14 Days of Freedom: Day 4
Free your mind and your ass will follow. That's something the very wonderful @nagoul1 has said before, and the more I roll the phrase over and over in my brain, the more I realise he's right.
It's doubtful whether one can have a truly free and humane society when people are brainwashed and unable to think for themselves. It's almost certain that, when those same brainwashed people live in an unfree society, they will be unable to break free of it - at least, not without freeing their minds.
A free or unfree mind is in many ways a dangerous thing to talk about, because there's always a risk of mistaking "disagrees with you" for "brainwashed" (no, they're not the same thing). The key to identifying an unfree mind isn't by whether they agree with you or not, it's by how dogmatic and illogical their beliefs are, and the dishonest lengths they will go to so that they don't have to give up those beliefs.
A lot of people have unfree minds: our society doesn't encourage thinking for oneself. Neither does it encourage a love of reading and educating oneself. But, on the plus side, it encourages filling one's days and brain with complete and utter trash that tells us what to feel and think! I highly doubt that most of it was originally intended as propaganda - other than advertisements, which should more correctly be called corporate propaganda - but it certainly ended up moulding many people into the corporate, consumerist dream. Now - unless people read widely and think freely - they can't get out of it.
I cannot put this in any clearer way. Open your mind or die. Those who cannot entertain new ideas or think beyond the bounds of the present system will undoubtedly fail, because they failed to look at all possible solutions - and indeed they failed to think up new ones. And by the time they realise that they were wrong, it will perhaps be too late.
Always read, always write, always think, always speak, always question. If an idea offends you, think about it harder. Strip it down to its bare logic. Reality is more important than your perception of it.
If everyone could do that - if everyone could free their minds through logic - we'd be in a much better place to start building a free and humane society.
It's doubtful whether one can have a truly free and humane society when people are brainwashed and unable to think for themselves. It's almost certain that, when those same brainwashed people live in an unfree society, they will be unable to break free of it - at least, not without freeing their minds.
A free or unfree mind is in many ways a dangerous thing to talk about, because there's always a risk of mistaking "disagrees with you" for "brainwashed" (no, they're not the same thing). The key to identifying an unfree mind isn't by whether they agree with you or not, it's by how dogmatic and illogical their beliefs are, and the dishonest lengths they will go to so that they don't have to give up those beliefs.
A lot of people have unfree minds: our society doesn't encourage thinking for oneself. Neither does it encourage a love of reading and educating oneself. But, on the plus side, it encourages filling one's days and brain with complete and utter trash that tells us what to feel and think! I highly doubt that most of it was originally intended as propaganda - other than advertisements, which should more correctly be called corporate propaganda - but it certainly ended up moulding many people into the corporate, consumerist dream. Now - unless people read widely and think freely - they can't get out of it.
I cannot put this in any clearer way. Open your mind or die. Those who cannot entertain new ideas or think beyond the bounds of the present system will undoubtedly fail, because they failed to look at all possible solutions - and indeed they failed to think up new ones. And by the time they realise that they were wrong, it will perhaps be too late.
Always read, always write, always think, always speak, always question. If an idea offends you, think about it harder. Strip it down to its bare logic. Reality is more important than your perception of it.
If everyone could do that - if everyone could free their minds through logic - we'd be in a much better place to start building a free and humane society.
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