Why It Matters
One of the most important things a person can ever learn is how their own mind works — how the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious layers interact and how each can be manipulated. Without this knowledge, people drift through life vulnerable to the designs of others: governments, corporations, media, entertainment industries, and even those closest to them. When you don’t understand the battlefield of the mind, you cannot see when propaganda, gaslighting, or subtle manipulation is happening. You only feel confused, overwhelmed, or pressured — and in that fog, you surrender control.
The conscious mind is where facts and choices live, but it is fragile under pressure. The subconscious builds habits and expectations, and once programmed, it will carry out patterns without questioning them. The unconscious holds our deepest symbols, fears, and identities — and if a false story lodges there, it can shape our entire worldview without us realizing it. That is why propaganda does not need to persuade you completely; it only needs to bypass your reflection and plant seeds deeper in your psyche. Once rooted, those seeds grow into beliefs and instincts that feel like your own, when in truth they were engineered.
Understanding this layered system is the difference between freedom and slavery. If you know how the mind works, you can recognize when repetition, fear, or emotional triggers are being used against you. You can pause instead of reacting. You can reprogram habits instead of letting them run you. You can uproot lies from the unconscious by shining light on them and replacing them with truth. But if you don’t know these things, even those closest to you — a spouse, a friend, a child, or a parent — can use guilt, fear, or love as tools of unconscious manipulation.
This is why “The Human Mind Under Siege” is not just a framework for politics or history — it is a survival skill for life itself. Without it, a person can be conquered without ever realizing a war is being fought. With it, you gain the ability to see through illusions, protect your dignity, and resist becoming an avatar for someone else’s agenda.
Understanding modern propaganda, misinformation, and manipulation requires more than studying politics or history; it requires studying the human mind itself. The battles of our age are not fought only with bombs or ballots but with ideas, emotions, and perceptions. They are waged in the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious layers of the human psyche. This is the theater of the continuous psy-war — the campaign to win, mold, and dominate the hearts and minds of people.
The Conscious Mind: The Battleground of Awareness
The conscious mind is where facts are presented, decisions are debated, and awareness flickers. It is here that most people believe they are in control — weighing options, listening to arguments, and deciding what to think. But this space is fragile. It is easily hijacked by the sheer weight of messaging that comes from governments, corporations, and institutions of authority.
Yet propaganda rarely fights fair. It overwhelms the conscious mind with repetition, authoritative framing, and emotionally charged soundbites. Instead of encouraging critical thought, it bombards the surface level of awareness until people surrender simply out of exhaustion. The conscious mind, rather than carefully analyzing, begins to nod along because “everyone is saying it,” or because the message comes wrapped in urgency and fear.
Think of how commercials work: the same jingle repeated, the same slogans reinforced, until they are no longer heard but absorbed. Governments and corporations use the same playbook. A phrase like “national security,” “climate emergency,” or “for your safety” gets repeated so often that it becomes an unchallenged axiom. The conscious mind, which should be the gatekeeper of reason, becomes a revolving door for whatever the loudest voice declares.
For the average person, this can feel like being caught in a storm of words, images, and headlines. You’re told what’s urgent, what’s safe, what’s dangerous, and what’s patriotic. In this storm, the ability to pause, to question, or to compare competing claims is drowned out. And once the conscious mind is bypassed, the message begins to sink deeper — into the subconscious and unconscious, where it reshapes beliefs, loyalties, and even identity itself.
In this sense, the battle over the conscious mind is not just about today’s headline or tomorrow’s policy. It’s about control of the very space where human beings believe they are thinking freely. And when governments, corporations, and media monopolies saturate that space with carefully managed messaging, they aren’t just winning arguments — they’re quietly colonizing the front door of human thought.
During Covid, the conscious mind was once again bombarded: case counts, charts, mandates, slogans like “follow the science.” Many people tried to think critically, but the sheer velocity of messaging drowned out reflection.
But what does reflection actually mean? Reflection is not just “thinking” — it is the deliberate pause that lets the mind step back and compare. Instead of immediately reacting to a headline or a command, reflection is the process of asking: Does this make sense? Does it match what I already know? Is there another explanation? Reflection looks like silence before agreement, hesitation before repeating, and the willingness to ask a second or third question before moving on. For the average person, practicing reflection can be as simple as stopping after reading a news story and saying: What do they want me to feel? What facts are missing? Who benefits from me believing this?
Without reflection, the conscious mind becomes a conveyor belt — whatever lands on it gets taken in and passed deeper without filtering. With reflection, the conveyor slows down. The mind begins to test, weigh, and consider, which is the root of real critical thinking. Reflection, then, is not a luxury; it is a shield. It is how we prevent information from overwhelming us and slipping unchallenged into belief.
