It just occurred to me to think about all the brainwashing I’ve been exposed to in my life, and to write it down in as close to chronological order as I can recall.
- Christianity – Sunday school and church in childhood, although I never really took to religion, I always found it boring and dubious, I was nonetheless subjected to it, both at school, Sunday school, and with the family attending church in our younger years … we were taught all sorts of bullshit religious stories, none of which were true.
- Nationalism – we used to start the day in primary school by singing the national anthem and then marching into class … clearly social engineering to prepare children for the prospect of war one day.
- History – in addition to other bullshit, we were taught that australia was “the only nation to ever be settled peacefully” … the frontier wars and genocide of aboriginal people was not mentioned at all.
- Economics – we were taught bullshit economic theory in high school as if it was a science.
- Games – things like Monopoly that teach people to be competitive instead of cooperative.
- TV – shows on TV throughout childhood were full of propaganda, including in cartoons … though fortunately some of it was subversive and designed to teach kids to think for themselves ( eg: Dr Seuss ).
- Movies – there are many films glorifying war, or selling some other bullshit and lies for social engineering purposes … and I love film so I’ve intentionally exposed myself to this.
- News – whether newspapers, TV news, or modern internet news, the news has always been full of bullshit … and 20 years ago I used to listen to ABC News Radio which was the Australian Federal Parliament broadcast network, which would play rolling news and science shows from around the world when Parliament wasn’t sitting … I mainly listened to it for the science shows, but it was interesting to hear the difference in spin of the exact same event from Australia’s ABC versus PBS BBC and Deutsche Weller Radio … then compare all that to parliamentary discussions when they came up … it was apparent that a lot of bullshit and spin was going on, and that parliament consisted of grown adults behaving like arseholes.
- War – the part of news that deals with war is the most full of shit.
- Advertising – barely contains any truth at all, but may contain traces of peanuts.
It’s a wonder there’s any sanity left on this planet. We have to stop lying to ourselves and each other.