Fundamental to neuroscience is the realization that sensory perception is constructive; we create a world by combining the registrations of our retinas and inner ears (etc.) with our stored experiences. Percepts are by nature biased, hence whatever the clever admen have managed to wangle into our synapses will corrupt further percepts from the get-go, before they've even been interpreted. It's therefore a good idea to skeptically question just about everything we perceive as "reality." An example that currently seems vulnerable to such skepticism is the idea that the US government is truthful with its citizens. When documents are ultimately declassified, they almost universally reveal how agencies like the CIA lie for decades until those lies are ultimately revealed. Yet the outrage, the calls for abolition of these rogue unelected organizations are often heavily criticized as excessive -- a testament to just how effective that brainwashing is, that it passively accepts granting great destructive powers to an org with a consistent track record of mendacity.
Indeed notice the shocking news that two of the hijackers in the 9/11 attack who were in the airplanes that crush into the Twin Towers were CIA agents were CIA agents. Notice how little reaction it has had from the public (and of course the mainstream media who serve the powers) - mainly because processing such new information could destroy the whole "house" of perception and belief.
The foundations of Descartes'"Method" was to doubt everything. Absolutely everything. The problem is that this method is very costly in brain energy. It requires educated minds, whereas the tendency is now to cultivate scatter brains: plutocrats prefer to deal with pigeons.
The problem for civilization right now is the opposite. Internet algorithms use the Hebbian mechanism in the most perverse manner: the more neuronal circuitry repeats something, the better the involved synapses get at it, and the more the circuitry loves itself, this endless repetition, be it only because it's more economical. All intellectual fascism systems throughout history have known this, but now it has become literally industrial. I buy shoes and then when I read poetry on my device, it wants to sell me shoes.
Therefrom a tribalization of society, and ever more reduced minds... Who only knows what they have been exposed to, and what they have been exposed to is what, once they believe in it, will make potentates on the other side of the planet automatically wealthy.
An aggravating factor is that hate is so satisfying... And little studied, so this seductress takes even educated individuals unawares...
I'd love to have heard more on your opinions of the 24/7 pushed Covid narrative. I hope this piece means you applied critical thinking to the blatant nonsense rammed into us.
This article certainly explains why those who didn't question it, continue not to despite the almost daily revelations of the lies told.
One piece of bogus Covid propaganda deals with the "start date" of virus spread. The timeline has always been off. As Caitlin writes often, the narrative is FUBAR.
Caitlin's written about it. She writes about propagandists who use Covid as a tool to divert attention from other issues, such as global nuclear war, ecocide - or the ruthless exploitation of labor by the wealthy owner classes.
I'd suggest that what happened was far more than a diversion. The biggest transfer of wealth in history, it was a money, power and control grab in its own right. We are currently passively watching the WHO award themselves the power to determine what is good for us. Their latest concerning surveillance. A rather dubious priority if "health" is truly what they are concerned with. But it should be clear to all by now that it is not the case. Like all regulatory agencies around the world, they have been captured and serve only to do what their owners demand.
Yeah I know. People go on and on and on about Covid. Often the same people who rarely discuss the MIC, the never ending Imperial wars, or the exploitation of the billionaire classes, or how wealth inequality in the US is the worst it has been since the gilded robber baron era. Often the same people who never talk about the benefits of government, or how regulations are necessary in a free society, to protect the equality of all citizens. Often the same people who told us not to worry about, or talk about the impact of greed based human resource exploitation on the planetary ecosystem.
Yup, and you can add the climate emergency to that list.
The way the COVID debate is framed (and polarized) makes it impossible to understand the real issues (science and public health) - and many voices either don't understand how science and public health systems work, or intentionally attack both using sham arguments about lies and conspiracies, when other factors are involved (uncertainty, new science, ethics of mandates, etc).
If by "people go on and on about Covid" you are referring to those that screamed like deranged lunatics at anyone questioning (and punished for doing so) the pushed narrative, and that anyone not wanting to be vaccinated be treated with the same distain as Lepers, I'd agree.
I've a hunch though, that you are referring to those that were and continue to be discriminated against.
I've heard the CIA now has a new story about the Nord Stream pipeline blowing up, this time the Ukrainians did it on their own. Apparently their previous CIA analysis must have been wrong. Maybe Covid had something to do with it? I guess we should trust the new story now.
Do let me know when Germany is going to invoke NATO Article 5 and demand that NATO make war on Ukraine, the way the US did after 9/11?
For that matter, if the CIA has changed its story so many times already, why are we supposed to believe the CIA this time? I suppose they'll say that they lied for our own good. So why should we believe the CIA when they assure us that Russia blew the Novaya Kakhovaya Dam? How do we know that they aren't lying now?
For our own good and out the purest, most noble and selfless of motives, of course.
I think Ukraine was the most recent story I heard, but there may be others. I think the multiplicity of stories may indicate a business opportunity for a new board game. The players move around a track as with Parcheesi or Monopoly, but after each move they have to take a card, of which half debunk the player who picked it. That player then has to move back to the "under the bus position" while the other surge ahead to construct new theories. Other cards might permit the player to introduce new theories, as about COVID, 9/11, or the Kennedy assassinations.
A hypoethetical, not with respect to COVID or the mRNA vaccines, suppose a vaccine completely blocked transmission of a deadly virus with a 25% fatality rate, but 1 in a million children who got the vaccine died. Would you support a vaccine mandate for your child?
Similar question on mandatory quaranteen and contact tracing of those who have the virus.
Now suppose that studies of communication showed that "vaccine hesitancy" would kill millions of people and that certain forms of false or misleading information led to vaccine hesitancy. Would you support or agree that "official" government science should be "propagandized" throughout the society? That false information discouraged or even suppressed or even censored? When would those false or misleading criticisms become the equivalent of yelling fore in a crowded theater?
You see, the real arguments are nuanced and require consideration of individual rights versus the larger public interest.
Bill, your hypothetical is wanting to dictate circumstances that are completely impossible, so I see little point in entertaining your question. You go on to point out that "arguments are nuanced" which I agree with. Unfortunately, the actions taken in the last three years allowed for no nuance, let alone scientific and medical expert opinions that should have been considered, especially when preaching "trust the science".
I fear you comment is a good example of what Caitlin's post describes. How propaganda and acceptance of same prevents people from being able to accept facts.
Rather than a hypothetical, the conversation should revolve around what happened to be meaningful. Your comment infers the greater good for the larger public interest is paramount. That in itself isn't a bad thing except this ideal was not a consideration to the draconian actions taken in the name of Covid. It was fairly obvious that the actions taken would result in more death and misery than the virus threatened. Early on, organizations such as OXFAM, predicted this. But suddenly it was as if the masses had previously thought themselves immortal and that the only threat to them was Covid. What created that public opinion other than 24/7 fear porn/propaganda?
According to the WHO, tobacco products kill over 8 million people each year. Where's the outrage? Perhaps these people only have themselves to blame? Except 1.2 million of them are victims of 2nd hand/passive smoke.
