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<h3>Dear Ray,</h3>
<div style="font-size: x-large;font-weight: bold;text-align: justify">
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/soundeagle-in-art-aphorism-and-paramusic/soundeagle-in-art-aphorism-and-paramusic-2/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/soundeagle-in-art-aphorism-and-paramusic.jpg" alt="SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic" title="Click here to visit and comment on this image entitled “SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic”." class="size-full" /></a>
I looked up at the coconut trees
They were looking down . . . . . and laughing
Suddenly faith returns
The sea is transparent
And the shore spins on the horizon . . .
</div>
<h3><a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow ugc"><img class="alignright" alt="Click here to visit SoundEagle." src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/soundeagle-medium.png" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle."></a>Yours sincerely,
<strong>SoundEagle</strong></h3>
[…] with this newfound reality, eventually sharing my story in a blog post titled “Day of Awakening – David vs Goliath vs Armageddon.“ Today, I revisit that journey, reflecting on its enduring significance in a world still […]
1.3.2025 16:52Comment on DAY OF AWAKENING – DAVID vs GOLIATH vs ARMAGEDDON by The Day the Veil Lifted: A Spiritual Awakening in a Time of Crisis – Religious Politic...On January 31, 1975, at the age of 31, I walked away from a lucrative career as National Marketing Representative, Mining Division, Dominion Engineering Works Ltd., a prominent Montreal-based company. The job, which I had taken with high hopes, turned out to be a far cry from what I had envisioned. I thought I was … Continue reading The Day the Veil Lifted: A Spiritual Awakening in a Time of Crisis
1.3.2025 16:52The Day the Veil Lifted: A Spiritual Awakening in a Time of Crisis<h3>Dear Ray,</h3>
<div style="font-size: medium;text-align: justify">
I look forward to receiving copious comments and feedback from you when you visit and peruse my aforementioned post entitled “<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle’s post entitled “
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
”." rel="nofollow ugc"><strong>
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
</strong></a>” published at what you have considered to be my “awesome exclusive expansive personal Blog” at your earliest convenience. Thank you in anticipation.
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity-on-social-and-news-media.jpg" alt="Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity on Social and News Media" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle
’s post entitled “
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
”." class="aligncenter size-full" /></a>
</div>
<h3><a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow ugc"><img class="alignright" alt="Click here to visit SoundEagle." src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/soundeagle-medium.png" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle."></a>Yours sincerely,
<strong>SoundEagle
</strong></h3>
<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>I should have known in your awesome exclusive expansive personal Blog you have written about almost everything. Just the numerous links on the side are evidence of that.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Reading 'Disinformation 101 Infographic' we generally have the same POV.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
23.2.2025 00:43Comment on HAVING EYES TO SEE by Ray Joseph Cormier<h3>Dear Ray,</h3>
<div style="font-size: medium;text-align: justify">
The answer(s) to your question(s) can be found in this post, which meticulously analyses salient matters and perilous issues that have both caused and defined “these UNCOMMON TIMES”:
https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/
The crux of such matters and issues can be outlined as follows:
<h1 style="line-height:1.5;font-size:x-large;text-align:center;color:MidnightBlue;font-weight:bold">Disinformation 101 Infographic</h1>
In an attempt to debunk the <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Disinformation is intentionally false or misleading information that is spread in a calculated way to deceive target audiences. The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s. English use increased in 1986 after revelations that the Reagan administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. By 1990 it was pervasive in U.S. politics; and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda. Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by nongovernmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of “fake news”, disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the disinformer's reputation. By 1990, use of the term disinformation had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term disinformation had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book The Idea of Propaganda that disinformation had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda. Research related to disinformation studies is increasing as an applied area of inquiry. The call to formally classify disinformation as a cybersecurity threat is made by advocates due to its increase in social networking sites. Researchers working for the University of Oxford found that over a three-year period the number of governments engaging in online disinformation rose from 28 in 2017, to 40 in 2018, and 70 in 2019. Despite the proliferation of social media websites, Facebook and Twitter showed the most activity in terms of active disinformation campaigns. Techniques reported on included the use of bots to amplify hate speech, the illegal harvesting of data, and paid trolls to harass and threaten journalists." href="#Disinformation" rel="nofollow ugc">disinformation</a> tactics of science deniers and climate change sceptics, Australian cognitive psychologist Dr <a title="John Cook is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change, with an emphasis on using critical thinking to build resilience. He obtained his PhD at the University of Western Australia, studying the cognitive psychology of climate science denial. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2013, he published a paper quantifying the 97% scientific consensus on climate change which was highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. In 2015 at the University of Queensland, he led the development of a Massive Open Online Course on climate science denial, that has received 40,000+ enrollments from over 185 countries. He co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis, as well as the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. His research covers four themes: Detection, Deconstruction, Debunking, and Deployment (summarized as the 4D Project). Detection involves training machine learning models, in collaboration with UK-based political scientists, to automatically detect and categorize climate misinformation in real-time. Deconstruction uses a critical thinking methodology developed with University of Queensland philosophers to analyse and identify reasoning fallacies in misinformation. Debunking myths can take a variety of forms, and he collaborates with US-based communication researchers to experimentally test different approaches and improve psychological understanding of misinformation correction. Deployment involves putting into practice the theoretical insights from the first three themes. For example, the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change applies critical thinking and inoculation research, combining climate science and cartoons to engage and educate readers about climate misinformation. Similarly, the Cranky Uncle game, developed with the U.S. creative agency Autonomy, applies the same approach in the form of a smartphone game that builds players’ resilience against misinformation. He has coauthored a number of handbooks summarising communication best-practices such as The Debunking Handbook and Conspiracy Theory Handbook." href="https://www.monash.edu/mcccrh/people/john-cook" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">John Cook</a>, the founder of the science platform <a title="Click here to visit SkepticalScience.com" href="https://skepticalscience.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">SkepticalScience.com</a> and the creator of the comic character “<a title="Click here to visit Dr John Cook’s comic character “Cranky Uncle”." href="https://crankyuncle.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Cranky Uncle</a>”, introduced in 2013 five denial techniques encapsulated in a catchy acronym <strong>FLICC</strong> to stand for <strong>Fake experts</strong>, <strong>Logical fallacies</strong>, <strong>Impossible expectations</strong>, <strong>Cherry picking</strong> and <strong>Conspiracy theories</strong>. Collaborating with the <a title="Click here to visit SkepticalScience.com" href="https://skepticalscience.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">SkepticalScience.com</a> team and Hamburg illustrator <a title="Click here to visit the website of Hamburg illustrator Marie-Pascale Gafinen." href="http://www.gafinen.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Marie-Pascale Gafinen</a>, the “leading German-language online resource on climate communications” providing up-to-date reporting, conferences and workshops at <a title="Click here to visit the article entitled “F-L-I-C-C: The most common disinformation tricks of science deniers” published at klimafakten.de" href="https://www.klimafakten.de/meldung/f-l-i-c-c-most-common-disinformation-tricks-science-deniers" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">klimafakten.de</a> has developed the <strong>Disinformation 101 Infographic</strong> to serve as a “vaccination” against <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Disinformation is intentionally false or misleading information that is spread in a calculated way to deceive target audiences. The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s. English use increased in 1986 after revelations that the Reagan administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. By 1990 it was pervasive in U.S. politics; and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda. Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by nongovernmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of “fake news”, disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the disinformer's reputation. By 1990, use of the term disinformation had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term disinformation had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book The Idea of Propaganda that disinformation had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda. Research related to disinformation studies is increasing as an applied area of inquiry. The call to formally classify disinformation as a cybersecurity threat is made by advocates due to its increase in social networking sites. Researchers working for the University of Oxford found that over a three-year period the number of governments engaging in online disinformation rose from 28 in 2017, to 40 in 2018, and 70 in 2019. Despite the proliferation of social media websites, Facebook and Twitter showed the most activity in terms of active disinformation campaigns. Techniques reported on included the use of bots to amplify hate speech, the illegal harvesting of data, and paid trolls to harass and threaten journalists." href="#Disinformation" rel="nofollow ugc">disinformation</a> campaigns.
