12 posts tagged “society”
When Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds whose birth parents are West Indian (Afro-Caribbean decent) batted in India recently, he was racially abused by some of the Indian spectators with taunts calling him a monkey and had "ape like" gestures directed at him. Initially the Board of Control for Cricket in India and local media dismissed the allegations and only acknowledged the racist vitriol directed at Symonds following the worldwide publication of damning photographs. Board officials initially even suggested that the Australians misunderstood the crowd’s gestures. Members of the crowd were captured imitating monkeys on Wednesday night at Wankhede Stadium when Symonds went out to bat, leaving the BCCI little choice but to act and crack down on the racially abusive behaviour.
To Symonds’s
credit he remained unflappable in the face of the provocative crowd behaviour
and let the team management handle it without lodging an official complaint.
I find the whole
racist thing based on skin colour just so absurd. The whole hierarchy of skin colour is
ridiculous. Lighter skinned races or even lighter skinned people of the same
race feel it is okay to be racist to people of darker colour, but they hate
white folk being racist towards them based on skin colour - they can't have it
both ways, it is so absolutely hypocritical.
Of course in predominantly darker skinned nations there can be just as much
prejudice against people of lighter skin colour.
What a load of
complete rubbish.
It is the person
inside that matters not their skin.
That is my rant
for the day.
The New Jersey Chapter of MAS (Muslim American Society) put together this message dispelling some of the stereotypes of Muslims, calling for peace and unity and encourages Muslims to be proud of their faith. This informative and very entertaining message is brought to you by the Muslim American Societies Media Foundation.
www.masmediafoundation.org
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.”
- Aldous Huxley
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Propaganda - it comes from the left, the right and anywhere in between!
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The master of the big lie was the head of the Third Reich's Propaganda Ministry, Josef Goebbels, who used repetition in the manner of an unrelenting drum beat to con the nation's masses into believing whatever deemed necessary by the regime to serve current objectives.
The big lie technique featured two important elements:
Goebbels stated his belief that, whereas a small lie would be questioned, if a gigantic untruth were unleashed its staggering magnitude would impact against the kind of scepticism that would arise from a more benign, less extravagant lie.
Repetition to the point of monotonous exhaustion should be employed to beat the lie concussively into the heads of the masses. The more frequently a lie is repeated the more common place it will appear to be until, alas, it will ultimately gain acceptance.
How Propaganda Works
by Bob Wallace
"Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing."
- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.It's not hard to understand how propaganda works. You don't need a college degree, or to read any of those thick textbooks everyone hates. Everything relevant can be explained in one not-particularly-long article. And, I guarantee you, you must understand how propaganda targets you, to immunize yourself against the attempts.
Propaganda works by appealing to our most base, animalistic instincts. It does not appeal to our better nature, although one of the purposes of it is to convince us it does. It pretends to appeal to our reason, when in fact it appeals to our most primitive emotions. There is good reason for this: perception travels through the emotional brain first, to the rational brain last.
Specifically, propaganda works by appealing to three things: emotionalism, tribalism and narcissism.
I just mentioned perception travels first to the emotional brain, then the rational brain. This happens to everyone, including people who con themselves that they are the most rational and intelligent of intellectuals.
As for tribes, we share with nearly every animal in the world the instinct to form tribes, arranged in a hierarchy, with a leader. We are group animals. The fact we look to a leader to take care of us is one of the most firmly established principles in psychology (if you don't remember anything else, remember that).
When anyone transgresses the taboos of a tribe, they can, and often are, ostracised or even expelled. An example? Say some people oppose a war. What happens? They are often called cowards and told to leave the country. Who hasn't heard the insult, "You're a coward! If you don't like it here, get out!" People who say such things think they're being patriotic; in reality they're acting like animals. Emotional, irrational, herd animals, prone to the fear and flight activated by propaganda. Individuals think; groups do not, and cannot.
Narcissism is our inborn tendency to see everything as grandiose or devalued, good or bad, with nothing in-between. It's why nearly every tribe in the world -- and nations are just tribes writ large -- called itself "the People," "the Humans," "the Chosen," "the Motherland," "the Fatherland," or "the greatest nation on earth," relegating everyone outside the tribe to a devalued non-people, non-human status (aka "collateral damage"). No wonder it's so easy to kill the outsiders -- they're just not quite human.
