College and university professors, the mind vice of social media like Twitter, mainstream political pundits, or just everyday peer-group influence: all provide the material with which to form convictions and opinions that are not really your own. It may be comforting to know you're just like everyone else, and all the evil is within the people you disagree with, but it doesn't make you original, authentic, or right. And to anyone looking in from the outside, you just sound like a mindless automaton speaking someone else's words.
Today on MindMatters we discuss these issues: conformity, originality, authenticity, and breaking free from the prison of ideological language designed not to find the truth, but as a weapon to bludgeon one's ideological enemies.
Running Time: 01:06:57
Download: MP3 — 61.3 MB
Harrison Koehli co-hosts SOTT Radio Network's MindMatters, and is an editor for Red Pill Press. He has been interviewed on several North American radio shows about his writings on the study of ponerology. In addition to music and books, Harrison enjoys tobacco and bacon (often at the same time) and dislikes cell phones, vegetables, and fascists (commies too).
Corey Schink was born and raised in the Midwestern United States, where he worked on farms and as a welder, musician, and social worker. His interests in government, philosophy and history led to his writing for SOTT in 2012 and to becoming a SOTT editor and SOTT Radio co-host in 2014. He now resides in North Carolina, where he enjoys the magnificent views of the Appalachian Mountains.
Reader Comments
"Racism now is systemic racism, which means there's not actually any racists. You don't need racists if it's systemic racism."
Thank you for that, Corey!
The irony is, the led are not blind, they are just unwilling to open their eyes.
My generation's stuck in the mirrorR.C.
"Forget about the poor, 'cause I don't like the word"
I need to know the name of my neighbor
I am not known if I'm not seen or heard
And I am afraid of that which I do not know
So why don't I just ask your fucking name
Justice just gets buried in a white light
I heard there was a time you'd call it shame
Speaking of, have you heard this? [Link] Mumford & Sons: "The Blind Leading the Blind".Not before. Seems to me they are "too intellectual" for the average consumer. Most slots in the media (radio/TV) seem occupied by the Britney-Spears/Backstreet-Boys lookalikes / actalikes. Sorry for bringing up that corpses, but that was the time I stopped listening to pop music ...
(I would not be surprised to hear in reply:"You've never heard them? They've been so overplayed that they're now uncool!" or such, which would simply go to show the level and duration of my disconnect from society.)
Please watch/listen in order:
#1: Ain't No Man [Link]
Which excellently segues into
#2: No Hard Feelings [Link] and
#3: High Steppin: [Link]
LOVE the wiseass approach from the taller thinner brother; it's the wiseass humor that I hope I learned from certain elder characters of my then youth.
If you watch I do appreciate. (After all, I suffered through at least 3 whole minutes of your and HFL's 'electronica'.)
RC
Going to listen when I finished my day job stunt.
(After all, I suffered through at least 3 whole minutes of your and HFL's 'electronica'.)You did at your own risk ...
Be thankful I did not suggest any Flamish stuff, like that:[Link] ...
"God of Abraham" ...save me! Jesus H. Fucking Christ! SAVE ME!!!
I think I'm feeling better? Or is it otherwise?
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!
'Into your hands, I commend my spirit... (I thought) but the door opened and there was...
ARGH!!!
Watch those; report back.
R.C.
Watch those; report back.Sure. Scheduled for the afternoon (local time, a few hours to noon here).
OMG! Now you owe me, dude!The Trash Metal equivalent in the techno scene. Sometimes called "gabber" or "Rotterdam hardcore".
"God of Abraham" ...save me! Jesus H. Fucking Christ! SAVE ME!!!
You learned something new today ...
Not my thing either, annoying, boring, and/or simply destructive to hearing.
Sometimes I listening to classical music. Even french one : [Link] (No trigger warning required )
To return the favour, here a few things I liked in my youth, and you probably never heard:
Omega : [Link] Hungarian, might sound familiar, though ...
City : [Link] in German, more the epic style;
Red Guitars : [Link] a bit tacky, but I liked it at times; a Polish band, but German lyrics, the kind of ocean & sailor romantic for a surfer ...
