You get information disease.
First coined by deprogrammers Conway and Seigelman in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, their concept described
“a new class of information-processing disorders caused not by germs, drugs, illness, or any recognized physical abuse, but by the manipulation of information. Their concept proposed that basic human capacities of thinking and feeling can be altered solely by information and communication.”
Information disease is not just for religious cults. It can come from political groups, too. And it is not just a disease that one can catch from Scientology. Any time you engage in daily information gathering from only one or two sources, with only one narrow viewpoint allowed, then you are likely to catch information disease.
It’s said that the basis of nutrition is a balanced, diverse diet. And that “infection” only occurs when one type of microbe dominates what should be a diverse population.
The same is true for information. The Internet, while allowing people to find their niche interests and gather together with others who are like-minded, can also wall-off those niches and barricade out other information which could help to maintain a proper context.
It goes like this:
An idea like: “A misunderstood word can be one thing that blocks your understanding of a sentence or passage.”
Becomes: “A misunderstood word is the cause of all failures in all activities everywhere.”
One is a sensible idea in its proper context.
The other is a diseased idea which has had its proper context removed.
This can happen in niche circles on the Internet.
An idea like: “Scientology is a cult that can bankrupt you and divert you from your true purpose in life.”
Becomes: “Scientology is a criminal organization where anything good in it is actually very bad.”
The second idea lacks context. It does not allow for facts that the niche finds offensive or threatening to its ideology.
As you know, an ideology must always be true – especially when it’s not. Where an ideology is not true, its adherents must take steps to enforce it’s “truth”, such as through threats, social coercion, censorship, and disconnection. And if those can not stop the threat, then fair game must be used on people who continue to communicate their threatening ideas.
Anti-Scientologists on the Internet have now developed an ideology about Scientology that they must protect through the above means of social coercion. Where their ideology is not true, it must be made true through these means.
A broader perspective, a wider context, and an array of diverse sources of ideas and information are the cures for information disease.
If others in your niche will not allow these, then you must get them for yourself.
Or risk becoming Donald Trump.
“When the President of the United States gets most of his information and news from Breitbart and Fox . . . ” (Somebody once said that, I think.) He also got to be a multi-billionaire by reading tea leaves.
Yet another left winger brainwashed from too much left wing media propaganda. Information disease is all over the place.
Just as there are more religious choices than Jew or Christian, there are more political choices than “left wing” and “right wing”. Criticizing Obama doesn’t make you a Republican and criticizing Trump doesn’t make me a Democrat.
In fact, using “wings” on a spectrum is a really poor metaphor to use to organize political thought.
Most people are not even aware that they are using a spectrum to organize political thought in their minds. A spectrum was created to plot the frequencies of light, never to organize political beliefs. It’s kind of crazy actually, when you really look at it.
Best to use a Constellation, instead.
Great post Alanzo. I see several comparisons of Trump and Hubbard. I personally think he is a type of cult leader. It’s striking to me how often he repeats himself and how he constantly hand gestures while speaking. I also agree with you on the ludicrousness of the ‘left wing’ label. Recognizing the ultimate danger of global warming and wanting to protect our planet(our only home), is literally a ‘conservative’ stance. Not wanting to give biggest ever tax breaks to billionaires, while simultaneously expanding our military is literally a ‘conservative’ stance.
Agreed. Your post reminds me of when I first noticed this ludicrousness. It was when Ralph Nader was labeled a “left wing radical” for wanting safer cars. Why? Because too many children were dying needlessly.
This kind of labeling must be inspected and seen for what it is: It’s the attempt of the labeler to reduce his own cognitive dissonance, or an attempt by a group to discredit an idea, or a person, that they think is dangerous to their ideology.
I don’t want to insult Richard, but pointing out labeling, black and white thinking, and other cognitive distortions, whether with religious beliefs or political beliefs, is kinda a main reason this blog is here.
The problem with jumping on the bandwagon and putting labels on Trump or posting stupid pictures of him is that the ISSUES are REAL and he’s willing to tackle them. Obama spent 10 Trillion dollars on the American credit card passing on a huge burden. What’s to show for it? Would Hillary be any different? 500,000 people per year run across the southern U.S border. Most get arrested, jailed and sent back which is a huge waste of money and not humane anyhow. IMO if it were known that the border was impenetrable then they wouldn’t even try. The list goes on.
“Here’s the contract for the brand new Air Force One, Mr./Madam President. Only four billion dollars.” Trump; “Wait a minute!” Hillary “Where do I sign?” LOL
Millions of non citizens vote using any kind of identification. Political correctness. They’re illegal aliens with no voting rights hoping for continued “sanctuary” (lol) from the democrats. There’s your “Hillary won the popular vote.”
Hi Richard –
You’ve stated this as a fact: “Millions of non citizens vote using any kind of identification.”
I’ve run 2 polling stations in LA during primaries and presidential elections. I was the “inspector”, the guy whose job it was to make the final determination over whether a person could vote or not. I did this based on the information in the voting rolls, and with their ID if I had to determine more detail. I was the one who opened the polling stations in the morning, and closed them again at night. I checked the final count on each ballot and drove them in to the collection stations.
There is absolutely no evidence which supports the statement you are holding out as a fact above. That “millions” of non-citizens are doing this is just not possible in our system.
Are you sure this is not just a belief of yours? Something you have been told or which has been asserted to you, over and over, without evidence?