That both <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Misinformation is essentially false or inaccurate information that has been spread or communicated irrespective of whether there is an intent(ion) to deceive, confuse, confound or muddy the waters for some reason(s) or purpose(s), typically involving frauds, intrigues, collusions, specious claims, disingenuous proclamations, fallacious arguments or false narratives ranging from out-of-context or otherwise misleading images, altered photos or videos, and audiovisual contents digitally manipulated or artificially generated, to false rumours or insults and pranks, manufactured evidence, questionable assertions, fabricated statements, doctored documents, deceptive interpretations, biased accounts, falsified data, faulty statistics and even cybersecurity threats. The main negative outcome or effect of misinformation is one of elicited wishful thinking, illusion, misbelief, fear, suspicion, paranoia, distrust, anxiety, anger, hatred, resentment, vindictiveness or spite in a person, group or population. News parodies, satires, lies, illusions, fictions or conspiracy theories can become misinformation if the unwary deem them to be credible and relay them as though they were true. The difference between misinformation and disinformation is that the former is shared accidentally whereas the latter is created or distributed deliberately in a calculated way with the intent(ion) of misleading or deceiving certain people or target audience for iniquitous or nefarious purposes." href="#Misinformation" rel="nofollow ugc">misinformation</a> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Disinformation is intentionally false or misleading information that is spread in a calculated way to deceive target audiences. The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s. English use increased in 1986 after revelations that the Reagan administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. By 1990 it was pervasive in U.S. politics; and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda. Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by nongovernmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of “fake news”, disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the disinformer's reputation. By 1990, use of the term disinformation had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term disinformation had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book The Idea of Propaganda that disinformation had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda. Research related to disinformation studies is increasing as an applied area of inquiry. The call to formally classify disinformation as a cybersecurity threat is made by advocates due to its increase in social networking sites. Researchers working for the University of Oxford found that over a three-year period the number of governments engaging in online disinformation rose from 28 in 2017, to 40 in 2018, and 70 in 2019. Despite the proliferation of social media websites, Facebook and Twitter showed the most activity in terms of active disinformation campaigns. Techniques reported on included the use of bots to amplify hate speech, the illegal harvesting of data, and paid trolls to harass and threaten journalists." href="#Disinformation" rel="nofollow ugc">disinformation</a> can pollute people’s <a title="The mind is the set of faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, intelligence, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion and instinct. Under the scientific physicalist interpretation, the mind is produced at least in part by the brain. The primary competitors to the physicalist interpretations of the mind are idealism, substance dualism, and types of property dualism, and by some lights eliminative materialism and anomalous monism. There is a lengthy tradition in philosophy, religion, psychology and cognitive science about what constitutes a mind and what are its distinguishing properties. One open question regarding the nature of the mind is the mind–body problem, which investigates the relation of the mind to the physical brain and nervous system. Older viewpoints included dualism and idealism, which considered the mind somehow non-physical. Modern views often center around physicalism and functionalism, which hold that the mind is roughly identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity though dualism and idealism continue to have many supporters. Another question concerns which types of beings are capable of having minds (New Scientist 8 September 2018 p10). For example, whether mind is exclusive to humans, possessed also by some or all animals, by all living things, whether it is a strictly definable characteristic at all, or whether mind can also be a property of some types of human-made machines. Whatever its nature, it is generally agreed that mind is that which enables a being to have subjective awareness and intentionality towards their environment, to perceive and respond to stimuli with some kind of agency, and to have consciousness, including thinking and feeling. The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different cultural and religious traditions. Some see mind as a property exclusive to humans whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities (e.g. panpsychism and animism), to animals and to deities. Some of the earliest recorded speculations linked mind (sometimes described as identical with soul or spirit) to theories concerning both life after death, and cosmological and natural order, for example in the doctrines of Zoroaster, the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle and other ancient Greek, Indian and, later, Islamic and medieval European philosophers. Important philosophers of mind include Plato, Patanjali, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Searle, Dennett, Fodor, Nagel, Chalmers and Putnam. Psychologists such as Freud and James, and computer scientists such as Turing developed influential theories about the nature of the mind. The possibility of nonbiological minds is explored in the field of artificial intelligence, which works closely in relation with cybernetics and information theory to understand the ways in which information processing by nonbiological machines is comparable or different to mental phenomena in the human mind. The mind is also portrayed as the stream of consciousness where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">mind</a> not merely by virtue of their problematic contents and their being championed by fake experts but also on account of people’s reasoning fallacies and <a title="A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgement whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own subjective (social) reality from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behaviour in the social world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgement, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. These biases help a person to find commonalities and shortcuts that simply make it easier to live and navigate the world and different situations in life. Some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics. Other cognitive biases are a “by-product” of human processing limitations, resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (bounded rationality), impact of individual's constitution and biological state (embodied cognition), or simply from a limited capacity for information processing." href="#Cognitive_Biases" rel="nofollow ugc">cognitive biases</a> that predispose them to unrealistic expectations, <a title="Cherry picking is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate. The term is based on the perceived process of harvesting fruit, such as cherries. The picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the tree's fruit is in a likewise good condition. This can also give a false impression of the quality of the fruit (since it is only a sample and is not a representative sample). A concept sometimes confused with cherry picking is the idea of gathering only the fruit that is easy to harvest, while ignoring other fruit that is higher up on the tree and thus more difficult to obtain (see low-hanging fruit). Cherry picking has a negative connotation as the practice neglects, overlooks or directly suppresses evidence that could lead to a complete picture. Cherry picking can be found in many logical fallacies. For example, the “fallacy of anecdotal evidence” tends to overlook large amounts of data in favor of that known personally, “selective use of evidence” rejects material unfavorable to an argument, while a false dichotomy picks only two options when more are available. Cherry picking can refer to the selection of data or data sets so a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to reality." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">cherry picking</a> and <a title="A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a pejorative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence. Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth, whereby the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than something that can be proved or disproved. Research suggests that conspiracist ideation — belief in conspiracy theories — can be psychologically harmful or pathological, and that it is correlated with psychological projection, paranoia and Machiavellianism. Conspiracy theories once limited to fringe audiences have become commonplace in mass media, emerging as a cultural phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Psychologists attribute finding a conspiracy where there is none to a mental illness called illusory pattern perception." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">conspiracy theories</a> can hardly be overstated, considering the ubiquity, vehemence and abject absurdity of contrarian claims that defy or denounce empirical accuracy and ethical integrity even to the point of thwarting, stalling or stifling worthwhile policies and beneficial measures.
