indoctrination
Indoctrinate: Teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
Critical: Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.
Objective: Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
These are oxford definitions.
If we let everyone define the word indoctrination to their liking, then any discussion on the subject will be like a discussion in the tower of Babylon after the languages were mixed; everybody will talk of different things thinking they are all talking about the same thing. Confusion will rule ... conflict will follow...
But if we accept the oxford definitions, then one fact becomes painfully evident:
We all were, are, and still will be indoctrinated.
Being critical implies having all the information from all the perspectives before trying to engage the difficult task of thinking without bias, without external influence or without considering any imperative other than forming an opinion based only on the information we dispose.
Who does that? Who has enough information to do that?
Who did that when we were being "educated" by our parents, our family, our community, etc.?
Who got ALL the information to think critically about any subject or principle?
Being answered on simple questions about how simple things work, is supplying punctual information, not cultivating critical thinking; It is simply giving the only possible answer which may satisfy the asker, but does not cultivate independent, objective or critical thinking processes.
Supplying answers is not cultivating critical thought.
Cultivating critical, independent thought is not about telling someone what to do, but is about letting him find out by giving him all the information he may require to decide what to do.
Questions about incoherencies in religion were probably answered by "God is so great that we cannot understand Him", and here goes the independent critical thinking. It is shut down.
Incoherencies about laws and manners of doing things were probably answered by "It is the law" or "It is our tradition" or "Imagine all people doing it", of course always after an unsuccessful attempt to satisfy the asker. Anothjer shut down of independent critical thought.
We have become so accustomed to not thinking critically, that we don't want to think anymore, just accept and trust others to think for us.
So if you want to know if you were indoctrinated or not, think of anything you believe in, be it religious or social, like economic systems, systems of government, and think if you have all the information about what you believe in, and all the information about all the other/rival systems, and remember if you chose to believe in one or the other by critical thinking or objective reasoning...
No?
Then you were indoctrinated into admitting them.
If the term "public education" does not involve cultivating critical thought and supplying information from multiple perspectives to encourage each member of the society to think for himself, then the term should be "public indoctrination".
When was the last time you had all the information comming from all the relevant perspectives to be able to think critically about a subject?
So instead of calling others indoctrinated, it might be useful to have an idea or think critically about our place on the scale of indoctrination.
It is so easy and gratifying to consider sects or people who blow themselves up as indoctrinated...
Looking at the issue critically will be revelatory.
The only action that does enable us to transgress our inescapable, different indoctrinations, is our agreement on the necessity to collectively work and achieve our common desires which constitute our human consensus.
The human consensus is the only point of conversion which transcends any indoctrination.
But since a consensus about the validity of their "doctrine" is inescapable in any indoctrinated group, some among us will be led to think that the human consensus may result from indoctrination. The "doctrine" in this case would be: all men agree on having some common, basic desires.
But isn't this claimed "doctrine" something which has always been true for everybody?
If it were not true, then there would be humans who would prefer to live short lives diminished by sickness, poverty and unhappiness...
Isn't something which has always been true a fact?
The human consensus ia a human agreement upon a same set of human desires, resulting from each and every particularity of the human nature experiencing life in all its diversity, from day one, till now.
During tens of thousands of years, not only have we mentally analyzed all the information that life has presented us in all possible manners and from all possible human perspectives be they subjective or objective, critical or uncritical, but we have lived every "information" for tens of thousands of years, experiencing them in every possible context, and still ended up with the same desires constituting the human consensus.
The consensus on our same desires transgresses every possible perspective or manner of thought, and becomes the resuly of actual living by each and every human being who has ever walked every possible path on our planet.
Even if the consensus should be considered as being some kind of consequence to some sort of indoctrination of humanity by some complicated mechanism that eludes normal people, then this abstract mechanism inescapably should consider life as the only "indoctrinator" of man, and only to its conditions, which are by definition the ultimate facts of existence...
Can the notion of indoctrination be compatible or applicable to ultimate facts of existence?
Can we say that someone is "indoctrinated" to the fact that water flows from high (potential) to low?
We can conclude that to transgress all differences, including differences due to any indoctrination be they tolerant or exclusive, mild or violent, is to make the consensus of human desires our only reference.
