On 2008-Jul-01, at 19:02, Kevin Callahan wrote: > but given how adults in the US were snowed by an obvious sham going > into Iraq .. > and given how adults are snowed by religion ... "thinking" adults > are clearly vulnerable to the same manipulation > > maybe "thinking for oneself" in and of itself, is not really a > distinguishing factor when it comes to manipulation > > > I wanted to point out that adults, while they're supposed to be > capable of thinking and being responsible to their thoughts, maybe we > need to think less of an adult's regarded capacity to reason
Well true.... we may start to think for ourselves, but there are many things we're not even aware coming from our environment and education and media, that are biases and influences on our thinking, including misinformation, mistaken information, subtle mistakes in logic, intuition, feeling, personal traits that predispose us to certain conclusions and not others, and even just the difficulty of finding good sources of information. Media bias is perhaps the least of our worries, as the media is just as much in the same boat as ourselves, how does the media create the right story? They're no more perfect than we are as human beings. I could travel to Iraq today but I'd still get only one limited perspective. It's a big planet. There's a lot going on, and we're all influencing each other. My bias influences you and your bias influences me. In fact the more we try to question things thoroughly, the more conscious we become of the infinite interdependence of the whole thing. Where are you going to find that one correct source of truth? Rather, things are interdependent and contexts are embedded in contexts... one thing is true in a particular context, and as you explore more contexts you gain additional perspectives, all true but partially true in a context. So then trying to hold more and more perspectives, from the point of view of a single human, the whole thing starts to appear as a single process, and you are a part of that entire process. You, the planet, the ecosystems, the species, the human activity, the conflicts, the development, the whole lot is a single process happening. As one French Zen Master woman put it, "it's all organic", from the aluminum in your Mac to the carrots in the ground, everything is organic. Coca cola, uranium, latex, vodka, B52s, Vogue, everything is in the process, organic, products of the nature and process that we are. We're then faced with a context shift. Is your government and oil companies a distinct separate and manipulating force that is controlling the politics and the media, and indoctrinating the public citizens, controlling their thoughts and beliefs, and exploiting them for their own selfish interests? If so then you as an individual have no choice in the matter. Even if you try to think for yourself, your whole environment is shaped by them, from taxes, to the oil you need for your car, to the pharmaceuticals you need to stay healthy. Whatever you can do as an individual is weak passive fruitless "objection" which will never amount to anything. You are their slave. The people are their slaves. Try to cut yourself off from them and you will just cease to exist. Even if they can be persuaded to shift modes of production, change means of obtaining energy, move from fossil to green, their power will continue. They don't care what they do to make money. Their power doesn't come from oil, it comes from the hundreds of millions of slaves who are jacked into them and can never let go. Whether British Petrolium sells you oil, or "Beyond Petrolium" as they now call themselves with their new green logo, sell you wind energy, makes no difference, you will always be a slave to them. You are embedded in the process, and your very existence is beholden to their process. They couldn't stop even if they wanted to, because hundreds of millions of people need them. Someone somewhere is inventing something that we will all need and then we will all be sucked into their process and their process will grow and expand and be sucked into us. So where is the power? Where is change? Everything is changing and you are changing. Always have and always will do. The power is distributed and interdependent, and while you have this perspective as a single man embedded in a society and country governed by a system, the system is embedded in you and the power is flowing through you and your actions as an individual and your power as an individual are identical with the power of the entire whole that is occurring. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
