What can we trust?

[Belligerent Savant]

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I can appreciate the appeal for Adam Curtis' work, and can enjoy watching some of his stuff while looking past some of the conditioning attempts (I've never sat through an entire Curtis program, however -- only caught portions online). Same goes with most forms of entertainment/multimedia/"art".

Manipulation and/or attempts at planting suggestions are largely non-issues for the discerning mind.

Unfortunately, too many folks don't discern. Too many simply absorb and accept with minimal distillation, which further enables and facilitates the transmission of LIES, and as a consequence, the commission of vile acts with minimal consequence.

CURTIS is not to be trusted. Doesn't mean one can't enjoy the work. That said: It's an act of complicity to share or recommend his work to another without proper disclaimers.

Then again, each U.S. taxpayer is at least partially complicit in crimes committed against humanity.



BUT How do we come to agreement on those that can't be trusted, and how would we define those conditions? Perhaps it's as simple as: someone either gets it, or doesn't, as alluded in alloneword's last response; and those that get it raise awareness. But then what if someone thinks they get it but they don't? An Unwitting propagandist! Dunning Kruger may be a factor -- it's always a factor, alas. I may be a victim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E ... ger_effect



Calls to mind Rummy's quote, and he'd be one to 'know'. What we don't know can't hurt them, to paraphrase the RI banner.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

[alloneword]

Thanks for the responses - I guess I'm just trying to crystallise some of what I read here and elsewhere.

I'd like to clarify my personal view a little: Yes, there are (thankfully) those that 'get it'. Yes there are those that certainly don't - I generally assume them to be suffering from a mere 'poverty of the imagination' (for want of a better term) and give them neither my time or attention, be they writers of crap movie scripts, crap articles or crap forum posts quoting crap articles that read like crap movies scripts.

But (to borrow Rummy's format), there is a (small but effective) third category: Those who do actually 'get it', but purposefully use the fact that there are a large number who don't to propagate hero/villain narratives in order to obfuscate systemic factors ( - that's not to demonise such people, but we need to acknowledge that entities such as the 77th Brigade, II etc do exist).

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Manipulation and/or attempts at planting suggestions are largely non-issues for the discerning mind.

To think... I once thought I had a discerning mind precisely because I watched Adam Curtis. Dunning-Kruger, indeed.

what if someone thinks they get it but they don't?

Perhaps a part of 'getting it' is realising that you probably don't get it - or rather: realising that your mind is still susceptible to manipulation, so remaining ever watchful. The influencers have a lot of experience in re-programming minds just like yours and mine and if we assume for a second that we're somehow immune from it, we've had it.

-

Anecdote: A while ago I witnessed a debate regarding which US Presidential candidate (can't remember who, doesn't matter) should win an upcoming election. It was being demanded of an acquaintance of mine that he choose between X and Y, the implication being that condemning one suggested support for the other... "But you must choose!"

He put it like this:

"Imagine that there are two crack dealers arguing over who gets to sell crack on the corner outside my house. Personally, I'd prefer that nobody was selling crack outside my house - or outside anyone else's house, for that matter. I'd prefer them to both go away, I'd prefer people not to buy crack outside my house, or anywhere else..."

Simplistic, I'll grant you. But the analogy often comes to mind.

And so to the Trumps, the Clintons, the Bidens, whathaveyou. OK, they're (probably) not selling crack, but perhaps what they are selling is much worse. Stories which star themselves as the 'hero' and the 'other guy' as the 'villain'. And the media that amplify this crap and stringently adhere to it's narrative form? Is it purely commercial? They like to tell us that it's what the people want - that this is the only narrative style that sells. The people need their heros and their villains, just as they need their sports teams.



But then I look at the success of TV shows that cast-off the hero/villain narrative style - shows like The Wire, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Sopranos etc - and I wonder if that's really all that true.

I wonder if it ever was.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Interesting, the timing of alloneword's last comment above with the madness that kicked off soon after.

Much to our collective shame and chagrin, it's far worse now, in 2022, than perhaps any of us could have imagined when replying to this thread in 2019.

(or at least, we quietly hoped it would take more time for us to get where we are now)

[Grizzly]

^^^ Spot on!

Not that you guys it needs more cheering on, but man I wonder even about RI's here on this board. Whom don't seen to get it. Ahh, well. As someone once said, "the answers can't be given, they can only be received.' Everything seems to be on a spectrum, non binary.

“There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money.”
― George Lakoff

Trust the system, because art ...Well, .. this song says it better



I trust the system is going to system.