Critical Thinking the Inoculation to Propaganda

When I read a piece in the newspapers these days, I have learned now to question the veracity of the argument being made and how the author goes about determining his/her narrative. What facts, hypotheses are being used in the formulation of the argument? Who are the players in the piece? When did their interaction commence and the context? Where did they occur? How things transpired and in what order? And why did things evolve the way they did? In other words, I pursue what is known as "root cause analysis", once established, I then work my way forward.

If I am particularly weak on the subject and the subject is particularly complex, I will hold the narrative with reservations until I am able to investigate more including taking on board the views of contrarians.

These days, objective journalism is endangered. Journalist are grotesquely partisan, often times being zealots to a particular school of thought. The allowance of big corporations that are owned by a handful of billionaires to control vast amounts of the media has rendered the institution broken. Powerful special interests, lobbyists and money have tainted the Fourth Estate.

Manufacturing Consent can be readily observed, the battle for the hearts and minds of the citizenry.

Journalists today who are employed by big news corps can earn tens of thousands of pounds per day. They are typically from similar elitist institutions that grotesquely lack social, economical and racial diversities. Whether they know it or not, they evolve into becoming the guard and attack dogs for the establishment and status quo. Chomsky says that it is this very phenomenon that creates the perfect environment for "manufacturing consent" to thrive.

The approach taken by these guard and attack dogs is to start with a predefined angle, where the conclusion is first established and the body of the article is then formulated around that conclusion.

As a scientist and engineer, I have learned to hold reverent the "research methods”, that is, how best to objectively conduct a study from scratch whether I hold little to strong preconception on the subject, but pulling at the string via a structured pursuit of answers to establish the how, what, when, where, and why, until an objective as possible conclusion is derived. The method needs to take into consideration possible anomaly, emotional and psychological biases etc that could compromise the objectivity of the conclusions.

We are all humans, therefore we are all subjected to holding preconceptions, because is information is constantly floating around in the airwaves which inadvertently impresses upon us certain biases, thus making the achieving of objectivity a significant challenge. However, if one truly seeks to establish as objective a truth as possible, we must make a concerted effort to apply the research method wholeheartedly.

The human mind exhibits a type of inertial belief system, therefore it is natural that our minds resist conclusions which contradicts our preconceptions, however it is incumbent upon us all who seek truth to keep an open heart which will ensure that our minds fall inline and evolve to accepting new substantiated realities.

With so much at stake in this information age, it is of utmost importance that we are aware that propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to totalitarianism. The Forth Estate has become corrupt and consequently have to a great extent become the enemies of the citizenry.

It is now time, for the citizenry to hold the media accountable, to be vigilant, to apply critical thinking to guard our minds and therefore reduce the effects of propaganda from the Forth Estate. We should keep this in mind, reality is not black and white,it is not binary, but is more akin to 50 shades of grey (I couldn’t resist), therefore, we should shun simplistic arguments that allow mindless and destructive populism to thrive.

Whether the subject is Venezuela, Israel, Trump or Austerity, let’s put the narratives under scrutiny by insisting that we get a better grasp of the why, what, how, when and where. Let’s resist propagandist slogans such as “strong and stable” until that time that those espousing such can substantiate their claims. If they cannot, then they are not credibility and we then have a right to ditch them in the bin.