When you combine those three concepts, you have the basis for all propaganda. If a leader of a tribe tells the people their goodness is under attack by insane, evil people who want to destroy them, they will react just like animals and attack. The Nazi Goering noticed all you had to do to get people to march off to war is for the leaders to tell them they were under attack, denounce protesters as traitors exposing the tribe to danger, and the people would slander, ostracize and expel the protesters, and then tramp straight off to be slaughtered. He said this technique worked in every country of the world.
The Bush administration used exactly this technique to start two wars. Essentially they told the public that our goodness was under attack by insane and evil people who wanted to destroy us. See how it works? Tribalism, emotionalism, and narcissism.
Supporters of the war responded by attacking protestors as traitors -- trying to expel them from the tribe -- and marching off to war. It's altogether too simple, and too easy.
One man everyone should know is Edward L. Bernays, the American disciple and nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was for all practical purposes the founder of modern propaganda techniques.
Bernays despised most people and regarded them as his inferiors, especially because of intellectual or social claims. (See how it works? I just appealed to your emotions, and convinced you Bernays was attacking you. You fell for it, right?)
Bernays not only pretty much founded modern propaganda techniques, but was also the father of modern PR. Although, you could say they are same thing, and that there's really no difference between them.
In his 1928 book, Propaganda, Bernays wrote, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country..."
Remember that quote. Burn it into your memory. Bernays thought people should be ruled by an extremely small elite, who should manipulate them through propaganda. That means you. People who believe in the wonders of government, and that it is their friend, should think twice about it.
In another book, In Crystallizing Public Opinion, Bernays wrote how governments and advertisers can "regiment the mind like the military regiments the body." This can be imposed, he said, because of "the natural inherent flexibility of individual human nature," and suggested the "average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own 'logic-proof compartments,' his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction."
Bernays also thought "physical loneliness is a real terror to the gregarious animal, and that association with the herd causes a feeling of security. In man this fear of loneliness creates a desire for identification with the herd in matters of opinion."
Bernays claimed that "the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word...In making up its mind, its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader. This is one of the most firmly established principles in mass psychology." What Bernays called the "regimentation of the mind" is accomplished by taking advantage of the human tendency to self-deception [logic-proof compartments], gregariousness [the herd instinct], individualism [exalting their vanity] and the seductive power of a strong leader.
Bernays also expressed the opinion people "have to take sides...[they] must step out of the audience onto the stage and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil." This also means appealing to our narcissism, our inborn tendency to see everything as either good or bad, with little or nothing in-between.
He also noted the need for people to feel as if they belong to something larger than themselves. Again, this also means appealing to our narcissism, such as people claiming they belong to "the greatest nation on earth."
When people consider themselves as part of the Humans (by whatever name they call themselves), they exalt themselves. Still again, those outside the tribe are non-people, "collateral damage."
"Mental habits create stereotypes just as physical habits create certain definite reflex actionism," Bernays wrote. "...these stereotypes or clichés are not necessarily truthful pictures of what they are supposed to portray." Perception is everything, the truth matters little or not at all.
Now, let's boil all this down and see what we have:
Mass Man, the herd, cannot think, and is instead ruled by its feelings. The herd will look to a leader to save it. The best way to accomplish this is for the herd to feel it is under attack. The herd will draw together, expel those who see the truth and protest, and then march off to war.
The full quote from Goering? "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Tell the herd they are the Humans, or the People, or best of all, have God on their side. Paint their enemies as insane and evil. Again, this is appealing to people's narcissism, the tendency to see everything as either good (us) or evil (them). Evoke paranoia and hysteria in them by convincing them the insane evil ones want to conquer and destroy them. What will happen? You can get them to march off to war by the millions, just as Goering noticed. The truth doesn't matter, only the manipulation of perception.
To make it as simple as possible, everything that is needed for a successful propaganda campaign can be summed up in those three aforementioned words: emotionalism, tribalism and narcissism.