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/disinformation-101-infographic.png" alt="Disinformation 101 Infographic" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle’s post entitled “
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
”." class="aligncenter size-full" /></a>
</div>
<h3><a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow ugc"><img class="alignright" alt="Click here to visit SoundEagle." src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/soundeagle-medium.png" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle."></a>Yours sincerely,
<strong>SoundEagle
</strong></h3>
In reply to <a href="https://rayjc.com/2025/02/21/having-eyes-to-see/#comment-10155">SoundEagle ೋღஜஇ</a>. <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Greetings Soundeagle! It would take a long time for me to reply in detail to your comments on my post, 'HAVING EYES TO SEE.' As you can see from the Old Testament image, that is only the beginning the title is based on. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Christ Jesus repeats it more specifically in the New Testament of this Year 2025 of THE COMMON ERA Christ Jesus ushered in. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>'For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.'</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The question remains? How to behave in these UNCOMMON TIMES?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
22.2.2025 22:10Comment on HAVING EYES TO SEE by Ray Joseph Cormier<h3>Dear Ray,</h3>
<div style="font-size: medium;text-align: justify">
The following also needs to be fundamentally addressed.
<h1 style="line-height:1.5;font-size:x-large;text-align:center;color:MidnightBlue;font-weight:bold"><a style="font-weight:bold" title="The tendency to search for, interpret, favour and recall information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning when people gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. This can often lead to people seeing illusory clusters or false patterns in data to prove their ideas." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Confirmation Bias</a> - how to get out of the <a style="font-weight:bold" title="In news media, an echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulates them from rebuttal. By visiting an “echo chamber”, people are able to seek out information that reinforces their existing views, potentially as an unconscious exercise of confirmation bias. This may increase social and political polarization and extremism. The term is a metaphor based on the acoustic echo chamber, where sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect on the Internet within social communities, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc; is cultural tribalism. Many scholars note the effects that echo chambers can potentially have on citizen's stance and viewpoints, more specifically what implications this effect will have on politics. However, there are counterarguments with supporting evidence that suggest the effects of echo chambers are significantly lowered than assumed and suggested." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Echo Chamber</a></h1>
This detailed infographic shows the role of Internet giants and information, the prevalence of <a style="font-weight:bold" title="A filter bubble – a term coined by internet activist Eli Pariser – is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behaviour and search history. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. The choices made by these algorithms are not transparent." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">filter bubbles</a></strong> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="In (discussions of) social and news media, an echo chamber represents a metaphorical description of a situation in which opinions, ideas, beliefs or even conspiracy theories are amplified or reinforced when people repeatedly participate in communication and interaction inside a closed system that effectively insulates them from dissenting views, rebutting evidence, alternative angles and counterarguments. By visiting or embedding themselves in an echo chamber, people are able to search and obtain information that reinforces their existing views, but at the cost of potentially or unwittingly engendering an unconscious or unintended exercise in confirmation bias, which in turn may intensify sociopolitical polarization and extremism. The catchy term is a metaphor based on the acoustic echo chamber, where sounds resoundingly reverberate in a hollow enclosure with high resonance and reverberation. Cultural tribalism is another emerging term for this form of echoing and homogenizing influence that has become undeniably prevalent on the Internet within social communities such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Instagram, QQ, Qzone, Tik Tok, Sina Weibo, Baidu Tieba, Viber, Snapchat, Pinterest, Line, Telegram and so on. Some scholars notice the effects that echo chambers can potentially have on citizens’ stances, outlooks and viewpoints, more specifically what implications such effects will have on politics. However, there are studies and counterarguments with supporting evidence indicating that the effects of echo chambers are weaker than they have been assumed or suggested." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">echo chambers</a>, plus the “<strong>ONE UNDERLYING HUMAN FLAW</strong>” fuelling “[t]he crisis of fact that permeates throughout social media”, namely, the <a style="font-weight:bold" title="The tendency to search for, interpret, favour and recall information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning when people gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. This can often lead to people seeing illusory clusters or false patterns in data to prove their ideas." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">confirmation bias</a>, which, as depicted, can be avoided by practising <a title="Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgement, a skill that one develops through meditation or other training. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Buddhist traditions, and based on Zen, Vipassanā and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions explain what constitutes mindfulness such as how past, present and future moments arise and cease as momentary sense impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J Davidson and Sam Harris. Clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on mindfulness for helping people experiencing a variety of psychological conditions. Mindfulness practice has been employed to reduce depression, to reduce stress, anxiety, and in the treatment of drug addiction. Programmes based on mindfulness models have been adopted within schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans' centers, and other environments, and mindfulness programmes have been applied for additional outcomes such as for healthy aging, weight management, athletic performance, helping children with special needs, and as an intervention during the perinatal period." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">mindfulness</a> and <a title="Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s). Studies have shown that people with high EI have greater mental health, job performance, and leadership skills although no causal relationships have been shown and such findings are likely to be attributable to general intelligence and specific personality traits rather than emotional intelligence as a construct. For example, Goleman indicated that EI accounted for 67% of the abilities deemed necessary for superior performance in leaders, and mattered twice as much as technical expertise or IQ. Other research finds that the effect of EI markers on leadership and managerial performance is non-significant when ability and personality are controlled for, and that general intelligence correlates very closely with leadership. Markers of EI and methods of developing it have become more widely coveted in the past decade by individuals seeking to become more effective leaders. In addition, studies have begun to provide evidence to characterize the neural mechanisms of emotional intelligence." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">emotional intelligence</a> through <a title="Self-control, an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts and behaviour in the face of temptations and impulses. As an executive function, self-control is a cognitive process that is necessary for regulating one's behaviour in order to achieve specific goals. A related concept in psychology is emotional self-regulation. Self-control is thought to be like a muscle. According to studies, self-regulation, whether emotional or behavioural, was proven to be a limited resource which functions like energy. In the short term, overuse of self-control will lead to depletion. However, in the long term, the use of self-control can strengthen and improve over time. Self-control is also a key concept in the general theory of crime, a major theory in criminology. The theory was developed by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi in their book titled A General Theory of Crime, published in 1990. Gottfredson and Hirschi define self-control as the differential tendency of individuals to avoid criminal acts independent of the situations in which they find themselves. Individuals with low self-control tend to be impulsive, insensitive towards others, risk takers, short-sighted and nonverbal. About 70% of the variance in questionnaire data operationalizing one construct of self-control had been found to be genetic." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-control" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">self-control</a>, <a title="In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives and desires. There are two broad categories of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">self-awareness</a> and <a title="Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of emotional states. Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, and somatic empathy. Empathy definitions encompass a broad range of phenomena, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other. Having empathy can include having the understanding that there are many factors that go into decision making and cognitive thought processes. Past experiences have an influence on the decision making of today. Understanding this allows a person to have empathy for individuals who sometimes make illogical decisions to a problem that most individuals would respond with an obvious response. Broken homes, childhood trauma, lack of parenting and many other factors can influence the connections in the brain which a person uses to make decisions in the future. According to Martin Hoffman, everyone is born with the capability of feeling empathy." