Why are smart people fooled

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Maat
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by Maat »

Dcopymope wrote:
Maat wrote:
jlsumme wrote: JFK telling us the 911 truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxnpujfanUM
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." — Mark Twain

I'm so tired of seeing that JFK speech edited to make it sound like a reference to specific 'secret societies', when it was actually all about the Cold War and the perceived threat / infiltration of Communism around the world.

Thanks to mega-mouth disinfo clown Alex Jones' propagation of that selective editing, they all seem to copy the same clips with the sentence after "no secret is revealed" cut to support their pet memes, 'secret society'/'Illuminati' etc. ad nauseam. But it doesn't hold up when read in its original context. e.g.

"...Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match."

This demonstrates why we all need to be vigilant & never automatically accept anything as presented just because it fits a cherished opinion, or done by a perceived ally, without verifying the source material in context.

Full transcript Address, "The President and the Press," before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, 27 April 1961

Full speech: Audio

Much like the difference between Belief & Knowledge, there is a vast difference between being "book smart" and intelligent. Having an aptitude for learning information by rote and passing exams doesn't denote intelligence any more than an IQ test can measure EQ. Without Emotional Intelligence (the ability to apply what is learned from experience to make a successfully meaningful, balanced life) so-called intelligent, 'educated' people can be quite stupid. Or, as a retired CPA and corporate treasurer relative of mine always says, "Qualifications do not necessarily confer competence."

I also agree with Oscar Wilde, "Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
I think people make the mistake in thinking that JFK and his assassination is more important than it really is. At this point, I don't care what the guy said and how people interpret what people for some reason think are "his" words. Nothing he ever said or did amounted to anything meaningful to people like us, or at least it shouldn't. Even his supposed anti Federal Reserve Executive Order 11110 is open to interpretation, so I think we should just let this puppet rot in piece in his grave and move on.
Oh, I agree with you! Sorry if I gave the impression that I was 'defending' anything about JFK's dubious 'contributions' in any way. ;) I probably should have emphasised that my point was how the contrived (or ignorant) misuse of any historical, recorded material to fit an agenda is misleading at best but becomes disinformation, regardless.

I'm just a stickler (aka PITA) for verifiable facts and accuracy in everything as much as possible. There's far too much bullshit propagated as fact to let stuff slip by as unimportant. In my experience, such things do accumulate accretions that just add extra work and headaches trying to chip away the obstructive damage caused. :)

P.S. It also really annoys me that JFK is credited with this quote from his Inaugural Speech:

“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

That was actually ripped off Kahlil Gibran's The New Frontier from 1925:

“Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?
If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.”


I hate plagiarists, but I love irony :D
hoi.polloi
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Mickey wrote:Been reading letsrollforums of late as I think there is a lot of good research done over there and I know there are a few researchers who are common to both sites. It absolutely amazes me that rubbish shillery is tolerated on that site. A lot of people who are smart do not seem to discuss proven media fakery like they should.

If people on that forum haven't bought into the horrendous fakery, then we cannot blame "smart" people who have not been exposed to cluesforum and media fakery.
I am not about blaming people - but I am interested in knowing why it is so challenging to just ask questions and be happy with the ambiguity of our existence. It seems maybe the downfall of smart people is that they want to define everything around them to create order in their lives ... but the world is chaotic enough to allow for people to get away with great big schemes.

Look at the way people forgive those obviously complicit in mass-murder like George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair, et cetera.
Mickey
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by Mickey »

hoi.polloi wrote: I am not about blaming people - but I am interested in knowing why it is so challenging to just ask questions and be happy with the ambiguity of our existence. It seems maybe the downfall of smart people is that they want to define everything around them to create order in their lives ... but the world is chaotic enough to allow for people to get away with great big schemes.

Look at the way people forgive those obviously complicit in mass-murder like George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair, et cetera.
Sorry hoi, blame was the wrong word to use, but I understand your points.

I have also realized that even after following Cluesforum for a few months and subsequently registering here, I have made mistakes in identifying some persons and their goals who have also recently joined like me, as well as not able to identify disinformation/propaganda in some cases. So I have lost some confidence in myself of late. I would love to give some answer to your powerful philosophical question, but I am stumped and in no position to discuss. Keep up the great work. Just like others, I am very appreciative.

Back to the grind for me.
Brutal Metal
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by Brutal Metal »

I think we can all agree the deception involved in the 911 Sham is of Biblical proportions, this makes JFK look like a drive by shooting in Compton LA.! The perps will go to insane lengths to make this Terror stick in the public's minds Forever!!
lux
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by lux »

I would have to say that the question "Why are smart people fooled?" is an oxymoron.