We con ourselves we are so advanced. In
reality, the human race is stuck in One Million Years BC, except there's no
Raquel Welch in a two-piece fur bikini.
Listen to the lyrics and substitute Government in place of Mother/Mama from the 2nd verse and that is the purpose of most propaganda. To make you scared, dependent, stifled, psychologically imprisoned, incapable of thinking for yourself, dumbed down and constantly monitored and controlled. If the propaganda campaign is well exercised you will not even be aware that this is happening to you because it will be disguised as being in your best interests – “Mama will keep baby cozy and warm” and “Mama wont let anyone dirty get through” and “Mama's gonna keep baby healthy and clean.” But while Mama is doing all of that for you, think about what else Mama is doing to you.
Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they'll like this song?
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother should I build the wall?
Mother should I run for president?
Mother should I trust the government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Mother am I really dying?
Hush now baby, baby, dont you cry.
Mother's gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mother's gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She wont let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooooh baby ooooh baby oooooh baby,
Of course mama'll help to build the wall.
Mother do you think she's good enough -- to me?
Mother do you think she's dangerous -- to me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother will she break my heart?
Hush now baby, baby dont you cry.
Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you.
Mama wont let anyone dirty get through.
Mama's gonna wait up until you get in.
Mama will always find out where you've been.
Mama's gonna keep baby healthy and clean.
Ooooh baby oooh baby oooh baby,
You'll always be baby to me.
Mother, did it need to be so high?
.
.
Sometimes we are so comfortably numb that we aren't willing to see past the propaganda.
“In a way, the world-view of the party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.” George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four
Sex sex - crime crime
Can I take this for granted with your eyes over me?In this place this wintery home
I know there's always someone in.
Sex crime
sex crime - 1984
1984.
And so I face the wall
turn my back against it all.
How I wish I'd been unborn wish I was unliving here.
Sex crime
sex crime - 1984
1984.
I'll pull the bricks down one by one.
Leave a big hole in the wall just where you are looking in.
Sex crime
sex crime - 1984
1984.
The Eurythmics and Annie Lennox were my all time favourite music group while growing up and I still enjoy both the old Eurythmics music and the songs performed by Annie Lennox as a solo singer. The song 1984 was released in conjunction with the movie "George Orwell 1984" and I am sure that not many people actually realise the connection between the two. I have read comments on YouTube in relation to this song (another listing which didn't allow embedding) and it is obvious that many have not made the connection at all. I saw this as a protest song.
We should never give away our civil rights, as once they are gone it is very difficult to have them restored.
Simple answer really, they were removed by YouTube due to censorship, "apparently" those parts "offended" people.
I am not sure which people were offended.
However I know I am offended by the fact that they were removed.
.
.
I read Nineteen Eighty-Four , "Brave New World" and "On The Beach" as part of the subject of English in my last year of high school in 1983 and each of these novels left an indelible imprint in my mind. These novels have definitely had an impact on my way of thinking and my fears and hopes for the future of our world. I cannot recall any of the other novels studied during my years at High School, but these books I shall never forget, that is the impact that they have had on me. May these novels never come to fruition. The worrisome thing is however, it appears that there are some aspects of 1984 that have already been implemented or at least are being considered.
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In George Orwell's futuristic novel published in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four posits a world wherein the government is totalitarian in word and deed. All mass communications media are subordinate to the government's interpretation of reality. Television, as technology and as communicated content, is the principal means of thought control, buttressed by the press and publishing. Through such, the population — the ruling Party, its government employees, and the proletariat — are controlled through perpetual war and all of its concomitant material and intellectual shortages. According to the government, this life must be endured for the collective good, until the war ends; the war ends when the government says so.
The citizens have no right to a personal life or to personal thought. Leisure and other activities are controlled through a system of strict mores. Sexual pleasure is discouraged; sex is retained only for the purpose of procreation, although artificial insemination (ARTSEM) is more encouraged.
The mysterious head of government is the omniscient, omnipotent, beloved Big Brother, or "B.B.", usually displayed on posters with the slogan "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" and this phrase refers to invasive surveillance. It is never made clear whether Big Brother is an actual person or whether he is a fictitious leader created as a focus for the love of the Party.
