The article on Opinions says people’s views come from four main sources. Let’s look at them to see how easily we can be manipulated. There must be some defense. Sources are:
- Intuition (your gut feel)
- Personal experience (what you’ve seen)
- What you’ve been taught
- What you’ve figured out for yourself
We’ll use the examples of Sigmund Freud and Chartered Schools to illustrate.
Freud
Freud lived between 1859 and 1939. He invented the theory of the subconscious mind. He also said man was inherently bad. His theory of the mind was something he figured out; the belief that man is naturally bad came from personal experience.
The subconscious mind is still being taught today (because it was brilliant), while what he derived from personal experience is no longer considered valid. But if you look at the time in which he lived, it makes sense. The late 1800s was before the implementation of mass education and early 1900s Europe was home to the First World War. So he saw people at their worst. Before modern efforts to arrive at a well-meaning consciousness.
Chartered schools
Jim and Brian were high school mates. Neither had ever experienced a charter school but both subscribed to hard-leaning websites that held staunch political views, albeit opposite. Jim’s websites taunted charter schools, exposing the devil inside. Brian’s credited the process with ingenuity and said people were lining up to get in. Then one day they had a fight about it and are no longer friends.
What happened is these buddies became foot soldiers for some propaganda’s cause. Convinced of their purpose, they began spewing nonsense exactly as masters intended. When things finally came to a head, one was googling “charter schools good” and the other “charter schools bad.”
Buying a book
Propaganda applies mostly to political situations but the same instruments are used by business. Everyone knows what advertisers are doing when presenting their wares but when it comes to politics, bias isn’t always as obvious.
I once bought a book about world issues. When paying, I asked if it was a good one. The clerk flipped it over to read the endorsements and said, “It depends. Are you a liberal?” I said, “Why does that matter?” He said, “Because all the endorsements are from liberal sources. So if you’re a liberal, you’ll like it. That’s the way poli-books work.”
Propaganda centres
According to Steve Jobs, Eastern culture relies heavily on intuition and personal experience, while the West places greater emphasis on what we’ve been taught. This explains why modern day propaganda works so well in America—it’s disguised as knowledge. Couple this with the “good student” phenomena to memorize and regurgitate and you have a nation for the taking.
Numerous propaganda centres spew nonsense on a daily basis, fueling foot soldiers to convince all their friends. Canadian stations are good but you still have to watch where you get news, especially when it comes from the States. People down there are trying to brainwash you. That’s the bottom line. We mask it with statements like “this is what I think” but the truth is: we don’t think anything. We only regurgitate what others have told us, adding absolutely nothing of what we instinctively feel, have experienced, or figured out for ourselves.
Summary
Wake up! This is our new reality. American news is selling an agenda in addition to telling you what happened today. So it’s work to get news without opinion. And this condition is not going to change anytime soon because it works.
In the public eye, politics has become a team sport, which is ridiculous because that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. And to make matters worse, every time a bias is exposed, adversaries use it to deny their opponent’s entire position—which is crazy. Real opinion involves considering all sides, recognizing bona fide points, and applying humility to whatever you discover because you’ll never have all the information. That’s the way intellectuals do it and they keep all their friends.