How They Programmed Your Mind Since Childhood (No BS): Socrates, Jesus, and Human Nature vs. Human Programming

This is one of the most profound videos I have ever seen. I agree with it almost completely. It’s very abstract, and people often struggle to connect abstract concepts to our reality. So, let me bring one of those concepts down to a more tangible, real-world level.

13:29

“It’s shaping how you see the world, and ironically, cartoons aren’t just entertainment—they’re commercials disguised as stories. Brightly colored ads and catchy jingles hook you as a child. The characters come with branded merchandise, dolls, costumes, and theme parks. Happiness becomes a transaction tied to the Disney lifestyle.

In childhood, they program you to equate happiness with owning the latest action figure or princess doll. For them, it’s about creating lifelong habits. Children are taught that their worth comes from what they own. Brands become a measure of social status. Owning the right products makes you popular, while lacking them makes you invisible.

Fast forward to adulthood, and you’re still chasing the same lie—spending money on things that provide fleeting pleasure but leave you empty. It’s a smart system, isn’t it? They program you from childhood to equate your self-worth with material things. They’ve trained you to believe that owning more will fill the emptiness. But it never does, and that’s exactly how they keep you buying into the lie.”

Sounds very abstract, doesn’t it? What I regret most in my life is that I was programmed by those manipulators! As a kid, I pressured my parents to buy me new toys, McDonald’s Happy Meals, and other things. All of this was programmed into me by them with the purpose of using my brainwashed desires to trap my parents in a cycle of work.

Looking back, instead of my parents enjoying their lives, they were working overtime to provide me with toys that didn’t even bring me real joy. I only wanted them because I had been brainwashed to want them. This brainwashing is deliberate—it’s about creating “lifelong habits.” But at the same time, brainwashing kids serves as a prison for their parents. A need for material possessions is programmed into children, forcing parents to sacrifice their time, happiness, and personal growth to fulfill those artificially created desires.

We are not programmed to think critically. The first thing I would change is the school system. People don’t think; they simply believe. My greatest hero is Socrates, who, in my eyes, is the greatest Western thinker of all time. As I’ve written before, I believe—alongside many real scholars—that Socrates served as the archetype for Jesus.

Both men, in my opinion, wanted to free people from an oppressive society rooted in religion. Socrates tried to help people understand that God does not exist. Since the power of the rulers of the state was based on the divine authority of gods, undermining that belief threatened their control. By challenging this foundation, Socrates sought to liberate people. However, the rulers saw him as a threat, so they sentenced him to death. They placed him before the judgment of the very people he was trying to free, and those same people found him guilty and deserving of punishment.

In the end, Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment. It is said that if he had chosen exile, he would have been spared. Instead, Socrates famously declared: “Athens should provide me free meals, in perpetuity, at the Prytaneum, the public dining hall of Athens.”

In effect, Socrates’ student Plato decided he did not want to end up like his teacher. So, Plato became the first official propagandist for the oligarchs controlling the population and created the concept of the “Noble Lie.”

In my view, Jesus understood Plato’s works and sought to achieve what Socrates aimed for: freeing people from the control of the oligarchs, which they maintained through religion. However, Jesus recognized from Socrates’ story that people need to believe in something. Instead of convincing people that God does not exist, Jesus redefined God as being outside the material world—a God who is everywhere and listens to everyone. This concept rendered the Church obsolete.

Initially, Jesus’ rule of “no other gods” was interpreted as a rejection of anything material connected to God. Crosses, pictures, temples, and all material objects were not to be associated with God. God would listen to your prayers whether you prayed in bed or in a church, so why was the Church necessary?

The rest of Jesus’ story parallels that of Socrates. Jesus’ ideas undermined the Church, which was a tool of control for the oligarchs, just as Socrates’ ideas challenged the establishment of his time. Both men were judged by the very people they sought to liberate. Socrates and Jesus were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Both had the means to avoid their punishment: Socrates could have chosen exile, and Jesus could have renounced his teachings. However, both chose to die for the ideas that could free people.

“Knowledge will make you be free.”

―Socrates

“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”

—John 8:32

Anyway, that’s my interpretation. We need more critical thinking, which, in my opinion, is what both Socrates and Jesus wanted.

All this Church stuff and today’s belief in Jesus is not aligned with the real teachings of Jesus. The Church and religion were not created by Jesus but by Rome, with the purpose of establishing a “slave morality.” I’ve explained this before—Jesus wanted to create a belief system that excluded the institution of the Church. Like Socrates, Jesus saw the Church as a tool of control for the ruling oligarchs. Later, the same oligarchs whom Socrates and Jesus sought to challenge manipulated Jesus’ teachings to create a Church that directly contradicted his original message. This Church propagated “slave morality.”

I’ve explained before how slave morality worked, but to summarize:

The idea of heaven, where people would live for eternity, was used to pacify the oppressed. If a simple Christian was being oppressed by the oligarch ruling them, the Church’s purpose was to tell that Christian to endure it and avoid protesting because the oligarch’s luxuries would only last for their short time on Earth, while the suffering Christian would enjoy eternal bliss in heaven for being good. This concept of an eternal afterlife for “being good” was twisted into an afterlife for “being obedient,” effectively pacifying the population.

The oligarchs in Rome recognized the power of this concept, which is why Rome adopted Christianity—not because Christianity was inherently great, but because it could be manipulated to control the masses. This manipulation went completely against the real teachings of Jesus. Instead of freeing people from oppression, as Jesus intended, his teachings were repurposed to justify the oppression of the very oligarchs he sought to oppose.

This is why people misunderstand Jesus and religion. These are manipulated ideas, just as I explained in my last post about the misrepresentation of evolution to justify economic theories. Here, you see the misrepresented ideas of Jesus—ideas that were originally meant to free people from oligarchic control but were later used to justify the oppression perpetuated by the same oligarchs Jesus wanted to resist.

What we truly lack is critical thinking, which is essential for freedom. Here’s what society really needs:

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”

― Socrates

Knowing yourself means understanding how much of who you are is not truly you, but rather programming that influences you. Most people believe they think for themselves, but in reality, they are not thinking independently. They are not truly themselves but rather someone shaped by the influence of the programming they’ve received.

“The only good is knowledge (truth/understanding), and the only evil is ignorance (lies/belief).”

― Socrates

We annihilate our true selves to fit better into society. People talk about human nature, but in reality, they have suppressed their own human nature and replaced it with programming designed to justify the status quo. Later, they point to themselves and say, “It’s human nature, and that’s why things are as they are.” In truth, they don’t understand human nature because their authentic self was suppressed in childhood and replaced with the programming they were fed.

“In the upbringing of the Herd, humanity’s almost boundless suggestibility will be scientifically exploited. Systematically, from earliest infancy, its members will be assured that there is no happiness to be found except in work and obedience; they will be made to believe that they are happy, that they are tremendously important beings, and that everything they do is noble and significant. For the lower species the earth will be restored to the centre of the universe and man to pre-eminence on the earth.”

― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow