One of the greatest gifts we have is free will. Yet, so many, because of conditioned fear and anxiety, relinquish their free will to some kind of authoritarian system that does not have their best interest as a priority. When you listen to someone else’s opinion, you are listening to someone who is giving you something from their conditioned belief structure. What I am writing here is my opinion but based on a lot of reading of other people’s opinions that I have encapsulated and reviewed with true skepticism. If my words resonate with you then you will accept them as fitting your own belief structures or at least in some form of them. If enough of my opinions resonate with your thinking, you may accept me as an authority you will listen to regularly. This may be because you believe that I have taken the time to sort out different opinions based on what we believe is factual information about the world. This is how credibility is gained, and lost, of course. I would hope that you choose to read my words because you believe that I have made the effort to form educated and informed opinions. I feel that I am clear when I am talking ‘facts’ where I derived that information. Much of my blog last year was my way of trying to awaken you the reader to options beyond the usual. I have also tried to clear up how the hierarchy maintains control, and most of it is through separation and division – by making us focus on our fears of others’ and our struggle and competition to keep apparently limited resources for ourselves.
Polarization has become the norm in our world. This has always been a problem with closed minded and dogmatic people with more polarized opinions. In our current world situation’s it has a lot to do with our modern social media. The great American Satirist Will Rogers (1920s) commented “Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.” On reading a local newspaper in a local mid-west town, he is reputed to have also commented, “My father would have liked this paper, it doesn’t confuse you with two points of view.” Mass media has always had a reputation for a certain bias in reporting of the news whether it was a ‘left’ or ‘right’ bias. At least the reader could decide which source they selected to read that supported their ‘values.’ The advent of television in the late 1940s began a polarizing trend that continues today with sound bites replacing in-depth news reporting (although there are still news sources giving more depth – not a source for most youth). Print and mainstream media is fast becoming a dinosaur being replaced by electronic media, with most people now deriving their ‘news’ from social media.
The social media (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc…) is driven by algorithms that constantly analyze the kind of information looked at by a user. These algorithms then select information web pages that seem most relevant to the user (and, importantly, product and service adverts as well). The research shows that this has the result of polarization. Studies show that people who look only at information that is directly relevant to their interests and beliefs tend to get more polarized in their views as the information they look at becomes more polarized – often without the viewer know it is happening. It is a simple result of the algorithm making choices for the viewer. In essence the free will of the viewer is inadvertently (??) removed. A critical thinker will have recognized this and make a deliberate choice to view alternate pages of competing viewpoints – this confuses the algorithm and leaves the viewer in a better, more centrist position, to make their own decisions about information without yielding to polarized perspectives.
Free will means to determine your own perspectives and opinions based on what you are reading. And a true critical thinker will also be a true skeptic (see previous posts on skepticism) that doesn’t form hard and fast conclusions. As spiritual guru Michael Roads points out:
“Conclusions are closed doors, while acceptable speculation holds them open. Once you reach a conclusion, you move into the stagnant zone of thinking. You close the door on further speculation. Knowing that you know is very different- and rare! The people who think they know makes statements like, “Well, this is the way it is.” They believe in their conclusions, and are inclined to cling to them. Their belief becomes very personal and they vigorously defend it. Be open. You do not need to come to a final conclusion. You can reach an acceptable speculation, open to its being proven correct or incorrect without any attachment to it, and without taking any of it personally. Michael J. Roads
The definitive conclusions most people have has resulted in worldviews that literally become one’s reality. And in these realities one’s free will is all but conceded to that of mindless allegiance to an ideology that might be ignored if one were to penetrate the deeper aspects with more inquiry. Exercising your free will can be a scary proposition. It often means going against mainstream expectations and social demands. Considering how much of our reality is determined by social conditioning, being willing to step outside the norms and see a different reality can be quite traumatic. There is a wonderful term, ‘GASLIGHTING’ that describes a state where one of the worst things in life is to have one’s reality denied – in essence to be told that something you have absolutely believed to be true is a delusion (or illusion). (The term ’gaslighting’ comes from the 1944 movie, “Gaslight”, where a husband is trying to drive his wife crazy by surreptitiously raising and lowering the intensity of the gaslights in their home while telling her that this is not really happening.) And boy, are we being gaslighted by the hierarchy.
Disempowering people seems to be the name of the game with mass media. That’s because people who exercise free-will are a threat to the elite’s agenda of control. So, what has this to do with living sustainably you may ask. Everything. We need to start thinking for ourselves and to demand more community autonomy for how we want to live. Our global economy is rigged to make the uber-rich even richer and to suppress technologies that free us from globalized corporate greed and control that exists solely to make money and keep us in place as good consumers. When you awaken to this travesty imposed on everyone on earth and demand that your ability to make real choices be honored you begin to have choices that make sense for a equitable future. You can continue to buy the illusion that the consumer system promotes or you can live the real dream of peace, happiness, well-being, and harmony. Free-Will or puppet – your choice.
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