cynicism and groupthink

I totally see how a bit of cynicism, paranoia etc. is the other side of the coin of gaining enlightenment. But I see an attitude across the board in the so-called truth movement. People are very often determined that certain things are a certain way and pretty much regardless of what they find they fit it into this frame of reference already constructed. I mean we all are like that all the time. But really, are we all as much? It's pretty standard in the so-called truth movement to see threads where everybody just pretty much agrees on the basic premise and pat each others back page after page. If we are supposed to be those that are immune to the groupthink, we are pretty good at having our own groupthink.

The elite are of course Satan worshipers who eat babies for breakfast, that's obvious.

a reply to: introspectionist

I love children... on toast.

Anyway, all minds are pattern seeking and all people want to foster a sense of belonging and community somewhere, except maybe for hermits, who are exceptionally rare. The blessed mark of transcendence rests on the mind that can topple an established truth and walk away from it, embracing its antithesis or synthesizing new truth to better describe the actual conditions of reality.

Certainty is almost always superior to confusion, and an objective thinker is going to be more beneficial to practical applications of abstract concepts than a nihilist ever is going to be. The goal is to teach a higher order of philosophical analysis so that a person can become the object of their own designs, tailoring themselves to serve a role in their present civilization that they find suitable to their desires and talents.

Go back to Hegel. Begin with dialectics and move forward from there. Shake the foundation of the ego. It is possible to become the full visage of self expression without being imprisoned by the self. The mask can be a great liberator when you learn how to wield it properly.

a reply to: Nechash

In other words, only the hermit is a real truth seeker. All others are limited by the groupthink.

a reply to: introspectionist

Oh. I'm sure there's a hermit somewhere on a mountaintop somewhere or maybe working as a dishwasher at Bob Evans, and he has it all figured out and he's tickled pink with himself. ;p

a reply to: introspectionist

What you just described has a name. It's called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

By the way. I literally just posted this in another thread and feel it could work here too (the thread is about some doom porn in case you need a frame of reference):
www.abovetopsecret.com...

You know I used to be a believer in conspiracies and various paranormal stuff until I came to this website. Then I learned how to read between the lines and realized that most of it was insane, and it's all thanks to the crazies spouting off crap like the OP yet nothing EVER happening. They DO have some points that the msm and stuff can't be completely trusted, but then fall into the same trap with their alternative news sites like they are any better. In the end, I've come full circle and decided that it is out of my hands. What happens happens. If the world ends, then so be it. No use wasting time worrying about it. Enjoy your life until then.

I traveled through the rabbit hole, embraced the insanity, and came out on the other end only to see it looks exactly like the place I came from.

originally posted by: introspectionist
I totally see how a bit of cynicism, paranoia etc. is the other side of the coin of gaining enlightenment. But I see an attitude across the board in the so-called truth movement. People are very often determined that certain things are a certain way and pretty much regardless of what they find they fit it into this frame of reference already constructed. I mean we all are like that all the time. But really, are we all as much? It's pretty standard in the so-called truth movement to see threads where everybody just pretty much agrees on the basic premise and pat each others back page after page. If we are supposed to be those that are immune to the groupthink, we are pretty good at having our own groupthink.

The elite are of course Satan worshipers who eat babies for breakfast, that's obvious.

Knowing there's a hole in the roof--or rather seeing and thus subconsciously recognizing it-- that is one thing. Spreading word the roof leaks, altering one's behavior accordingly, or ignoring the rain altogether even as it drips on one's head--entirely different. People can be led beneath the hole in the roof, can be convinced to look up at it, convinced to even taste the raindrops. However, leading people to either verbally admit there's a hole or to even care about it, well, how does one conquer the fears of others? Has that manual even been written? Fear it seems, in the minds of the masses, is only controlled with greater fear or higher value of what is at stake.

Similarly, status quo is ultimate sanctuary for the masses. Beliefs ingrained generation to generation so deep-seated so as to have become inescapable foundations of the subconscious can reign in the collective thoughts of hundreds of millions and define unbreakable limits of behavior no matter how apparent some other truth has become.