The conscious mind can be outpaced, leaving deeper layers of the psyche vulnerable. What does “outpaced” mean here? It means the information comes faster than we can process it. Imagine trying to drink from a fire hose: the water rushes in so quickly that you can’t swallow — you choke. The same happens with nonstop messaging: charts, updates, warnings, slogans, conflicting expert voices, all pushed out daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute. The brain becomes too tired to analyze, so it defaults to acceptance. The exhaustion is not accidental — it is the design of propaganda. A tired mind seeks shortcuts, and the easiest shortcut is to trust the loudest authority.
This is where the psyche becomes important. Psyche is a Greek word that means the “soul” or “the whole mind.” It is not just thoughts on the surface (conscious), but also the vast reservoir of hidden feelings, instincts, memories, and habits (subconscious and unconscious). The psyche is like a house: the conscious mind is the front door, the subconscious is the living space where patterns and habits live, and the unconscious is the basement where the deepest drives and fears are stored. If the front door is flooded and overwhelmed, what pours in doesn’t just stay there — it seeps into the rest of the house.
When the conscious mind is outpaced, messages slide downward. Into the subconscious, where repetition turns into habit: slogans become automatic responses, repeated phrases become reflexes. And into the unconscious, where fear embeds itself, shaping identity and loyalty without us even knowing. That is why fatigue and overwhelm are such powerful tools for governments, corporations, and propagandists: they don’t just win today’s argument, they quietly shape tomorrow’s beliefs.
The Subconscious Mind: The Storehouse of Habit
The subconscious absorbs patterns, routines, and cultural norms. It is where propaganda begins to take root after bypassing conscious resistance. If every night the television tells you about a Terror Alert, every week you hear warnings of terrorism threats, every month you are told of climate dangers, or if headlines remind you of nuclear weapons, WMDs, wars, threats of death, and even hate from your neighbors or fellow citizens, the subconscious slowly adjusts. And if, on top of that, every day you are reminded to “mask up to save lives” or “get a vaccine to save the world,” your subconscious begins to normalize the message — even when your conscious mind has doubts.
So how does this normalization actually happen? Imagine your subconscious as the background playlist in your life. You might not always notice the song that’s playing, but after hearing it again and again, you start humming it without thinking. Propaganda works the same way. The conscious mind may roll its eyes at a headline — “Not this story again” — but the subconscious is taking notes. It’s learning the rhythm: danger is everywhere, safety depends on compliance, trust the authority.
A simple example: traffic lights. You don’t consciously think “green means go” every time you drive; your subconscious has stored the rule. In the same way, if every broadcast tells you the “threat level is orange,” your subconscious doesn’t just register words — it stores the feeling of being under constant, low-level danger. Soon, “orange” feels normal, and you live in an invisible state of anxiety without needing to be reminded.
Another example: advertising. How many times have you caught yourself craving a burger or a soda without planning it? You weren’t persuaded by a single ad — you were conditioned by repetition. Ads are designed for the subconscious: bright colors, catchy jingles, happy faces. Propaganda uses the same tricks. Fear alerts, pandemic slogans, patriotic symbols — all bypass analysis and settle into habit.
Think of the subconscious like wet cement. If you drop a heavy object once, the mark might fade. But if you press the same shape over and over, the impression hardens. That is why governments, corporations, and media repeat messages endlessly: not to convince your logical mind, but to carve grooves in your subconscious. Once a groove is there, your behavior follows automatically — you stand in line, you comply, you distrust the “enemy,” you fear stepping out of bounds.
Normalization also works through social mirroring. The subconscious pays attention to what others around you are doing. If your neighbors hang flags for war, if your coworkers wear masks, if your church repeats climate or terror slogans, the subconscious takes that in as “this is normal.” Even if your conscious mind objects — “I don’t think this adds up” — the subconscious whispers, “But everyone else believes it, so it must be true.”
Here’s another easy picture: laughter tracks on sitcoms. You may not find the joke funny, but when the “audience” laughs, your subconscious nudges you to smile along. Propaganda uses the same tactic with crowds, applause, hashtags, or TV panel consensus. The subconscious feels safest when it matches the group, so it quietly files the group’s reaction as the “correct” one.
This is why propaganda doesn’t need to prove itself every time. It just needs to repeat itself often enough that your subconscious begins to treat it as background truth. Over time, this reshapes what feels real, regardless of what is actually true.
This is why the Overton Window shifts slowly but effectively. The subconscious stores not just behaviors but “what feels normal.” Yesterday’s unthinkable becomes today’s radical, tomorrow’s accepted, and next week’s policy. Without active questioning, subconscious programming silently aligns citizens with whatever narrative power structures repeat often enough.