The three slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant.
The Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong." The ultimate aim of the Party is to gain and retain full power over all the people. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
DoubleThink: The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
The Perpetual War: The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is built around a never-ending war involving the book's three superstates, with two allied powers fighting against the third. Each superstate is so strong it cannot be defeated even when faced with the combined forces of the other two powers. The allied states occasionally split with each other and new alliances are formed. Each time this happens, history is rewritten to convince the people that the new alliances were always there, using the principles of doublethink. The war itself never takes place in the territories of the three powers; the actual fighting is conducted in the disputed zone.
The war is unwinnable, and that its only purpose is to use up human labor and the fruits of human labour so that each superstate's economy cannot support an equal (and high) standard of living for every citizen.
Living standards for the population are generally very low — everything is in short supply and those goods available are of very poor quality. The Party claims that this is due to the immense sacrifices that must be made for the war effort. They are partially correct, since the point of continuous warfare is to be rid of the surplus of industrial production to prevent the rise of the standard of living and make possible the economic repression of people. The Inner Party, at the top level of society, enjoys the highest standard of living.
It is not clear to what extent Orwell believed his work was prophetic.
His character O'Brien described his view of the future of the world: "There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face …for ever."
The above dialogue was taken from: Nineteen Eighty-Four
In the shadow of Big Brother
Avril Moore
The Age Monday April 23, 2007
The novel 1984 resonates long after the year has passed.
IT HAS been exactly 30 years since I studied George Orwell's political satire 1984 for my year 12 certificate. In 1976, I was mesmerised but not wholly convinced by the idea that government control, when pushed to its limits, could produce a society such as Winston's Oceania.
And yet the year in question, although long since passed, remains in our lexicon, no longer as an abstract idea but as a perpetual warning on how effortlessly democracy can transform into autocracy if our vigilance is not maintained……………………………..
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Due to the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" no longer being under copyright it is legally available as a free download at this address: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html
I am trying to stay away from blogging at the moment due to my son's up coming wedding on Saturday, but issues keep coming which I feel the need to post. Given my passion regarding Australian Indigenous affairs, I felt the need to post this latest email from GetUp. Just as I and others have suspected, it seems that the Australian Government has not done very much consultation with the local Aboriginal communities which the latest legislation will be affecting.
An email from GetUp:
Dear friends,
When the Prime Minister announced his radical 'emergency' plan for Indigenous
communities in the Northern Territory, people welcomed the commitment to tackle
the incidence of child abuse, but the jury was out on the actual worth of the
plan. Well, now the jury's back in -- and the verdict? It stinks.
The Senate will vote on these laws on Tuesday -- and we want a true debate on
our hands. Send them a message now that we expect them to stand up for the
rights of Indigenous Australians, and respect the integrity of their
parliamentary chamber.
www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoRubberStamp
500 pages of controversial legislation, a paltry one-day Senate hearing, and
merely two days of debate for laws that dramatically affects land tenure,
community security and the rights of Aboriginal communities in the NT - done
with practically no consultation with the Indigenous people affected.
Everybody wants to stop abuse, but not with flawed laws like these which
experts argued in Friday's Senate hearing actually risk making children less
safe.
We expect more from our Senate, designed to rigorously scrutinise and vigorously
debate the laws passed by the lower House - that's how the brakes are put on
bad legislation. But since the Government took control of both Houses of
Parliament two years ago, the Senate has become no more than a rubber stamp for
the Prime Minister's whims.
Send the Senate a message today. We'll deliver them directly, and we'll even
throw in a rubber stamp and a speed-reading guide for each Senator -- they’ll
need one or the other!
www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoRubberStamp
GetUp has already written to each Senator demanding they properly interrogate
the bills, travelled to Canberra to lobby politicians from around the chamber,
met with Indigenous leaders from Central Australia (read their potent blog here), published articles criticising the
plan and put people in the Committee room for Friday's hearing. We've done all
we can behind the scenes -- now we need your help.
Send a message to our Senators today, so at Tuesday's final vote they'll
have the urgent appeals of thousands of Australians ringing in their ears.
