It also sometimes includes neither lies or facts but ideas and fashions hammered over the head that those who make it want to be embraced.
Refer to the book Propaganda by Edward Bernays.
Hammering over ideas using biased and/or misleading information or half truths doesnât seem ethical to me, and it isnât always the most effective way to go about convincing someone of an idea. Absence of lies or misleading information doesnât take into account a lack of bias.
Factual, unbiased information can get the job done, especially if the body of thought being conveyed is rational.
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This post proves my point.
Whilst I agree certain problems do exist with modern societal constructs, I donât think current alternatives are any better. I had issues with certain elements regarding american sociocultural normalities just as I have a few issues with Australian society⊠But Iâm still glad I live in Australia as opposed to some authoritarian, poverty stricken mess of a country.
At least I live under a stable home, have access to good healthcare etc. If I have to put up with the irritance of socal media, pointless reality television and a highly narcissistic/profoundly self centered generation of kids but in return I have access to the tools required to live out an adequate quality of life then so be it. Iâm willing accept what I donât like as the benefit I percieve far outweighs what I dislike about Australian/secular society.
Also, earlier on you mentioned the humourous nature of your username. In relation to that today I saw this picture and I thought you might find it amusing. It looks like the man has bricks implanted into his muscles (photoshop obviously).
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You can minimize it.
Nothing with this definition cannot possibly not be inherently bad:
âinformation, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.â
They arenât comparable. Government is at least accepted, at worst, as a necessary evil. Propaganda isnât even a necessity, if you want to speak in pragmatic terms.
No, itâs what turns the average person into a lemming, of whom some adopt the idea that others are the propagandized ones.
Already, you guys are whining about liberal arts schools influencing adult students with socialism and whatever âfar leftâ ideologies you donât like. You have bloody idiots in their 20s now thinking socialism is a good idea.
Imagine your own government shifts even further left and they indoctrinate KIDS.
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These things should be taught at home.
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But if itâs religious indoctrination I suppose thatâs okay⊠Itâs not as if excessive religious influence has ever historically led to catastrophic consequences.
Propaganda doesnât have to be used to push a political ideology per se, as brickhead stated it can be used to hammer in any idea/ideology. The problem stems from the fact that propaganda is always biased, sometimes filled with misinformation or half-truths.
As youâve stated, propaganda creates lemmings⊠Or it can lead to distrust/disconnection (as was the case with say⊠Abstinence only sex education)
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Well, first of all, I made that post about religion part as an idea, or opinion. Itâs not a conviction. Like I said earlier, Iâm taking some time off from working, while purposefully forcing myself to not think about work, so I have time to think about this kind of stuff that I normally donât bother thinking about.
At the time of said post, I was reflecting on my own experience with the Catholic faith and education and just throwing out my train of thought while I was at it since this is a thread on religion. If someone were to argue against my position, I probably wouldnât counter much since it was more of a suggestion than anything else.
Now, when we talk about propaganda, this is a topic I am very extremely intimately fucking familiar with because Iâve helped DESIGN IT before. Thatâs all Iâm gonna say. It is, by definition, designed to indoctrinate people into a certain way of thought and/or behavior, regardless of whether the people who came up with it really believe that shit or not, and applying it on a macro level, which can be disasterous.
Some things have to be dealt with on a micro level, like choice of individual religious beliefs or choice of parenting style.
Thereâs religious indoctrination for sure. Iâve seen friends turn into evangelists of the loony variety who end up donating large amount of their paychecks to their churches whose pastors live in multi-million dollar homes and have private jets. But the chicks were easy to lay, so sometimes I followed them to church. I was young, horny and dumb. Cut me some slack here lol.
There were people who were sucked into multi level marketing schemes in the 2000s. I attended a couple of member meetings out of professional curiosity and they looked almost exactly like bloody evangelist churches of the loony variety.
If you gave me the power, I would want to ban both of them but itâs my respect for the freedom of the individual that would prevent me from doing that. I would, however, put a lot of into investigation of the legality of some of their practices and use and flow of funds, especially the churches whom are essentially exempt from tax.
Of course, Iâm not comparing any of these to civics and moral education classes at school. Iâm only bring up all this other stuff because this topic somehow turned into whether âpropagandaâ is good or not.
In fact, I could even agree with having them IF they were highly open to input and scrutiny from all the parents on what should or should not be included in individual schools since itâs not an academic subject. This is also what I mean by application on a micro level. We wouldnât be able to have that in Asia, but it could be different in the West.
If this were not the case, then Iâm highly opposed to them. At least with religion, you have the choice of which one you want your kid to embrace. You can send them to church, the synagogue, the mosque, anything.
And like I said, itâs also a community thing where parents can get involved and mingle with like-minded people. Overall, IMO itâs a good thing for society.
There are religious loons for sure and I gave my opinions above. But in this day and age, the odds of a first world country like the US turning into a Myanmar-like situation are close to zero so I wouldnât be worried about that(although it was both State and religious propaganda working hand in hand, the worst combination of all.). But propaganda is a different thing altogether, like Iâve also described above.
To put it simply, you canât use half-truths to make someone believe in an ideology on a nation-wide scale. Weâre not talking about something fun and benign like making kids believe in Santa Clause.
When they grow up, everyone figures out, or is eventually told Santa isnât real. Propaganda sticks with you because people donât debunk it nor explain the various nuances involved when kids grow up.
