Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: philv who wrote (20637)	4/12/2004 6:15:39 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81018

Phil > People today are bombarded with propaganda and spin at every turn. Indeed so, and very many people I know won't buy a newspaper or switch on their TV sets, except to watch sport or a movie. I think I am one of a small minority who even believes there is such a thing as truth and, further, spends most of his time hunting for it, mainly on the internet (although, if you can tell me where else I could look, I would). Of course, I have to say, my definition of "truth" is something which coincides with the way I see the world. > I think people yearn for simple truth, but the truth is no longer simple. Someone with a simple message, clearly stated over and over has a sort of simple appeal. Sure, simple solutions to complex problems --- which can't work and never will. Always a quick fix. But, if you ask me, I believe there is a return to the Dark Ages, especially in the West, where there is increasing involvement with superstition, myth and religion as a way of solving problems. Instead of people being more educated and therefore more enlightened, prejudice and bigotry is the order of the day. In agreement with the piece which I posted, I can only believe it's because people are becoming more "subjective" and therefore more frightened of the "real" world and for this reason seek out, and are prepared to follow, charismatic leaders, including religious ones. Thus, I have thought at length what the US public could possibly find attractive in a person like W and have come to the conclusion that their fondness of him is a personal matter and has nothing to do with his policies, his intellect (or lack of it) or his integrity (or lack of it). Maybe the people just like his "cowboy" looks or his studied image of virility. Hence it's impossible to find objective criteria for his manifest support because, as I see him (without the rose-coloured glasses), he should be in jail for what he has done to the US and its people (quite apart from what he's done elsewhere). > Bending the truth, revealing just one side, obscuring the other is now taken for granted. What I see is the synthesis of a new "reality" which may have nothing to do with the world we can perceive with our senses. In other words, complete fabrication and obfuscation of the truth simply on the basis of "who says so". > I guess one could argue it has always been that way, it is in the nature of humans to promote their points of view, but it sure seems to be getting more strident and obvious lately. I try to understand where these points of view come from. In fact, I think I queried before whether this thinking is genetically predetermined. However, one would have thought that, with all the thinking, a common outcome would have emerged where everyone would have agreed, more or less, what the best solution to a given problem would be. But, of course, when people bring in Biblical "rights" and contrast them with common-law or legal rights, then there can be no convergence of opinion. It is only when people argue from the same premise that there can be a "reasonable" conclusion. Unfortunately, today, not only religion but the various interpretations of it make any consensus impossible. So, it seems, the world is moving inexorably towards a situation of violent conflict as a means of settling "differences" or even of creating more of them. > But then, an amateur psychiatrist might diagnose me with suffering from a hopeless, untreatable illness. I suppose a professional one would have you on Prozac before he even considered a diagnosis! > How many guys do you know who are skeptical of even their own B.S.? I believe most thinking people always try to see two sides of the coin. I know I do. As we have discussed before, I often take a position against what I really believe --- just to see if I really believe it! I wonder what your amateur psychiatrist would say about that?!