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">empathy</a>; engaging in informed and respectful debate through <a title="Curiosity is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation and learning, evident by observation in humans and other animals. Curiosity is heavily associated with all aspects of human development, from which the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill is derived. The term curiosity can also be used to denote the behaviour or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information. Curiosity as a behaviour and emotion is attributed over millennia as the driving force behind not only human development, but developments in science, language and industry. Daniel Berlyne recognized three major variables playing a role in evoking curiosity; namely, psychophysical variables, ecological variables and collative variables. Psychophysical variables correspond to physical intensity, while ecological variables to motivational significance and task relevance. Collative variables are called “collative” because they involve a comparison between different stimuli or features, which may be actually perceived or which may be recalled from memory. Berlyne mentioned four collative variables; namely, novelty, complexity, uncertainty and conflict. At the same time, he suggested that all collative variables probably involve conflict. Additionally, he considered three variables supplementary to novelty, namely change, surprisingness and incongruity. Finally, curiosity may not only be aroused by the perception of some stimulus associated with the aforementioned variables (“specific exploration”), but also by a lack of stimulation out of “boredom” (“diversive exploration”)." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">curiosity</a>, <a title="Scepticism is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief, or towards putative instances of knowledge which are asserted to be mere belief or dogma. It is often applied within restricted domains such as morality (moral scepticism), religion (scepticism about the existence of God) or knowledge (scepticism about the possibility of knowledge, or of certainty). Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion or pseudoscience." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">scepticism</a> and <a title="Open-mindedness is receptiveness to new ideas. Open-mindedness relates to the way in which people approach the views and knowledge of others. In the words of Dean Tjosvold, it means to be respected as a mindless person. Jason Baehr defines an open-minded person as one who “characteristically moves beyond or temporarily sets aside his own doxastic commitments in order to give a fair and impartial hearing to the intellectual opposition”. Jack Kwong's definition sees open-mindedness as the “willingness to take a novel viewpoint seriously”. According to Wayne Riggs, open-mindedness springs from an awareness of the inherent fallibility of one's beliefs; hence, open-minded individuals are more inclined to listen to, and seriously consider, alternative viewpoints. There are various scales for the measurement of open-mindedness. It has been argued that schools should emphasize open-mindedness more than relativism in their science instruction, because the scientific community does not embrace a relativistic way of thinking. Among other things, the critical attitude involves an open-minded outlook with respect to one's beliefs. Open-mindedness is generally considered an important personal attribute for effective participation in management teams and other groups. Open-mindedness is usually encouraged in group settings within different cultures and new environments. According to David DiSalvo, closed-mindedness or an unwillingness to consider new ideas can result from the brain's natural dislike for ambiguity. According to this view, the brain has a “search and destroy” relationship with ambiguity such that evidence contradictory to people's current beliefs tends to make them uncomfortable by introducing such ambiguity. Research confirms that belief-discrepant-closed-minded persons have less tolerance for cognitive inconsistency. Virtues contrasting with open-mindedness include steadfastness, loyalty and fundamentalism." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mindedness" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">open-mindedness</a>; and using good research skills such as taking online or local courses on news literacy and getting news as directly as possible from the source.
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/confirmation-bias-how-to-get-out-of-the-echo-chamber.jpg" alt="Confirmation Bias - how to get out of the Echo Chamber" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle’s post entitled “
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
”." class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-42508" />Confirmation Bias - how to get out of the Echo Chamber</a>
</div>
<h3><a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow ugc"><img class="alignright" alt="Click here to visit SoundEagle." src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/soundeagle-medium.png" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle."></a>Yours sincerely,
<strong>SoundEagle
</strong></h3>
<h3>Dear Ray,</h3>
<div style="font-size: medium;text-align: justify">
Thank you very much for publishing your latest post entitled “<strong>HAVING EYES TO SEE</strong>”!
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/we-have-paleolithic-emotions-medieval-institutions-and-god-like-technology/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/cropped-the-eyes-and-fires-of-emotions.jpg" alt="HAVING EYES TO SEE" title="HAVING EYES TO SEE: Click here to visit SoundEagle’s post entitled “
We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology
”." class="aligncenter size-full" /></a>
How admirable of you to have “emailed to 17 US Senators, Republican & Democrat, and tweeted to CNN & MSNBC TV personalities, and others yesterday”! However, good advice often falls upon deaf ears, unless the following issues can be addressed.
<h1 style="line-height:1.5;font-size:x-large;text-align:center;color:MidnightBlue;font-weight:bold">Rejection of Critical Thinking and Objective Reasoning with Seven Insidious and Corrosive Conditions</h1>
As the third decade of the third millenium dawns, the skill and resolve for winnowing truth from falsehood have become more wanting in humans than ever before. <span style="color:MidnightBlue;font-weight:bold">Falsity trumps probity; fallacy swamps clarity.</span> <strong>In short supply and chronic retreat are the cognitive tools and intellectual acumen necessary to recognize the errors or defects propagated in quotations, statements and claims from numerous sources</strong>, including the media, academia, luminaries, dignitaries, celebrities, ideologues, politicians, pundits, stakeholders, advertisers, influencers, Internet users and bloggers, particularly in the era of <a style="font-weight:bold" title="A misquotation refers to an act, instance or occasion of quoting a person or a source incorrectly or inaccurately; or of attributing a quotation to the wrong author or incorrect source. Click here to visit the section called “Misquotation: Improper Quoting, Sourcing, Context, Appropriation” in the post entitled The Quotation Fallacy “
”." href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/the-quotation-fallacy/#Misquotation" rel="nofollow ugc">misquotations</a> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Disinformation is intentionally false or misleading information that is spread in a calculated way to deceive target audiences. The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s. English use increased in 1986 after revelations that the Reagan administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. By 1990 it was pervasive in U.S. politics; and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda. Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by nongovernmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of “fake news”, disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the disinformer's reputation. By 1990, use of the term disinformation had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term disinformation had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book The Idea of Propaganda that disinformation had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda. Research related to disinformation studies is increasing as an applied area of inquiry. The call to formally classify disinformation as a cybersecurity threat is made by advocates due to its increase in social networking sites. Researchers working for the University of Oxford found that over a three-year period the number of governments engaging in online disinformation rose from 28 in 2017, to 40 in 2018, and 70 in 2019. Despite the proliferation of social media websites, Facebook and Twitter showed the most activity in terms of active disinformation campaigns. Techniques reported on included the use of bots to amplify hate speech, the illegal harvesting of data, and paid trolls to harass and threaten journalists." href="#Disinformation" rel="nofollow ugc">disinformation</a>, numerous instances of which seem to be intractably stoking people’s partial or utter ignorance as well as growingly courting their emotional drives, biased attitudes, cardinal urges, primal impulses and tribal instincts. Riding on these naked vulnerabilities, the unprincipled, ambitious, acquisitive, illiberal, ruthless or predatory opportunists, ranging from (those who are) wrongdoers, miscreants, malefactors and reprobates to profiteers, disinformers, obscurantists, hatemongers, <a title="Extremism is “the quality or state of being extreme” or “the advocacy of extreme measures or views”. The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied shared social consensus) to be far outside the mainstream attitudes of society. It can also be used in an economic context. The term is usually meant to be pejorative. However, it may also be used in a more academic, purely descriptive, non-condemning sense. Extremists views are typically contrasted with those of moderates. In Western countries for example, in contemporary discourse on Islam or on Islamic political movements, the distinction between extremist and moderate Muslims is commonly stressed. Political agendas perceived as extremist often include those from the far-left politics or far-right politics as well as radicalism, reactionism, fundamentalism and fanaticism. Extreme acts are more likely to be employed by marginalized people and groups who view more normative forms of conflict engagement as blocked for them or biased. However, dominant groups also commonly employ extreme activities (such as governmental sanctioning of violent paramilitary groups or the attack in Waco by the FBI in the U.S.). Extremist acts often employ violent means, although extremist groups will differ in their preference for violent vs. non-violent tactics, in the level of violence they employ, and in the preferred targets of their violence (from infrastructure to military personnel to civilians to children). Again, low power groups are more likely to employ direct, episodic forms of violence (such as suicide bombings), whereas dominant groups tend to be associated with more structural or institutionalized forms (like the covert use of torture or the informal sanctioning of police brutality). Although extremist individuals and groups are often viewed as cohesive and consistently evil, it is important to recognize that they may be conflicted or ambivalent psychologically as individuals, or contain difference and conflict within their groups. For instance, individual members of Hamas may differ considerably in their willingness to negotiate their differences with the Palestinian Authority and, ultimately, with certain factions in Israel. Ultimately, the core problem that extremism presents in situations of protracted conflict is less the severity of the activities (although violence, trauma and escalation are obvious concerns) but more so the closed, fixed and intolerant nature of extremist attitudes, and their subsequent imperviousness to change." