What Is Propaganda?
Propaganda is information designed to influence rather than inform—often 99% truth mixed with subtle deception. This blog explores how propaganda works like slow poisoning, shaping beliefs through conditioning, neuroscience, and repetition, and why building a
mental immune system is essential for those committed to
Becoming Maverick.
Who is Propaganda?
Interestingly, while I admire the artist Propaganda, the concept of propaganda itself is generally not a good thing.
The Nature of Propaganda
Over coffee one day, a friend explained propaganda to me using an illustration that has stayed with me ever since.
He asked me to imagine a glass of clean water. Then imagine a single drop of poison being added to it. For propaganda to work, he said, it needs to be 99% truth and 1% deception.
If you drank that water once, you wouldn’t detect the poison. It wouldn’t have an immediate or noticeable effect on your body. But if you continued to drink that same poisoned water over time, the poison would slowly accumulate. Eventually, you would start getting sick without knowing why. If the exposure continued long enough, it could even be fatal.
This is not just a metaphor. Historically, murders have been committed this way—through slow, undetectable poisoning.
There are documented criminal cases involving
thallium poisoning, sometimes referred to as the “poisoner’s poison.” Thallium is colourless, tasteless, and accumulates in the body over time. Victims often experience vague symptoms—fatigue, hair loss, gastrointestinal distress, and neurological issues—long before the cause is discovered.
Several high‑profile cases illustrate this clearly:
Graham Frederick Young (United Kingdom), known as “
The Teacup Poisoner,” used thallium to poison family members and later co‑workers in the 1960s and 1970s. He administered small doses over time, causing prolonged illness before death. Because symptoms mimicked natural disease, suspicion was delayed.
George Trepal (United States) poisoned his neighbour’s family in
Florida in 1988 by contaminating
Coca‑Cola bottles with thallium. Multiple family members became ill over weeks, and one child died. The staggered, escalating symptoms complicated early diagnosis.
Zhu Ling (
China), a university student, was poisoned with thallium in the 1990s. Although she survived, the poisoning caused severe and permanent neurological damage. The case remains unresolved, but it is one of the most studied examples of thallium’s long‑term bioaccumulative effects.
In these cases, perpetrators relied on repeated low doses, knowing the body would slowly store the toxin. The damage became evident only once critical biological systems began to fail—often too late for full recovery.
That is the danger of propaganda. It rarely comes as an obvious lie. It hides inside truth.
From a scientific perspective, this mirrors how certain poisons and toxins behave in the human body. Substances such as heavy metals (like lead or mercury), fat‑soluble toxins, and some organic poisons are not immediately expelled. Instead, they bioaccumulate—stored in organs, fatty tissue, or the nervous system. Each exposure may be small, but over time the total load crosses a threshold, and systems begin to fail.
The body often compensates at first, masking the damage. Symptoms only appear once the damage is advanced. By then, reversal becomes far more difficult.
Conditioning: Nature’s Version of Propaganda
In the natural sciences, there is a concept known as conditioning. It is a highly effective method of instruction.
Small bits of information are introduced and repeatedly reinforced until they influence behaviour. At first the change is slow, almost unnoticeable. Over time, however, the effect compounds, and eventually the behaviour or trait becomes permanent—and very difficult to reverse.
In many ways, conditioning is nature’s equivalent of propaganda.
Psychology and neuroscience help explain why this is so effective. The human brain is wired for pattern recognition and repetition. Neural pathways that are activated repeatedly become stronger through a process known as
neuroplasticity. In simple terms: what we rehearse, we reinforce.
Psychiatry recognizes that repeated exposure to distorted or harmful beliefs can contribute to
anxiety disorders,
learned helplessness, depression, and maladaptive coping mechanisms. When false narratives are repeated often enough—especially during childhood—they become part of a person’s internal model of reality.
Epigenetics adds another layer. Research shows that prolonged stress, fear‑based messaging, and chronic negative conditioning can influence gene expression—not by changing DNA itself, but by switching certain genes on or off. In other words, long‑term exposure to harmful environments and ideas doesn’t just affect thoughts; it can influence biology across generations.
Conditioning itself is neutral. It can be good or bad, depending on what is being reinforced. The problem with propaganda is that, by design, it carries deceptive intent. Its end goal is rarely the well‑being of the person being conditioned.
A World of Constant Influence
From birth, we are all being conditioned!
Some of this conditioning is genuinely good. It helps us become effective, productive, and responsible contributors to society. But a significant portion of it is propaganda—messages shaped by people or systems that do not have our best interests at heart.
These ideas slowly shape how we think, what we believe, and how we behave, often without us ever realizing it.
Becoming Maverick
If propaganda works through slow conditioning, then freedom requires intentional re‑conditioning.
To reverse the effects of propaganda, we must introduce small amounts of truthful, healthy information, repeated consistently over time, until our behaviour begins to change and better outcomes are produced.
This is the process of Becoming Maverick.
Not dramatic overnight change—but small, deliberate shifts that compound over time.
Building a Mental Immune System
Once we begin to break free from harmful conditioning, we must also build a defence system. Freedom is fragile. Without protection, we can easily be trapped and enslaved again.
We need what I would call a mental immune system.
What are the antibodies against propaganda? They are:
- Reliable information
- Reputable sources
- Correct data
- Verifiable truth
If you find that you are consistently being defeated in a particular area of life, it may be worth asking:
What propaganda have I been exposed to?
Because often, the battle is not in our circumstances—but in the ideas we have unknowingly consumed.
Yes, you can do this.
Enjoy your journey of Becoming Maverick.
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