The Mass Public Only Know What They Read!

If there is one thing that I've learned from the three years of lurking ATS, it is that people only know what they read, and what they are told. This is a HUGE problem! This screams sheeple louder than any megaphone created by man!

People like to claim they know quite a bit, myself included, until just recently I realized... "Wait, the only thing that we claim to know comes from what we are taught and what we read!" I wonder how many people in the mass public go out and try to recreate things that they read in first-hand experimentation. The problem is, they can't! We only know what we know about the moon through what we read and are taught via pictures and scientific representations. We will never go to the moon and see for ourselves! Does this not bother anyone else? Who's to say that we can trust who's teaching us these things and writing these things? Who's to say that everything we've been taught isn't a fabrication of reality... who's to say what reality even is, given these circumstances?!

This is absolutely maddening! This is imprisoning! We know absolutely nothing! And the only things we claim to know are handed down as hand-me-downs! We all have differing beliefs because we all read and hear different things! You see it all over ATS! "Dude that's bogus! Provide proof and sources plz..." Why? So you can just read what they read and then know what they know only by reading what is inside the link they post, am I the only one seeing something terribly wrong with this?!

In this modern day we lack innovation from the mass public because of our sickening complaisance! Our desire for comfort and nothing more or less is baffling and unprecedented! Everything is spoon fed to us, because we are sheep! We are just batteries of mental creation to whatever leader has his hand over us! How many of you can say that you would come up here with me in Alaska and spend a winter in a tent surviving like the natives here did not even two hundred years ago? I can hear it now "Uh, why? That's just a cold long winter, what would be the point?" Because if your comfort is at risk, there is no point, right? WRONG! I have talked with native village elders up here who remember the good-ol days. But their youth has already submitted to this whole system of only knowing what they read and not experiencing it first hand. Their culture is dying because of this!

Just had to get that red pill off my chest. Feel free to share your thoughts and have a nice day

reply to post by DakmindAK


I've thought about this exact thing dude, for all we know our history could be entirely different and is just manipulated to fit into how our government sees best, just like in 1984.

reply to post by DakmindAK


That is encouraging.
I didn't think "most people" read anything anymore.
Most people get information told to them from cable news, TV and online media like an inter-venous drip - they only know what gets force fed them through the tubes!

at least now I know why I am getting the double posts...think I can fix it.

Well it's worse than that - a lot worse!

The focus of the lives of the vast majority, are types of social identity, wether family tribal, natonal, civilisational, 'religious' or others.

All of the popular myths and stories that we tell ourselves about the nature of the world - are created to reinforce aspects of our social identities - truth seeking tends to be a solitary affair.

Truth for rmost people is a social agreement - it has to be on MSM, or it didn't happen.

As you get older you can then speak from personal experience because you have some.I didn't read this I experenced it.....first hand with nobody telling it to me.

Keep going Neo. The rabbit hole gets much deeper from this epiphany to the next one.
Wait till you see history re-written right before your eyes.

Lonegurkha, you're missing the point entirely! You have NO first hand experience! Have you ever been to the Moon? Have you been to history thousands of years ago to see exactly what happened first-handedly? Have you seen with your own two eyes the workings of the universe? No. You only know what you read, my friend. You only know what you are told. The truth might hurt some, but it is the truth, and it tends to do that to people.

Now I have some first hand experiences myself in life lessons, I've lived in pristine Alaskan wilderness for a couple of years out of a tent and seen what its like to live off of bare necessities with no electronic devices... but I have NO personal experience when it comes to that which I cannot experience... which is more than 90% of what is out there! We have NO power as people in this matter. Any power that we WOULD have is theirs, and all theirs.

The biggest problem I have with this whole concept is two points.

Point #1 - How else is one to learn about anything? Its not like you can go out and just learn by osmosis the proper history of the world, the exact science of space travel, or anything else for that matter. All you have is what you learn from others. Except of course for the things you can learn for yourself like life lessons. I mean if someone didn't tell you about reproduction would you know how a baby is made to be? Would you know why you have the organs you have and what is vital vs what isn't?

Point #2 - Way before modern times and books were even written. History was learned by the stories told by the fathers to there sons. By the fellow tribesman to other tribesman, and of course if you believe in Ancient Aliens then the people of early earth learned from them too.