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremism" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">extremists</a>, plutocrats and despots, are able to thrive with greater gusto, impunity or even savagery because there simultaneously exist <strong>four of the most insidious and corrosive conditions</strong> fuelled and intensified by <a title="Media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies, psychological manipulations, outright deception (disinformation), rhetorical and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding them out, by inducing other people or groups of people to stop listening to certain arguments, or by simply diverting attention elsewhere. In his book entitled Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul writes that public opinion can only express itself through channels which are provided by the mass media of communication – without which there could be no propaganda. It is used within public relations, propaganda, marketing, etc. While the objective for each context is quite different, the broad techniques are often similar. Many of the more modern mass media manipulation methods are types of distraction, on the assumption that the public has a limited attention span." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">media manipulation</a> and <a title="Internet manipulation refers to the co-optation of digital technology such as social media algorithms and automated scripts for commercial, social or political purposes. Such tactics may be employed with the explicit intent to manipulate public opinion, polarise citizens, silence political dissidents, harm corporate or political adversaries, and improve personal or brand reputation. Hackers, hired professionals and private citizens have all been reported to engage in Internet manipulation using software – typically Internet bots such as social bots, votebots and clickbots. Cognitive hacking refers to a cyberattack that aims to change users' perceptions and corresponding behaviours. Internet manipulation is sometimes also used to describe selective Internet censorship or violations of net neutrality." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_manipulation" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Internet manipulation</a>, whilst frequently exploited and exacerbated by a sizeable number of ideologues, demagogues, provocateurs, influencers, <a title="A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agreement secret from the public or from other people affected by it. In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of people united in the goal of usurping, altering or overthrowing an established political power. Depending on the circumstances, a conspiracy may also be a crime or a civil wrong. The term generally implies wrongdoing or illegality on the part of the conspirators, as people would not need to conspire to engage in activities that were lawful and ethical, or to which no one would object. There are some coordinated activities that people engage in with secrecy that are not generally thought of as conspiracies. For example, intelligence agencies such as the American CIA and the British MI6 necessarily make plans in secret to spy on suspected enemies of their respective countries, but this kind of activity is generally not considered to be a conspiracy so long as their goal is to fulfill their official functions, and not something like improperly enriching themselves. Similarly, the coaches of competing sports teams routinely meet behind closed doors to plan game strategies and specific plays designed to defeat their opponents, but this activity is not considered a conspiracy because this is considered a legitimate part of the sport. Furthermore, a conspiracy must be engaged in knowingly. The continuation of social traditions that work to the advantage of certain groups and to the disadvantage of certain other groups, though possibly unethical, is not a conspiracy if participants in the practice are not carrying it forward for the purpose of perpetuating this advantage. On the other hand, if the intent of carrying out a conspiracy exists, then there is a conspiracy even if the details are never agreed to aloud by the participants. For instance, CIA covert operations are by their very nature hard to prove definitively, but research into the agency's work as well as revelations by former CIA employees have suggested several cases where the agency tried to influence events. Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations' governments 72 times. During the Cold War, 26 of the U.S.' covert operations successfully brought a U.S.-backed government to power; the remaining 40 failed. A “conspiracy theory” is a belief that a conspiracy has actually been decisive in producing a political event of which the theorists strongly disapprove. Political scientist Michael Barkun has described conspiracy theories as relying on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is unfalsifiable, and therefore “a matter of faith rather than proof.”" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">conspiracy</a> theorists, corporate entities, state agents and political elites:
(1) The prevailing <a title="Hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature and science as impractical, politically motivated and even contemptible human pursuits. Anti-intellectuals present themselves and are perceived as champions of common folk — populists against political and academic elitism — and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people. Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. Anti-intellectualism is not always violent. Any social group can act anti-intellectually by discounting the humanist value to their society of intellect, intellectualism and higher education." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc"><span style="font-family: Georgia;font-weight: bold;font-size: larger;line-height: 0">anti-intellectualism</span></a>
(2) The <a title="Thomas M Nichols (2017) The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. Oxford University Press [ISBN: 9780190469412]. From The Publisher: The rise of the Internet and other technology has made information more easily-accessible than ever before. While this has had the positive effect of equalizing access to knowledge, it also has lowered the bar on what depth of knowledge is required to consider oneself an “expert.” A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement to attacks on GMOs. This surge in intellectual egalitarianism has altered the landscape of debates - all voices are equal, and “fact” is a subjective term. Browsing WebMD puts one on equal footing with doctors, and Wikipedia allows all to be foreign policy experts, scientists, and more. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, there are a number of reasons why this has occurred - ranging from easy access to Internet search engines to a customer satisfaction model within higher education. The product of these interrelated trends, Nichols argues, is a pervasive distrust of expertise among the public coinciding with an unfounded belief among non-experts that their opinions should have equal standing with those of the experts. The experts are not always right, of course, and Nichols discusses expert failure. The crucial point is that bad decisions by experts can and have been effectively challenged by other well-informed experts. The issue now is that the democratization of information dissemination has created an army of ill-informed citizens who denounce expertise. When challenged, non-experts resort to the false argument that the experts are often wrong. Though it may be true, but the solution is not to jettison expertise as an ideal; it is to improve our expertise. Nichols is certainly not opposed to information democratization, but rather the enlightenment [that] people believe [that] they achieve after superficial Internet research. He shows in vivid detail the ways in which this impulse is coursing through our culture and body politic, but the larger goal is to explain the benefits that expertise and rigorous learning regimes bestow upon all societies." href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=x3TYDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc"><span style="font-family: Georgia;font-weight: bold;font-size: larger;line-height: 0">cult of anti-expertise sentiment</span></a>
