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iterating Roger W.'s avatar

I want to introduce a concept. A disruptive one. I hope you like it.

Smartphones are literally TV.

There. Mic drop.

They tell us that there is a generational gap: young people don't read newspapers or watch tv, they get all their information (malinformation) online. Preferably, using the smartphone. Therefore, the same people who made TV unwatchable moved to take over the Internet and make it unwatchable too. The young people are as bad informed as if they watched TV all day.

Therfore, there is a chance that the "new beliefs" of the newer generations are as immutable and unfounded as the beliefs of the older generations.

I know, too pessimistic.

I accept debates on this concept.

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Curious and Concerned's avatar

I took an English Comp class in high school, and was blessed with a curriculum based around learning rhetorical figures of speech (metaphor, simile, hyperbole, oxymoron, and many less well known). We had to find examples in magazines or newspapers and cut them out. That made us process the figures of speech internally, not just memorize a definition. It was a "sneaky" way to introduce critical thinking, as in "what are they really saying," and opened us up to ask "is this a trick to manipulate the way I think about something?" Years later when I figured out what that teacher had been up to, I went looking for a book that took a similar approach to figures of speech (or the principles of rhetoric) and came to appreciate just how rare was the kind of teaching I had received. I could not find a single book that did the topic justice--only academic treatises that missed the practical point entirely.

I wish there were more sneaky teachers like that, who helped us pierce the veil and reveal how we are being programmed to think.

Now when a new "event" such as the war in Ukraine or COVID comes along, I immediately set up two columns in my mind: A) This is the official story and B) The underlying story/a deeper look. I now find there is ALWAYS another side to the story. Over time I have developed resources that I trust. Critical Thinking with Dr. T and Dr. P has become one of my go to sources for filling out Column B. I also have a mental list of sources I can depend on to be broadcasting something so far from the truth that I can start out by assuming that exactly the opposite is likely to be true (CNN for example).

Money and power interests usually have an agenda they want hidden from the public mind, with a cover story we are not only supposed to believe, but to become emotionally invested in. The Network, or TNI, or the White House spokesperson, will tell us why we should cheer for the team they are putting on the field (a tip of the hat to Dr. P and his sports news).

Early on in the "cultural programming" process I try to sort out enough of what's really going on so that I can feed better resources to those who might listen to me--and indeed, over the life cycle of the Fairy Tale we are being fed, I find people are less interested, more set in their belief patterns, harder to reach--even when it becomes clear to me that the stakes are high, as they have been with the PlanDemic. Some people I can never reach.

I remember how with the COVID substory about early trearment--where we were fed the clear lie that only a vax could save us--I caught the initial press conference of America's Frontline Doctors who were already working with Iver and HCQ. It left me speechless when a very dear friend (a classmate, and fellow acupuncturist, with training in clinical research methodology) bit on the media trope that the doctor from Haiti was into black magic. She could not get past that character assassination--and ironically a racist smear--and the way it painted all the people in that group, and thus she was convinced that the message they carried, should be ignored.

How do we train and deploy more sneaky teachers?

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