propaganda

Interesting, isn’t it, how most of the smear propaganda that you receive in your emails or the Myspace bulletins seems to come from the right side of the fence? Sure, there are the 9-11 conspiracy theorists and Alex Jones aficionados, but the majority of what pollutes my inbox are things like, “OBAMA IS TEH ANTICHRIST” and “I DONT CARE IF WE DESECRATE THE KORAN BECAUSE SOME MUSLIMS DID SOMETHING BAD ONCE” and “ILLEGAL IMMAGRANTS GTFO” or other generally uneducated blather justifying their fear and ignorance.

I used to send rebuttals that destroyed the entire logic of such position, but I realized that the people who send this drivel can’t actually read for analysis, they just forward what fits in with they think they believe.

So now I just pity them. They are poor, sad creatures grasping at straws out of an abject fear that their peoples’ time of power and prosperity is coming to a definite end.

Religious extremists, on the Islamic and Christianist sides both, are being phased out, and it’s been happening like that since the Crusades and even before. Superstition is being replaced with reason. I read a great essay once that likened religiosity to smoking. Just a few decades ago, smoking was THE thing to do. If you didn’t smoke, you weren’t cool. Everyone did it. But through the years, people realized that they could make the choice not to smoke, and be better off for it. Now, there are still plenty of smokers in the world, but they are merely tolerated and smoking in general is considered uncool. Same will be with religion and religionists. There will still be religious people in the world, even some extremists. But the vast majority of religions are converting to a less extreme, more ecumenical version of its prior form, and the extremists are blowing themselves up or discrediting themselves in the media day by day. Religion, especially the old-time judge others according to your moral code so you can feel superior religion, is no longer seen as the cool thing to do.

I read an article about how Iraqi youths are abandoning the faith of their fathers. Even in the seemingly Christian United States of America, only about half the people attend church regularly. People are learning how to think and putting the book down, or at least analyzing the book and doing what is right, not just what they’ve been told.

Evaluation is the highest step on Bloom’s Taxonomy. People are acquiring higher-level thinking skills in great numbers, and that’s something to be optimistic about.

Tags: politics, religion, vent