Covid was used for a wealth, power and control grab. The tool to make this successful was fear. What bewilders me is that people in 2019 who knew that Big Pharma really didn't give a damn about our health and politicians were serial liars; suddenly thought they were our saviors and the bastions of truth.
And please don't come back at me for ignoring regulatory capture, bias, and Big Pharma and industry corruption of the science. I've battled all that for decades. I am posing questions that assume that those real problems don't exist.
Western propaganda is so effective because it comes from authority figures. A newborn baby instinctively trusts its parents, especially the mother, so that trusting authority figures is ingrained in us from birth. It's a survival instinct that all animals are born with. Contributing to this natural tendency is that prior to the age of large, concentrated populations, dishonesty and incompetence in chosen leaders was readily detected and expeditiously dealt with, such that leaders were actually held to standards that today's 'leaders' can't even pretend to. Thus, leaders effectively held to standards that benefitted the entire tribe -- a win/win -- was the norm for most of the human experience, so that we've culturally evolved to instinctively trust authority figures, be they elected or imposed. Now we find ourselves in a radically changed world where the old reflexive trust in authority is counter to the wellbeing of the masses. Like they say, old habits die hard, which is why we have to try harder.
I notice the use of the term _Western_ propaganda here (and elsewhere). The difference between modern propaganda and the classical sort (tribal and religious beliefs) is the development of industrialism, not its geographical locations. Those who have adopted industrial methods have also adopted the modern models of propaganda; these include many non-Western cultural communities, such as those of China and Japan. Industrialism multiplies the evolved tendency towards authority and submission which seems to have enhanced the survival chances of humans living under tribal conditions. It's going to be difficult to change that if out current response to that history has been encoded in our genes.
I say "Western" because it's the dominant narrative that rationalizes the worst behavior of the Western empire, and I'm primarily addressing a Western audience. That said, I agree with your take on the role of industrialism in non-Western propaganda but would add that the industrial model wasn't "adopted" by China and Japan, it was imposed on them by the West, and I'm reasonably sure that non-Western propaganda doesn't serve the project of world conquest, judging by non-Western behavior, in contrast to the West.
I would hesitate to deny the Japanese and Chinese agency. The Japanese adoption of Western industrial methods in the late 19th century is legendary; they went from a backwater to a world power in a couple of generations. Imperial conquest was often mentioned by their leadership. The Chinese were caught napping but seem to have more than caught up once they apprehended the problem.
As per conquest and its propaganda, I'm not referring to last century's China and Japan. And yes, Japan ran with the new industrial methods -- after being intimidated and manipulated into opening its ports to the West.
For many people their beliefs are a safe harbor anchored in calm waters behind break waters. To go beyond the breakwater into the open sea of inconvenient truths is life in full sail and they are not prepared for the passage.
Are you familiar with the concept popularized in Asian cultures of Double Discipline?
External Discipline, i.e. force, coercion, punishment and reward.
Internal Discipline, i.e. a responsibility for self and one's impact on others, an internal code of values.
This is taught in many martial Arts. China's leaders embrace the concept today. They are very aware of their history rising to power and the cultural revolution, Great Leap Forward where external discipline was primarily applied to force the idea of collectivism onto a population of individuals. Violence, depravation, death visited on the disobedient in a frenzy to force obedience to a declared collective will. The death toll of their external discipline exceeds all other democides to date.
When the fervor of forced discipline ebbed, due to the effect that extreme fear and intimidation had, as well as the elimination of the most disobedient China embraced the development of internal discipline studies. Getting citizens to voluntarily obey government and societal policy as "the right thing to do." Reserving their right to apply external discipline as conditions warrant, but leaning into internal discipline as their primary means of population control.
This is an important concept to understand as we contemplate authoritarian/totalitarian governing models and changes being forced onto nations that historically value individualism, freedom as sovereigns.
Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes compel obedience. And apply external discipline to achieve it. They consider themselves the parents and the people their children. And unruly children get punished, while obedient children get rewards. This is their thinking and justification. And their thinking assumes they possess the wisdom, the truth, the proper goals and values that others must obey. An unassailable elite, above question, possessing the only truth and values that merit unflinching obedience to. They and they alone are entitled to rule, impose their agendas on the people who dare not question, for the collective good as they ordain.
China considers itself more enlightened these days because it has a largely internally disciplined population. And so they rarely roll out external discipline. But how did they transform a population of sovereign individuals needing lots of external discipline to a voluntary collectively obedient population?
They applied human psychology through a behavioral science model of propaganda campaigns. Reeducation camps for the unruly and insolent. Framing choices with psychological appeals to virtue, popularity, authority, experts, fear. Managing minds through manipulation, coercion and more subtle framing of choices, issues, linguistics, symbols, appeals, nudges. So people would become obedient through self-discipline that elevates the collective's wishes above self.
I know collectivists find this description dreamy. Utopian to them. But it is built on a false and unstable construct. Because it relies heavily on propaganda, deceit and turning over one's own free will to others. A population in an artificially constructed state of internal discipline has been effectively brainwashed. But it is fragile. And the more removed it becomes from the natural world, as propaganda and reality become sufficiently disconnected the population will break from their propaganda indoctrination.
Authoritarian/totalitarian governments must then apply external discipline to compel obedience in that situation. This cycle may go on repeatedly. But it is unstable. It is not the natural order of mankind no matter what collectivist dream. They are not parents of adult children. They have no right to infantilize citizens disciplining them with punishments and rewards or repeated psychological attacks, propaganda, on their minds to gain "voluntary" compliance.
The double discipline model is fine and appropriate for actual parents to raise their children. But it is tyranny, hard and soft, when used to govern citizens.
God created man in his image, to be free. To live in peace and harmony with the earth he created. We were not created by man in the image of other men. We are not compelled by God to obey the whims and demands of a self-proclaimed elite declaring a collective good overrides our own individual values. God did not create man to be slaves to other men. Even if the masters believe they are benevolent stewards of their slaves, their property. Authoritarian/totalitarian regimes believe they own the people they rule over as they own land, a machine or cattle. The parent-child model only works because childhood demands it. Applied to adults it's slavery.
The strongest prison isn't made of concrete and steel. It is the mind. Propaganda wielded by behavioral scientists, psychologists on sovereign adults is an attack the mind to control them, to enslave them.
The double discipline model for governance is an attack on God's design for man. Internal discipline as practiced by government is a false construct because it doesn't authentically come from within the individual. True internal discipline cannot be taught, it must come from within. False internal discipline designed by behaviorists using propaganda is inauthentic.
And so it will remain in conflict with government campaigns to impose it. Those tensions are unsustainable. We are God's children, not the children of government. And God created us to be free, not slaves to mind prisons created by arrogant men.