Thanks for being a part of the solution,
The GetUp Team
PS - If you live in Canberra, email actsenate@getup.org.au to join us in the Senate Public Gallery
when the bills are debated and voted on next Monday and Tuesday. It will be
harder to make a mockery of our parliamentary traditions with the eyes of the
public looking on.
PPS - Read the real story in our blog from various Indigenous leaders
including Valda Shannon, Gina Smith, Harry Nelson and Walter Shaw.
------------------
GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new
technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national
issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign
we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you'd like to chip in
to support GetUp's work, please click here.
Yesterday I was in Melbourne sitting in a specialist's waiting room. The doctor's office was located near the centre of Melbourne in a busy city street that had many doctor's consulting offices and hospitals along it.
We were extremely lucky, as we were able to find some on street parking that allowed us to park for 2 hours for a minimal cost and it was directly across the road from the building we required.
While waiting in the waiting room for quite sometime, an elderly gentleman came in and started to chat to the receptionist. I had nothing better to do so I listened in - yes I know a bit of a sticky beak!
Anyway this was the story that he told the receptionist.
"I managed to find a car space but I noticed that it only allowed parking for 2 hours, I was a bit concerned that 2 hours wouldn't be enough because I knew my wife would need to have X-rays once she saw the doctor and would then need to come back for the results. I happened to notice the parking inspector just up the street so I went up to him and asked if he knew of anywhere nearby that I could park for 3 hours? The inspector replied that it was all 2 hour parking around this area but I will tell you this, if you go and park in that street just up around the corner you will be okay, as although it does say 2 hour parking, I won't be marking the tyres in that street today so you will be fine. The parking inspector also told him that even though the signs say 2 hour parking, they allow people an extra half an hour because they realise that patients generally do get caught waiting for doctors and also for various test results to come back."
I will give that parking inspector a gold star!
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I will tell you another nice story. This time the story is about the doctor that I saw yesterday, he is a Haematologist (blood). It was the first time that I had seen this doctor. Last week I rang up to make an appointment thinking that it would probably be about 3 months before I got to see him, as that is the typical waiting period to see most specialists. Imagine my surprise when the receptionist said she could fit me in on either Tuesday or Friday if I liked. I said could it be Tuesday as I have an appointment in Melbourne on Wednesday to see my ME/CFS doctor and she said yes!
So I got to see this new doctor yesterday and after quite a wait in the waiting room I was ushered into his office, but he was in the adjacent room making a phone call obviously for some results for another patient (this doctor is also an oncologist i.e. a cancer specialist so patient's results are very important to him and his patients). Obviously the phone call was not going well as he demanded to speak to a supervisor, as he had been let down by the system for far too long and he had had enough. He obviously wasn't happy, he wasn't being overly aggressive, just being assertive. But I was a bit worried that he may be a bit cranky when he saw me. Anyway after 15 minutes he finally emerged to see me and his manner and disposition was extremely friendly and you would never have known that he had just had a very unpleasant conversation.
Not only that, he observed that I had a bit of an adult acne issue and said if I liked he could get me in to see a dermatologist very quickly as he knows three dermatologists very well, and normally dermatologists are nearly impossible to get into with at least a 3 months waiting period. He told me to have a think about it and if I decided yes, just let him know and he would arrange it for me!
Now how nice was that :-)
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One more story. Late yesterday afternoon my ME/CFS doctor phoned to see if he could cancel my appointment at 9.40am this morning, as he had just managed to organise an appointment for him to see some-one and it conflicted with my appointment. He was happy to shift it to a day that he would normally devote to paperwork. I indicated that we were already down in Melbourne in preparation for the appointment with him the following morning. So being the nice man that he is, he managed to squeeze me in at 11.20am this morning instead.
Once again this doctor is also a lovely man, he has devoted his practice to just ME/CFS patients, the type of patients that most doctors are reluctant to take on because they feel so helpless when it comes to the treatment of ME/CFS, and they just don't know what to do with us. By the time ME/CFS patients find such a compassionate doctor we need as much empathy and hope we can get, as we have been let down so much in the past by the medical profession and have been told there isn't anything they can do for us.
A doctor such as this one provides hope and it really does help.
