Multidimensional food for thought...
“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” ~Audre Lorde
We are told what to think almost every day. We are less often taught how to think.
From mainstream media to social media. From “real” news to “fake” news. From Facebook political pokes to Twitter Trumpisms. It’s getting more and more difficult to navigate the wide-open waters of the information age.
There is so much information out there. It can be overwhelming. All too often we take the easy route and unquestioningly stick to our political party line. But when it comes down to it, it is our responsibility alone to think clearly. It’s not our chosen news outlet’s responsibility. It’s not our teacher’s responsibility. It’s not our political party’s responsibility. It is ours and ours alone. Paraphrasing Aristotle, we must be capable of entertaining a thought without accepting it. Lest we become victims to the thoughts of others. As a sixth grader once said, “Question authority, including the authority that told you to question authority.”
Newspeak
“I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous – if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.” ~Robert Green Ingersoll
Newspeak is a term coined by George Orwell in his book 1984. Newspeak is dangerous because it is the opposite of the first amendment: freedom of press. It is all about thought control and thought suppression. It limits the freedom of thought while keeping the individual under the delusion that he/she is thinking freely. As Noam Chomsky wrote in The Common Good, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
Newspeak is all about limiting spectrums of thought. Every time you hear Trump utter the words “Fake news” you are witnessing a newspeak tactic that is covertly attempting to keep you passive and obedient while also limiting the spectrum of “acceptable” opinion.
The first amendment is powerful because it allows for freedom of expression. Whether that expression is right or wrong, or even fake, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is our responsibility as individual thinkers to decide if it is right or wrong. When another person is using their power to dictate to you what is right or wrong, or who attempts to coerce you from ever seeing the information to make a sound decision in the first place, that person is lording their power over you through newspeak. That is covert tyranny.
Lest we fall into covert slavery, we must, as responsible individuals, first use our courage and solidarity to maintain freedom of press and freedom of creative expression and, second, use our powers of logic and reasoning when assessing the information gleaned from said press or creative expression.
Doublethink
“How could you have a slogan like “Freedom is Slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” ~George Orwell
Governing the precept that orthodoxy is unconsciousness, it stands to reason that unorthodoxy is consciousness. It further stands to reason that not questioning the orthodoxy is falling victim to unconsciousness. Therefore, to be conscious, to be woke, as the kids are saying, is to question the orthodoxy.
Also coined in 1984, and subtly different from newspeak, doublethink is a strategy that attempts to keep thought trapped inside the double-bind of the orthodoxy. It keeps a person in a constant state of unconscious cognitive dissonance. It goes Meta with the idea of Newspeak, where the lies we tell ourselves are always one step ahead of the truth we willfully suppress. In the book, the three slogans of the Party –War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, are good examples of doublethink…
We’ve fallen hook-line-and-sinker for cultural conditioning, statist brainwashing, and political propaganda to such an extent that we have lost the ability to “entertain a thought without accepting it.” Cultural ninjaneering is a call to arms to reacquire this lost ability.
The Cultural Ninjaneer
“The population suffers from a fear of change. Their conditioning assumes a static identity, and challenging one’s belief system usually results in insult and apprehension, for being wrong is erroneously associated with failure. When in fact, to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding.” ~Peter Joseph
A cultural ninjaneer is an individual who is capable of entertaining a political, national, racial, and religious thought without accepting it. Using logic, reason, and probability, they are adept at taking things into consideration and not putting all their eggs into any particular basket. In short, they are able to culturally adapt and self-overcome.
A cultural ninjaneer counters newspeak and “limited spectrums of acceptable opinion” by questioning everything they read. They question all political parties, especially their own. And when they come up with what seems like a solid answer, they take it into consideration rather than believe in it. In other words: they entertain the answer without accepting it. They use the “answer” as a tool so that it doesn’t turn them into a tool.