Since WW II, How many people did the Chinese extricate from extreme poverty to a reasonable standard of material conditions? How many countries did they invade and kill people? How many military bases do they have? How many countries have they conducted "democracy promotion" and propaganda and color revolutions? Does Chinese foreign aid and investment come with the same "conditionalities" to extract wealth and resources, promote corporate market controls, and impose austerity on the population as US, World Bank and IMF money does?
Freedom from and freedom to are very different concepts, eh? (positive and negative freedom). And By what criteria are civilizations to evaluated?
Oh. I didn't realize that the only body counts that matter are from invading other countries. Killing over 50 million of their own citizens was just "breaking a few eggs to make an omelette" I suppose.
The freedom I'm most attached to is my freedom to live, freely. And the freedom of my friends, family, neighbors and countrymen to live, freely. For totalitarians like Bill Wolfe, though, mass murder on scales never seen before in human history, democide, in the name of "progress" is a small price to pay to advance the human condition by constant applications of "internal discipline" propaganda behaviorist indoctrination campaigns and "external discipline" to break the will of selfish individuals and nonconformists who threaten the tyrannical rule of the collective.
In NO way is my description of China's double-discipline system of governance a defense of the current American regime experience. Which was led astray by the same totalitarians as those who conducted two world wars in the 20th Century. The US has not been governed by its constitution for over a century now. And a great many Americans are waking up to that sad fact that we have been subjected to the most sophisticated propaganda campaign of psychological warfare against our minds for at least that long. The US Constitution was a work of art and a righteous governing document that protected individual sovereignty rights and responsibilities. Freedom is the natural state of man, as God created us. Totalitarianism of any stripe, Chinese Communism, American Fascism, oligarchical dictators is evil, an abomination in the eyes of God.
Communist China is godless. It is evil and wicked to its own people. Psychologically controlling its people and using carrots and sticks to train them to obey like animals. It is an inherently weak system, fragile, a house of cards. It has no moral foundation, only the projection of strength. By intimidation and manipulation. It does not welcome free and fair debate of issues and ideas it considers foundational. While it has robust debate within those guardrails, dozens of news outlets with different opinions allowed, the foundational issues are strictly off-limits and produce severe consequences for engaging. That is not freedom. That is tyranny.
And the US is the same in practice today as China. I'm not in any way defending it in these times. Rather, making the case that the original US Constitution constructed a republic to assert individual freedom, sovereignty as the law of the land, with a small government and large religious role in public life. God in public and private life is a necessary precursor to freedom. The absence of God requires totalitarianism, without a moral compass in man his animal instincts are incompatible with civilization. A moral compass that comes from an individual's relationship with God. Not an amoral compass implanted in them that reflects the values of other men.
"Even then, Duranty dismissed more diligent writers’ reports that people were starving. “Conditions are bad, but there is no famine,” he wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March of 1933 describing the “mess” of collectivization. “But – to put it brutally – you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”"
This is you, Mr. Wolfe. Invalidates you. Exposes your immorality. Your wickedness and evil intentions. At least I admit the US's failings. Your silence as to these facts reflects a smug self-justification for the murder of 50-70 million people, you consider collateral damage. Broken eggs. Making you, Mr. Bill Wolfe, human sewage and detritus.
"So the simple answer to why people cling to beliefs instilled by imperial propaganda is because that's just how minds work." CJ
I disagree. People cling to beliefs from on high because they are mentally lazy. Hell, my first day of school when I was 5 some dumb Polish Catholic kid knocked over my wood block fort. I stood up and slugged the kid in the nose. He bled. He cried like a baby. And I had to kneel in front of the class for two hours until lunch.
My first day of school!
So I knew at the age of 5 that authoritarian figures were full of shit.
In first grade at the age of 6 I was the only kid in my class who didn't march up to the front of the church and get the cross of ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday. I hid out in the bathroom.
To hell with the crowd, the mob, the herd. What a bunch of lazy gullible shites!
Patrick Powers: It depends on where you are on the planet or even in the uSA. But I'd say in the uSA the median exception to the herd instinct is around 3-6%.
I've noticed myself that if there is a popular proposition before the public, like "Let's invade Vietnam", and it is strongly backed by established leadership, the hard-core dissidence rate is about 5%. Almost no matter what it is. I don't know about other countries, ethnic groups, etc., but it might be universal.
There is a joke about the herd instinct that goes like this: A fellow dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates and encounters St. Peter, who says, "I'm sorry, you can't come in. Heaven is full and there's no room for you. You'll have to try the other place."
The dead guy thinks about it for a while and then starts jumping up and down and yelling, "Gold! Gold has been discovered in Hell!" He keeps it up and faces begin to pop out of the windows. Pretty soon people start leaving Heaven to investigate: first a trickle, then a crowd, then a rushing mob. After awhile there's nobody left. St. Peter says to the dead guy, "Well, there's plenty of room here now. You can come in."
But the dead guy goes the other way. "Where are you going?" asks St. Peter.
"Hell," says the dead guy. "There might be something to that story."
No, that's the simple English explanation of that your midwit Puritan moral whinings are inerently wrong, have been wrong ever since Calvin set pen to paper, and will continue to be wrong, and that actual economic facts will never care about your feelings.
SSP: What is a "midwit"? And that's not how you spell inherently. Are you talking about Calvin the cartoon character? Do you always write sentences of paragraph length with lots of commas? Are there any other economic facts besides actual ones? Which parts of society are stinky?
This is brilliant and adds to my understanding of why propaganda works. I'll definitely be citing it in a future episode. I also think that shared superiority is the bribe in every belief system. 'You and me, we're smarter than them' is the subtext. But the backfire effect is really interesting. I've termed it cognitive dissonance but I think it's the same thing. When something conflicts with our core belief that we're a good person, we do the work of justifying it.
In 2007, many true believers in the financial markets were handed pink slips because they trusted familiar institutions and what seemed like authoritative administrative procedures and leaders. Thousands lost everything.
I think the faith and certainty of the victims of the 2008 crash is identical to the faith and certainty of the true believers in Western Liberalism. People are whistling as they saunter through the cemetery.
The evidence of misplaced confidence in a declining empire is not the abrupt shock that devastated investors experienced in a fraudulent market. It is the gradual, steady realization that the media lies, the police are bought, the teachers are underpaid by design, the church is complicit, civility is hiding under a bed, guns and drugs are more available than clean water, and every last drop of the cost of living is wrung out of more and more people, and still the advertisers sell their wares as if there is nothing wrong, and the military budget grows and grows and grows.
It is the difference between the frog dropped into boiling water that immediately jumps out, and the frog that is placed in warm, soothing water, that is gradually brought to a boil, and the frog expires.
Propaganda works because most humans are too lazy to think for themselves or at least question things. After the last decade or two, it is impossible to trust most institutions, agencies or government. We blindly trusted these fools and prison is our reward.