P.s., I would say that I once had the 'plu', but fear they might institute a lockdown.
R.C.
More about using language & the desire to belong to "a group" as a method of coercion and conformity.
In some sense it strikes me as the opposite of the "dog whistle" claim. One group claims that commonly used words "don't really mean what you think they mean and are really a covert way to express an entirely different sentiment."
In the discussion the near opposite was discussed; a group covertly re-defines commonly used words in such a way that agreement with a statement, such as "are you against racism" seems customary. But, possibly unbeknownst to you, "racism" has been re-defined to mean something other than the historically and commonly accepted definition.
And, quite coincidentally, a daily comic site posted this [Link] the day before this discussion.
Had to go look it up...
Sapir-Whorf hypothesisAlso thought it a bit funny that there are actual humans named "Whorf." But I've possibly watched too much Star Trek.
a hypothesis, first advanced by Edward Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Benjamin Whorf, that the structure of a language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience.
indeed all sociologists including Arlie Hochchild at Berkeley observe that culture determines perceptions and expectations
Made me think of one of George Carlin's routines where he discusses the progression from "shell shock" to "post traumatic stress syndrome." [Link]
BTW, happy 4th of july to all Americans. Or at least those who have something to celebrate.
I also appreciated Cory's thoughts on those individuals, I've always found objectionable, who are more intent with appearing clever and being superior than communicating. Yes, dominance is surely their game. French intellectuals are masters in this area. The more obscure their discourse the more they get promoted.
There is little doubt that America is going through very troubled times and as Harrison pointed out, the situation could and more than likely will get a lot worse.
While we are heading globally towards Chinese style Communism, I fear that America is planned for destruction.
RC
I do not life exclusively of meat. But I understood that I need animal foods for nourishment, a little carbs are optional. Veggies are not necessary at all, nothing essential ore readily digested. But if you like them, it's fine.
Some people have issues with certain vegetables, I have mine with nightshades (paprikas, tomatos). Leafy greens, often processed to green smothies, are the contemporary number one cause of kidney stones ...
So, experiment with your garden ...
I am mostly of northern descend, and realized lately that animal products are crucial for me.
fake people=amerikans
hofstede ranks US the most individualistic society on earth, followed closely by Australians NZ, Canada, then UK...while his other comparisons are erroneous this is accurate
"only in amerika do people act like machines, r treated like machines and only in US r machine metaphors used to describe human behavior". G Gorer
the Parsonian Philip Slater: "amerikans poorly understand that individualism produces uniformity"
"what unites the slavophiles, Alexandr Herzen, Peter Kropotkin and the Marxists is that western individualism is an enemy of individuality". Vladimir Golstein
"individuality has entirely decayed in amerika". Horkheimer/Adorno they described amerikan conversations as the same: "shallow, bombastic, fatuous"
the liberal David Riesman observed amerikans were afflicted w a "shallow national character" and described them as "over conformist semi-automatons"
Arthur Kosester fluent in German, English French--lived in USSR spoke Russian, a virulent anti-communist, compared amerikans to 5th century Romans: "a similarly contactless society populated by automatons...a similarly soulless political y corrupt everybody for themselves society"
George Simmel examined more than 1000 societies and found that only in primitive individualist tribes where individuality was absent were genders homogenized and fashion brought closer to the body.....in the USA masculines Females (Hochschild, etc) feminized males---Gorer, wrote only in the USA is the father vestigial---the amerikan minded conscience is feminine"---the most feminized males on the planet...."the amerikan ideal is that everybody should be the same". James Baldwin. in civilized collectivist nations colored hair is absent...when Riesman described amerikans as semi automatons, the only people that had tattoos ere some lower ranks in the US Navy, biker gangs, criminals....in collectivist societies---criminals, a few members of the military, vulgarian rock stars...
USA=the only peer group society on earth---in all other nations I have lived, now live different age groups and people that disagree socialize...in USA is is insecure herds of the same age.... if an amerikan is alone she will be copulatiing w a mobile phone
puritans do not think or feel