Critical: Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.
Objective: Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
These are oxford definitions.
If we let everyone define the word indoctrination to their liking, then any discussion on the subject will be like a discussion in the tower of Babylon after the languages were mixed; everybody will talk of different things thinking they are all talking about the same thing. Confusion will rule ... conflict will follow...
But if we accept the oxford definitions, then one fact becomes painfully evident:
We all were, are, and still will be indoctrinated.
Being critical implies having all the information from all the perspectives before trying to engage the difficult task of thinking without bias, without external influence or without considering any imperative other than forming an opinion based only on the information we dispose.
Who does that? Who has enough information to do that?
Who did that when we were being "educated" by our parents, our family, our community, etc.?
Who got ALL the information to think critically about any subject or principle?
Being answered on simple questions about how simple things work, is supplying punctual information, not cultivating critical thinking; It is simply giving the only possible answer which may satisfy the asker, but does not cultivate independent, objective or critical thinking processes.
Supplying answers is not cultivating critical thought.
Cultivating critical, independent thought is not about telling someone what to do, but is about letting him find out by giving him all the information he may require to decide what to do.
Questions about incoherencies in religion were probably answered by "God is so great that we cannot understand Him", and here goes the independent critical thinking. It is shut down.
Incoherencies about laws and manners of doing things were probably answered by "It is the law" or "It is our tradition" or "Imagine all people doing it", of course always after an unsuccessful attempt to satisfy the asker. Anothjer shut down of independent critical thought.
We have become so accustomed to not thinking critically, that we don't want to think anymore, just accept and trust others to think for us.
So if you want to know if you were indoctrinated or not, think of anything you believe in, be it religious or social, like economic systems, systems of government, and think if you have all the information about what you believe in, and all the information about all the other/rival systems, and remember if you chose to believe in one or the other by critical thinking or objective reasoning...
No?
Then you were indoctrinated into admitting them.
If the term "public education" does not involve cultivating critical thought and supplying information from multiple perspectives to encourage each member of the society to think for himself, then the term should be "public indoctrination".
When was the last time you had all the information comming from all the relevant perspectives to be able to think critically about a subject?
So instead of calling others indoctrinated, it might be useful to have an idea or think critically about our place on the scale of indoctrination.
It is so easy and gratifying to consider sects or people who blow themselves up as indoctrinated...
Looking at the issue critically will be revelatory.
The only action that does enable us to transgress our inescapable, different indoctrinations, is our agreement on the necessity to collectively work and achieve our common desires which constitute our human consensus.
The human consensus is the only point of conversion which transcends any indoctrination.
But since a consensus about the validity of their "doctrine" is inescapable in any indoctrinated group, some among us will be led to think that the human consensus may result from indoctrination. The "doctrine" in this case would be: all men agree on having some common, basic desires.
But isn't this claimed "doctrine" something which has always been true for everybody?
If it were not true, then there would be humans who would prefer to live short lives diminished by sickness, poverty and unhappiness...
Isn't something which has always been true a fact?
The human consensus ia a human agreement upon a same set of human desires, resulting from each and every particularity of the human nature experiencing life in all its diversity, from day one, till now.
During tens of thousands of years, not only have we mentally analyzed all the information that life has presented us in all possible manners and from all possible human perspectives be they subjective or objective, critical or uncritical, but we have lived every "information" for tens of thousands of years, experiencing them in every possible context, and still ended up with the same desires constituting the human consensus.
The consensus on our same desires transgresses every possible perspective or manner of thought, and becomes the resuly of actual living by each and every human being who has ever walked every possible path on our planet.
Even if the consensus should be considered as being some kind of consequence to some sort of indoctrination of humanity by some complicated mechanism that eludes normal people, then this abstract mechanism inescapably should consider life as the only "indoctrinator" of man, and only to its conditions, which are by definition the ultimate facts of existence...
Can the notion of indoctrination be compatible or applicable to ultimate facts of existence?
Can we say that someone is "indoctrinated" to the fact that water flows from high (potential) to low?
We can conclude that to transgress all differences, including differences due to any indoctrination be they tolerant or exclusive, mild or violent, is to make the consensus of human desires our only reference.