Society today makes truth a prisoner of emotion.
Discussion
I believe in open inquiry, individual autonomy, free speech and scientific skepticism. I’m a horrible person.
It’s disgusting.
Hasn't it always?
On an individual level maybe, but at the societal level?
State propaganda has always targeted the emotions of their populace.
The people seem to fall for it harder these days 🤷🏽♀️
I don’t know about that. A quick look into the not too distant past, brings a lot of examples to mind.
I meant harder as in they seem to be more emotionally invested in gov propoganda these days. But I'm comparing observations from my shortish lifetime spent in a relatively obscure country. 🤷🏽♀️
Yes, but think about communism in the eastern bloc, or the Kmer Rouge in Cambodian, or Nazism in Germany. Think of what “regular” people were willing to do. They were driven by emotion. Hatred, fear, and jealousy. Emotions that were fanned into a frenzy and used to direct people to participate in horrible acts and policy.
True that. All I see these days is people uncritically accepting media/government narratives and I think they're prepping people for the next big massacre that the "regular people" can participate in. 🤷🏽♀️ Those events you mentioned didn't come out of nowhere, people were primed for that too..
I think that just happens faster since information disseminates so much more efficiently. People haven't changed.
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Yeah, consensus always requires sacrifice. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement.
It was just a thought I had while talking with a friend earlier. Not really fleshed out 😂 As I think about it more I think it pertains more to the pursuit of truth than to “truth” itself. Society has placed comfort and perceived safety over all else. We (the connective we) can’t have discussion and debate without encountering the impassioned overreactions of people who demand that you must either be for them and accept their ideology, or be against them and become their enemy.
Ah, now I follow. And agree. We are literally safer than we have ever been as a species but are lead to believe that we are in constant danger. The mindset of constant fear creates constant defensiveness... and the best defense is to be offensive. The pursuit of truth suffers under the weight of collective paranoia.
Individuals have been doing it to themselves forever. Society at large should prioritise truth so that people have some solid foundation, live in reality and prosper for it. I haven't been around long, but I've been here long enough to notice society trending ever more to pursuing short-term emotions and ignoring truth.
The unavoidable dilemma with that... is that society is made up of a bunch of individuals, so a society can't really prioritize something that the individuals within that society can't agree on.
Oddly, even when it's all working well, discourse about truth is what leads to advancement. We can only get better by questioning truth & fact.