tbm005

Do governments use the ignorance of its citizens to its advantage?

Yes, and the worse thing is, we know it and we let them! Many don't want to be bothered with all that polictical stuff....too boring for them....or they figure what's the use. Now that their wallet is shrinking they're starting to pay attention. I guess better late than never.

__________________
"If you want your children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders." - Abigail Van Buren

The_Jazz

I'm sorry, but this seems to be true of every government ever. Assuming the Jeffersonian concept of "concent" is true (and there are numerous examples of where governments exist outside of the concent of the citizenry), I think you're just pointing out something that's pretty obvious and acknowledged. The US Constitution, as it originally was written with the Bill of Rights, flat out acknowledged this by limiting voting rights to property holders, the idea being that property holders would be more likely to have more educated and long-term grasp of their own self-interest.

This isn't new and it isn't news. Or is there something about this topic that I'm not grasping?

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

kriswest

The wolf chews its leg off when the trap does not open. Humans do that in response to their government's actions. They will chew their proverbial legs right off. Governments tend to forget this rule. they do get caught up in their own actions of controlling the trap.

RogueGypsy

I don't think governments forget this at all, in fact I would say it's in the forefront of their minds. To me, it's more about control and power to the ruling body. They have control and they are in power. They will continue to reap more control and more power until they are stopped. To use your analogy of a trap: If the trap slams shut with intense and instant pain, people will go berserk. But, if the trap is eased shut, slowly with little pain and time to get used to the pain before the trap is closed tighter. There is no reason to 'chew off a leg'. It has become, over time, a slightly annoying restriction that everyone is comfortable with.
Like an Elephant at the Circus. Tethered to a small stake with a small rope. There is no way, the stake or the rope can hold the Elephant, but over time, from birth, the Elephant has been trained. As a baby it strained against the rope and stake, but couldn't move them. Now as a much more powerful adult, it knows no better and unless something terrifies or angers the Elephant enough to over come the training. It will never test the rope or stake again.

Governments are very well aware of this. It's also why you get the far left and far right 'loonies' yelling "the sky is falling" with every little impingement of our freedoms. They are looking at the big picture, the fact that just one little law or restriction goes unnoticed, but in the long run; thousands of little laws and restrictions, put us in a cage from which we can never escape.

But the problem is not the Government, it is the populous. They can not take what we won't give them. Remember we are the Elephant, laws are the rope, government the stake. But if we allow them to build an Iron cage around us, one bar at a time. Eventually, we will not be able to escape. Our duty as citizens is to continuously tug at the rope and break it, to knock down the bars as they're erected, and to keep the stake in sight.

The laws restricting our freedoms enacted since 9/11 are bars, and to date none have been knocked down. The cage is nearly complete. As a citizen, how does that make you feel? I bet your still feeling comfortable.

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

kriswest

Only when the government outnumbers the population would escape become impossible. the US military for instance is far mor inclined to individuality then it was in the past. Soldiers are no longer required to blind servants. If the government wished to imprison us then it would not have made our soldiers training so pacifistic compared to what it used to be. Why do you think there is a greater number of PTSSs they are no longer fully trained.

The_Jazz

Either that or PTSS was un/underdiagnosed in previous conflicts.

I can't wait until one of our active duty members comes along to straighten you out on the "blind servant" comment.

Otherwise, I completely agree with you, RG. We've seen absolutely no evidence of a wolf-trap here.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

RogueGypsy

PTSSs? Post traumatic stress soldiers?? If so, I live with one, my brother. I can assure you there was nothing passive about his training or his service. "what makes the grass grow?? BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD!" Is one of my favorites. Standard bayonet training chant as your stabbing the shit out of a training dummy. Doesn't sound very passive to me. Nor was it very passive when he was ordered to inject unknown chemicals from pre-filled syringes into his fellow soldiers under penalty of Court Marshall for disobeying. This, after years of training telling him to NEVER inject anything he didn't draw himself.

That aside, I think you missed the point. Why would you try to escape, if you don't know you're trapped?? When they've achieved the control they want, do you think they're going to dance around announcing their success like some kind of bad movie villain?

Let's say someone is still aware when it all comes together. How will word spread if you can't travel and communicate freely? How would you ever convince enough people to make a difference if you're stuck in a cage? If you think people will just suddenly become aware and rise up; that good always overcomes evil. You've been watching too much TV. People are slave to their conditioning. Doubt me? Read this:

The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment

They had to end a 2 week experiment, after only 6 days because of what the environmental conditioning was doing to the participants. And you would like to believe people will over come a lifetime of conditioning?