"Too lazy" is too harsh. Modern life in developed countries is designed such that most people are overwhelmed with daily demands - jobs, family, etc. In these circumstances it is unrealistic to expect people finding time/strength to question and educate themselves re every single issue. To expect mostly exhausted folks by the end of the day to dive into some research instead of watching a sports game to unwind is highly naive.
The system is designed around that and it is highly effective.
Once you start down that road, you have to start making choices. If the society and system that we live under does so much evil, how much will I compromise with it?
These choices can have very real personal and professional consequences. Try not paying taxes and see what happens. "Bartelby the Scrivener" it ain't.
Even if you do compromise, you are left with a guilty conscience.
By contrast, if you go along with the crowd, you can avoid those tough choices and face no consequences, and your conscience stays relatively untroubled, for the time being at least. Even in the worst case, you can say to yourself that you did what every other Good German did under the circumstances.
Interesting. Given we are all so immersively submerged in propagnda from a young age, what do you think is\are the major factors in provoking awakening? Is it purely genetic disposition, is it environmental, and if , as probable, it is a mix of both, what do you think are the genetic and environmental factors that helps un-propagandize more?
Factors provoking awakening? Here are a few possible explanations for the existence of “the awakened”. (Only one of the three below is the correct answer.)
1. The awakened are part of a genetic experiment by the CIA/aliens/Satan. Of course, just to be safe they hardwired a backdoor override into our brains and also installed a kill switch. The awakened—if they aren’t careful—are used by these nefarious forces as controlled opposition and limited hangouts.
2. This virtual reality has been designed just like a movie in which a small minority of us view ourselves as the hero. Not only do we have to face our own existential questions, but we have to overcome all the carefully designed psyops that employ “the illusion of truth”, “cognitive bias”, and “backfire effect”. The scriptwriters also made sure the awakened hero had to confront the most heinous, overwhelming, and seemingly insurmountable evil imaginable. This makes for a much more riveting reality/movie. And fortunately, all those poor suffering masses of fellow humans we encounter are really just NPCs.
3. The Awakened are part of a religious “elect” selected by God. There are only 144,000 of us, and we all read Caitlin’s substack. The odds of meeting another Awakened on the street are 1 in 49,000. Soon, all the Awakened will ascend to heaven on a cloud.
Option 4. We’re the ones brainwashed by the likes of Caitlin, Putin, China, and it’s Rachel Maddow & the like who are the voices for truth, justice, peace, and prosperity for all.
No, in my intention it meant the exact opposite: getting un-propagandized. To be honest, I don't understand how "awake" and "woke" are supposed to have the same meaning when they have the same etimology: in my mother language that "a" suffix is called alpha-privative and generally invert the meaning of the word... but what do I know?
I asked AI, and it told me "awake" comes from some Middle English words. Apparently, in that language, the "a" at the end of the word does not have the same effect that it does in your mother language.
The a- in awakened, awoke, etc, looks like a past-participle prefix to me, akin to German ge-, so "awakened" would be the same as "wakened." _Woke_ is not Standard English, it's dialectical. Standard English would be _woken_. The point of using dialect would be to convey the meaning of the root (wake/woke/woken, thus, "enlightened") but to associate the term with the perspective of a particular ethnic or cultural group or class to which the dialect pertains.. Hostility to this group would explain the animus associated with the term.
Psychologists/psychiatrists/neuroscientists go wild with theories dating back to walking on all fours, but propaganda's success has a much simpler explanation: it makes us feel good. We don't have to think, as an aded bonus, and that works so well that even oblivion around the corner is no reality check. As a corollary, we believe in authority for the same reasons, and protests are usually on the level of child-like tantrums, not followed up by effective action. The system doesn't work, it is killing us, period. We shouldn't support it. For a start we should regularly ask authorities just what percent of our taxes go to war efforts, to repair of infrastructure, people programs: ask for justification of politicos' salary increases, in fact the whole balance sheet. This info is all available, but bug them anyway. And especially, question the money sucking worm-hole that supports the losing, people devouring nemesis we call "War in Ukraine".
The "Free World" is a concept that has been propagandized to no end. There never was a free world, only a Neoliberal controlled world with a brainwashed public to boot. Our press is owned by the oligarchs as is public opinion. The residents of this "free world" don't know the difference.
I am honestly not digging your takes on propaganda or on free will. The real answer is far more simple.
Propaganda in a capitalist country like ours works because people are selfish, assholes and propaganda caters directly to their narcissism and underlying nihilism.
Deep down everyone knows that by accepting the lies of corrupted institutions at face value and not bothering to question or examine blatant contradictions, they are really making the world a worse, shittier place but what it always comes down to is that there's some pay off for them personally and so they are simply justifying choosing not to think about it.
Just look at the current hollywood celebrity culture for the most glaring example. To the extent that nearly everyone in our society of clicks and "likes" wants to be his/or her own mini-celebrity and to feel like they have an "identity" of sorts within this vacuous hellscape of a so called "culture", everyone in their own tiny little way is like the fuckers in hollywood who promote every single disgusting empire psyop at the top of their lungs with zero consideration of the negative impact or any deeper sense of moral commitment to something greater than themselves because that's of far less importance than their own perceived personal benefit.
Our culture is absolutely drowning in this kind of grotesque narcissism and the only hope I can see is for it to basically be swept away.
Fundamental to neuroscience is the realization that sensory perception is constructive; we create a world by combining the registrations of our retinas and inner ears (etc.) with our stored experiences. Percepts are by nature biased, hence whatever the clever admen have managed to wangle into our synapses will corrupt further percepts from the get-go, before they've even been interpreted. It's therefore a good idea to skeptically question just about everything we perceive as "reality." An example that currently seems vulnerable to such skepticism is the idea that the US government is truthful with its citizens. When documents are ultimately declassified, they almost universally reveal how agencies like the CIA lie for decades until those lies are ultimately revealed. Yet the outrage, the calls for abolition of these rogue unelected organizations are often heavily criticized as excessive -- a testament to just how effective that brainwashing is, that it passively accepts granting great destructive powers to an org with a consistent track record of mendacity.
As the cliche goes - ultimately people deserve the governments they have. No matter how loudly they will object it.
"Deserves got nothing to do with it." Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven".
Indeed notice the shocking news that two of the hijackers in the 9/11 attack who were in the airplanes that crush into the Twin Towers were CIA agents were CIA agents. Notice how little reaction it has had from the public (and of course the mainstream media who serve the powers) - mainly because processing such new information could destroy the whole "house" of perception and belief.
Sorry for the typos...
The foundations of Descartes'"Method" was to doubt everything. Absolutely everything. The problem is that this method is very costly in brain energy. It requires educated minds, whereas the tendency is now to cultivate scatter brains: plutocrats prefer to deal with pigeons.
The problem for civilization right now is the opposite. Internet algorithms use the Hebbian mechanism in the most perverse manner: the more neuronal circuitry repeats something, the better the involved synapses get at it, and the more the circuitry loves itself, this endless repetition, be it only because it's more economical. All intellectual fascism systems throughout history have known this, but now it has become literally industrial. I buy shoes and then when I read poetry on my device, it wants to sell me shoes.