Others say, "Sometimes the official press release is the truth. If it walks like a duck ..."

Personally, as I age further, realization that perhaps the most monumental truths of our time matter less and less has grown parallel to my over a lifetime nurtured sense of cynical skepticism. Does or would or has or could the truth change anything at all of value for the average man? Should the average man one day discover that "up" is not, would he really enforce change in his own life or would any collective movement of his peers enforce said degree of change for him? I think, most likely, not.

Say we Americans do find out someday the cannibalistic human sacrificing nature of our elected leaders and captains of industry--or some other equally disturbing truth about the Machine in control of our existence, who among us masses, or rather, how many or would any at all live any differently than they already live despite such grim knowledge?

Truther or perpetual skeptic, truth in the end serves the system as much as it exposes it ... or so it seems for now.

a reply to: Krazysh0t


Thanks.

I had a discussion about this with someone somewhere. We talked about how people like myself, i.e. conspiratorial people, can be perceived as being closed-minded, that no matter what you present it fits into your frame of reference. And we then discussed how psychiatrists are just the same. No matter what you tell them there's some diagnosis that fits into their world view and nothing you say is going to change that. And of course pills to "fix the error".

This is something I have been thinking a lot about. I think that it is quite key in the human evolution. The groupthink gets tighter and tighter all the time, until a person here and there can't stand the pressure any longer. They become "mad" or "disordered", but really those are the blessed ones. The increasing alienation or atomization of people in the evolution is something I find very interesting too, and how this relates to things like autism.

I have also philosophized about avante garde art. The more civilization evolves, the tighter the groupthink gets and the more the senses are dulled, the more we are desensitized. The purpose of some art seems to be similar to black comedy, which is similar to 9/11. There's a fine line between ugly and evil. And I believe evil is enlightenment.

Here's a video that I think shows quite well the confirmation bias, in this case in a psychiatrist:

You know I used to be a believer in conspiracies and various paranormal stuff until I came to this website. Then I learned how to read between the lines and realized that most of it was insane, and it's all thanks to the crazies spouting off crap like the OP yet nothing EVER happening. They DO have some points that the msm and stuff can't be completely trusted, but then fall into the same trap with their alternative news sites like they are any better. In the end, I've come full circle and decided that it is out of my hands. What happens happens. If the world ends, then so be it. No use wasting time worrying about it. Enjoy your life until then. I traveled through the rabbit hole, embraced the insanity, and came out on the other end only to see it looks exactly like the place I came from.

Interesting. I am quite disappointed with the so-called truth movement and the alternative media in the same genre, but I'm in a different position than you. I am still "mad" and conspiratorial, and like to be so. But I feel that I have perhaps grown out of the movement and to a certain degree moved on. And for me that is mostly about having humility towards all those that the truth movement points fingers at, simply because I, as opposed to most truthers, don't feel that I know enough to be able to pass such judgements continuously and fiercely. Besides, it gets boring after a while.


As for what I wrote earlier about being a hermit. I do feel that there probably is something to that. This is written in Gospel of Thomas, a gnostic scripture. I think "Jesus" has a slightly different meaning here compared to the bible.

Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

I happen to think that this is the natural consequence of evolution, and that the elite actually want to push us into this state in order to enlighten us. I believe the process is part natural law and part planning and it is illustrated by this video:

a reply to: Krazysh0t

A personal awareness of that 'bias', goes a long ways to keeping an open mind to one's own weaknesses.

One doesn't have to be a hermit to learn. The studies of those that came before us far outweighs starting at 'square one' again and again, if one keeps that bias in mind.....

Variable reward operant conditioning is the hardest to extinguish, and is the type of learning that occurs the most to people in real life. I mean that real life seems like VROC, because of the variable results from human behavior.

In VROC, the reward was given sometimes, for the correct behavior, but not every time. It is harder for the subject to determine that the reward is no longer coming, or that there was never a real connection between the behavior and the reward because, the reward was not always given during the learning process.

In a controlled society, the social environment can be set up to maximize or minimize bad mental processes.

School should teach a lot more philosophy.

Make that Partial Reinforcement, not variable.