by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone:
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
One of the worst mistakes you can make when formulating your understanding of the world is to begin with the assumption that the truest and most accurate position must lie somewhere near the center of the two major political perspectives you see laid out all around you.
It’s a mistake not only because assuming that the center position must be the best one is a type of fallacious reasoning known as the middle ground fallacy (the correct position between “Drink a gallon of bleach daily for good health” and “Drink zero bleach daily for good health” is not “Drink half a gallon of bleach daily for good health”); it’s also a mistake because the entire framing arises from a situation that has been artificially engineered by the powerful.
It’s a well-documented fact that the rich and powerful pour vast fortunes into manipulating the political and media landscape in ways that serve their interests. Their control over the news media and Silicon Valley tech platforms is used to set the agenda and influence public perception by determining what issues will receive attention and which won’t in ways that preserve the political status quo they’ve built their empire upon, thereby shrinking the Overton window of acceptable debate down to a very narrow spectrum whose outcomes can’t threaten their interests in any way.
“Normal human beings
– whose brains haven’t been turned to clam chowder by propaganda from either mainstream faction – would much prefer to avoid giant world-threatening confrontations between any nuclear-armed nations.” https://t.co/mUIQO8eLzc— Brunapper (@brunapper) August 22, 2023
We just discussed this dynamic with regard to US aggressions against Russia and China; the Overton window is being narrowed to a debate between which US enemy should be the target of the most imperial aggressions, with voices who advocate detente with both countries finding no platform in mainstream politics or media. This is what Noam Chomsky was talking about when he said “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.”
People assume there must be truth in the mainstream worldview because so many others are invested in the mainstream worldview, when really the only reason that worldview is mainstream in the first place is because so much wealth and influence has gone into making it mainstream. In reality the assumption that the truth exists anywhere in either of the two mainstream political viewpoints promoted by the managers of the western empire is an example of the bandwagon effect, which describes the cognitive bias in which humans tend to take on beliefs, behaviors, styles and attitudes solely because that’s what the people around them are doing.
This bias would have had evolutionary advantages early on in our development as a species. Back when our evolutionary ancestors were prey for prehistoric carnivores, it was a survival advantage to start running for your life if you saw other members of your tribe running, even if you personally didn’t see what they were running from. As primates whose survival depended on social cohesion, being rejected by the tribe would mean almost certain death by predation or starvation, so it was necessary to conform in whatever ways prevented that rejection from happening.
But we don’t live in prehistoric times anymore. We live in a civilization with a highly complex information environment that is being continually manipulated away from truth and accuracy and toward the advantage of powerful people who rule over us. If you go along with the herd, you’ll be deceived.
Read More @ CaitlinJohnstone.com
