Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
This eerily prophetic quote from George Orwell’s 1984 is growing more relevant by the day.
Any orthodoxy is safe. It has set barriers. It is comfortable –you know when you stay within the confines of your orthodoxy no one within your tribe will attack you or question you. The orthodoxy becomes your truth and woe betide anybody who dares to question it.
It has always been thus.
Think about the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. Think about Galileo daring to suggest that the world orbited the sun. Consider Iraq and their still missing weapons of mass destruction and then wonder at what happened to journalist Chris Hedges when he dared report the truth.
Orthodoxy gets people killed while its adherents sleepwalk into the abyss.
There is more than one orthodoxy. All claim to be the truth and the way to a better world. All, in one way or another, demand strict adherence to the truth.
Communism, Socialism, Catholicism, Islam, Wahhabism and countless other isms, doctrines and philosophies expect compliance and adherence to their fundamental doctrines.
Some of these are easy to see for the cults that they are; others not so much, but invariably, once you’re in, they’re never going to let you out without a hell of a struggle.
This adherence to philosophy is even more evident in political debate. Once you join a political party, you are expected to embrace the party philosophy and platform, regardless of any moral, logical or personal objections that you may have. This is particularly true of left-leaning parties, but they aren’t alone.
By their very nature, political parties demand unthinking subservience to their orthodoxy. They don’t want you to think. They want you to do. When you do that, they will pat you on the head, wind you up and send you out to “fight the good fight.”
It’s a con as old as man himself.
Drink the Kool-Aid. Join the winning team and don’t associate with anyone else but us, because we’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Do you know what happens when you join the team? Ever so slowly you let things slide. Wrong becomes right. Right becomes wrong. But it’s OK because you’re on the winning team. They even give you words that cloak you in moral superiority and shield your hypocrisy. You learn the dark art of doublethink and think nothing of calling for all MAGA hat wearing white people to be shot, while simultaneously calling for gun control. Or you dismiss all socialists as “just wanting free stuff” while applauding massive grants to companies like Boeing, or bank bailouts on a scale that is unimaginable. You can do this because your “ism” allows you to. Your “ism” is the right “ism”. There is no other way because you are not allowed to think another way.
A whole other level of orthodoxy is when the media repeats a mantra. It at various times has been “domino theory,” “WMDs” and variations of “reds under beds.” It can be argued that at times the media has refused to question these narratives as well as official narratives like the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations. Any attempt to deviate from the official narrative is attacked and quarantined as a conspiracy theory.
Right now that media orthodoxy has metastasized into several malignant tumours. Those tumours all have Russia embedded in them. “The Russians hacked the 2016 US election.” “Julian Assange colluded with Russia to bring down Hillary Clinton.” “Russians are influencing the gun control debate.” I could go on.
This media orthodoxy is extremely dangerous. You are meant to swallow it, digest it and repeat it. In doing so, you will be enabling what comes next. Please do not allow that to happen. Question everything. Make your own decisions based on your intuition and gut. The days of being bullshitted to must end.
We are free when we choose to think for ourselves.
Otherwise - War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery.
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