From http://www.channel4.com/culture/micr...rrenbrown.html
"Derren Brown, mind-manipulator extraordinaire (who sparked the most ever complaints to Ofcom for his recreation of a séance on Channel 4 last year), has taken his latest debunking mission to America. In a country where his mind control skills are unknown, he sets out once again to show us, not that our beliefs are wrong, but just how easy it is to dupe people into believing 10 impossible things before breakfast.
Seal of approval
The five experiments he sets up vary from standard tests for psychic ability to physical methods of religious conversion. They cover all areas of belief, organised religion and purchasable salvation. In each case his stated aim is to get a reputable authority to endorse the results of the experiments in order to demonstrate the validity of people's experiences in the confusing world of belief. By securing this validation, he aims show how little such endorsements mean, even if they are genuinely motivated. After all, we know that heâ??s not a Messiah â?? heâ??s just very good as pretending to be one.
But there is another agenda in the programme: to encourage people to investigate what they believe more rigorously. Derren himself used to be an evangelical Christian until his mid-20s. Then he started to realise that his faith was just as vulnerable to suggestion as any of the New Age theories that annoyed him so much. His faith was rocked and he abandoned it. That could certainly be one response to this programme since, while we know that his amazing acts are done by suggestion, they are immediately endorsed by almost all the 'authority' figures he approaches.
Good questions
Derren Brown causes a lot of anger (and complaint!) through his experiments because he causes a lot of fear. Fear that your whole life has been based on a lie, that you have been manipulated, that there is no comfortable higher authority making sense of your world â?? or that there is. This is powerful stuff. But what, after all, is wrong with his questioning of people's beliefs? If you havenâ??t investigated what you believe independently and looked at the arguments standing against you, your beliefs have little validity. Investigation doesnâ??t have to mean the end of your world view, it can be a very constructive process, providing confirmation of what you already thought, or showing you new avenues for development.
Derren Brown is right. Many people are being duped, innocently maybe, and this programme exposes how easy it is to do that. However, it doesnâ??t necessarily follow that all the belief systems he investigates are fraudulent â?? just that a fraudster could use them. It is up to us to ensure that we approach our beliefs with an open mind; that we allow them to be challenged and perhaps through that learn more about what real truth is".
Anyone have any thoughts on this subject matter?