Those few who are not fooled (or who have figured it out) are the smart ones. The rest are not truly "smart people" no matter what their apparent qualifications may seem to be.

That's my view anyway.
nonhocapito
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by nonhocapito »

lux wrote:I would have to say that the question "Why are smart people fooled?" is an oxymoron.

Those few who are not fooled (or who have figured it out) are the smart ones. The rest are not truly "smart people" no matter what their apparent qualifications may seem to be.

That's my view anyway.
Oh, good that you came around after 4 pages of discussion telling us there was no point in the discussion in the first place. :P

The world is full of smart people. I dare the say that most people are smart in a way or the other, and that really dumb creatures are obviously rare.
Wicked, criminal, debauched minds have better chances to thrive than dumb.

Besides, and more importantly, smart minds can lie asleep inside dumb minds, and be awaken at a snap of a finger if necessity requires it. We don't lack intelligence on this planet, rather we seem to lack the necessity for it, when everything is provided for and given to us with so little (apparent) effort.

And what about yourself, and anyone else here (supposedly the only smart persons for miles around (lol)): before you were aware of fakery or of other similar tricks played on the public, were you not smart? or were you the same person you are today, who back then lacked the the interest or the opportunity to seek that knowledge?
lux
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by lux »

nonhocapito wrote:
The world is full of smart people.
I'm relieved to hear that. I knew it was full of something ... :D
And what about yourself ... before you were aware of fakery or of other similar tricks played on the public, were you not smart?
No, I wasn't. Not in my opinion.

I think you're talking about a potential while I'm talking about an actuality.
nonhocapito
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by nonhocapito »

lux wrote:
nonhocapito wrote:
The world is full of smart people.
I'm relieved to hear that. I knew it was full of something ... :D
And what about yourself ... before you were aware of fakery or of other similar tricks played on the public, were you not smart?
No, I wasn't. Not in my opinion.

I think you're talking about a potential while I'm talking about an actuality.
Or maybe we have to better define the meaning of "smart". I don't equate "smart" to "awaken", "learned", "aware of propaganda" etc.

I simply intend "smart" in a more neutral sense, as in possession of all the working qualities of the brain, which can be exemplified (for convenience of the discourse) by the many professions of our society that require a person to be abundantly "smart". Engineers, doctors, scientists, technicians, designers, writers, musicians and all other "major" and "minor" professions that equally require undeniable high-levels of brain and manual functions.

You can't deny that many of these people are smart or very smart, and at the same time you certainly can't expect them to automatically acknowledge the idea of fakery because of it, no?

I think the original questions is: why all these people, despite their proven smartness are nonetheless fooled by propaganda, to the point of refusing to learn about it? If we simply end the discussion by denying their being smart at all it would be a pity because it is an interesting question, that directly addresses the "conspiracy of silence" around us: one that we have to face everyday.
lux
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by lux »

nonhocapito wrote:
lux wrote: Or maybe we have to better define the meaning of "smart".
I agree.
I simply intend "smart" in a more neutral sense, as in possession of all the working qualities of the brain, which can be exemplified (for convenience of the discourse) by the many professions of our society that require a person to be abundantly "smart". Engineers, doctors, scientists, technicians, designers, writers, musicians and all other "major" and "minor" professions that equally require undeniable high-levels of brain and manual functions.
I see - OK.
You can't deny that many of these people are smart or very smart, and at the same time you certainly can't expect them to automatically acknowledge the idea of fakery because of it, no?
In my opinion they would have to have a certain aptitude in their chosen fields, enough to gain employment anyway. I don't equate that with intelligence necessarily but you may.

I agree that it takes more intelligence to, say, design a highway than it does to dig a ditch but that does not mean that all engineers are smarter than all ditch diggers. If the engineer buys all the media BS and a particular ditch digger does not then the ditch digger is the smarter one in my book.
I think the original questions is: why all these people, despite their proven smartness are nonetheless fooled by propaganda, to the point of refusing to learn about it? If we simply end the discussion by denying their being smart at all it would be a pity because it is an interesting question, that directly addresses the "conspiracy of silence" around us: one that we have to face everyday.
I think it's an interesting question either way. I guess my view is that, yes, it takes a certain amount of smarts to hold a job in the professions you mentioned but it requires more smarts to see through the propaganda, regardless of one's profession.

Most of the professions you mentioned require a college degree. Many truly intelligent people think college is a training ground for idiots and so avoid it. They would rather hold "menial" positions than become part of "the system." I have known "learned" people with impressive degrees and jobs who were, in my opinion, idiots. They could perform quite well in their chosen fields and I'm sure most would say they were intelligent but I wouldn't.

