I recently came across a video and it was so fascinating I was moved to examine it further. It was an interesting explanation why so many people blindly follow leaders and agendas that are problematic and even detrimental to this country as a whole. The video is by Thomas Sowell and I would invite you to watch the video, and of course I will be giving my reactions to the grat points that the video makes. Here it is…
(Posted on YouTube by Sowell Explains)
My reaction…
The video starts by explaining that a woman went to a State Fair and started asking people to sign a petition. The petition demanded that people ban dihydrogen monoxide. She said because it was in our lakes and streams it was now in our sweat and tears. She ended up collecting hundreds of signatures to ban dihydrogen monoxide.
These people unknowingly wanted to ban water, which is what that substance is. Dihydrogen monoxide is the scientific name for a water molecule. I included a link in the references that will explain the joke in full. But the reason Mr. Sowell brings it up is, many Americans were easily fooled into thinking they were signing a petition to ban something that was harmful to us. Mr. Sowell says this experiment shows how conditioned Americans have become that if something sounds politically correct, we will respond to bogus crusades.
And in modern times we have seen this with people with agendas. What comes to my mind is how people will rally behind certain political figures and their causes, even to the detriment of the American people. And when questioned about the logic behind the agendas they will freely spout rhetoric that they have memorized rather than investigating and questioning the logic behind the agendas, they will blindly follow agendas because they sound plausible, no matter how wacky the agenda is.
Mr. Sowell says that people are born ignorant but they are not born stupid. He says that much of the stupidity we see today is because of the educational systems. He claims that stupidity is being created by the educators. He says that rather than the educational institutions passing on to the next generation knowledge, experience and culture, they are indoctrinating students into ideologies that are popular amongst the intelligence communities and educators.
And I would also say that in America people have been purposely mis-educated to support certain political agendas. People are intentionally teaching the wrong things in order to support the status quo.
Mr. Sowell says that most of the leading conservatives of today were actually on the left in their youth. An important point he makes is that life experiences can help people outgrow whatever they were indoctrinated with.
So for example, if you were raised in a family that believes that all illegal immigrants are lazy as you live and have the opportunity to see other cultures you start to realize that you were raised wrong. That in fact immigrants are often over worked in comparison to people who are able to work legally.
Mr. Sowell says some people have the lazy habit of hearing one side of an issue and being galvanized into action.
So using the same example, we have a whole segment of mis-educated people fighting for a wall to keep immigrants out of The United States. And yes a great number of them are bigots but others are well intentioned people who just blindly believe the rhetoric being fed to them. They do not read literature from a variety of sources that may educate them better about the people fighting to come to America illegally. Someone told them about immigrants and that’s what they believe and are too lazy to investigate the matter thoroughly.
Mr. Sowell explanation is that some people do not develop the mental skills to systematically test one set of beliefs against another. He says many teachers today are teaching students what to think as opposed to how to think. So you have students who are ill equipped with the mental skills to fact check. So after someone gives them an impassioned speech these people will go fighting for causes without properly vetting if the cause is valid.
What about in 2018 when then President Donald Trump told his supporters that he was going to make sure America would be the first to land a man on the sun? What about in 2020 when coronavirus was in full swing and he suggested people ingest disinfectants as a possible treatment for COVID-19?
An actually Head of State that doesn’t know that you will disintegrate way before getting near the son was laughable. So of course comedians went out to question Trump supporters, and guess what? They were in full support of putting a man on the sun. And surprisingly even though ingesting Lysol can be lethal, some people tried it just because Trump suggested it.
Mr. Sowell says when we see elementary school aged children carrying signs in demonstrations it is an example of mindless groupthink that causes adults to sign petitions they don’t understand or worse follow leaders they don’t understand.
How many Trump supporters regurgitate information fed to them and are made to look stupid by anyone questioning them because it become apparent they cannot argue independent of the information they have been indoctrinated with? It’s really sad. But sadder is there are millions of American’s that cannot think independently, or investigate things because they have not been educated to do so.
But what do I know? I’m just a bootleg sociologist who nobody will listen to, so I started a blog…
What are your thoughts?
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References:
Dihydrogen monoxide parody – Wikipedia
When This Woman Speaks 