Therefrom a tribalization of society, and ever more reduced minds... Who only knows what they have been exposed to, and what they have been exposed to is what, once they believe in it, will make potentates on the other side of the planet automatically wealthy.
An aggravating factor is that hate is so satisfying... And little studied, so this seductress takes even educated individuals unawares...
I'd love to have heard more on your opinions of the 24/7 pushed Covid narrative. I hope this piece means you applied critical thinking to the blatant nonsense rammed into us.
This article certainly explains why those who didn't question it, continue not to despite the almost daily revelations of the lies told.
One piece of bogus Covid propaganda deals with the "start date" of virus spread. The timeline has always been off. As Caitlin writes often, the narrative is FUBAR.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/case-zeroes-in-world-did-not-come
Caitlin's written about it. She writes about propagandists who use Covid as a tool to divert attention from other issues, such as global nuclear war, ecocide - or the ruthless exploitation of labor by the wealthy owner classes.
Well, nuclear winter appears to be the Biden fix to global warming.
I'd suggest that what happened was far more than a diversion. The biggest transfer of wealth in history, it was a money, power and control grab in its own right. We are currently passively watching the WHO award themselves the power to determine what is good for us. Their latest concerning surveillance. A rather dubious priority if "health" is truly what they are concerned with. But it should be clear to all by now that it is not the case. Like all regulatory agencies around the world, they have been captured and serve only to do what their owners demand.
Yeah I know. People go on and on and on about Covid. Often the same people who rarely discuss the MIC, the never ending Imperial wars, or the exploitation of the billionaire classes, or how wealth inequality in the US is the worst it has been since the gilded robber baron era. Often the same people who never talk about the benefits of government, or how regulations are necessary in a free society, to protect the equality of all citizens. Often the same people who told us not to worry about, or talk about the impact of greed based human resource exploitation on the planetary ecosystem.
Yup, and you can add the climate emergency to that list.
The way the COVID debate is framed (and polarized) makes it impossible to understand the real issues (science and public health) - and many voices either don't understand how science and public health systems work, or intentionally attack both using sham arguments about lies and conspiracies, when other factors are involved (uncertainty, new science, ethics of mandates, etc).
If by "people go on and on about Covid" you are referring to those that screamed like deranged lunatics at anyone questioning (and punished for doing so) the pushed narrative, and that anyone not wanting to be vaccinated be treated with the same distain as Lepers, I'd agree.
I've a hunch though, that you are referring to those that were and continue to be discriminated against.
I've heard the CIA now has a new story about the Nord Stream pipeline blowing up, this time the Ukrainians did it on their own. Apparently their previous CIA analysis must have been wrong. Maybe Covid had something to do with it? I guess we should trust the new story now.
Do let me know when Germany is going to invoke NATO Article 5 and demand that NATO make war on Ukraine, the way the US did after 9/11?
For that matter, if the CIA has changed its story so many times already, why are we supposed to believe the CIA this time? I suppose they'll say that they lied for our own good. So why should we believe the CIA when they assure us that Russia blew the Novaya Kakhovaya Dam? How do we know that they aren't lying now?
For our own good and out the purest, most noble and selfless of motives, of course.
I think Ukraine was the most recent story I heard, but there may be others. I think the multiplicity of stories may indicate a business opportunity for a new board game. The players move around a track as with Parcheesi or Monopoly, but after each move they have to take a card, of which half debunk the player who picked it. That player then has to move back to the "under the bus position" while the other surge ahead to construct new theories. Other cards might permit the player to introduce new theories, as about COVID, 9/11, or the Kennedy assassinations.
You're making yourself look stupid, not me.
A hypoethetical, not with respect to COVID or the mRNA vaccines, suppose a vaccine completely blocked transmission of a deadly virus with a 25% fatality rate, but 1 in a million children who got the vaccine died. Would you support a vaccine mandate for your child?
Similar question on mandatory quaranteen and contact tracing of those who have the virus.
Now suppose that studies of communication showed that "vaccine hesitancy" would kill millions of people and that certain forms of false or misleading information led to vaccine hesitancy. Would you support or agree that "official" government science should be "propagandized" throughout the society? That false information discouraged or even suppressed or even censored? When would those false or misleading criticisms become the equivalent of yelling fore in a crowded theater?
You see, the real arguments are nuanced and require consideration of individual rights versus the larger public interest.
Bill, your hypothetical is wanting to dictate circumstances that are completely impossible, so I see little point in entertaining your question. You go on to point out that "arguments are nuanced" which I agree with. Unfortunately, the actions taken in the last three years allowed for no nuance, let alone scientific and medical expert opinions that should have been considered, especially when preaching "trust the science".
I fear you comment is a good example of what Caitlin's post describes. How propaganda and acceptance of same prevents people from being able to accept facts.
Rather than a hypothetical, the conversation should revolve around what happened to be meaningful. Your comment infers the greater good for the larger public interest is paramount. That in itself isn't a bad thing except this ideal was not a consideration to the draconian actions taken in the name of Covid. It was fairly obvious that the actions taken would result in more death and misery than the virus threatened. Early on, organizations such as OXFAM, predicted this. But suddenly it was as if the masses had previously thought themselves immortal and that the only threat to them was Covid. What created that public opinion other than 24/7 fear porn/propaganda?
According to the WHO, tobacco products kill over 8 million people each year. Where's the outrage? Perhaps these people only have themselves to blame? Except 1.2 million of them are victims of 2nd hand/passive smoke.
Covid was used for a wealth, power and control grab. The tool to make this successful was fear. What bewilders me is that people in 2019 who knew that Big Pharma really didn't give a damn about our health and politicians were serial liars; suddenly thought they were our saviors and the bastions of truth.
And please don't come back at me for ignoring regulatory capture, bias, and Big Pharma and industry corruption of the science. I've battled all that for decades. I am posing questions that assume that those real problems don't exist.
Western propaganda is so effective because it comes from authority figures. A newborn baby instinctively trusts its parents, especially the mother, so that trusting authority figures is ingrained in us from birth. It's a survival instinct that all animals are born with. Contributing to this natural tendency is that prior to the age of large, concentrated populations, dishonesty and incompetence in chosen leaders was readily detected and expeditiously dealt with, such that leaders were actually held to standards that today's 'leaders' can't even pretend to. Thus, leaders effectively held to standards that benefitted the entire tribe -- a win/win -- was the norm for most of the human experience, so that we've culturally evolved to instinctively trust authority figures, be they elected or imposed. Now we find ourselves in a radically changed world where the old reflexive trust in authority is counter to the wellbeing of the masses. Like they say, old habits die hard, which is why we have to try harder.
