They rely on poverty and ignorance... it is the only way they can retain power

[Soph0571]

Fail to educate and teach critical thinking skills to the populace is the name of the game. Keep them tired and weary, throw in gas lighting and fake news, stir and ferment – bingo. The deceit is strong in them…

[Newest Reality]

1. Good quote!

I could not agree more with this. Orwell was incredibly insightful on these matters and 1984 gives an outline of that.

It is like when you are getting into a complex situation that you need to succeed with and you don't bother to look into it and find out more. We have so much online that it is easy now. Who is the agent here? If we hold the system totally responsible for our outcomes, that not only gives away power, but transfers the agency and responsibility to a collective abstraction and misses the point entirely. Then, causes are attributed to the vague, nebulous "they" and "them" and left at that as if it is definitive. That's rather self-defeating and that even generates many conspiracies that try to force the information to fit the theory, (in fact, speculation) rather than the other way around. Having more information makes outlandish conspiracy "theories" less likely and one can still have an open, inquisitive and scientific view.

In fact, do you notice how the emphasis is on an "information society" or "data-driven"? Well, look what's missing: knowledge. We should be striving to be a knowledge-driven society as a whole. All the information and data is more like a stream of white noise and only useful and powerful for those who know what it means and can interpret and use the information. Knowledge is the key in that case. Without it, the sheer volume of data can be like a smoke-screen that befuddles those who have no clue.

Ignorance can be original, (like how we all begin) or it can be willful or even a product of fear. That's why I like to use ignore-ance.

I think that, all things considered, our future as a society and for the entire world rests on this issue one way or another.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. Or as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come puts it to Scrooge...

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.



Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm#link11