The Unconscious Mind: The Deep Soil of Identity
The unconscious is the deepest layer — the soil in which identities, archetypes, and collective myths grow. Once lies are planted here, they become part of a people’s self-understanding. The Iraq War illustrates this with brutal clarity: even decades later, millions unconsciously associate Iraq with 9/11 or terrorism, despite evidence to the contrary. The lie became eternal, lodged in the American psyche as “truth.”
Think of the unconscious like the foundation of a house. You don’t see it, you rarely think about it, but everything you build above it depends on it. If the foundation has cracks or poison poured into it, the entire structure is weakened. When the government and media repeatedly linked “Saddam” with “9/11,” they weren’t just misinforming people; they were pouring cement into the foundation of the American mind. Years later, even if people consciously know there was no connection, the association still feels real — because it was carved into the unconscious.
You can see this in everyday cultural reflexes. Ask an American who grew up in the 2000s about Iraq, and many will immediately think of terrorism, even though Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. This isn’t logic — it’s conditioning. The unconscious connects the dots that were drawn for it, even when those dots don’t actually belong together.
Advertising gives another easy example. Most people know a luxury car doesn’t make someone more attractive. But after decades of ads pairing sleek cars with beautiful models, the unconscious quietly links the two. The association feels natural: “Drive this, become desirable.” That’s how the unconscious works — it stores archetypes, symbols, and emotional pairings that outlast logic.
The same applies to politics. After the Vietnam War, the unconscious link became “protester = unpatriotic.” This archetype was drilled in so deeply that, for many, the very image of someone holding a protest sign still carries a reflexive fear or disgust — as if questioning government policy is the same as betraying the nation. In the same way, the “terrorist Arab” archetype was cultivated after 9/11, and it still colors American perceptions of the Middle East today. People don’t sit down and reason it out; the association already lives in the soil of the unconscious.
Even myths of national identity are stored here. “America as liberator,” “Israel as ally,” “the military as heroes” — these are archetypes that shape how events are interpreted before facts are even considered. So when the Iraq War was sold, it didn’t just ride on fake intelligence; it tapped into unconscious myths: America saves the world, Saddam is the villain, war is necessary for freedom. These were not new arguments — they were pre-loaded archetypes, triggered at the right moment.
For the layperson, the key is this: the unconscious doesn’t argue. It accepts. It is where childhood lessons, cultural symbols, and national myths live. That’s why propaganda aims to bypass debate and sink straight to the unconscious. Once it’s there, it no longer feels like an external message; it feels like part of you. This is your identity.
That’s why so many people still carry beliefs like “Iraq was behind 9/11” or “masks saved the world” or “the CIA protects us” even after contrary evidence emerges. It’s not because they’re stupid — it’s because the unconscious has already accepted the story as part of reality. And once a belief is unconscious, it is no longer questioned.
This is the true danger of propaganda: not simply to mislead in the moment, but to rewire unconscious frameworks so thoroughly that even future generations inherit poisoned assumptions. It is why today’s debates over surveillance, censorship, or foreign wars feel “natural” rather than shocking. The poisoned wells of yesterday have seeped into the unconscious streams of today.
Why the Model Matters
By understanding the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious as distinct but interrelated compartments of the mind, we gain clarity about how psy-ops function. The conscious can be overwhelmed, the subconscious conditioned, and the unconscious colonized. Only through awareness of these mechanisms can individuals and societies resist.
The people who pushed back against Covid stood against a tide not just of bad intelligence, of shifting mandates and slogans like “follow the science,” but of deliberate psychological strategy. Their story reminds us that courage in citizenship is not just about rejecting a single mandate; it is about defending the mind itself. In every era — Covid, Iraq, Ukraine, the financial crises — the real battleground has been the human psyche.
To understand this, think of how the phrase “follow the science” was repeated endlessly. On the surface, it sounded reasonable — who could argue with science? But beneath the surface, it was a psychological cue: don’t question, don’t think, obey. Those who asked questions were shamed, labeled as “anti-science,” or even treated as dangerous. This wasn’t about data alone; it was about using repetition, authority, and fear to overwhelm the conscious mind and sink into the subconscious as “truth.”
For ordinary people, pushing back took tremendous energy. It meant pausing in the storm of constant headlines, reflecting, asking: “Does this make sense? Are the rules consistent? Who benefits from this policy?” Reflection is like hitting the brakes when you’re being swept along by a current. Without it, the current drags you downstream until you no longer remember where you started.
The courage of those who resisted wasn’t just political. It was psychological and even spiritual. They defended their own minds, and by doing so, they helped defend the collective mind of society. Because once fear and slogans take root in the unconscious, they linger long after the crisis has passed — shaping how people react to the next war, the next emergency, the next “mandate.”
The war for the world is the war for the mind. And unless we learn to guard all three levels of it, history will keep repeating its cycles of deception.
Crisis as a Weapon: “Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste”
Rahm Emanuel once infamously said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The phrase is more than political cynicism; it is a blueprint for psychological warfare.
