i read this article in the times few days back...
about how the media is used to manipulate the truth with a good amount of understanding of how the human brain works..
if a human is bombarded with an apparent lie over a long period of time, even though he or she knows its a lie, he / she starts subconsciously attaching truth value to it...
the media & especially politicians use it to exploit the public at large...
& iv seen quite a few applications in my own life...without giving specific examples...
this is something new for me to learn...& the more i try to understand it, the more i view it as a human self-deception, and a very huge drawback..
if we start believing in something which we know is not entirely true...
& then we keep telling ourselves this is really true..
after a given period of time...we lose the 'Not true' label attached to it...
& then the whole thing becomes a truth for our life....
although i dont want to go into the science of this...i think i need to explain roughly how this works..
each repeated incident is stored as a series of highlights in the human brain...
but since the entire incident is not stored, the highlights vary..
& when the scene is recreated in memory, not one highlight is used..
any combination from the many repeats are used..
& since some information is lost...
the human brain starts perceiving the incident in a very different manner....
this perception of course depends on a variety of factors like:
our fears, our current state of mind, our lifestyle & beliefs..
all in all the perception is a projection of our own understanding and the truth is lost somewhere inside..only what we want to believe is shown back to us..
DANGEROUS ISNT IT!!!!!
with a series of self-deceptive values that can be attached to this drawback..
it just scares me..
our understanding of our friends & why they are our friends.
our foes & why we hold grudge against them or what they did for us to hold the grudge, & did they really do it..
our life & what we believe in..
being an atheist myself, i dont even want to go into the religion part... i do respect others' beliefs
& i dont think i need to clarify mine regarding religion...so leave it there..
but the implications of such a quality of the human brain are outstanding..
& we are no better than the wild animals...
so this might lead us to the part where culture comes in...
& the values culture attaches to things...
& how the written text is better than the said word...
which is why the rich Indian tradition has suffered so much ...
the caste system changed from being an administrative one to a hereditary hierarchy..
all because we didn't note it down.
but iv seen even the written word change its meaning..
in the day of information overload, even science is not able to come up with undisputed facts
& there are always those who can dispute a certain fact..
for eg whether a cell-phone causes cancer or not..
its being disputed & argued over the world..
for me.. i just think, worse come: it does cause cancer, but can i live without it?
No...then shut up & use it...& think those years i lose will be payment for use of the phone..
one could say its a sarcastic view, but then...the truth is not coming out... atleast i dont think until iv used the phone till my retirement!!!!
coming back to media...
if a newspaper prints articles regarding cell phones causing cancer for 10-20 days on & off...
even though the reader is given a warning that the article is disputed..
one starts handling the phone in different ways..not keeping it near the heart or head or things like that...
so there you have it...classic example of self-deceptive manipulation...
all i can conclude is..
BEST OF LUCK TO UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD,
MAY WE CONTROL THIS WILD SIDE OF US!!
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