That is the official sight, Google "The Stanford Prison Experiment" and you'll find a lot more info.

I'll also point out that chain-of-command and a military in general, simply does not work without blind servitude and 'group think'.

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

Baraka_Guru

This was covered quite extensively by 20th century philosophy. Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault come immediately to mind (and I think Slavoj Žižek has picked up the torch since them, though I haven't looked at his work much). You might recognize what they've explored more overtly in such fictional works as Nineteen Eight-Four and Brave New World, namely, state control over citizens through various means.

There are generally two categories: repressive and ideological.

The repressive tends to trigger the most alarmism: government, judiciary, prisons, military, police, etc.

However, it can be argued that it's the ideological that is the most "damaging" to our enlightenment and is the biggest culprit for fomenting ignorance: societal expectations (e.g. familiy), the media, religion, education, etc.

What I find to be the most harrowing is the idea developed by Foucault that he called governmentality. In a nutshell, it's how governing power has accounted for all aspects of social action and thought. This means that protest, anarchy, or other political action are rendered as "norms" rather than deviations or disruptions because they are expected and therefore already planned for.

This dovetails nicely with Althusser's thoughts on repressive and ideological apparatuses: they work to ensure the effectiveness of ruling power vis-à-vis governmentality.

I guess I mean to say that these phenomena aren't anything new. I guess what's new is the level of sophistication with regard to technology. I suppose you could argue for the slow decay of liberalism in America as well. What is new are the conditions within which these things operate.

You could say things are getting worse, yes. I'd be willing to hear opinions on the contrary.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

kriswest

I come from a long line of military. Lifers most of them. I was raised in a military style home.My father is retired, Two siblings just recently retired from service. They and cousins of near the same age has seen the major change in training. Its not giving our soldiers the ability to truly understand and acclimate to what they will confront. The training has been PCed so much so that it is the crux of post traumatic stress syndrome.

The_Jazz

kriswest, I'm the son of a USMA '63 grad and the cousin of USMA '85, '91 and '96 grads (as well as USNA '88, but he's the black sheep). For those of us who didn't go to West Point, family reunions are boring affairs with all the military talk. So you and I were probably raised in very similar households. My father's class was back at West Point 2 years ago to do Beast Week with the plebes, and his comment was that it was different but definitely as challenging as when he did it.

As far as training to "understand and acclimate what they will confront", there's no training in the world that can prepare you killing another human being that you've never seen before (the psycology of it, not the mechanics, obviously) or watching your friends be killed. Your claim about PTSD is based on statistics that anyone with the most basic understanding of the history of the diagnosis would agree is misleading at best and most likely outright faulty.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

roachboy

i think the trick is not to maintain people at a level of ignorance (if you like) but rather to persuade them to maintain themselves at that level of ignorance. it's much more cost-effective. it's about the information flows you choose to access and the skill sets you develop for interpreting them, and its about what constitutes the given and what a variable. for neo-colonial forms of control, it's best to have continual motion at the level of contents coupled with a sense that everything about the existing order is simply given in advance, not in play...in the way that the continuous alteration of consumer goods is an implicit argument for the legitimacy of the system that enables that continuous alteration, the system that's a condition of possibility for the alteration that tends to vanish because of what it enables.

like that.

that way people can think and think and think in circles circles circles and pretend they're free even. way more efficient than direct domination because people like this neo-colonial form. they don't even see it.

look around.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

Neocolonialism is great. It gives us cheap, disposable clothes and electronics, among other things.

Of course, it's also why I try not to laugh when I see media coverage talking about North Americans and "tough times." You know, when they have to start paying more at the pump.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

kriswest

( i would insert a really happy smiley emoticon here but I have dialup and the download is really slow)Oh crap,,,, You are an officer brat,,, well uummm,,,, yea,, there is a difference. I am a noncom brat with relations in officer territory. Hmmm, don't know if many here understand that difference. Training is different for officers then it is for the grunts. You do know this right? And Ohhhhhh Godds yes it is boring when they get together. Did they force you all to watch the documentaries of old wars over and over and over again????
There is training to acclimate to killing and watching your friends die,, correction, there was. It is no longer allowed. That happened well over two decades back almost 30 years back, it slowly started changing after Vietnam. I am 47 years old tomorrow,, I have observed the change.

Projectguru

I absolutely think that they use the ignorance of it's citizens to gain an advantage. Isn't it ironic that society's elite are typically politicians. It's like they have access to information and avenues that we as "normal" do not.

kriswest

Or is it that we like to have our heads in the sand and not have to make decisions. We do hand over responsibility rather quickly.