As for doublethink, the same thing applies, but they must go Meta to counter the preconditioned Meta of doublethink. One way they do this is to cultivate and practice Joshua Green’s concept of metamorality. Which is based on a common ground that all humans can agree upon while proposing a utilitarian deep pragmatism that empathically broadens the mind and compassionately opens the heart to the plight of us all as interdependent beings on an interconnected planet.
At the end of the day, the cultural ninjaneer realizes that the age of information inevitably comes with an overload of bullsh#t from all angles. Which is even more of a reason to keep their skeptics cap on tight and their question-mark sword sharp. They understand that it will be difficult to excavate Truth –tantamount to finding diamonds in the rough. But they have a sense of humor about it. They don’t take anything too seriously, especially their own opinion. They take everything with a grain of salt, and some things with the entire salt shaker.
They appreciate the difficulty of being a fallible, imperfect, prone to mistakes, tribally-biased and confused human in an otherwise confusing universe, where Truth has never been readily apparent. They laugh, and they laugh hard, at the cosmic joke of it all. But they have the courage and the audacity to turn that humor into art, into creative self-expression, and into The Press, which not everyone will always agree with. But so what if people don’t agree? They will never agree 100%… And that’s okay when you’re not taking yourself or your political agenda too seriously.
OneLoveRevolution247
@ http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/10/26/cultural-ninjaneering-overcoming-newspeak-doublethink/
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Free Your Mind From Mainstream Media Brainwashing
by Patrick Henningsen
Starting with Gutenberg’s printing press, then Thomas Edison’s motion picture camera and the introduction of celluloid and the silver screen, and later the cathode ray tube – a select few media institutions, and the men behind them, have enjoyed monolithic monopoly over the information we see and hear.
Their machine is awesome and seemingly unstoppable, and reaches anywhere, anytime and into the minds of all it targets.
How does one navigate, let alone make sense, of this 21st century matrix?
If this transformation were truly an organic process, then most critical minds would be able to rationally deal with our total immersion in media. But the evolution of technology and how we interact with it is not so easy to articulate. As platforms and choice continue to proliferate, the situation is becoming more attuned to Chaos Theory than Darwinian Theory. The media and its modern marketing arms tell us it’s all progress. By now, their role is well defined – as the initial express vehicle on which all new ideas and advancements are delivered into the mainstream. In most cases, one could say the public are now fully preconditioned to accept new media on arrival.
Whether we care to admit it or not, there are varying degrees of brainwashing and behavioral conditioning with films and TV. That’s why they call it programming. How many of us find ourselves automatically using quotes from popular films or TV shows? And how many of us emulate the fashion or hairstyles of those we see on the screen?
It happens much more than most people care to admit. Most of us are completely unaware of how much we mimic what we see, and repeat what we hear.
In the 1976 classic, The Network, the film’s main character, a television prophet named Howard Beale, delivers an unforgettable sermon to his studio audience, perfectly describing the raw nature of mass media in a societal context:
And why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube. This tube is the Gospel. The ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damn force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people.
Beale must have known it had already fallen into the hands of the wrong people, namely organized crime, the CIA, the Military Industrial Complex and the transnational global elite.
The reality is that studio and record executives, and their media producers, are responsible for much of society’s behavior, as well as the popular cultural archetypes that people adopt. For sure, this is a tremendous amount of power, and don’t think for a moment that executives do not know this. The same can be said for their CIA and Pentagon ‘advisors’ too.
When in high gear, this culture machine commands any of the following behaviors en masse; foul language, profanity, sexual promiscuity, pre- and extra-marital affairs, drug use and abuse, dysfunctional relationships and families, racial tension, violence, defacing religious symbols, Satanic ritualism, undermining authority figures like fathers, teachers, clergy, and even the worship of the Orwellian security state. It’s all fair game for the media and entertainment industry.
How is anyone expected to survive this psychological and spiritual onslaught?
Media Survival 101
The average person living in a technologically advanced first world society will watch an average of three hours of television per day, as well as another two to three hours spent on computerized electronic devices. If we want to survive with our minds and souls intact, at some point in our lives we have to muster the courage to turn off, and tune-out.
