There is no greater enemy to logic, common sense and critical thinking than religion. Religion punishes skepticism and logic. In many places you can still be killed for blasphemy. When children discover Santa isn't real, this should be an opportunity for them to break free of the gaslighting of their family religion, instead many parents double down on the gaslighting. When people are too brainwashed to accept something as simple as "fairy tale creatures are not real" their brains become mush. What would you say if I told you, yesterday on my way home I crossed a footbridge and I saw a man walking on the water. Not only that, the man was a zombie. I saw him raise another man from the dead. We should probably be getting ready for a zombie apocalypse? You would immediately think i was either insane or making some kind of joke. And if you didn't, I would ask you to give me all your money for my new church.
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The thing about propaganda that's often overlooked is the fact that it isn’t just about controlling what people think - it’s about controlling what people think other people think.
I think the real problem is, people don’t know how to manage their emotions, and those end up swaying them left and right. Opportunistic antagonists will take advantage of those triggers.
Stop thinking with with your gut, take a pause to analyze your body response to emotions. Are you sweating? Are you afraid or is it actually warm? If you’re afraid, what specifically do you fear? Etc.
Propaganda, echo chambers, peer pressure, and even vicious cycles of self-pity, anger, sadness… will have a weaker hold on you.
Feel, but don’t stop thinking.
I wish I was like that.
I am gonna take a biased and unsubstantiated leap in logic here but no. Not because most people are incapable of critical thinking but because it is intentionally not encouraged by western education. Critical thinking is something that has to be taught to people and most people have never had a reason to learn it. All they need to know is how to go to work and consume.
Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda?
They surely do in the USia, why wouldn't they do it in other countries. It is only takes to convince third of a population but it has to be the loud third to maintain power in a modern "Democracy"
I was idly thinking about this the other day, how absolutely lonely it must be in say North Korea, where if you're caught by the regime to be thinking the wrong thing you'll get killed. I'd know its bullshit, but I'd be terrified of speaking out or asking questions, incase the person I'm speaking to is an agent of the state, or will suspect me of being an agent and inform the authorities incase I'm testing them.
It must be awful not knowing who's a secret police, who's a gullible rube for buying the propaganda and who's just hiding behind forced conformity.
I don't think many of them will believe the propaganda, but I bet the ones who do will be the happiest. Or least miserable I guess.
Everyone believes and agrees with propaganda to some extent because world is a lie. All rules are just rough aproximation of reality. All modern rules are man made and most of them are not real. They are just real in this moment of time we live in. The moment we agreed those rules are true. So people just agreed that this propaganda you're seeing is ok for them right now. They can live with that. This doesn't mean they have no critical thinking. This means they are fine with things as they are because it doesn't touch directly major percentage of them.
Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
Where I come from? Not much, but part of that is because the lies are so obvious and in conflict with people's lived experience that you can't even delude yourself into accepting them.
The concept of "the average person" is a good example of the type of crass generalisation that propagndists often use.