Illustration: Michael Leunig In biology, the amygdala are two clusters of nuclei in the brain. There is a cluster on the left and one on the right. Both hemispheres are intrinsic to memory and emotion. The right holds the most negativity. If we were rats in lab experiments, it would go like this: a shock is dispensed and the rat associates it with an object. This is done repeatedly. Over time, the rat responds in the same manner to the object even if no shock is applied. We are far too civilised to do this to people. Instead we use language to create the shock. We hurl accusations, insinuations and ultimatums, some strident, some almost sibilant. And then we sit back and let the conditioned fear kick in. Asylum seeker. Zap. Refugee. Zap. Radical. Zap. Outsider. Zap. National security. Zap. Sorry I keep saying we, as in the royal we. I mean the government – the one the majority of Australians elected. Team Australia. Zap. Whose side are you on? Zap.

If you are the captain of Team Australia, it's a perfectly natural question to ask. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been asking it of late. This time over the controversy of Zaky Mallah being on Q&A. Mallah has been convicted of threatening to kill AFP officers. It's a serious crime. But should it have precluded his appearance with in the studio or via videolink from a secured location? Does Q&A vet the criminal backgrounds of all its audience members, indeed of its panel guests? Do other talk shows? Do radio broadcasters ask callers first if they have any criminal convictions? The Mallah episode was just one gift in nudging us closer to Amydgala. Abbott was relentless. In the days after Q&A, he said: "I think many, many millions of Australians would feel betrayed by our national broadcaster right now, and I think that the ABC does have to have a long, hard look at itself, and to answer a question which I have posed before - whose side are you on? Whose side are you on here? All too often the ABC seems to be on everyone's side but Australia's." Last year, commenting on the radicalisation of young people, he said: "You don't migrate to this country unless you want to join our team." His position is "everyone has got to be on 'Team Australia' — everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first".

Betrayed. Zap. Whose side? Zap. Team. Zap. Values. Zap. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World wrote that all conditioning "aims at making people like their inescapable social destiny". But is our way of life under threat? Are the foundations of our financial, corporate, political and essential services worlds about to crumble? Listen to the messages, and yes it is. Actually, there comes a point when the message becomes subliminal. A few key words, over and over, and the river of thought and attitudes slowly bends. But does this mean we should start hiding under our beds? The government stresses that we should not do so, but stand up and go about our lives in the face of terror. And there is terror all around us, the incidents and tragic deaths, and evidence of plots are proof that it is everywhere. And this is the trick, the little become the large. And yet we are Australians. We have shared values – of giving everyone a fair go. Citizens in fraternity, one and all.

Indeed in one of the latest pieces of legislation, the government says this: "This Act is enacted because the Parliament recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, and that citizens may, through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia." For allegiance to Australia, some might say, allegiance to the government of the day. George Orwell, who understood better than nearly everyone the creeping insidious nature of power wrote in Nineteen-Eighty Four that "the war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance". An efficient tool of government is secrecy. It is where national security and self-serving ideology bleed into each other. A law came into force last week in which it is now a crime for an "entrusted person" to divulge information about conditions in the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. An open letter signed by former detention workers such doctors, teachers and humanitarian workers has challenged the government to charge them if they do so. Will future historians look at Amygdala and see in such gestures of defiance, the start of an awakening or one more act of futility. Or will they simply write, they lived with conditioned fear and did not know. Zap.