The sheer volume of content now available means each person must be judicious about how they spend their time. The old binary option for ‘Generation X’, when you said to yourself, “Alright, I have three hours to myself. How am I going to spend that time? Do I watch TV, or do I read a book?” – may no longer apply.
For Millennials (and others too), it’s more like, “Do I watch TV, YouTube, hangout on Periscope, Instagram, Facebook, or do I stream Hulu, Amazon Prime, iTunes or Roku, or do I read online, with my Kindle, or my Nook, or who knows, maybe a book?”
The term binge watching also comes to mind. Seven seasons with 10 episodes each, with a continuous interconnected cliffhanger plot line – enough suspense and intrigue to trigger endorphins in the brain to keep you awake all night, enough to watch an entire season of 24… in 24 hours.
If things are really that bad, or you are feeling anxious over an obsession with keeping up with content, then there is a high probability you are under some degree of media-driven mind control.
The first step in liberation from the machine is to become a more active consumer of information and content, as opposed to being a passive sieve. That’s not to say you cannot enjoy a movie, or watch a good ball game now and again – everyone needs to step off the hamster wheel and indulge in entertainment from time to time.
To defeat the linear, force-feeding tube of information and social conditioning by Hollywood and mainstream media… simply read more. Read whatever you can get your hands on – books, print journals, magazines, online articles, and newspapers. Your knowledge retention rate will be higher, and the experience of reading will hone your mental focus, self-reflection and clarity of thought.
Rather than waste hours watching TV or sitting through a sub-par Hollywood cinema production that you know will be disappointing in the end, instead try listening to radio shows, or podcasts. Instead of drifting down rabbit holes on YouTube, visit websites like Soundcloud instead, and get immersed in their vast audio jungle.
Another useful practice in liberating your mind from groupthink and staying less susceptible to mainstream brainwashing is to make a concerted effort to occasionally read, watch or listen to content from media outlets or sources that you do not like, or generally do not agree with. This is important for a number of reasons. If you are truly confident in your political beliefs, your worldview or your grasp of current and historical events, then it shouldn’t bother you to hear what ‘the other side’ has to say. If you really want to successfully defend your position, opinion, or ideology, or your side of the political spectrum – then it helps to know the contrarian arguments, and you should want to analyze them as much as possible. This type of open-minded information consumerism is exactly what the establishment culture-makers and matrix operatives do not want you to be involved with – because a confident, well-informed and objective voice is antithetical to the prevailing divide and rule, bipolar political paradigm program that social engineers are currently running on Western society.
Also, should you ever find yourself growing tired of reading about it, then go and experience it.
Learn How to Learn
The American poet Robert Frost famously said, “We all proceed with insufficient knowledge.”
In the education of the mind, everyone must submit (at least once a day) to the fact that no matter how smart or knowledgeable you think you are on any given topic or event, you actually know very little. You may know more than the person next to you, and you might even be an expert on one layer of a lattice, but more than likely would only have above average knowledge of one corner of the galaxy that is your area of expertise.
Unfortunately, as far as social media is concerned, it remains a crude platform for human interaction and learning. Your 13.5 inch laptop screen doesn’t always deliver when it comes to human stimulation and speed of exchange that you’ll get through human conversation. The solution to this problem is a simple one – we need to talk more. Talk more, and talk about anything. The most powerful microprocessor on the planet is not in the basement of the NSA in Provo, Utah, or in Jeff Bezos’ server yards in Colorado – it’s between your ears.
Also, rather than preaching to the choir, try and strike up conversations with people who are smarter or more experienced than you. This is one of the fastest ways to increase your knowledge base and gain valuable insights which you will never get from the mainstream media, or even find in the annals of the Ministry of Truth (Wikipedia).
Remember: you’re not a robot, so stop acting like one.
There’s a big world out there – and it’s much bigger than anything inside your TV or smart phone.
@ http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/10/31/free-mind-mainstream-media-br...