It gets off to a slightly slow start but there’s some excellent stuff in a new article by Bruce Scott, link below, for example:
[Jacques] Ellul points out that the victim of propaganda or the Pavlovian psy-op can no longer judge for himself because his thoughts, values and prejudices are shaped by the propaganda. He has been given ready-made value judgements about himself, others, and the threat of the world.
Frighteningly, what the individual loses through the effects of propaganda and alienation, is not easy to repair.
Once personal judgement and critical faculties have disappeared or atrophied, they will not reappear when the propaganda ends. Indeed, the victim of propaganda will actually crave another narrative to give him a foundation to orient himself to himself, others and the world; hence, that is why they are gearing up the climate “crisis” narrative to become more prominent when/if the COVID-19 narrative diminishes.
The durable effects of propaganda and the mechanisms of alienation via the Pavlovian conditioning of fear, punishment, reward, contradiction (of messages from government) chaos and confusion cycle lends itself either to the projection onto and/or identification with a hero or leader and/or fusion with a mass (psychological outlook).
This describes the cult of Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland perfectly; she can do no wrong despite mounting evidence of incompetence and corruption during and out with the COVID19 situation
Over this last weekend I “attended” an online retreat led by A.Sucitto, a prominent Theravada teacher and writer. As is customary at events like this, there were Q&A sessions and the last of these had a question from someone troubled by their sleep pattern. Waking in the night, she or he said, the only way to get back to sleep was to sit in meditation for 40 minutes or so. Is this worrisome? (I paraphrase)
The answer was reassuring, pointing out there is no right way to sleep, and reminding us that in preindustrial times people slept from nightfall but then awoke, worked a little, made love, whatever, then slept again.
All of which was typical of Sucitto’s wise and critically-informed style. Getting to the point: what exasperated me and to some extent spoiled the session was the chat box comment by some thoroughly hypnotised person (clearly not understanding the teachings) in response to the questioner: “Have you considered that maybe this is covid?”
Truly conditioned, through and through.