The conclusion of this is that there is no way to learn anything if it is not told to you. I mean yea you can learn that if getting punched in the nose hurts, or that cutting yourself makes you bleed. etc etc etc, but that is about it. So I ask how else are you supposed to learn anything? If everything we have been taught is a lie then frankly there is nothing we can do about it. There is no way for you to go out and learn the truth for yourself because then you would have to learn how to read ancient languages, but you can't use a book because it could be a lie.

Originally posted by DakmindAK
If there is one thing that I've learned from the three years of lurking ATS, it is that people only know what they read, and what they are told. This is a HUGE problem! This screams sheeple louder than any megaphone created by man!

I have to disagree with this statement. Only because the majority of people I know dont even read. They watch and listen to whatever the talking heads say to them outta the squawk box called television. Sometimes at safety meetings at work they'll give a little paper with a safety topic to someone and ask them to read it. You would think they asked them to kill somebody. And its painful to listen to 30-40 year old guys stammering through sentences and stalling at any word that is over seven letters long. Its pathetic. Sometimes the client will come in and listen to our safety meetings and they ALWAYS give the topic to me to read because they're all blown away that I can pronounce "them big" words and not take 5 mins to read 3 paragraphs. And they all have opinions, on everything. Usually the same opinions that you hear the Limbaughs, the Hannitys, the Glenn Becks all of those bozos spout. Whats really funny is I might mention to someone that i get my information from the internet, the first thing they do is look at me like I have a phallus hanging off my chin and say..."well anyone can put anything on the internet, its not all true." as if it coming outta the TV makes it gospel.

Its really quite sad, especially when my 12 year old nephew asked me how I know so much stuff one time, I told him because I like to read/learn/educate myself. I then asked him what he liked to read. He told me that all he ever read was texts on his phone and his friends facebook pages. But he said it like it was something to be proud of, like reading books or anything was just a waste of time. And I've noticed this attitude in other kids about his age as well. Its only a matter of time before that movie Idiocracy is a reality.

Originally posted by Klassified
Keep going Neo. The rabbit hole gets much deeper from this epiphany to the next one.
Wait till you see history re-written right before your eyes.

edit on 13-2-2011 by Klassified because: Correction

edit on 13-2-2011 by Klassified because: (no reason given)

Yes i have seen this aswell bro your not alone or crazy!!! Sometimes I wish I was crazy, sometimes I think or feel like i'm a traveller in a reality shift as things in time disolve mostly I find with people or projects than see myself in a more tighter reality, overnite Obama has pushed america nearly off of a cliff and there ws a small pepple that snags it. I find myself enstranged with my surroundings at times.

We wouldn't be where we are as humans today if it weren't for the written word.
Inventing writing and eventually printing made us able to share knowledge gained by others so that we didn't NEED to learn it first hand.
We could simply read about what others before us had learned and experienced.
This way knowledge could spread much faster and we could build on that previous knowledge to come to new conclusions without having to actually having to first hand experience the foundation this knowledge was build upon.

Before the written word humans used the spoken word to hand knowledge down from generation to generation.
That worked well in a small community, but something well known for generations in one village could be completely unheard of a couple of villages away, so the spoken word had it's limitations.

If you suggest we can't trust what we are taught from history and the millions of people before us that have written down their learnings and experiences for our benefit, then you basically disrespect all our ancestors wisdom and all their efforts to make the world a better place for the ones that was to live here after they passed.

All of science is basically founded upon the fact that you take pieces of what others have learned, prove it beyond doubt and then build on from there.
If every person would have to discover what Pythagoras did first hand, then there wouldn't be much progress in mathematics for example.

You are questioning the very foundation that human knowledge rests upon for crying out loud!

Of course, in this day and age, you can't take everything you read for granted. Internet is a pot full of different opinions and theories and you have to be selective of what you consider to be knowledge.
But bear in mind that the world wasn't always like this.
Many a monk has spend several months just to copy ONE book, BY HAND just so that the book could be spread and others could learn the important things written in that book.
I think they were VERY selective back then which books they would spend all this time copying.

After all, if you don't learn from your past - how are your ever gonna change your future...?