It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words

[_honorentheos]

Quas -

I was going to let this sleeping dog lie, but since it's been roused anyway...

I think that conforming to styles and beliefs in a group one belongs to may be instinctual. It might take a learned (and healthy) disrespect for authority to go beyond the 'norms' and follow your own drum beat. Maybe that's what makes a good artist.

I remember being very concerned that the clothes I wore to school passed the fashion test (a good argument in favor of school uniforms).

There are many examples of this outside religion. I have an acquaintance that spent most of his life in the military. He's retired from that now, but he misses it. Everything was laid out for him. Life was easy. If he had any doubts about decisions he needed to make he could just follow the 'manual'. Always safe. Now he has to be concerned with making decisions without guidance. He doesn't care for it.

I have to agree with you. Having served in the military I recognize what your acquaintance describes. I also recognize the type who felt very at home being free from having to think, compete, and otherwise act for one's self.

In the past, there was evolutionary benefit to taking cues from the culture one was in. Both broadly and in an immediate sense. There's a reason we all have a deep instinct to look where the crowd is looking. Any proto homo sapien who failed to do so ran the risk of being eaten by the predator the others were looking out for. Likewise, culture cues could have very specific, unique value that made a group collectively more adapted to their environs and improved their survival chance.

The challenge I think we face today is that this instinct has been co-opted. The masses that are chasing culture often are doing so to the enrichment of someone else's pocketbook or the inflation of someone elses ego. Housing bubbles, pyramid schemes, religious movements, or cliques - at the center there is often someone who is using the collective instinct to be a collective to their own advantage.

I think the key point is it takes thoughtfulness to navigate in the modern world. We can not rely on the reflex to join in without reflection, but we also should not be mislead into thinking we can go it alone and be successful as human beings, either.

For example, when I see the emotional reactions directed towards John Dehlin as has been brought up on the board I can't help wondering why so many people are so angry at having been "manipulated" into being part of a group based on being angry at having been manipulated into being part of a group?

This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? ... If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

To me, it's important to realize this happens at all scales. But the correct action is always the same: Be mindful. Choose. Don't let others choose for you. And have the courage to accept the consequence of your own choices. Somethings that means moving with the flow of the river, sometimes against, sometimes stepping out all together. Sometimes diving under to a whole different current.

Be mindful. Choose.

[_richardMdBorn]

The irony of seeing the acronym mainstream media used in a thread based on Newspeak is hard to overlook.

But mainstream media is used as a rejection of a type of Newspeak. The Journalist scandal is an example of Newspeak in action.

[_EAllusion]

The idiotic things members of the mainstream media say about leftists like Obama are examples of a slobbering love affair.

Granted, this is coming from a person who thinks Bill Ayers ghostwrote for Obama, thinks Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's real father, and generally considers failing to wear a tinfoil hat as an act of leftwing bias.

Fox is a substantial portion of the mainstream media, by the way. It's the biggest player in the biggest piece of mainstream media influence. And given that it's mostly a cross between rightwing shock-jock talk radio and and outright propaganda arm of the Republican party, it's hard to imagine how far to the right you have to be to consider it leftist. MSNBC tries to be the liberal equivalent, but also tries to have it both ways by having a straight news division that's more CNN-like. CNN is middle-road yellow journalism terrified of being accused of having liberal bias. It often compensates by playing a "both sides have merit, you decide!" to any political dispute regardless of how little factual merit one side might actually have. Usually, it's just a conduit through which Democrats and Repubs can disseminate their competing talking points mixed up with tabloid reporting. It occasionally tries to model Fox as a business strategy with rightwing pundits, but usually fails.

And those three together are a huge portion of what it means to be the mainstream media.

[_honorentheos]

The irony of seeing the acronym mainstream media used in a thread based on Newspeak is hard to overlook.

But mainstream media is used as a rejection of a type of Newspeak. The Journalist scandal is an example of Newspeak in action.

richardMdBorn,

As EA points out above, buying into the "mainstream media" conspiracy as invented and feed to you through a supposedly trustworthy and orthodox form of media is odd.

Having declared themselves to be unbiased, moderate, and "no spin", it seems you have simply choosen to align with their marketing and ideological propoganda. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Right-leaning media is unbiased.

That they have simplifed the need to think about this into a label, "main stream media" which has been shortened even further to an acronym, mainstream media, is just icing on the cake. You know exactly what it means without having to think about it. mainstream media. The thinking is done. No danger of wondering how the people telling you about the threat of the mainstream media are part of the media because the new Newspeak has taken the thinking out for your.

Welcome to orthodoxy, brother.

[_richardMdBorn]

The idiotic things members of the mainstream media say about leftists like Obama are examples of a slobbering love affair.