If you have evidence for your statement that makes it a fact, could you provide the evidence for it so we can all examine it, and test it for validity?
Because all the evidence and personal experience I have says this is an unfounded political belief of yours about our voting system, and not a fact.
You are correct. It’s an opinion. Voter registration requirements vary from state to state. The Census Bureau estimates that at least 11 million undocumented/illegal aliens reside in the U.S. Whatever number of those people that got to vote, almost all would vote democratic, another opinion. “Not my president ” is also an opinion.
You took a swipe at Trump, so I took a swipe at Clinton – that’s politics. 🙂
Well, after living in Los Angeles for 11 years, and living, working with (and dating) people who came to the US from Latin America, I would have to disagree that “almost all would vote democratic”. I engaged in a lot of politics when I lived in LA, having helped to get Ross Perot on the ballot in California and being a registered Libertarian for all those years.
I would say that more than half the people I talked to from Latin America, from almost all those separate cultures, had a definite conservative streak to their politics. Almost everyone of them came here because they believed that if they worked hard enough, they could get ahead in America. None, that I knew, ever wanted any kind of a hand-out from the government, or came here to be on welfare. That would have been completely humiliating to them and they would see themselves as a failure.
And none of them were on any kind of government assistance. Most had small businesses that they had created themselves, or worked two jobs to save money so their children could go to college.
While many did not like the Republican governor of California, Pete Wilson, at all, almost none were “left-wing” in the least. Most had worked to become citizens, or were working on it. About 10% of the people I knew had arrived illegally and were working, and paying taxes, on fake social security numbers.
One thing about being here illegally is that you never want to put yourself into a position where someone in authority is checking your identity. Voting, getting driver’s licenses, applying for passports, signing up for welfare, and even going to the doctor – are ALL activities that you would NEVER want to involve yourself in if you were in the US illegally.
I appreciate your intellectual honesty in labeling the information you presented as an opinion.
Do you believe that it is possible for a Republican to have a legitimate criticism of Donald Trump?
Or for a democrat to have a legitimate criticism of Hillary Clinton?
Do you have to be a democrat to criticize Donald Trump?
Do you have to be a Republican to criticize Hillary Clinton?
What if a person embraced every bit of truth that he could find in the ideas of any party, and rejected the rest?
What “wing” of the political spectrum would he be in, then?
“. . . people who came to the US from Latin America . . .” How did they “come here”? No doubt they are lovely people, but it’s a matter of legality. People from all over the world are waiting to immigrate to America and they would be equally as lovely people.
Deporting 11 million people is an impossibility. It’s damn near impossible to deport 800,000 or whatever the number is of criminals and they come right back across the border as it currently exists, but shoring up the border is a start.
As I see it, Trump has to draw a hard line in the sand to start off . Only from there can he back off and make “a deal” so to speak. You’ll notice that DOCA is untouched. When and if it’s generally accepted that “illegal immigration” is a thing of the past, then he’ll come up with an amnesty or some form of incorporation of the honest “illegals”. Comprehensive immigration reform is politically too early at this time. There are already ongoing plans being devised to review hardship or humanitarian deportation cases now occurring.
I may be totally wrong on all this and Mr. Trump’s agenda is to re-Christianize America – laughter
90% of the Latin Americans who immigrated to the US, that I knew, came here legally. 10%, that I knew, came here illegally.
Illegal immigrants are not nearly as threatening to the survival of sentient beings as: billionaires who worship money, climate change deniers in positions of power, or psycho bigots who desire WW3(Christians vs Muslims).
Not all news is fake. Our Democracy is possibly in serious danger right now.
Tipping points are occurring. On Trump’s solo news conference last week, he brought up “the tone of hatred” against him on a certain CNN show. People got it. The very next day the tone of the liberal media came off the tone of hatred. Issues and policies are still passionately debated, but the tone went up. I’ll take a (small – lol) win for humanity on that.
Trumps delusional attack on the medias hateful tone is just a passive aggressive attempt at media censorship. Media censorship is dictatorship 101, not to mention unamerican. I don’t find any solace in it.
The political civil war continues. Globalists vs. nationalists. The world order established after WWII worked when human population was 2.5 BILLION. Only 70 years later it’s almost 8 BILLION and continuing to rapidly expand. A new paradigm exists.
Quoting Steve Bannon at CPAC this weekend “They’re corporatist globalist media. They’re adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has.” People who have decided that Donald Trump is a fascist and sociopath will not consider this possibility.
I’m sorry Richard, but you come across to me as promoting fictional narratives. I imagine you are trying to make sense of our complex world, but your posts leave me only with the feeling of “How does he know any of what he says is true?” I don’t think you do, or indeed can, know that anything you have posted here is TRUE. It is all conjecture and imagination as far as I can see.
Al, here is something I thought you would be interested in and which think cannot be disseminated enough: the source and basis of Trump’s apparent “delusions” about himself, America, the voters, and just about everything else in the world. I think this article pretty much nails it. And of course it immediately reminded me of Hubbard and his “affirmations”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-2016-norman-vincent-peale-213220
It seems Trump’s apparent delusions, grandioseness, and denials of everyone and everything he does not like or agree with, are more intentional than the result of senile dementia on his part. He lives in a world of intentionally created and maintained self-delusion, using a “positive thinking” system he learned as a child from Norman Vincent Peale.