I notice the use of the term _Western_ propaganda here (and elsewhere). The difference between modern propaganda and the classical sort (tribal and religious beliefs) is the development of industrialism, not its geographical locations. Those who have adopted industrial methods have also adopted the modern models of propaganda; these include many non-Western cultural communities, such as those of China and Japan. Industrialism multiplies the evolved tendency towards authority and submission which seems to have enhanced the survival chances of humans living under tribal conditions. It's going to be difficult to change that if out current response to that history has been encoded in our genes.
I say "Western" because it's the dominant narrative that rationalizes the worst behavior of the Western empire, and I'm primarily addressing a Western audience. That said, I agree with your take on the role of industrialism in non-Western propaganda but would add that the industrial model wasn't "adopted" by China and Japan, it was imposed on them by the West, and I'm reasonably sure that non-Western propaganda doesn't serve the project of world conquest, judging by non-Western behavior, in contrast to the West.
I would hesitate to deny the Japanese and Chinese agency. The Japanese adoption of Western industrial methods in the late 19th century is legendary; they went from a backwater to a world power in a couple of generations. Imperial conquest was often mentioned by their leadership. The Chinese were caught napping but seem to have more than caught up once they apprehended the problem.
As per conquest and its propaganda, I'm not referring to last century's China and Japan. And yes, Japan ran with the new industrial methods -- after being intimidated and manipulated into opening its ports to the West.
Fabulous piece!
For many people their beliefs are a safe harbor anchored in calm waters behind break waters. To go beyond the breakwater into the open sea of inconvenient truths is life in full sail and they are not prepared for the passage.
Are you familiar with the concept popularized in Asian cultures of Double Discipline?
External Discipline, i.e. force, coercion, punishment and reward.
Internal Discipline, i.e. a responsibility for self and one's impact on others, an internal code of values.
This is taught in many martial Arts. China's leaders embrace the concept today. They are very aware of their history rising to power and the cultural revolution, Great Leap Forward where external discipline was primarily applied to force the idea of collectivism onto a population of individuals. Violence, depravation, death visited on the disobedient in a frenzy to force obedience to a declared collective will. The death toll of their external discipline exceeds all other democides to date.
When the fervor of forced discipline ebbed, due to the effect that extreme fear and intimidation had, as well as the elimination of the most disobedient China embraced the development of internal discipline studies. Getting citizens to voluntarily obey government and societal policy as "the right thing to do." Reserving their right to apply external discipline as conditions warrant, but leaning into internal discipline as their primary means of population control.
This is an important concept to understand as we contemplate authoritarian/totalitarian governing models and changes being forced onto nations that historically value individualism, freedom as sovereigns.
Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes compel obedience. And apply external discipline to achieve it. They consider themselves the parents and the people their children. And unruly children get punished, while obedient children get rewards. This is their thinking and justification. And their thinking assumes they possess the wisdom, the truth, the proper goals and values that others must obey. An unassailable elite, above question, possessing the only truth and values that merit unflinching obedience to. They and they alone are entitled to rule, impose their agendas on the people who dare not question, for the collective good as they ordain.
China considers itself more enlightened these days because it has a largely internally disciplined population. And so they rarely roll out external discipline. But how did they transform a population of sovereign individuals needing lots of external discipline to a voluntary collectively obedient population?
They applied human psychology through a behavioral science model of propaganda campaigns. Reeducation camps for the unruly and insolent. Framing choices with psychological appeals to virtue, popularity, authority, experts, fear. Managing minds through manipulation, coercion and more subtle framing of choices, issues, linguistics, symbols, appeals, nudges. So people would become obedient through self-discipline that elevates the collective's wishes above self.
I know collectivists find this description dreamy. Utopian to them. But it is built on a false and unstable construct. Because it relies heavily on propaganda, deceit and turning over one's own free will to others. A population in an artificially constructed state of internal discipline has been effectively brainwashed. But it is fragile. And the more removed it becomes from the natural world, as propaganda and reality become sufficiently disconnected the population will break from their propaganda indoctrination.
Authoritarian/totalitarian governments must then apply external discipline to compel obedience in that situation. This cycle may go on repeatedly. But it is unstable. It is not the natural order of mankind no matter what collectivist dream. They are not parents of adult children. They have no right to infantilize citizens disciplining them with punishments and rewards or repeated psychological attacks, propaganda, on their minds to gain "voluntary" compliance.
The double discipline model is fine and appropriate for actual parents to raise their children. But it is tyranny, hard and soft, when used to govern citizens.
God created man in his image, to be free. To live in peace and harmony with the earth he created. We were not created by man in the image of other men. We are not compelled by God to obey the whims and demands of a self-proclaimed elite declaring a collective good overrides our own individual values. God did not create man to be slaves to other men. Even if the masters believe they are benevolent stewards of their slaves, their property. Authoritarian/totalitarian regimes believe they own the people they rule over as they own land, a machine or cattle. The parent-child model only works because childhood demands it. Applied to adults it's slavery.
The strongest prison isn't made of concrete and steel. It is the mind. Propaganda wielded by behavioral scientists, psychologists on sovereign adults is an attack the mind to control them, to enslave them.
The double discipline model for governance is an attack on God's design for man. Internal discipline as practiced by government is a false construct because it doesn't authentically come from within the individual. True internal discipline cannot be taught, it must come from within. False internal discipline designed by behaviorists using propaganda is inauthentic.
And so it will remain in conflict with government campaigns to impose it. Those tensions are unsustainable. We are God's children, not the children of government. And God created us to be free, not slaves to mind prisons created by arrogant men.
Since WW II, How many people did the Chinese extricate from extreme poverty to a reasonable standard of material conditions? How many countries did they invade and kill people? How many military bases do they have? How many countries have they conducted "democracy promotion" and propaganda and color revolutions? Does Chinese foreign aid and investment come with the same "conditionalities" to extract wealth and resources, promote corporate market controls, and impose austerity on the population as US, World Bank and IMF money does?
Freedom from and freedom to are very different concepts, eh? (positive and negative freedom). And By what criteria are civilizations to evaluated?
Oh. I didn't realize that the only body counts that matter are from invading other countries. Killing over 50 million of their own citizens was just "breaking a few eggs to make an omelette" I suppose.
The freedom I'm most attached to is my freedom to live, freely. And the freedom of my friends, family, neighbors and countrymen to live, freely. For totalitarians like Bill Wolfe, though, mass murder on scales never seen before in human history, democide, in the name of "progress" is a small price to pay to advance the human condition by constant applications of "internal discipline" propaganda behaviorist indoctrination campaigns and "external discipline" to break the will of selfish individuals and nonconformists who threaten the tyrannical rule of the collective.
In NO way is my description of China's double-discipline system of governance a defense of the current American regime experience. Which was led astray by the same totalitarians as those who conducted two world wars in the 20th Century. The US has not been governed by its constitution for over a century now. And a great many Americans are waking up to that sad fact that we have been subjected to the most sophisticated propaganda campaign of psychological warfare against our minds for at least that long. The US Constitution was a work of art and a righteous governing document that protected individual sovereignty rights and responsibilities. Freedom is the natural state of man, as God created us. Totalitarianism of any stripe, Chinese Communism, American Fascism, oligarchical dictators is evil, an abomination in the eyes of God.
