I wrote this note down on 11-7-19.
Just finished listening to Ronan Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill, and beginning the book, Mindf*ck by Christopher Wyle about Cambridge Analytica. These add to the idea that others have control over us. Control over our minds, our actions, our choices, our behavior, our habits, and much more. In this scenario, there is nothing except blame. It is something or someone outside of ourselves that is the cause within us in our thinking and our choices.
I know that some of that can be very influential on our thinking and choices; however, to allow others to control us to that degree is tantamount to participating with the so-called perpetrators of the attack or attempt to influence us. We are agreeing with them. We are even helping them in that. Aiding and abetting them.
Discernment is a power that each of us has and we can use that wonderful power as we will accept it as within our tools with which we navigate the interactions with others. We can tell when someone is lying, making things up, and more or we can choose to believe the lies and call them truth. Many as they are shown the absolute truth will choose the falsehood for a number of different reasons, and most of them are related to their own history and training.
In using the term discernment, it would seem that there is actually a right and wrong, truth or falsehood, etc. But, it is only a power we can choose to use to help guide us each individually. Some would discern that the so-called truth was a lie and that the lie is the truth and vise versa. We each discern through our knowledge base however tainted or untainted that may be.
Of course, this is also what makes propaganda an effective tool. This is what makes lying an effective strategy. And, it is also that which makes the truth the same in the same ways.
People choose. They choose what to think. They choose what to do. They choose how to navigate this world for whatever reasons and whatever prior history they may have accepted. Some are easily swayed, others not so much. Yet all choose as they will. This is also what makes truth and lies both in constant motion and fully subject to debate.