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The Body Electric
of the cage, then the other, then climbed to the rear ceiling, then back
down. The animal performed this same activity as many times as it was
stimulated with the signal, up to sixty times an hour, but not blindly—
the creature still was able to avoid obstacles and threats from the domi-
nant male while carrying out the electrical imperative. Another type of
signal has made monkeys turn their heads, or smile, no matter what else
they were doing, up to twenty thousand times in two weeks. As Del-
gado concluded, "The animals looked like electronic toys."
Even instincts and emotions can be changed: In one test a mother
giving continuous care to her baby suddenly pushed the infant away
whenever the signal was given. Approach-avoidance conditioning can be
achieved for any action simply by stimulating the pleasure and pain
centers in an animal's or person's limbic system.
Eventual monitoring of evoked potentials from the EEG, combined
with radio-frequency and microwave broadcasts designed to produce spe-
cific thoughts or moods, such as compliance and complacency, promises
a method of mind control that poses immense danger to all societies—
tyranny without terror. Scientists involved in EEG research all say the
ability is still years away, but for all we could sense of it, it could be
happening right now. Conspiracy theories aside, the hypnotic familiarity
of TV and radio, combined with the biological effects of their broadcast
beams, may already constitute a similar force for mass standardization,
whether by design or not.
.
The potential dangers of televised lethargy are no yawning matter. It's
well known that relaxed attention to any mildly involving stimulus,
such as a movie or TV program, produces a hypnoid state, in which the
mind becomes especially receptive to suggestion. Other inducers of
hypnoid states include light sleep, daydreams, or short periods of time
spent waiting for some predetermined signal or action, such as a traffic
light.
The Central Intelligence Agency funded research on electromagnetic
mind control at least as early as 1960, when the notorious MKULTRA
program, mostly concerned with hypnosis and psychedelic drugs, in-
cluded money for adapting bioelectric sensing methods (at that time
primarily the EEG) to surveillance and interrogation, as well as for find-
ing "techniques of activation of the human organism by remote elec-
tronic means." In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Health
and Scientific Research on September 21, 1977, MKULTRA director
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb recalled: "There was a running interest in what
effects people's standing in the field of radio energy have, and it could
easily have been that somewhere in the many projects someone was try-