Communist China is godless. It is evil and wicked to its own people. Psychologically controlling its people and using carrots and sticks to train them to obey like animals. It is an inherently weak system, fragile, a house of cards. It has no moral foundation, only the projection of strength. By intimidation and manipulation. It does not welcome free and fair debate of issues and ideas it considers foundational. While it has robust debate within those guardrails, dozens of news outlets with different opinions allowed, the foundational issues are strictly off-limits and produce severe consequences for engaging. That is not freedom. That is tyranny.
And the US is the same in practice today as China. I'm not in any way defending it in these times. Rather, making the case that the original US Constitution constructed a republic to assert individual freedom, sovereignty as the law of the land, with a small government and large religious role in public life. God in public and private life is a necessary precursor to freedom. The absence of God requires totalitarianism, without a moral compass in man his animal instincts are incompatible with civilization. A moral compass that comes from an individual's relationship with God. Not an amoral compass implanted in them that reflects the values of other men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#/media/File:Life_expectancy_by_world_region,_from_1770_to_2018.svg
And really, Wikipedia? Lolololololololrotflmao! Sorry, I don't usually waste my time on mental midgets like you. Very unsporting of me.
Can you distinguish a source from data and a graph?
50? Do I hear 50?
Your IQ above 60?
Is your IQ above 70?
https://www.nytco.com/company/prizes-awards/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/
"Even then, Duranty dismissed more diligent writers’ reports that people were starving. “Conditions are bad, but there is no famine,” he wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March of 1933 describing the “mess” of collectivization. “But – to put it brutally – you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”"
This is you, Mr. Wolfe. Invalidates you. Exposes your immorality. Your wickedness and evil intentions. At least I admit the US's failings. Your silence as to these facts reflects a smug self-justification for the murder of 50-70 million people, you consider collateral damage. Broken eggs. Making you, Mr. Bill Wolfe, human sewage and detritus.
https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-73000000/
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.CHAP1.HTM
"So the simple answer to why people cling to beliefs instilled by imperial propaganda is because that's just how minds work." CJ
I disagree. People cling to beliefs from on high because they are mentally lazy. Hell, my first day of school when I was 5 some dumb Polish Catholic kid knocked over my wood block fort. I stood up and slugged the kid in the nose. He bled. He cried like a baby. And I had to kneel in front of the class for two hours until lunch.
My first day of school!
So I knew at the age of 5 that authoritarian figures were full of shit.
In first grade at the age of 6 I was the only kid in my class who didn't march up to the front of the church and get the cross of ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday. I hid out in the bathroom.
To hell with the crowd, the mob, the herd. What a bunch of lazy gullible shites!
Some people are born without the herd instinct. But this is the exception. 1% maybe?
Patrick Powers: It depends on where you are on the planet or even in the uSA. But I'd say in the uSA the median exception to the herd instinct is around 3-6%.
I've noticed myself that if there is a popular proposition before the public, like "Let's invade Vietnam", and it is strongly backed by established leadership, the hard-core dissidence rate is about 5%. Almost no matter what it is. I don't know about other countries, ethnic groups, etc., but it might be universal.
StarryG: The 5% dissidence rate sounds about right to me. It's certainly under 10%.
There is a joke about the herd instinct that goes like this: A fellow dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates and encounters St. Peter, who says, "I'm sorry, you can't come in. Heaven is full and there's no room for you. You'll have to try the other place."
The dead guy thinks about it for a while and then starts jumping up and down and yelling, "Gold! Gold has been discovered in Hell!" He keeps it up and faces begin to pop out of the windows. Pretty soon people start leaving Heaven to investigate: first a trickle, then a crowd, then a rushing mob. After awhile there's nobody left. St. Peter says to the dead guy, "Well, there's plenty of room here now. You can come in."
But the dead guy goes the other way. "Where are you going?" asks St. Peter.
"Hell," says the dead guy. "There might be something to that story."
Starry G: LOL! Yeah, it gets crazy when the elites believe their own bullshit.
Our Timmy is a legend.
russian_bot: I wasn't aware that I was owned by you and the folks on this site. Sorry, Massa'.
To Timmy: Of course not. That's just to stress your assumed persona on this particular forum. Someplace else you might have hit an Indian kid instead.
russian_bot: You mean like on the Res?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
SSP: Your link is psychological Bullshit! How many multi-syllable words and commas can some academic dickhead put into a sentence?
That's philosophy. Keeping up here is _your_ problem.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
SSP: I think you have the FAE as you keep attributing to the same link.
No, that's the simple English explanation of that your midwit Puritan moral whinings are inerently wrong, have been wrong ever since Calvin set pen to paper, and will continue to be wrong, and that actual economic facts will never care about your feelings.
SSP: What is a "midwit"? And that's not how you spell inherently. Are you talking about Calvin the cartoon character? Do you always write sentences of paragraph length with lots of commas? Are there any other economic facts besides actual ones? Which parts of society are stinky?
14-YEAR-OLD IRISH GIRL BEHIND VIRAL ‘I AM NOT A DRESS’ POEM
https://www.megynkelly.com/2023/04/28/14-year-old-irish-girl-behind-viral-i-am-not-a-dress-poem-speaks-out-about-trans-indoctrination/
“I Am Not A Dress” by @brandubh4
We are women, we are warriors of steel.
Woman is something no man will ever feel.
Woman is not a skill that any man can hone.
Woman is our word and it is ours alone.
I am not a dress to be worn on a whim,
A man in a dress is nonetheless a him.
Women are not simply what we wear.
If this offends you, I do not care.
I am not an idea in any man’s mind
And my purpose in life is not to be kind.
So while my rights are trampled every day of the week,
I will not stand by being docile and meek.
I am not defined by sexist lies.
There is more to a woman than that shallow guise,
That guise of dresses, bikinis, and skirts.
Those clothes are not what womanhood is worth.
I am not a bitch, a TERF, a whore, a slag,
Hysterical, witch, a slut, a hag.
No, I am a woman. I am a female,
Who will not let her rights be put up for sale.
I am not defined by what men are not,
So to hell with cis misogynistic rot.
I am a woman, I’m not as subset of my sex.
If this makes me a dinosaur, so be it, I’m a T-Rex.
I am not a bleeder nor a menstruator,
A womb carrier or a uterus haver.
These words and phrases are such a sham.
Just call me woman, it’s who I am.
We are women, we are warriors of steel.
Woman is something no man will ever feel.
Woman is not a skill that any man can hone.
Woman is our word and it is ours alone.
I don't think we know for sure what any other one's experience is.
This is brilliant and adds to my understanding of why propaganda works. I'll definitely be citing it in a future episode. I also think that shared superiority is the bribe in every belief system. 'You and me, we're smarter than them' is the subtext. But the backfire effect is really interesting. I've termed it cognitive dissonance but I think it's the same thing. When something conflicts with our core belief that we're a good person, we do the work of justifying it.