I am reading this book at the moment and I have to admit it has been a bit of an eye opener.
I came across Sam Harris giving a lecture about his book at YouTube. The man speaks well and I believe that he does give a very good argument.
I have the video footage listed below from his lecture and also the links at YouTube if you feel that you could watch them better via YouTube. Each clip runs for a bit over 20 minutes. I know that it is a big ask, but if you do want "Peace on Earth" then I urge you to watch his lecture. Please don't just watch one clip and decide he is talking a whole heap of crap, please watch all of the lecture as otherwise you will be taking his opinions out of context.
If you have read his book then you probably don't need to watch his lecture, but I would love your opinions. If you haven't read his book then I would prefer it if you watched his lecture before you comment. However, if you have already made up your mind on this subject then please feel free to make a comment, but I still do believe you would benefit from watching his lecture.
I believe that anyone who does belong to a religion should watch this lecture, not to convince you to stop following your religion but so that you have an understanding of why there maybe issues with religion and the failure of finding more peace in this world. It is obvious that not all conflicts are caused by religion; however we cannot ignore the fact that some violence in this world does have a religious motivation to it.
So I hope you take the time to consider watching his lecture and then also leave a comment. I won't be around for a couple of days so I will not be able to reply to any comments for a while. But to be honest I am happy to just be an observer at this stage and not respond just yet. Who knows I may not even get any comments.
Please feel free to say whatever you wish - there are no rules of conduct on this entry.
I will now hand it over to Sam Harris.
Peace be with you.
This excerpt from A Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Carl Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighbourhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometres (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the centre of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
"Look again at
that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love,
everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was,
lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of
confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and
forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization,
every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father,
hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader,"
every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of
dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
-- Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) from Pale Blue Dot, 1994
The purpose of the entries I have been displaying on my blog recently is to show people that there are real explainable reasons behind the violence that is occurring in the Middle East and in other parts of the world. I am trying to show people that if we oppress people then there will be consequences and it has nothing to do with the person who retaliates as being a person whom is evil, it has to do with basic Human Rights violations. The Western World claims it upholds basic 'Human Rights' as part of its 'Charter' and I am trying to expose the hypocrisy of the Western World's actions.
I am not being anti-Semitic when I criticise the Israeli Government. But I am not pro-Zionism at the cost of all other people in the regions surrounding and including Israel/Palestine. There are many Jewish people throughout the world that are appalled by the way the Palestinian people are being treated and they are worried that they will be the target of anti-Semitic behaviour because of the Zionist movement.
I do not have a problem with any religion that is a religion of peace. I believe that most religions basically believe in peace and believe in treating people well. But I believe that too many religions are hijacked by fundamentalists who use religion to oppress or discriminate against people throughout the world.
But it is not only religion that is at fault, there are other beliefs that also are used to oppress and discriminate. Examples could include communism, capitalism, fascism and the list goes on. Any belief system that is used to extreme will cause oppression of certain groups in society.
I do not care what you believe as long as what you believe does not negatively impact on other people or you try and force your beliefs onto other people.
If we all accepted each others differences and genuinely tried to help people for the greater good of all then this world would be a much better place.
Just so you know I haven't finished yet, but I have for today!
I hadn't intended on posting an Iraqi War entry today, but after a comment that was left on one of my previous entries I have decided to post this article. It basically sums up how I feel about the war in Iraq.
A Few Reminders
By Charley Reese
"Lew Rockwell" -- -- A few reminders: Iraq is not our country. Our invasion and occupation are illegal, being in violation of both international law and our own traditions. We were lied into war. We are still being lied to. Both the Bush administration and the Democrats intend to maintain American troops in indefinitely.
The catchy little phrase "If you break it, you own it" might apply to unpurchased merchandise, but it definitely does not apply to nation-states. You don't gain title to your neighbor's house just because you blow it up. We definitely broke Iraq, but that only gives us the burden of sin. It does not entitle us to the country.
It's easy to forget that when you listen to American politicians in both parties talk about what Iraq has to do or ought to do or should do. The Iraqi government does not have to do anything we tell it, and so far it hasn't, despite promises to the contrary.