A crisis is, at its root, a rupture in normalcy. It can be a war, a terror attack, an economic crash, a pandemic, or even a manufactured shortage. It is an interruption that destabilizes the conscious mind, saturates the subconscious with fear, and plants myths in the unconscious.
- Conscious Mind: In crisis, the conscious mind becomes flooded. Numbers, images, breaking news tickers, and declarations from authorities overwhelm the ability to process rationally (information overload). Just like a child who will not stop asking the same question, the repetition of slogans (“flatten the curve,” “support the troops,” “stop the spread”) erodes conscious resistance until people simply comply.
- Subconscious Mind: The subconscious records the crisis in patterns. Sirens, color-coded terror alerts, masks, “threat levels,” and endless loops of violent imagery create routines of fear. Even after the conscious mind grows skeptical, the subconscious keeps the crisis alive through habits of caution and compliance.
- Unconscious Mind: The unconscious absorbs the crisis as identity. The Cold War embedded “Communist = Enemy” into the psyche; 9/11 embedded “Arab = Terrorist.” Covid embedded “Mask = Safety, Unmask = Danger.” These archetypes live long after the crisis ends, shaping how whole generations view the world.
A crisis, then, is not just an event — it is a tool of conditioning. Like a tantrum that does not stop, it wears down defenses until fatigue replaces discernment. The people relent, not because they are persuaded, but because they are exhausted.
Guarding the Mind: Defenses Against Psychological Siege
If the mind is the battlefield, then protection requires conscious discipline, subconscious reprogramming, and unconscious renewal.
Guarding the Conscious Mind
- Slow down. Crises thrive on speed. Pause before reacting to headlines, fact-check before sharing, and allow time for reflection.
- Practice questioning. Ask: Who benefits from this message? What assumptions are being planted? What is missing?
- Limit repetition. Break the cycle of constant news feeds and curated “alerts” designed to bypass reflection.
Guarding the Subconscious Mind
- Replace routines of fear with routines of strength: prayer, journaling, healthy habits, and meaningful conversation.
- Be intentional with inputs: the subconscious records what it sees, hears, and feels repeatedly. Replace the noise of fear with words of truth, art, history, and music that build resilience.
- Ritualize truth. Whether through daily reading, meditation, or reflection, build patterns that resist manipulation.
Guarding the Unconscious Mind
- Reclaim archetypes. Refuse to let fear-based myths define identity. Replace “terrorist,” “plague,” or “enemy” with deeper, eternal archetypes: family, courage, faith, dignity, justice.
- Anchor in community. Shared traditions, stories, and spiritual practices become shields against false narratives.
- Seek transcendence. The unconscious is most vulnerable when disconnected from higher meaning. Faith, prayer, and alignment with God’s truth plant roots deeper than propaganda can reach.
Ultimately, the greatest defense against psychological warfare is awareness. To know that the war is happening is the first step. To train the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind to resist is the second. And to align those minds with truth — eternal truth, not manufactured illusion — is the only way to remain free when the siege comes.
Revisiting the Iraq War 2003: A Template for a Crisis & Psychological Warefare
By looking back twenty years, the Iraq War becomes more than a geopolitical event — it becomes a case study in how power colonizes the human mind. The war was not only fought with bombs and troops, but with narratives carefully fed into the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious layers of society.
In the coming days, we will be publishing a series of articles that trace this playbook in detail — how tyrants, institutions, and hidden hands have weaponized the mind itself, turning people into avatars of propaganda. These articles will break down how fear, repetition, and manufactured consensus transform free citizens into unwitting enforcers of the very systems that exploit them.
This is not just about governments lying or corporations profiteering. It is about how those lies and profits are implanted inside of us — shaping our thoughts, our relationships, and even how we see our neighbors. Once we understand how the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious layers are hijacked, we begin to see the terrifying truth: the greatest battlefield is not overseas, but within the human mind itself.
The CIA, government officials, corporations, and international bankers worked in tandem — sometimes openly, often subtly — to construct a reality where war felt inevitable. Money and influence powered the megaphone, while media repeated the script until doubt was drowned out. What we see in hindsight is a template for psychological warfare:
- Conscious level: Numbers, headlines, speeches, and “breaking news” created urgency. The mind was flooded with so much repetition that real reflection became impossible.
- Subconscious level: Phrases like “weapons of mass destruction,” “mushroom cloud,” and “support our troops” burrowed into cultural norms until they became second nature.
- Unconscious level: The deeper archetype took root — Iraq = Terrorism. Even decades later, the association remains hardwired in the American psyche.
By revisiting Iraq, we aren’t just studying history. We are studying the playbook still in use today — in conflicts, pandemics, financial crises, and cultural battles. Once we recognize the pattern, we can see how our minds are still being targeted and manipulated.
