MrSnaith,
snip
Switching tracks: I’m going to make an analogy that might be illustrative. What if you met a man for the first time, and you didn’t know anything about him, but you knew that he had one thing in common with some others whom you did know quite well: they beat their wives. Let’s say you knew that several dozen people were wife-beaters, and they shared other characteristics as well (short temper, alcoholism, abused as children, often unemployed, etc). Would this be just a little bit suspicious? Why not?
Now, let’s consider the company of censors. The sophists, the pharisees, the Nazis, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, pretty much every oppressive and totalitarian regime, etc. Basically, if you look at history, can you give an example when censorship was used to protect freedom and truth? It seems like censorship has been used to silence truth and suppress freedom. I’m speaking about a very specific kind of censorship, mind you, not censorship of obscenity or vulgarity, but censorship that undermines the political or religious power and privilege held by the censors.
snip Is truth really the kind of thing that can’t stand up to falsehoods without the aid of violence, or the violent or forcible suppression of “liars?” Are people really so easily confused? If we are “made for truth” then shouldn’t we be able to discern true from false? Shouldn’t false ideas simply wither away over time?
I suppose you could say “no” and offer the enduring popularity of horoscopes, palm readers, and other superstitions as evidence. No one is forcing people to believe in that stuff, and yet they do! I wonder though, if humanity were able to attain true spiritual and intellectual freedom, what would happen? If everyone were able to think clearly and were free from the bonds of family pressure, political oppression, and lack of information, would everyone in the world become a Roman Catholic, or would the Church still need to censor opposing views? An open question I suppose.
Truth is in constant conflict with falsehoods. And has been since men understood they could influence others by spreading certain ideas that were not true, a mix of truth and falsehood and outright falsehood. If you examine the history of just about every government on a political level, various untruths were used to change the thoughts and finally, actions of the people. These methods come under the headings of “psychological warfare” and “engineering consent.” To use a common example, why do advertisers spend billions of dollars (globally) every year to sell their products? Why do we see well-known names advertised over and over, often with emotional appeals, to sell say, different soft drinks? “Tastes better than the other brand” or, more generally, buy/wear/own this to impress others and show others you appreciate the finer/“better” things. Research will show that constant, non-political messaging does influence buying decisions.
Take that to a governmental or institutional level and you have a broad spectrum of tools to work with. Since we have so much information available, on what basis does anyone, religious or not, accept that information as true and useful? Take political campaigns. Opponents sometimes paint other opponents in a bad light. “He or she voted for this… Don’t vote for them, vote for our guy.” I doubt the average person has the time to do a lot of fact checking.
Not long ago, in Africa, the Hutus and the Tutsis were convinced they needed to eliminate each other and all they had were primitive weapons. A spokesman for one side called the other “cockroaches.” Land was at stake. Then we move on to “reeducation camps” for those members of the population who don’t “get it.” Those who continue to resist are sent to ‘work camps’ or just disappear
When war is about to break out, and during the conflict, government and intelligence personnel make sure the news is to their favor. The public must feel that whatever action is justified. And who gets picked up first after one country is conquered by another? Artists, writers and intellectuals. They can get get in the way of spreading the desired messages to the people. On the other hand, those who support the regime in power can and do lend their support by drawing, writing and speaking favorably about it.
Truth, and falsehood, are just as much weapons as anything actually designed to kill people. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was called an “Evil Empire” by one US President and was referred to as a constant threat in the media, by the governments of certain countries, from 1945 to its collapse in the early 1990s.
But most people cannot deal with this on some level. Their lives are difficult enough without knowing about such things. “Regime change” is the latest rebranding of “overthrow that government/leader.” Sounds a lot more pleasant, and vague.
Wouldn’t it be nice if truth was truth and the truth-teller could be and is actually telling the whole truth? But, too often, the truth and the whole truth is hidden in private, public and governmental actions. This is often justified as ‘protecting’ others and in the case of “national security,” once the public knows, the enemy knows, so the truth has to be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies (Prime Minister Winston Churchill). A careful reading of the open literature about various people and places, reveals that some guilty parties were never prosecuted because they knew too much that was of value or that the evidence against them would include “classified information” that would alert the enemy that we knew something they believed we did not.
Ed