They may be "smart" within the society's accepted standards but that society happens to be quite ill and headed for its own demise at a rapid rate so how smart are they really?
nonhocapito
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by nonhocapito »

lux wrote:They may be "smart" within the society's accepted standards but that society happens to be quite ill and headed for its own demise at a rapid rate so how smart are they really?
As I said I mentioned those professions for convenience of discourse. Personally I have long grown aware of the pitfalls traps and hypocrisies of many such professions. It doesn't matter. Of course, human intelligence is not defined by such professions and is manifested in many different things. It was just a convention to define someone that we all agree is probably very intelligent. Let's move on.
Let's figure ourselves for example some kind of genius, pick the field you like most. Music, finance, landscaping, whatever. In any case a genius, capable of dramatic creative intuition or quick adaptive solutions in his field and maybe in many diverse fields too etc etc.

The assumption here is that even this hypothetical figure, very likely, will deny the existence of media fakery the first, second, third time that it is mentioned to him or her, and maybe will go on denying it forever.

Thus we can observe how the power of propaganda does not only work with fear or with subliminal, subconscious messages. The whole system of propaganda in all its parts overlaps so much with reality itself that going against it means putting oneself in some sort of drop-out, desperate spot regarding society. And people with a "future" ahead of them in term not only of "career", but for example in terms of rewards coming from the exercise of their own intelligence and creativity (for which they have found a satisfactory release); people who have the maybe illusory feeling that life will reward their abilities because, for a number of reasons, they fit in with the society around them: those people instinctively will stay away from anything that can jeopardize their social, individual "luck", to the point of refusing to exercise the critical thinking that it is so useful to them in other contexts.

So maybe the truth of the story is not that it takes a "smart" person to appreciate a revolutionary thought of this magnitude: maybe it takes an "unlucky" one.
lux
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by lux »

Actually, I think it takes more than intelligence to see through the propaganda. It also takes courage and integrity.

An intelligent person may actually see through the propaganda but may live in denial of it as he/she lacks the courage and integrity to live with that truth.

I think this is often what is happening when a person gets angry at someone who points out the evidence of "the man behind the curtain" to them. The anger coming from a defense of their own denial. They are desperately holding onto a paradigm that they think they need to survive and anyone who demonstrates that that paradigm is invalid is viewed as a threat.

I fully agree with Dave McGowan's statement in his Wagging the Moondoggie article about the people who insist on believing in the Apollo moon hoax:
What primarily motivates them is fear. But it is not the lie itself that scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around us and how it really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?

That is what scares the hell out of people and prevents them from even considering the possibility that they could have been so thoroughly duped. It’s not being lied to about the Moon landings that people have a problem with, it is the realization that comes with that revelation: if they could lie about that, they could lie about anything.
I think this is where the courage and integrity come into play. So I will modify my earlier opinion and say that the smart ones who don't see through the propaganda are the ones that lack the courage and integrity to live with the truth, no matter what it might be. They may be smart but they are also cowards and/or lacking in integrity.
burningame
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by burningame »

nonhocapito wrote:
...The whole system of propaganda in all its parts overlaps so much with reality itself that going against it means putting oneself in some sort of drop-out, desperate spot regarding society. And people with a "future" ahead of them in term not only of "career", but for example in terms of rewards coming from the exercise of their own intelligence and creativity (for which they have found a satisfactory release); people who have the maybe illusory feeling that life will reward their abilities because, for a number of reasons, they fit in with the society around them: those people instinctively will stay away from anything that can jeopardize their social, individual "luck", to the point of refusing to exercise the critical thinking that it is so useful to them in other contexts.

So maybe the truth of the story is not that it takes a "smart" person to appreciate a revolutionary thought of this magnitude: maybe it takes an "unlucky" one.
Beautifully put, nonhocapito; my sentiments exactly. I proudly admit to being one of those ‘unlucky’ ones, in that desperate spot! And the fact that the all-encompassing propaganda has actually come into play with, altered, and is currently fucking with what should be reality is the mind-blowing thing. It’s like the birth of the universe to us – how can we envision what society was like before all this? How it should really be? Is there such a thing as a society that has never been controlled by some kind of ‘perps’?
nonhocapito
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by nonhocapito »

lux wrote:So I will modify my earlier opinion and say that the smart ones who don't see through the propaganda are the ones that lack the courage and integrity to live with the truth, no matter what it might be. They may be smart but they are also cowards and/or lacking in integrity.
Well in a way or the other you end up patting yourself on the back :) I appreciate this, but personally I don't feel particularly superior to anyone out there. Not in terms of integrity, courage or smarts.
I see humans as pretty fantastic creatures, generally. The few sad or bad apples don't make me change my mind.
I am better than some at something, but many are more intelligent or braver than I, no doubt. They are just completely uninterested with the tricks of propaganda. I don't blame them.
I think that what happened to me is that I became socially "unlucky" enough to start seeing things "out of the box". And at the same time I found a release for my over-developed skepticism and critical thinking in the studying of conspiracies and propaganda. All things considered, a pretty casual affair, that could have gone very differently, for minor reasons and accidents. Like most of everything in life but death.
pov603
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by pov603 »

There are plenty of smart people who are overweight because they eat the wrong foods, and know it.

