Who Really Minds Your Mind?

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 For most of human history, the “mind” was not treated as something to manage, fix, or monetise.

It was understood as relational.

Embedded in body, culture, land, community, and meaning.

Only recently has it become a product.

If you’ve ever felt that your thoughts, fears, hopes, or “mental health” are being shaped, steered, or sold back to you, you’re not imagining it.

That feeling has a history.

And it matters.

Before the Mind Became a Market

Across cultures, humans have always explored inner life.

But not as a detached object.

In Christian Europe, thought was woven with ethics, conscience, and responsibility.

Reflection was about how to live well, not how to optimise performance.

In Eastern traditions, attention and awareness were trained to reduce suffering and cultivate insight.

In Indigenous cultures, consciousness was never separate from land, kinship, and story.

Thinking was something you did with the world, not inside a sealed skull.

Across these traditions, awareness was practical, moral, and relational.

Not something to dissect.

Not something to sell.

Freud: Turning Inner Life into a System

Sigmund Freud changed the cultural story.

He gave Western society a new language.

Unconscious drives.
Repression.
Inner conflict.
Hidden desires.

For the first time, the psyche was framed as something opaque, unstable, and in need of expert interpretation.

This was powerful.

It offered insight into suffering.
It normalised talking about inner life.
It gave people permission to explore emotion and memory.

But it also did something else.

It turned subjectivity into a system.

A system that could be analysed.
Categorised.
Interpreted.
Managed.

Much of Freud’s work was speculative, anecdotal, and shaped by his own biases.

Many core theories never stood up to scientific testing.

Yet his deeper influence was cultural.

He taught society to see the mind as something separate from life itself.

Something that could be worked on from the outside.

Bernays: When Psychology Became Persuasion

Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew, took this language and put it to work.

He realised that if you understood people’s fears, desires, and identities, you could guide behaviour at scale.

He helped popularise:

Women smoking as “liberation”
Bacon and eggs as “tradition”
Political narratives as emotional branding

He didn’t sell products.

He sold meanings.

From this point on, psychology and marketing became entangled.

The inner world became a terrain for influence.

Attention became currency.
Emotion became leverage.
Identity became a tool.

Mental Health in the Age of Packaging

Modern mental health developed inside this framework.

The “mind” became something to diagnose, optimise, regulate, and repair.

Apps.
Programs.
Protocols.
Productivity systems.
Self-help industries.

Much of this helps people.

Much of it reduces suffering.

And yet, it often carries an unspoken message.

Something about you is wrong.
Someone else knows how to fix it.
You need guidance to be whole.

Social pressure, economic strain, digital overload, and nervous system exhaustion are quietly reframed as “personal issues.”

The person adapts.

The system remains untouched.

 The Algorithmic Mind 

Today, influence no longer needs a public relations firm.

It lives in code.

Algorithms learn what captures your attention.

What unsettles you.
What reassures you.
What keeps you scrolling.

Your inner life becomes data.

Your uncertainty becomes profit.

Your focus becomes a commodity.

The “mind” is no longer just something you experience.

It is something traded.

Indigenous Knowledge: Consciousness as Relationship

Indigenous cultures never separated awareness from life.

In Aboriginal Australian traditions, Dreaming connects individual experience to land, ancestors, and responsibility.

In many Native traditions, imagination and vision are ways of listening to the wider ecosystem.

Here, inner life is not private property.

It is participation.

Imagination is not fantasy.

It is guidance.

Attention is not captured.

It is offered.

Nothing needs to be optimised.

Everything needs to be honoured.

Who Really Minds Your Mind?

Freud gave us a language of inner conflict.

Bernays taught institutions how to use it.

Technology scaled it.

Slowly, quietly, the story shifted.

From
“I am part of something alive.”

To
“I am a psychological unit to be managed.”

From
“Awareness is relational.”

To
“Attention is a resource.”

From
“Imagination is wisdom.”

To
“Imagination is content.”

So the real question isn’t only:

Who is shaping your thinking?

It is:

What kind of inner world are you living inside?

One built on fear and optimisation?

Or one grounded in presence, relationship, and lived intelligence?

Reclaiming Consciousness

Reclaiming your awareness doesn’t mean rejecting psychology, therapy, or technology.

It means refusing to outsource your sense of self.

It means noticing when your nervous system is being pulled, prodded, and harvested.

It means trusting your body’s feedback.

Your rhythms.
Your intuitions.
Your capacity to feel what is true.

Before the mind was a product, it was a relationship.

With breath.
With land.
With others.
With meaning.

That relationship is still available.

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