andersonnnunes
Disciple
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To those who know Adam Curtis, this needs no introduction, to those who don't, take this as an introduction to his works.
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We live in a state of confusion, to which the response is 'Oh, dear'
- Thread starter andersonnnunes
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Could do without the dramatized music, but he does have a point.
But such methods are easily defeated by not looking at the causes but the actual effects. Confronting key figures with important questions is also a way to do this. And finally, we simply look at people's actions, not at their intents and we decide what it means, not what some figurehead says it means.
For example, Russia is invading the Ukraine, but NOBODY approves of this and from what I've read, sympathy is massively in the Ukraine camp. Ultimately, we need to do what we think is truly right. We need to be more intelligent and discerning or risk being led by parties who are more than happy to do such for us.
Remember, no matter how many lies are spun, the truth always exists and can never be changed, for that is the nature of all truth.
But such methods are easily defeated by not looking at the causes but the actual effects. Confronting key figures with important questions is also a way to do this. And finally, we simply look at people's actions, not at their intents and we decide what it means, not what some figurehead says it means.
For example, Russia is invading the Ukraine, but NOBODY approves of this and from what I've read, sympathy is massively in the Ukraine camp. Ultimately, we need to do what we think is truly right. We need to be more intelligent and discerning or risk being led by parties who are more than happy to do such for us.
Remember, no matter how many lies are spun, the truth always exists and can never be changed, for that is the nature of all truth.
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It may perhaps be that truth will always exist. The question, how much relevance does it have? Are people really concerned with what is true or are they concerned with what they would LIKE to be true?
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If our civilization comes to the point where the absolute majority are more concerned with their fantasies, then it will only be a matter of time before that civilization falls. You cannot build a stable society on lies.
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Your response implies we haven't reached that point in your opinion. Individualism is pretty big, this Forum is a expression of that being a ideal you extoll. People already do live for their fantasies. I'd argue it's a intrinsic part of being human. So, obviously I don't agree with the notion that that necessarily equates to lies. BUT where I see the political issues generally to originate isn't necessarily from policy itself, but from behavior, things that are inconvienent are simply not talked about or obscured to the point of making any mention meaningless.
Illegal immigrants become undocumented migrants or refugees. People will say they are against open borders, but their reaction to any kind of border enforcement will suggest otherwise. Now on the other side of the aisle we have people that aren't at all bigoted, they want a straight pride parade, it's totally not just a ill concieved fuck you to the LGBTQ Community, nope, not at all, they are totally serious and sincere in their wish to celebrate heterosexuality!
People see what they want to see. I for instance am pretty sure that truely combating climate change, barring some kind of technological wonder, would essentially require going back to pre-industrial revolution standards of living, perhaps a bit higher. Some other people think that it would result in a practical utopia with a clearly higher standard of living for everyone. They believe this can absolutely be achieved with existing technology that would also be entirely clean. For what I gather they believe the rich are not allowing this to happen, I can only assume because they would rather keep their lower standard of living whilst being able to lord it over everyone else then having a far higher standard of living but that applying to all. Others still just think climate change isn't a thing or worse even, acknowledge it, yet think it to be entirely natural as if that somehow would make it less of a problem.
If this were a Math problem, this would be the like trying to solve it by explicitily ignoring parts of the equation. And that's what I see everyone doing all the time, obviously including myself. The problem is the degree. It's ok in societal terms for someone to be blue-eyed about their career prospects, it's bad when the problems with immigration are ignored for humitarian and emotional reason to the point that it causes tensions amoung other segments of the population, which leads to backlash and ever increasing rhetorical escalation and doubling down.
TL;DR
On a personal scale being kinda unrealistic with some things is fine. It becomes a problem when you start deciding policy not based on what is provibly true, but what you feel should be true. At this point, I'm not sure you could even establish what is true on many issues due to the sheer amount of misinformation and special interests.
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Depends on how you wanna look at current society. Certain ones do seem worse than others but I also think the internet often makes everything seem a lot worse than what it is. After all, enmity sells.