There are plenty of smart people who imbibe to excess and know the next day what they did wrong but do the same the week after.

There are plenty of smart people who smoke, say no more...

Most people are trusting and trustworthy so if they are told or shown something in a particular way why should they have to doubt what they are being told?

The problem is the element of people who take advantage of this and do it to increasing numbers in increasing ways and with increasing frequency.

There will be plenty of smart people who will take note of what others on September Clues forum say about this, but in many ways this just repeats a cycle of those smart people believing others irrespective that these others are at this time are telling them the 'truth'.

We can only hope that enough people wake up to what is going on and begin to make/take informed decisions/actions rather than implicitly believing and following the advice of others, primarily those in government/power.

Don't hold your breath but don't despair.
simonshack
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

Unread post by simonshack »

nonhocapito wrote:
lux wrote:So I will modify my earlier opinion and say that the smart ones who don't see through the propaganda are the ones that lack the courage and integrity to live with the truth, no matter what it might be. They may be smart but they are also cowards and/or lacking in integrity.
Well in a way or the other you end up patting yourself on the back :) I appreciate this, but personally I don't feel particularly superior to anyone out there. Not in terms of integrity, courage or smarts.
I see humans as pretty fantastic creatures, generally. The few sad or bad apples don't make me change my mind.
I am better than some at something, but many are more intelligent or braver than I, no doubt. They are just completely uninterested with the tricks of propaganda. I don't blame them.
Dear Nonho and Lux,

I have been reading your exchanges with interest - and with a growing mixture of feelings and musings. Please allow me to approach this discourse from a personal perspective (i.e.proposing my own endeavors as a 'case study') - and also, please appreciate my difficulty of tackling this subject at all. See, this very topic ("Why are smart people fooled") makes me a little uneasy because, as the founder of this forum and author of September Clues, I can imagine many people would assume that I somehow consider my mind 'smarter' or 'superior' than average. I don't. I just consider myself lucky to have put to good use a combination of factors which have helped me peek through the opaque web of deception spun by the sorry bunch of humans who control this planet. Do I consider myself 'unlucky' (as Nonho says) for doing so? No, not a bit. That's where I beg to differ a little from Nonho's viewpoint. Whereas we may baulk at considering ourselves 'smarter' than the average public, we cannot go as far as qualifying ourselves as 'unlucky'.

Paradoxically, I would only consider myself unlucky if this (now collective) propaganda research of ours gets to a point where it is embraced by the current 'scientific' community - and enters university classes. That will be the day when it gets torn apart (by the many arrogant 'pro-fessors' infesting these so-called 'academic' circles) and burn out in a magma of dispute and controversy. If being 'unlucky' means being boxed into a marginal and lonely village, I much prefer cultivating this village (and its plucky inhabitants) than reaching out for the artificial limelight of mainstream, mass consensus.

Now, I can certainly appreciate Lux's quote which goes: "the smart ones who don't see through the propaganda are the ones that lack the courage and integrity to live with the truth, no matter what it might be." Believe it or not, I can understand (which is different from 'approve of') people who prefer to live in a cocoon of comfort, uncaring of the ugliness and perils of the world around them. However, I wouldn't accuse them of lacking of courage and integrity. I would just define them as useless passengers of this alarmingly ill-piloted (if not irreversibly hijacked) planet. Such people cannot be blamed for wishing to live life lightly - pretending humanity will take care of itself. They are a bit like those guests that linger longer in your house - just to enjoy the pleasure of being idle and cosily pampered for a while. The problem is, you just can't keep being a guest of this world forever: when shit comes to shovel, those who sit on their asses will be the first submerged by the ineluctable excrement of their own inaction. But not to sound as a glum preacher of impending doom, let me copy/paste an old quote of mine - from my Youtube channel:
In my mind, future generations will despise us all if we don't have the guts to expose the evil resident in our contemporary rulers. We will be derided throughout history if we fail to expose the tricks they are playing on us. Enjoy life while doing this - a strong, positive spirit is the key to defeat its darker sides.
And once again, pardon me for approching this subject from a personal standpoint. I hope this post won't sound too self-centred.
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