Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

Just as the mass media is ultimately "about" itself rather than any specific content; so the vast, global, totalitarian apparatus (media, bureaucracy, all major institutions) is to control thinking as such, rather than to inculcate any specific content to thinking. Thus totalitarianism seeks to direct thinking, and to link that thinking to a continuous infusion of external stimulus. What results is thinking of a certain character. The characteristic is that people think about subject matter that is being fed to them, using concepts and interpretations that are fed to them; and that this thinking forms the dominant subject matter of human interactions. 
And, sometimes, control of thinking is a PSYOPS; a form of psychological torment that is enjoyed by the Beings who control our social systems. The masses are fed with stuff that induces terror and despair; perspectives that make one group resent and hate another; creates enormous edifices of pseudo-knowledge that people then take seriously; or the stuff is simply incoherent, illogical, self-contradicting - and induces bewilderment and numbed passivity. The global totalitarian thought-control System can therefore serve many purposes; and satisfy many desires of those who control it.  
Social media amplify, rather then counteract, the mass media; because people mostly talk about what they think about; and what they mostly think about comes from the mass media - usually in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of the categories and assumptions by which discussion proceeds. Thus not just the topic but the scope of social media discourse is totalitarian-controlled. 
Because people are always-absorbing that which they think-about; this sets up habits of thinking that crowd-out other possible ways of thinking - other subject matter, yes; but more importantly other modes of thinking altogether. A modern person therefore finds himself enmeshed in toils of bad thinking habits of a mundane/ worldly content, and passive in form; with priorities, interests, assumptions etc. that are chosen by the dominant totalitarians on the one side, and reinforced by most social interactions on the other.
Where can something different and better be sought? Until the past few decades, there were realms of groupish human discourse and action that was somewhat or almost-completely autonomous - the realms of entertainment, the arts, hobbies, social activities, the church... But, of course All of these have long-since been infiltrated and subverted, and they are now dominated by exactly the same totalitarianism as described above - the phenomena variously termed leftism, political correctness, or wokeness. As of 2023; there is no safe place to escape from totalitarianism - at least not into any large grouping or large social activity. Even families are being destroyed by anti-family laws and practices and by subversion of individual members. 2020 and its sequelae demonstrated that only the most loving family relationships and strongest friendships can survive a participant expressing significant dissent from the confines of totalitarian-approved discourse - when the totalitarian System is making a massive push on any particular theme.
As usual nowadays, each individual is thrown back onto his own powers of discernment, analysis, understanding. If we do not want to think just whatever They want us to think-about; and in only the ways that They want us to think it - then we must embark upon some kind of personal quest to discover the real and better alternative. As of 2023; any easily available or obvious source of external guidance is almost certain to be corrupted; and will (sooner or later) channel us back to the totalitarian-approved main stream. 
So it is up to each of us to seek the answer; made more difficult that the answer will be - to some significant extent - unique to each individual; since our needs and destiny are distinctive. The reward, however, is great if we can escape the gravitational tractor-beams of the totalitarian thought-control System: to discover what we ought to be thinking about, and how we ought to be thinking. Because the right kind of thinking is one of the very few positively-transformative events that can happen in this world - and because such thinking leads-on to other, and similarly good, outcomes.