In 2007, many true believers in the financial markets were handed pink slips because they trusted familiar institutions and what seemed like authoritative administrative procedures and leaders. Thousands lost everything.
I think the faith and certainty of the victims of the 2008 crash is identical to the faith and certainty of the true believers in Western Liberalism. People are whistling as they saunter through the cemetery.
The evidence of misplaced confidence in a declining empire is not the abrupt shock that devastated investors experienced in a fraudulent market. It is the gradual, steady realization that the media lies, the police are bought, the teachers are underpaid by design, the church is complicit, civility is hiding under a bed, guns and drugs are more available than clean water, and every last drop of the cost of living is wrung out of more and more people, and still the advertisers sell their wares as if there is nothing wrong, and the military budget grows and grows and grows.
It is the difference between the frog dropped into boiling water that immediately jumps out, and the frog that is placed in warm, soothing water, that is gradually brought to a boil, and the frog expires.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbG6G_iHLU
Propaganda works because most humans are too lazy to think for themselves or at least question things. After the last decade or two, it is impossible to trust most institutions, agencies or government. We blindly trusted these fools and prison is our reward.
"Too lazy" is too harsh. Modern life in developed countries is designed such that most people are overwhelmed with daily demands - jobs, family, etc. In these circumstances it is unrealistic to expect people finding time/strength to question and educate themselves re every single issue. To expect mostly exhausted folks by the end of the day to dive into some research instead of watching a sports game to unwind is highly naive.
The system is designed around that and it is highly effective.
Once you start down that road, you have to start making choices. If the society and system that we live under does so much evil, how much will I compromise with it?
These choices can have very real personal and professional consequences. Try not paying taxes and see what happens. "Bartelby the Scrivener" it ain't.
Even if you do compromise, you are left with a guilty conscience.
By contrast, if you go along with the crowd, you can avoid those tough choices and face no consequences, and your conscience stays relatively untroubled, for the time being at least. Even in the worst case, you can say to yourself that you did what every other Good German did under the circumstances.
Interesting. Given we are all so immersively submerged in propagnda from a young age, what do you think is\are the major factors in provoking awakening? Is it purely genetic disposition, is it environmental, and if , as probable, it is a mix of both, what do you think are the genetic and environmental factors that helps un-propagandize more?
Factors provoking awakening? Here are a few possible explanations for the existence of “the awakened”. (Only one of the three below is the correct answer.)
1. The awakened are part of a genetic experiment by the CIA/aliens/Satan. Of course, just to be safe they hardwired a backdoor override into our brains and also installed a kill switch. The awakened—if they aren’t careful—are used by these nefarious forces as controlled opposition and limited hangouts.
2. This virtual reality has been designed just like a movie in which a small minority of us view ourselves as the hero. Not only do we have to face our own existential questions, but we have to overcome all the carefully designed psyops that employ “the illusion of truth”, “cognitive bias”, and “backfire effect”. The scriptwriters also made sure the awakened hero had to confront the most heinous, overwhelming, and seemingly insurmountable evil imaginable. This makes for a much more riveting reality/movie. And fortunately, all those poor suffering masses of fellow humans we encounter are really just NPCs.
3. The Awakened are part of a religious “elect” selected by God. There are only 144,000 of us, and we all read Caitlin’s substack. The odds of meeting another Awakened on the street are 1 in 49,000. Soon, all the Awakened will ascend to heaven on a cloud.
Option 4. We’re the ones brainwashed by the likes of Caitlin, Putin, China, and it’s Rachel Maddow & the like who are the voices for truth, justice, peace, and prosperity for all.
Is "awakening" the same thing as "getting woke"?
No, in my intention it meant the exact opposite: getting un-propagandized. To be honest, I don't understand how "awake" and "woke" are supposed to have the same meaning when they have the same etimology: in my mother language that "a" suffix is called alpha-privative and generally invert the meaning of the word... but what do I know?
I asked AI, and it told me "awake" comes from some Middle English words. Apparently, in that language, the "a" at the end of the word does not have the same effect that it does in your mother language.
The a- in awakened, awoke, etc, looks like a past-participle prefix to me, akin to German ge-, so "awakened" would be the same as "wakened." _Woke_ is not Standard English, it's dialectical. Standard English would be _woken_. The point of using dialect would be to convey the meaning of the root (wake/woke/woken, thus, "enlightened") but to associate the term with the perspective of a particular ethnic or cultural group or class to which the dialect pertains.. Hostility to this group would explain the animus associated with the term.
It's being a cat, and thus always walking by oneself, such that all places are alike to a cat.
Psychologists/psychiatrists/neuroscientists go wild with theories dating back to walking on all fours, but propaganda's success has a much simpler explanation: it makes us feel good. We don't have to think, as an aded bonus, and that works so well that even oblivion around the corner is no reality check. As a corollary, we believe in authority for the same reasons, and protests are usually on the level of child-like tantrums, not followed up by effective action. The system doesn't work, it is killing us, period. We shouldn't support it. For a start we should regularly ask authorities just what percent of our taxes go to war efforts, to repair of infrastructure, people programs: ask for justification of politicos' salary increases, in fact the whole balance sheet. This info is all available, but bug them anyway. And especially, question the money sucking worm-hole that supports the losing, people devouring nemesis we call "War in Ukraine".
The other big motivator is fear. And fear is exciting. People will pay for horror movies.
The "Free World" is a concept that has been propagandized to no end. There never was a free world, only a Neoliberal controlled world with a brainwashed public to boot. Our press is owned by the oligarchs as is public opinion. The residents of this "free world" don't know the difference.
What was stated at the end resonated with me which was about finding ways to cleverly tell the truth.
Often it's difficult to find those who would even listen.
“Listen carefully: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves."
I am honestly not digging your takes on propaganda or on free will. The real answer is far more simple.
Propaganda in a capitalist country like ours works because people are selfish, assholes and propaganda caters directly to their narcissism and underlying nihilism.
Deep down everyone knows that by accepting the lies of corrupted institutions at face value and not bothering to question or examine blatant contradictions, they are really making the world a worse, shittier place but what it always comes down to is that there's some pay off for them personally and so they are simply justifying choosing not to think about it.
Just look at the current hollywood celebrity culture for the most glaring example. To the extent that nearly everyone in our society of clicks and "likes" wants to be his/or her own mini-celebrity and to feel like they have an "identity" of sorts within this vacuous hellscape of a so called "culture", everyone in their own tiny little way is like the fuckers in hollywood who promote every single disgusting empire psyop at the top of their lungs with zero consideration of the negative impact or any deeper sense of moral commitment to something greater than themselves because that's of far less importance than their own perceived personal benefit.
Our culture is absolutely drowning in this kind of grotesque narcissism and the only hope I can see is for it to basically be swept away.