I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
Bold of you to assume you recognize every piece of propaganda for what it truly is. And that you have a choice to just ignore it. It often feels like we are in control of what we give attention to and what we choose to retain as factual knowledge but we’re not.
The best we can do is try to recognize when some piece of information, or source, we believe may not be as valid as it once appeared and try to rectify our beliefs moving forward. It’s a never ending job. But if you want to actually have beliefs based in fact there’s no other option.
Yes. However believing all beliefs are equal because they are equally likely to be false which is what “everyone is influenced by propaganda” implies, is also an incorrect way to think and an intellectually dishonest shirking of responsibility. Kudos to you for not simply repeating the mantra but stating the right response to it.
I believe in mathematics and schematics. I also believe in the right to repair.
I do not believe in invisible deities and I don’t trust most politicians.
Edit: And I damn sure don’t trust AI!
Those are like the most superficial layer of propaganda. The real danger of propaganda is that it doesn’t look like it, it looks like other regular people making you support their interests without you realizing it.
Do you like engines? Do you dislike electric vehicles? Do you like guns? If so, when and where did those ideas come from? You weren’t born with them.
The real propaganda is money.
Like, whoever designed the idea of rent (which is basically a safe place to perform the biological function of sleep and store your stuff).
You don’t own a damn thing anymore, nor do I. But for real, whoever invented the concept of rent, invented the concept of taxing humans for the right to sleep in a safe space.
Edit: Do you own the dirt under your feet?
Didn’t think so.
The house around me, and the dirt under it, yes.
Do you pay property taxes?
You don’t own it.
You can debate that in court. But if you steal a bucket of my dirt, the police will come, take it from you, and give it back to me. I’d call that ownership.
Wow, the police where you live must be either pretty good, or pretty bored. If someone stole a bucket of dirt from my garden and I rang the police about it, I genuinely think they’d laugh at me… Honestly so would I.
It’s the emergency dispatcher who picks up when I dial 911, not the police - but yeah, they don’t laugh when you report unlawful intrusion and theft, and neither do the police. So I’d say they’re pretty good in that regard.
Where I’m from, they’d probably confiscate said dirt as evidence, charge the person with trespassing and some sort of misdemeanor property theft, and you’d never see your dirt again, as it was evidence in a crime.
It’s not your dirt, it’s the government’s dirt.
I am against the concept of individuals or legal entities owning property, it belong to everyone. However, if you take something from the society in order to be allowed to used it exclusively for a while, you ought to give something back, that is what tax is for.