One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
– Aldous Huxley
Propaganda is quite the effective marketing tool to get as many people as possible to act in a certain manner. It looks as if people want to know what the truth is, but not the entire scope of it, so I would say they are more willing to settle for a manufactured version of truth. It’s much as if it creates a mind virus that spreads throughout a person’s mental, physical and spiritual characteristics. It is unbelievable just how much deception we humans fall for or make use of.
To offset the onslaught of propaganda, one must develop critical thinking abilities. It’s not easy at the beginning, but once a person starts it is hard to go back to the slumber they once were in. One can question the whys, hows and whats of the going ons around them and not settle for mediocre answers. Too bad we don’t have vaccinations to cure dulled thinking or hypnotized mindsets.
There will always be a certain amount of truth mixed in with the propaganda so it has more credibility. Josef Goebbels, as evil as he was, was bang on the mark when he said; “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”. With this in mind, one really has to be careful on what they accept as gospel truth. The very best propagandists can convince you that Heaven is Hell and Hell is Heaven.
The best propagandists are the ones who study human behavior. Josef Goebbels and Edward Bernays knew this very well. Plus there is rarely an individual in a large crowd. It is so easy to get absorbed into a collective mindset which can be steered into any direction at the whim of any leader(s). The mass mind is so easily influenced or manipulated.
It would be interesting to find what desires or fantasies come to the surface in an uncontrolled crowd setting. These are the ones an individual keeps under a tight wrap or be too ashamed to admit to in the light of day. Would propagandists use these hidden secrets to compromise a person? We have to assume that all of our actions are watched, every word we say is being recorded. Will the day come that every thought we have will be brought out into the open? Most of us don’t make our thoughts public. Scary thought isn’t it?
Ron Murdock has lived and worked in Western Canada all his life, and will continue to do so until his last day on Planet Earth. He has a good number of interests and hobbies which include dogs, freight trains, baseball and astronomy. Ron wants to know what the truth is, and nothing but the truth, and will do what research it takes to find it. The best compliment he can get is when a person says his writing, or what he says, gets them seeking.
