Directed consciousness: how you become a victim by believing you are informed
When consciousness is broken, it needs no chains or shackles; it suffices for it to be stripped of its language, estranged from itself, subjected to the desires of those who dictate what it should see, hear or believe. The media — especially in the age of glowing screens — do not present truths, but something that resembles them, what the context allows to be disseminated and what the market consents to promote. Between one thing and another, the receiver ceases to be a witness and becomes a spectator, from being free to becoming a malleable tool whenever war needs an audience.
The recent war between Israel and Iran — or more precisely, the psychological war between the two — has shown that the first battle is not fought in the sky or underground, but in the minds. Not only do missiles fall, but the truth is also fragmented, bombarded, launched and recycled in sophisticated media kitchens whose goal is not only to convince you, but to deactivate you. To turn you into a fearful, angry, confused spectator with no certainties beyond what you see on the news.
In this media war, we saw how myths are constructed from incidents and how the Arab public's consciousness is reconfigured through binary language: you are either with us or against us, you either support the resistance or you are part of the axis of evil. What was important was not what happened, but how the event was narrated, how it was adapted to the audience, how scenes were mutilated and how fragments were reassembled to turn them into heroic or catastrophic episodes according to emotional needs. What we see is not what happened, but what we were allowed to see. And that is where consciousness collapses, losing its capacity for discernment and renouncing its critical mission.
According to the ‘spiral of silence’ theory of German researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, individuals tend to keep their opinions to themselves when they feel they differ from the dominant consensus, which is carefully constructed by the media. In times of war, the only voice that is heard is that of the most powerful network, the one capable of manufacturing the illusion of consensus. Other voices are silenced, divergent opinions are marginalised, and bias becomes a state of mind that no one questions.
From the perspective of media psychology, we are faced with what is known as ‘perceptual conditioning’, where the emotional response of the recipient is reprogrammed through the repetition of images with the same emotional charge: crying, ruins, hymns, exclamations, headlines that consolidate heroes and victims. These tools are not innocent; they target the viewer's emotional system, placing them in a state of continuous reception of messages that they repeat without thinking.
In this environment, human beings not only receive the news, but become the ‘result’ of it. Their minds, fears, positions and even emotions cease to emanate from themselves and are designed from outside. As French philosopher and historian Gustave Le Bon said: ‘The public does not think, it reacts.’ That is why, when consciousness is defeated, thought is defeated, and vocabulary disappears from the mind like the earth beneath our feet.
Take Al Jazeera's coverage of the conflict between Iran and Israel as an example. When the US base at Al-Udeid in Qatar was attacked, silence reigned. A heavy silence that neither condemns nor celebrates. Language was suffocated. Because the media discourse previously loaded against Iran left the platform with few options when the war scenario moved to its own territory. And therein lies the crisis: not in the bombing, but in the structural contradiction between what one wants to say and what one cannot acknowledge.
We do not live only in the ‘post-truth’ era, but in the ‘post-meaning’ era, where messages are meticulously crafted not to fill minds, but to empty them. Journalism, in its psychological dimension, is attention management, anger redirection, and control of collective perception. What is said on the screens is only part of the story; what is not said is what defines the real nature of the conflict.
When you are told that ‘Iran has bombed,’ it is not just about the fact itself, but what you are going to think about it: Who will you love? Who will you hate? Who will you blame? Who will you elevate as a hero? And who will you accuse of treason? That is what the media does: it does not report the event, it shapes you through the event.
The collapse of consciousness is not instantaneous; it is a silent accumulation that begins with blind faith in the screen, passes through constant repetition, and becomes the belief that it is not necessary to investigate, verify, or question. Over time, those who ask questions are suspicious, those who doubt are traitors, and those who think differently are enemies of the state.
And there we return to the essential idea: ‘Defeated consciousness cannot find its words when truth strikes its heart.’ Because those words no longer belong to them. They were confiscated long ago, when they surrendered their minds to platforms that spoke on their behalf. When truth falls on an unarmed mind, it leaves no choice but silence or lamentation, with no capacity for analysis, for its critical tools have been ruined, its perceptual systems devastated by waves of images, phrases, speeches, chants and dramatic montages.
In the end, the real danger lies not only in ‘media deception,’ but in ‘media omission’: when half the truth is told and the other half is buried in the archive of the unsaid. That is why the real battle is not only fought on the physical terrain, but also in the mind: in how we understand the world and in our ability to recover the language that makes us free human beings, and not simply eyes staring at screens that decide when we should get angry, shut up or applaud.
Abdelhay Korret, Moroccan journalist and writer