At one time in the past there were several established truths; The earth was flat. The Earth was the center of the universe. People were burned alive from accusations of witchcraft. Thank the Lord we are out of those times and we are all more enlightened today.
Or are we?
What happens when fact checkers are biased?
What happens when organizations or people with a particular political agenda hides behind what they claim to be the real facts?
Who is fact checking the fact checkers?
How does this relate to the human brains affinity for biases?
Does the big media and Big Tech (who owns social media) twist reality to fit their own agenda, and if so, how?
What are the political views of the owners of Big Media and Big Tech (“Big Social media”)?
Why is it that it seems like the established truth is only on one side of the political scale? Or on one side of the environmental scale? Or on one side of <insert scale name here>?
What happens when the pendulum swings from one extreme – one side of the scale, to the other? Why does it seem that so many people think that the other extreme is somehow better? It’s still an extreme. What is so wrong with the middle?
Realizing that we are all living in a bubble. You included.
The law of belief: It’s said that “Whatever you believe, with conviction, becomes your reality”.
Thus, it’s not about the reality, it’s about the perception of reality. It’s no secret that setting out a nasty rumor about someone you don’t like will eventually lead to the destruction of that persons life. The same can be done for organizations, companies and even countries.
How does this rant relate to prepping?
To me, knowing that my mind is defaulting to being biased in some way, allows me to step back and look at what I do in a little more of an objective way. In essence I am building another skill to be prepared to see the manipulation from the government, Big Media, Big Tech and other people. And also to see when there is none.
It’s important to be able to think for yourself and not blindly follow a trail just because someone says something is so.
Seeing when something is NOT being said, is just as important. For example, why are certain republicans labeled “lying traitors” and certain democrats are “just forgetting to mention certain facts”? Or why are the environmental data just focusing on the past 200-1000 years? Never mind the 500 million years before that. Ask any independent statistician and that person will tell you that almost any statistics can be made to get a specific outcome, just by being presented in a certain way or by focusing on a different set of metrics. So the data presented isn’t actually false, however, certain relevant details are conveniently left out. In the same way, Big Media can take a video of one event and flip the story on it’s head just by cutting the video at just the right spot.
Being mentally prepared for anything, including psychological manipulation, is just another skill a prepper needs to have. Just don’t take it to a “tinfoil hat” extreme.
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