In the movement against trash science and public health’s social control there is arrayed a vast majority of intelligent, dedicated and combative people. But even amongst them the predominant attitude is one of hopelessness. As a movement, we need an attitude adjustment.
Unfortunately, the soldier who goes into battle with the (no matter how realistic) belief that he is going to be killed by the enemy, may have the correct assessment, but he should never share his pessimistic views with anyone — ever. To survive, he has to be convinced that he will, even before attempting to pass that conviction on to others, as you cannot give what you don’t have.
This reflection fits quite well with this piece by Sandy Szwarc, whose blog is a repository of intelligence and common sense. We recommend that you read it.
“Is it even possible to effectively counter popular false beliefs and help people understand accurate information? Or, had Joseph Goebbels, in the 1920s, correctly pegged people as easily manipulated by media disinformation campaigns and we’re doomed to repeat history? The underlying processes of human reasoning and fallacies of logic are known in the scientific literature, but if we don’t understand them, they could remain the secrets of those using them against us.”
Exactly. Instead of feeling noble by "throwing oneself into a desperate battle that has no hope in the name of liberty” (‘they are so powerful we don’t have a chance in hell’), we should employ less time in such futile musings and more time in learning and understanding how the public health machine of fraud works – especially inside our heads. As no engine is perfect, there is always a grain of sand that seizes it up – and a grain is all it takes. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. As we all agree with that, why do we worry about our size?
Let’s be honest: if you are a smoker, how many times when coughing or having a sore throat, did you think of throat or lung cancer? And that notwithstanding the fact that non smokers cough and have sore thoats too, and in spite of the fact that you know that you have less than a one in a thousand chance to get those diseases even if smoking was the only and scientifically demonstrated cause of those cancers, which it is not. Here is another one: groups who fight for the rights of smokers go out of their way to repeat ad infinitum that they are NOT financed by the tobacco industry. That in spite of the fact that the industry is LEGAL (therefore implicitly moral), and notwithstanding their knowledge that those who accuse them most often are crooks on pharmaceutical payrolls.
Those are imposed associations ("smoking-cancer", "smokers’ rights-tobacco industry") stuck in your heads by your enemies who say that they are your friends. And you behave accordingly, thinking to gain public approval and consensus if you do so.
The first step, therefore, is to rid yourself of the intellectual rape you are the victim of. Sandy is giving us a lot of good elements to do just that.
Happy studying.
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