Granted, this is coming from a person who thinks Bill Ayers ghostwrote for Obama, thinks Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's real father, and generally considers failing to wear a tinfoil hat as an act of leftwing bias.

Where did I state that Frank Davis is Obama's father? Perhaps you lack the understanding that I was joking when I wrote

If Obama had a son, he might look like Frank Marshall Davis.

I do think that Ayres a major part of Dreams from my Father. I think the evidence for this is strong. The assertion that JFK did not write Profiles in Courage and instead it was written by Ted Sorenson was denied for 50 years . It did happen to be true, but you need not worry with trifles like that. In a similar way, I think we will eventually learn the truth about the composition of Dreams. We already have strong evidence that Obama lied about the closeness of his connections with Ayers. He was not just a guy in the neighborhood.

[_richardMdBorn]

richardMdBorn,

As EA points out above, buying into the "mainstream media" conspiracy as invented and feed to you through a supposedly trustworthy and orthodox form of media is odd.

Having declared themselves to be unbiased, moderate, and "no spin", it seems you have simply choosen to align with their marketing and ideological propoganda. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Right-leaning media is unbiased.

That they have simplifed the need to think about this into a label, "main stream media" which has been shortened even further to an acronym, mainstream media, is just icing on the cake. You know exactly what it means without having to think about it. mainstream media. The thinking is done. No danger of wondering how the people telling you about the threat of the mainstream media are part of the media because the new Newspeak has taken the thinking out for your.

Welcome to orthodoxy, brother.

Newspeak is a government invented language. The fact that you don't understand that means you comprehend little about Orwell or 1984. I suggest that you spend some time reading the four volumns of his collected essays. You might learn something.

[_richardMdBorn]

Fox is a substantial portion of the mainstream media, by the way. It's the biggest player in the biggest piece of mainstream media influence. And given that it's mostly a cross between rightwing shock-jock talk radio and and outright propaganda arm of the Republican party, it's hard to imagine how far to the right you have to be to consider it leftist.

Fox could be considered conservative. ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/NYT/Washington Post are all liberal to leftist. The national media is overwhelmingly leftist and the coverage of the 2012 campaign reflects this. How many stories were there about Fast and Furious? How many slobbering stories were there about Obama? The fact that you deny this shows how out of touch with reality you are.

[_EAllusion]

Where did I state that Frank Davis is Obama's father? Perhaps you lack the understanding that I was joking when I wrote

If Obama had a son, he might look like Frank Marshall Davis.

Heh. Forgive me from thinking that you were serious when you referenced a conspiracy theory you don't believe given that you believe in others along the same lines. Heck, the person you relied on for your case that Ayers wrote Dreams employs the same kind of arguments, though self-contradictory, to argue Frank Marshall Davis ghostwrote for Obama as "pop". That is, not when not plying him with underage sex.

(Other people probably will recognize Richard's preferred source for hissemi-famous use of an awful photoshop job to argue a slightly different Obama conspiracy theory. Coincidentally for this thread, WND disappeared it in Orwellian fashion.)

I think the evidence for this is strong.

That's looney-tunes. You have a severe disconnect from reality.

[_EAllusion]

conservative. ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/NYT/Washington Post are all liberal to leftist.

Heh. So Fox just kinda sorta can be considered conservative. I guess that says something about just how conservative you need to be to get that label from you. I guess when you are to the right of the John Birch society, everything does seem liberal by comparison.

CNN tends to lean rightward in its punditry makeup, by the way. ABC likewise. The rest lean from slightly left leaning to full-on liberal outlet, though it depends on the issue you are talking about. The "leftist" NYT did heavily push the lead up into Iraq war, after all, which aided the Bush admin arguments. Judith Miller,the disgraced NYT journalist most associated with that, now belongs to Newsmax. It really depends on what you are talking about.

The national media is overwhelmingly leftist and the coverage of the 2012 campaign reflects this. How many stories were there about Fast and Furious? How many slobbering stories were there about Obama? The fact that you deny this shows how out of touch with reality you are.

The media hammered tons of narratives of, some of dubious merit, that were not favorable to Obama. It's a mixed bag. Heck, I clearly recall polls that showed Obama comfortably up were often called a "tie" on CNN while polls that showed a statistical tie were reported as Romney winning. That's probably a function of horserace reporting, a desire to see a close race, but clearly that was to the advantage of Romney.

[_honorentheos]

Newspeak is a government invented language. The fact that you don't understand that means you comprehend little about Orwell or 1984. I suggest that you spend some time reading the four volumns of his collected essays. You might learn something.

Ah, one of my favorite types of responses on the internet. The one that says, "You haven't gone far enough down the rabbit hole to know what you're talking about. If you had only dug deeper, gone further, struggled harder up Fox News' asshole, you'd know their crap don't stink."

To which I say, "Good luck getting that smell out of your hair."