Right now, we also need to promote independent thinking and exposure to a variety of ideas, not stifle kids. There are geniuses born everyday who have the potential to find a cure for cancer or invent the next big tech innovation that will further change the world or solve world hunger or invent a real responsive sex doll that will also make you a sandwich.
We need to nurture talent. Male and female. It increases the odds because there are now more people doing shit to finally get me that sex doll.
Itâs why I accept a lot of things that other more conservative fellows here donât. Iâm not saying theyâre wrong intellectually nor morally, Iâm just stating Iâve have my own rationale for MY way of thinking.
Just think about this. In the late 90s, a PC had like 256mb of hard drive space and a 56kb/s connection was like warp speed when it first came out. 256mb was HUGE. Now weâre talking about 500gb thumbdrives, 5g with over 1mbps speed and smartphones that cost a couple of hundred bucks that are far more advanced than a PC that would have cost thousands in the 90s.
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ContinuedâŠ
This isnât a sign of society regressing. Itâs a sign of society CHANGING. Some things are good while some things are bad. And since the change is happening so fast, people are naturally finding it hard to adapt. You canât tell me that weâve literally invented shit that was the stuff of science fiction just 2-3 decades ago and the sky is falling at the same time and expect me to buy it.
The COVID situation has further rattled the world. Some people just give up trying to make sense of it all and turn into anarchists on one extreme end, or suddenly embrace extreme nationalism or run and submit to a God, be it a spiritual one, or a secular totalitarian government like the CCP in China to make everything ok on the other end. Itâs a product of fear and perceived disenfranchisement. I get it. Iâve seen enough shit go down in Asia during the previous crisises and how worthless politicians dealt with them.
But if we want to talk about being MEN(oh shut up feminazis, Iâm just making a point here)⊠Men have BALLS. We canât just give in to fear. We gotta learn how to adapt and survive. We challenge whatâs wrong and support whatâs right, even if our side is wrong and the other is right sometimes.
And weâre not fucking stupid. At least not all of us. Thereâs a reason why Jimmy Fallon has a career.
God gave us consciousness and the ability to think rationally, and the creativity and intellect to solve complex problems for a reason. To give in to fear and embrace any kind of extremist mentality out of sheer convenience would be a terrible abuse of this gift.
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I donât think fearing things that are sure to lead to impoverishment, despair, cruelty, and death is irrational. I have over and over in this and other threads shown how this is not out of sheer convenience but me going by actual data and real word experience in my own life.
I also donât think itâs extreme to envision a healthy community and life. I talk about clean streets, family life, marriage, safe schools, industriousness, and so on and so on, and the next think ya know Iâm in conversations that lead to talk about drug use, prostitution, sexual nihilism, and all that destroys that, all in the name of âfreedomâ.
I assume (possibly wrongfully so) that you are of the sort that manages to avoid all the pathologies created by what we talk about here. You are high IQ, high earning, and donât work with your hands and thereby stay away from it all; youâre not going to have your town ripped apart by drug addiction, mass job loss, and so on.
If that doesnât describe you I sincerely apologize (FOR REAL) but it describes many!
I cannot write at length lately Because of exactly what I want and have âhealthy family ties and friendshipsâso I am sorry for my brief replies on my phone. Again, for real because I Donât talk to fellow men with the intent to ignore or insult at all. I am stressing that for this conversation and topic.
However I believe much of what I present is ignored.
Not now. But it was exactly what you described, just worse, where I lived till I was in my mid teens when I decided to leave, and against my parentsâ wishes I might add. This would be considered a âshould be struck by lightningâ moment in traditional Chinese culture lol.
Last time I went back, it was pretty much improved although I lost a lot of old friends.
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Please donât misunderstand the fact that I do see you as a multi dimensional person. When I write a whole chunk of stuff, Iâm also churning out my flow of thought that may not have to do with anything you wrote, but rather a segway into other stuff that just pops into my mind while putting my thoughts down.
I donât do shit like this often(writing long posts reflecting on things) and the only real writing I do IRL is in formal business language.
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I wasnât referring to you with the âsheer convenienceâ comment(I explained what was going through my head while I was writing aove) What I do think is that youâre overreacting to a lot of things and your views on politics are definitely very different from mine. But itâs the kind of disagreement which, if we were having in a bar IRL, weâd just agree to disagree and laugh it off at the end and talk about more entertaining stuff.
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OK, I understand. And thanks.
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Definitely. Thatâs the point. If I met someone on here in real life Iâd likely say something like, âSo youâre so-and-so from T-mag?! Nice to meet you.â I would not say âCanât talk to you. Remember that threadâŠâ
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What? Accepting the best scientific explanation tentatively is blind faith? Your approach is far closer to blind faith than my own.
Blind faith in science.
This is an odd take. I donât understand how you equate science to blind faith, when it is the opposite of blind faith. Science requires evidence (having evidence of something, removes that thing from requiring blind faith). To be a scientific theory, the proof has to be reproducible. It also has to be falsifiable (meaning it can be disproved if new evidence arises).
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So reproduce the big bang.
The big bang could be real, God could have caused it too. But nobody knows, nobody can possibly know, and there is no evidence so I wonât waste my time speculating on baseless nonsense. Seems to me like the main reason for this and certain other scientific theories is to push more people towards atheism.
The EVIDENCE is reproducible. Have you looked into it?
This is false.
I donât know what to say to someone who believes in religion, but thinks scientific theory is baseless nonsense. One has evidence (that has been verified over and over), the other doesnât. Which one makes more sense to accept?
Science doesnât have a goal like this. It is about discovery and understanding. The theories should be based on where the evidence leads, not the other way around.
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