Great Minds Think Alike?
Wow. Just when you think you're all alone in your views of humanity and its situation in this country, someone comes along and reminds you that, while you may be in the minority, you are never alone. Read on:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer100.html
posted by Kyle Vernon @ 9:26 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
From TFA:
By conditioning students in the mindset of institutionally-structured authority – to which they are to subordinate their wills and lives – the government school system has played an essential role in the creation of brigades of automatons whose primary function is to serve the state
Its funny that I'd read this today. Just last night I was watching a special on North Korea. In the schools there they teach that Bush calls them 'Evil' (imagine that) and that he will make premptive nookular strikes against them (you can't make this stuff up folks, I really don't know where they'd get these ideas (oh, yeah, right, CNN)). They are encouraged to hate Bush and the USA often and througly. Nearly the entire population is extraordinarly well indoctrinated into the whole communist dictatorship deal, they've never heard anything different their entire lives, and they buy the party line, hook, line and sinker.
Did you know that it takes about three years of coming up with and applying daily torture to prisoners, many of whom are first, second or third generation decendants of the offender, before the joy of it starts to wear off? Eventually they swap the guards out so they can get more vigorous performance of the daily tortures.
And now I'm treated to an article by some dude who's pissed off that the government here in the USA is concerned enough about the general welfare that potentially dangerous medications are access controlled, and who then goes off on a rant about how our school systems are busy indoctrinating the students into government service, subverting their will and bending them to its nefarious purposes.
Hello, reality check here. Our school systems are having enough difficulty teaching kids the three R's; are we really concerned that there is some vast conspiracy subverting the good-will of our underpaid but often dedicated and hardworking teaching staff to turn our children into 'brigades of automatons'?
I think Mr. Butler Shaffer needs to lay off the wacky tabaky for a few weeks and let some rays of prespective filter through the billows of funky-smelling smoke clouding his mind.
One only need look to history to learn to recognize the signs of a country in the iron grip of a serious mind-f***. We may be dumb, and we know we're being lied to, but we aren't being mind-controlled.
Automatons indeed.
Admittedly, there is a significant difference between the amount and style of indoctrination experienced here and in other less democratic nations. However, to deny that it happens here at all is pure folly. Look around the local shopping mall and count the name brand labels on the passersby. Look at the images on the covers of our magazines. Look at what passes for news in our popular media. Did anyone else happen to notice the unusually coincidental timing of several big-budget hollywood films glorifying the American soldier and American wars at the same time we were moving closer to war with Iraq? We have become a nation bred to be uber-consumers at the cost of all reason. I see more automatons in one day than I do free thinkers in a month. This is the result of cultural indoctrination. Rampant nationalism coupled with greed focused and funneled through technology has led to our current pitiful state of affairs. Life in America has become a farce. Rather than give us useful information about Lebanon and Syria, or any of the other dozen or so political hotspots in the world, we are treated to congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball. Give me a break. No one cares a rat's ass if these overpaid jocks shrink their testicles and enlarge their egos in the quest to send one to the moon. Even if they do care, they certainly wouldn't care so much as to waste taxpayer money on congressional hearings. Oh, and lets not forget poor Martha. The household name that made it rich by showing us how to make and buy shit we don't need is now out of prison and needs your support. All of this smokescreen playing on my television and monitor while I am actually trying to remain an informed, politically active participant in what I jokingly call a governing system. Its corrupt throughout, and when the mass media is controlled by three or four corporations which have congress members in their pocket, what you get is a wonderful "democratic" way of controlling the populace. Just because it's more subtle than Korean tactics, doesn't mean its less insidious.
The difference is that one is a totalitarian control system wherein a central agent is exerting its will over a population and the other is simply a decadent society with too much time for luxury without much drive for anything but pleasure-seeking. The herd mentality of fasion and manipulations of marketers hawking their wares is a far cry from the insidious control mechanisms of a central agent.
It is good policy to avoid attributing to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Not that one should not look for justifications for a tin-foil hat, that certainly would invite trouble, but one should also not manufacture boogymen. We have enough problems without being scared of what we might find in the dark.
Modern culture would be an interesting study. Sometimes I wish I had had the chance to take modern anthropology in college, there are so many things one could study.
Media control is definately a critical point, and while a media organization gets to choose what it broadcasts, the danger is not in the ability of someone to control what stories are broacast, but in the populations belief that they have all the information. Modern media is no different than ancient media in that we are depending upon someone else to tell us what happened. No matter how we get the information, or how much information we get, it all comes down to trust. How much do you trust that you are getting the whole story? The danger today is not that there is a new capability to lie or be selective about the truth, thats always been there, the danger is that much of the population trusts that they are getting the whole story (there may be an element of apathy as well, many people don't care if they are being lied to, as long as the TV keeps them entertained).
You could perhaps dictate that the education system teach more critical thinking skills, and instill a better sense of independance, but that would be a form of central control, not freedom. In truth, I think that unlimited freedom of a population is probably a great way to enjoy the trip down a beautiful highway to decadent self-destruction. Like it or not, populations need to be managed and directed, and I don't think any society has yet figured out the magic combination of freedom and control that works.
There was this guy, Huxley, who had some interesting ideas though.
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