can become curious about it.

What am I responding to? Is this familiar? Am I reacting to what's actually happening, or to what I expect might happen?

Sometimes those questions reveal something useful. Other times, a little more information, rest or an honest conversation may change how the situation feels.

Our bodies are part of how we experience the world. Understanding their responses gives us another source of information, not an infallible authority.

Why Different Angles Matter

Some people approach questions through historical records. Others are drawn to science, philosophy, personal experience or observing patterns in everyday life.

I think there's value in bringing those perspectives together, provided we understand what each can actually tell us.

Historical documents can help establish what happened. Scientific research can investigate mechanisms and test explanations. Lived experience tells us how something was encountered and what it meant to the person living through it.

One doesn't automatically prove the other, but each can prompt questions that might otherwise go unasked.

That's what interested me about encountering the history of persuasion. It offered another way to investigate patterns I'd already been noticing in my own experiences and conversations.

Not confirmation of every suspicion. Another angle worth exploring.

The Quiet Return of Authority

The answer to influence isn't to distrust everything. We'd simply end up replacing one rigid way of thinking with another.

I'd rather stay curious about how an idea arrived, why I believe it and whether it still holds up.

That includes paying attention to my reactions without treating them as absolute proof, examining information without automatically accepting the authority attached to it, and being willing to sit with uncertainty when I don't yet know enough.

Some useful questions are surprisingly ordinary. Who benefits if I believe this? What evidence supports it? What might I be overlooking? Am I free to question it without being made to feel that something is wrong with me?

And perhaps just as importantly, what does my own experience tell me, and how can I examine that honestly?

Recognizing influence doesn't mean becoming immune to it. I doubt any of us can claim that.

But noticing how our attention, beliefs and responses are shaped gives us more opportunity to decide what we want to do with that information.

Same Elephant. Still Breathing.

I don't think any single discipline or theory can explain the whole human experience.

History, science, philosophy and lived experience can each show us something different. Sometimes they support one another. Sometimes they challenge what we thought we knew.

That's part of why I keep exploring.

I am less interested in finding a single explanation for everything than in becoming more aware of what shapes our understanding, including the explanations we've already adopted.

The elephant is still there, no matter which angle we're looking from.

And I suspect there are plenty more angles to discover.

Inspired in part by historical research in Rebecca Lemov's The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion (2025).