If propoganda-esque stuff worked, it would never have led to the uprisings that we've seen across the Middle East. People are not all infinitely malleable beings that can be made submissive simply by droning them with television messages that, ultimately, lead them to accept the regimes in question. There is an awareness about what's going on with the neighbors and the family, and an independence of thought that comes with the territory.
Just ask any hypnotist, and they'll tell you that it only works if the subject buys into the hypnosis in the first place and accepts the suggestions. You can't make people do whatever you want them to, just because you're pulling their mental wires (although, in television, you are pulling their wires to elicit emotions and responses which help impart the story that the director is trying to tell. Same could be said for any kind of story telling, really. But it does not mean that the individual necessarily is losing control of themselves or their actions as a result of your insidiousness.)
You only give up control if you allow the control to be given up. And, quite frankly, most human beings don't do that on a regular basis, particularly to those whom they don't trust, don't have strong feelings for or are otherwise opposed to or one reason and another.
You can't MAKE someone do something they wouldn't ordinarily do.
And that is the lesson that the Arab Spring, and other uprisings can teach us.
If propaganda worked, Germany would have risen up in revolt against the occupiers rather than surrender to them at the end of World War II, as per the order by Hitler and Goebbels.
You could keep people ignorant, back in the day.
And, to a certain extent, you can keep them ignorant in the present.
But it does not change the human paradigm that is interpersonal communication and interpersonal news spreading.
Else, how could you account for the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/
Or the French Revolution?
Or the Protestant Reformation?
Or Wat Tyler's Revolution in England?
Or, even more, the Baron's revolt in England in 1215 that led to the creation of Magna Carta?
All of these instances were of people banding together by word of mouth to deal with a government and a group of people in government who's regime had become oppressive, intolerable and unacceptable in these countries. And that's just Western history!
They've each shaped the countries and societies where they happened, permanently, depending upon what happened in each of these instances.
And it boggles my brain to see that people so casually disregard these lessons from history, which is indeed, the lessons that we all share in common from the world beyond our own brain's conceptions and our own brain's perceptions.
And yet, here we are.
Circling the drain once again, because of the careless thinking of a minority few, getting in the way of the majority many.
Think about it.
Cause I know that the lords and ladies of Capitalism are not.
Else they wouldn't be making these kinds of choices and these kinds of decisions.
And they'd really step aside to let more capable hands take over the government and the society, peaceably.
Without a war.
And without violence.
Think about it.
Cause the lords and ladies aren't listening. Or thinking.
And that is how they're going to fail.
One way or another.
That is how they're going to fail.
Think about it.
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