(3) The <a title="The politicization of science is the manipulation of science for political gain. It occurs when government, business or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. The politicization of science may also negatively affect academic and scientific freedom. Historically, groups have conducted various campaigns to promote their interests in defiance of scientific consensus, and in an effort to manipulate public policy. Many factors can act as facets of the politicization of science. These can range, for example, from populist anti-intellectualism and perceived threats to religious belief to postmodernist subjectivism, fear for business interests, institutional academic ideological biases, or potentially implicit bias amongst scientific researchers. Politicization occurs as scientific information is presented with emphasis on the uncertainty associated with the scientific evidence. The emphasis capitalizes on the lack of consensus, which influences the way the studies are perceived. Chris Mooney describes how this point is sometimes intentionally ignored as a part of an “Orwellian tactic”. Organizations and politicians seek to disclaim all discussion on some issues as 'the more probable conclusion is still uncertain' as opposed to 'conclusions are most scientifically likely' in order to further discredit scientific studies. Tactics such as shifting conversation, failing to acknowledge facts, and capitalizing on doubt of scientific consensus have been used to gain more attention for views that have been undermined by scientific evidence. “Merchants of Doubt”, ideology-based interest groups that claim expertise on scientific issues, have run successful “disinformation campaigns” in which they highlight the inherent uncertainty of science to cast doubt on scientific issues such as human-caused climate change, even though the scientific community has reached virtual consensus that humans play a role in climate change. William R. Freudenburg and colleagues have written about politicization of science as a rhetorical technique and states that it is an attempt to shift the burden of proof in an argument. He offers the example of cigarette lobbyists opposing laws that would discourage smoking. The lobbyists trivialize evidence as uncertain, emphasizing lack of conclusion. Freudenberg concludes that politicians and lobby groups are too often able to make “successful efforts to argue for full 'scientific certainty' before a regulation can be said to be 'justified' and maintain that what is needed is a balanced approach that carefully considers the risks of both Type 1 and Type 2 errors in a situation while noting that scientific conclusions are always tentative.” President of the industry advocacy group American Council on Science and Health Hank Campbell and microbiologist Alex Berezow have described “feel-good fallacies” used in politics, where politicians frame their positions in a way that makes people feel good about supporting certain policies even when scientific evidence shows there is no need to worry or there is no need for dramatic change on current programs. They have claimed that progressives have had these kinds of issues with policies involving genetically modified foods, vaccination, overpopulation, use of animals in research, nuclear energy and other topics." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc"><span style="font-family: Georgia;font-weight: bold;font-size: larger;line-height: 0">politicization of science</span></a>
(4) The prevalent manifestation of <a title="Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasise the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group against “the elite”. The term developed in the 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, although it has rarely been chosen as a self-description. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, whereas some scholars have proposed that the term be rejected altogether. A common framework for interpreting populism is known as the ideational approach: this defines populism as an ideology which presents “the people” as a morally good force and contrasts them against “the elite”, who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving. Populists differ in how “the people” are defined, but it can be based along class, ethnic or national lines. Populists typically present “the elite” as comprising the political, economic, cultural and media establishment, depicted as a homogeneous entity and accused of placing their own interests, and often the interests of other groups — such as large corporations, foreign countries or immigrants — above the interests of “the people”. Populist parties and social movements are often led by charismatic or dominant figures who present themselves as the “voice of the people”. According to the ideational approach, populism is often combined with other ideologies, such as nationalism, liberalism or socialism. Thus, populists can be found at different locations along the left–right political spectrum, and there exist both left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Other scholars of the social sciences have defined the term populism differently. According to the popular agency definition used by some historians of United States history, populism refers to popular engagement of the population in political decision making. An approach associated with the political scientist Ernesto Laclau presents populism as an emancipatory social force through which marginalised groups challenge dominant power structures. Some economists have used the term in reference to governments which engage in substantial public spending financed by foreign loans, resulting in hyperinflation and emergency measures. In popular discourse — where the term has often been used pejoratively — it has sometimes been used synonymously with demagogy, to describe politicians who present overly simplistic answers to complex questions in a highly emotional manner, or with opportunism, to characterise politicians who seek to please voters without rational consideration as to the best course of action. The term populism came into use in the late 19th century alongside the promotion of democracy. In the United States, it was closely associated with the People's Party, while in the Russian Empire it was linked to the agrarian socialist Narodnik movement. In the 1960s the term became increasingly popular among social scientists in Western countries, and later in the 20th century it was applied to various political parties active in liberal democracies. In the 21st century, the term became increasingly common in political discourse, particularly in the Americas and Europe, to describe a range of left-wing, right-wing, and centrist groups that challenged the established parties." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc"><span style="font-family: Georgia;font-weight: bold;font-size: larger;line-height: 0">populism</span></a>
<a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/" rel="nofollow ugc"><img src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/rejection-of-critical-thinking-and-objective-reasoning-with-seven-insidious-and-corrosive-conditions.jpg" alt="Rejection of Critical Thinking and Objective Reasoning with Seven Insidious and Corrosive Conditions" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle
’s post entitled “
Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic:
Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity
”." class="aligncenter size-full" />Rejection of Critical Thinking and Objective Reasoning with Seven Insidious and Corrosive Conditions</a>
These four social conditions along with <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It is the differentiation preference of access of social goods in the society brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation and class. Social inequality usually implies the lack of equality of outcome, but may alternatively be conceptualized in terms of the lack of equality of access to opportunity. The social rights include labour market, the source of income, healthcare and freedom of speech, education, political representation and participation. Social inequality linked to economic inequality, usually described on the basis of the unequal distribution of income or wealth, is a frequently studied type of social inequality. Although the disciplines of economics and sociology generally use different theoretical approaches to examine and explain economic inequality, both fields are actively involved in researching this inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are also unevenly distributed in most societies and may contribute to social status. Norms of allocation can also affect the distribution of rights and privileges, social power, access to public goods such as education or the judicial system, adequate housing, transportation, credit and financial services such as banking and other social goods and services. Many societies worldwide claim to be meritocracies, meaning that their societies exclusively distribute resources on the basis of merit. The term “meritocracy” was coined by Michael Young in his 1958 dystopian essay “The Rise of the Meritocracy” to demonstrate the social dysfunctions that he anticipated arising in societies where the elites believe that they are successful entirely on the basis of merit, so the adoption of this term into English without negative connotations is ironic. Young was concerned that the Tripartite System of education being practiced in the United Kingdom at the time he wrote the essay considered merit to be “intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors ... identified at an early age and selected for appropriate intensive education” and that the “obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications” it supported would create an educated middle-class elite at the expense of the education of the working class, inevitably resulting in injustice and eventually revolution. Although merit matters to some degree in many societies, research shows that the distribution of resources in societies often follows hierarchical social categorizations of persons to a degree too significant to warrant calling these societies “meritocratic”, since even exceptional intelligence, talent, or other forms of merit may not be compensatory for the social disadvantages that people face. In many cases, social inequality is linked to racial inequality, ethnic inequality and gender inequality as well as other social statuses, and these forms can be related to corruption. The most common metric for comparing social inequality in different nations is the Gini coefficient, which measures the concentration of wealth and income in a nation from 0 (evenly distributed wealth and income) to 1 (one person has all wealth and income). Two nations may have identical Gini coefficients but dramatically different economic (output) and/or quality of life, so the Gini coefficient must be contextualized for meaningful comparisons to be made." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequality" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">social inequality</a> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Social polarization is associated with the segregation within a society that may emerge from income inequality, real-estate fluctuations, economic displacements etc. and result in such differentiation that would consist of various social groups, from high-income to low-income. It is a state and/or a tendency denoting the growth of groups at the extremities of the social hierarchy and the parallel shrinking of groups around its middle. One of the earlier stimulating research works on social polarization is from R. E. Pahl on Isle of Sheppey, wherein he provides a comparison between the Pre-capitalist society and capitalist society. More recently, a number of research projects have been increasingly addressing the issues of social polarization within the developed economies. When social polarization occurs in addition to economic restructuring, particularly in cities, economic inequality along social class and racial lines is exacerbated. Such separation can be best observed in the urban environment, “where [communities] of extreme wealth and social power are interspersed with places of deprivation, exclusion, and decline.” In addition to how spatial compositions are managed in cities, the technologies used in regards to social relations can also contribute to social polarization (see Social Polarization & The Media). Increased spatial segregation of socioeconomic groups correlates strongly with social polarization as well as social exclusion and societal fragmentation." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_polarization" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">social polarization</a>, <strong>unprincipled <a title="Opportunism is the practice of taking advantage of circumstances with little regard for principles or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term can be applied to individual humans and living organisms, groups, organizations, styles, behaviours and trends. Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances. Although in many societies opportunism often has a strong negative moral connotation, it may also be defined more neutrally as putting self-interest before other interests when there is an opportunity to do so, or flexibly adapting to changing circumstances to maximize self-interest (though usually in a way that negates some principle previously followed). Opportunism is sometimes defined as the ability to capitalize on the mistakes of others: to exploit opportunities created by the errors, weaknesses or distractions of opponents to one's own advantage. Taking a realistic or practical approach to a problem can involve “weak” forms of opportunism. For the sake of doing something that will work, or that successfully solves the problem, a previously agreed principle is knowingly compromised or disregarded with the justification that alternative actions would have a worse effect overall. Criticism of opportunism usually refers to a situation where beliefs and principles are tested or challenged. Human opportunism should not be confused with “seeking opportunities” or “making use of opportunities when they arise”. Opportunism refers to a specific way of responding to opportunities, which involves the element of self-interestedness and disregard for relevant (ethical) principles, or for intended or previously agreed goals, or for the shared concerns of a group. However, opportunism is sometimes also redefined by businesspersons simply as “the theory of discovering and pursuing opportunities”. According to this redefinition, “opportunism” is a euphemism for “entrepreneurship”." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunism" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">opportunists</a></strong>, <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies, psychological manipulations, outright deception (disinformation), rhetorical and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding them out, by inducing other people or groups of people to stop listening to certain arguments, or by simply diverting attention elsewhere. In his book entitled Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul writes that public opinion can only express itself through channels which are provided by the mass media of communication – without which there could be no propaganda. It is used within public relations, propaganda, marketing, etc. While the objective for each context is quite different, the broad techniques are often similar. Many of the more modern mass media manipulation methods are types of distraction, on the assumption that the public has a limited attention span." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">media manipulation</a> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Internet manipulation refers to the co-optation of digital technology such as social media algorithms and automated scripts for commercial, social or political purposes. Such tactics may be employed with the explicit intent to manipulate public opinion, polarise citizens, silence political dissidents, harm corporate or political adversaries, and improve personal or brand reputation. Hackers, hired professionals and private citizens have all been reported to engage in Internet manipulation using software – typically Internet bots such as social bots, votebots and clickbots. Cognitive hacking refers to a cyberattack that aims to change users' perceptions and corresponding behaviours. Internet manipulation is sometimes also used to describe selective Internet censorship or violations of net neutrality." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_manipulation" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Internet manipulation</a> have coalesced to signify a <strong>widespread and deepening <span style="color:MidnightBlue;font-weight:bold">rejection of <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Critical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgement. The subject is complex and there exist several different definitions, which generally include the rational, sceptical, unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and ethnocentrism." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">critical thinking</a> and objective reasoning</span></strong>, and a <strong>significant rise of <a title="A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a pejorative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence. Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth, whereby the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than something that can be proved or disproved. Research suggests that conspiracist ideation — belief in conspiracy theories — can be psychologically harmful or pathological, and that it is correlated with psychological projection, paranoia and Machiavellianism. Once limited to fringe audiences, conspiracy theories have become commonplace in mass media, emerging as a cultural phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Psychologists attribute finding a conspiracy where there is none to a mental illness called illusory pattern perception. A “conspiracy theory” is a belief that a conspiracy has actually been decisive in producing a political event of which the theorists strongly disapprove. Political scientist Michael Barkun has described conspiracy theories as relying on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is unfalsifiable, and therefore “a matter of faith rather than proof.”" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">conspiracy ideations</a>, political misperceptions and illiberal values, resulting in the erosion of <a title="Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that liberal governments commit not to abridge, either by legislation or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may include the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights. Many contemporary nations have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee civil liberties. Other nations have enacted similar laws through a variety of legal means, including signing and ratifying or otherwise giving effect to key conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The existence of some claimed civil liberties is a matter of dispute, as are the extent of most civil rights. Controversial examples include property rights, reproductive rights and civil marriage. In authoritarian regimes in which government censorship impedes on perceived civil liberties, some civil liberty advocates argue for the use of anonymity tools to allow for free speech, privacy and anonymity. The degree to which democracies have involved themselves needs to take into account of the influence of terrorism. Whether the existence of victimless crimes infringes upon civil liberties is a matter of dispute. Another matter of debate is the suspension or alteration of certain civil liberties in times of war or state of emergency, including whether and to what extent this should occur. The formal concept of civil liberties is often dated back to Magna Carta, an English legal charter agreed in 1215, which in turn was based on pre-existing documents, namely the Charter of Liberties." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">civil liberties</a>, democratic principles, <a title="Civil society can be understood as the “third sector” of society distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere. By other authors, civil society is used in the sense of (1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens; or (2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government. Sometimes the term civil society is used in the more general sense of “the elements such as freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, etc, that make up a democratic society” (Collins English Dictionary). Especially in the discussions among thinkers of Eastern and Central Europe, civil society is seen also as a normative concept of civic values. The literature on relations between civil society and democratic political society have their roots in classical liberal writings of G W F Hegel from whom they were adapted by Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Ferdinand Tönnies. They were developed in significant ways by 20th century researchers Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, who identified the role of political culture in a democratic order as vital. They argued that the political element of political organizations facilitates better awareness and a more informed citizenry, who make better voting choices, participate in politics, and hold government more accountable as a result. The statutes of these political organizations have been considered micro-constitutions because they accustom participants to the formalities of democratic decision making. More recently, Robert D Putnam has argued that even non-political organizations in civil society are vital for democracy. This is because they build social capital, trust and shared values, which are transferred into the political sphere and help to hold society together, facilitating an understanding of the interconnectedness of society and interests within it. Others, however, have questioned the link between civil society and robust democracy. Some have noted that the civil society actors have now obtained a remarkable amount of political power without anyone directly electing or appointing them. It has been argued that civil society aided the Nazi Party in coming to power in 1930s Germany. It has also been argued that civil society is biased towards the global north. Partha Chatterjee has argued that in most of the world, “civil society is demographically limited.” For Jai Sen, civil society is a neo-colonial project driven by global elites in their own interests. Finally, other scholars have argued that since the concept of civil society is closely related to democracy and representation, it should in turn be linked with ideas of nationality and nationalism." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">civil societies</a> and <a title="Social norms are regarded as collective representations of acceptable group conduct as well as individual perceptions of particular group conduct. They can be viewed as cultural products (including values, customs and traditions) which represent individuals' basic knowledge of what others do and think that they should do. From a sociological perspective, social norms are informal understandings that govern the behaviour of members of a society. Social psychology recognizes smaller group units (such as a team or an office) may also endorse norms separately or in addition to cultural or societal expectations. In the field of social psychology, the roles of norms are emphasized — which can guide behaviour in a certain situation or environment as “mental representations of appropriate behavior”. It has been shown that normative messages can promote pro-social behaviour, including decreasing alcohol use, increasing voter turnout, and reducing energy use. According to the psychological definition of social norms' behavioural component, norms have two dimensions: how much a behaviour is exhibited, and how much the group approves of that behaviour. These dimensions can be used in normative messages to alter norms (and subsequently alter behaviours). A message can target the former dimension by describing high levels of voter turnout in order to encourage more turnout. Norms also can be changed contingent on the observed behaviour of others (how much behaviour is exhibited). Social norms can be thought of as: “rules that prescribe what people should and should not do given their social surroundings” (known as milieu, sociocultural context) and circumstances. Examination of norms is “scattered across disciplines and research traditions, with no clear consensus on how the term should be used.”" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_norm" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">social norms</a></strong>, whilst highlighting consequential aspects of <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It is the differentiation preference of access of social goods in the society brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation and class. Social inequality usually implies the lack of equality of outcome, but may alternatively be conceptualized in terms of the lack of equality of access to opportunity. The social rights include labour market, the source of income, healthcare and freedom of speech, education, political representation and participation. Social inequality linked to economic inequality, usually described on the basis of the unequal distribution of income or wealth, is a frequently studied type of social inequality. Although the disciplines of economics and sociology generally use different theoretical approaches to examine and explain economic inequality, both fields are actively involved in researching this inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are also unevenly distributed in most societies and may contribute to social status. Norms of allocation can also affect the distribution of rights and privileges, social power, access to public goods such as education or the judicial system, adequate housing, transportation, credit and financial services such as banking and other social goods and services. Many societies worldwide claim to be meritocracies, meaning that their societies exclusively distribute resources on the basis of merit. The term “meritocracy” was coined by Michael Young in his 1958 dystopian essay “The Rise of the Meritocracy” to demonstrate the social dysfunctions that he anticipated arising in societies where the elites believe that they are successful entirely on the basis of merit, so the adoption of this term into English without negative connotations is ironic. Young was concerned that the Tripartite System of education being practiced in the United Kingdom at the time he wrote the essay considered merit to be “intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors ... identified at an early age and selected for appropriate intensive education” and that the “obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications” it supported would create an educated middle-class elite at the expense of the education of the working class, inevitably resulting in injustice and eventually revolution. Although merit matters to some degree in many societies, research shows that the distribution of resources in societies often follows hierarchical social categorizations of persons to a degree too significant to warrant calling these societies “meritocratic”, since even exceptional intelligence, talent, or other forms of merit may not be compensatory for the social disadvantages that people face. In many cases, social inequality is linked to racial inequality, ethnic inequality and gender inequality as well as other social statuses, and these forms can be related to corruption. The most common metric for comparing social inequality in different nations is the Gini coefficient, which measures the concentration of wealth and income in a nation from 0 (evenly distributed wealth and income) to 1 (one person has all wealth and income). Two nations may have identical Gini coefficients but dramatically different economic (output) and/or quality of life, so the Gini coefficient must be contextualized for meaningful comparisons to be made." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequality" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">social inequality</a> and <a style="font-weight:bold" title="Social polarization is associated with the segregation within a society that may emerge from income inequality, real-estate fluctuations, economic displacements etc. and result in such differentiation that would consist of various social groups, from high-income to low-income. It is a state and/or a tendency denoting the growth of groups at the extremities of the social hierarchy and the parallel shrinking of groups around its middle. One of the earlier stimulating research works on social polarization is from R. E. Pahl on Isle of Sheppey, wherein he provides a comparison between the Pre-capitalist society and capitalist society. More recently, a number of research projects have been increasingly addressing the issues of social polarization within the developed economies. When social polarization occurs in addition to economic restructuring, particularly in cities, economic inequality along social class and racial lines is exacerbated. Such separation can be best observed in the urban environment, “where [communities] of extreme wealth and social power are interspersed with places of deprivation, exclusion, and decline.” In addition to how spatial compositions are managed in cities, the technologies used in regards to social relations can also contribute to social polarization (see Social Polarization & The Media). Increased spatial segregation of socioeconomic groups correlates strongly with social polarization as well as social exclusion and societal fragmentation." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_polarization" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">social polarization</a>, all of which are cumulatively distorting people’s opinions and judgements about, and progressively affecting their roles and participations in, some of the most important matters in their lives. As well as being intellectually and culturally deprived or polarized, <strong>many segments and cohorts of the population can be easily convinced or manipulated to defend, support or purvey the interests, beliefs, agendas and actions of those who propagate problematic quotations, statements or information intended to be factually inaccurate, misleading, erroneous, spurious or conspiratorial.</strong>
</div>
<h3><a href="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow ugc"><img class="alignright" alt="Click here to visit SoundEagle." src="https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/soundeagle-medium.png" title="Click here to visit SoundEagle."></a>Yours sincerely,
<strong>SoundEagle
</strong></h3>
I strive to live by these words of wisdom.
21.2.2025 16:54Comment on ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE – MOTHER TERESA & PRINCESS DIANA by Erica RogersThis was emailed to 17 US Senators, Republican & Democrat, and tweeted to CNN & MSNBC TV personalities, and others yesterday: I am writing to share a message of urgency and hope—a vision for global unity and prosperity that aligns with the values of service, peace, and collective responsibility. As someone with significant influence and … Continue reading HAVING EYES TO SEE
21.2.2025 16:30HAVING EYES TO SEE<!-- wp:quote --> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Actually reading my duplicate comment, I told Deepseek “it should be he, not their” so your complaint is with me. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Deepseek suggested I change the SUBJECT: COWARDS IN CONGRESS to SUBJECT: Urgent: A Call for Moral Courage in Congress which was better than my 1st thoughts and with theback and forth, this letter is the result:</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>From: ray032@sympatico.ca</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>To: Senator_Kennedy@Kennedy.senate.gov; Senator_Merkley@Merkley.senate.gov; senator_ossoff@ossoff.senate.gov; mike@rounds.senate.gov; elizabeth_warren@warren.senate.gov; senator@cotton.senate.gov; correspondence_reply@durbin.senate.gov; info_sanders@sanders.senate.gov; SenatorHawley@hawley.senate.gov; Hirono.outgoing.mail@hirono.senate.gov; Senator@cortezmasto.senate.gov; senator@klobuchar.senate.gov; senator@Gillibrand.senate.gov; Senator@Thune.senate.gov; Senator@Schumer.senate.gov; cory_booker@booker.senate.gov; senator_warner@warner.senate.gov</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Sent: Tuesday, February 11th 2025, 18:07</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Subject: Urgent: A Call for Moral Courage in Congress </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Good Day Senators,</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As a Canadian observing the political turmoil in the United States, I am deeply concerned by the erosion of accountability and moral courage in your government. Unlike the partisan agendas of Republicans and Democrats, my perspective is rooted in a commitment to justice, transparency, and the principles of democracy.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>I am a complete unknown to you, even though someone in your offices has seen my previous messages pointing to the <em>Signs of the Times</em>. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Esteemed Jewish Professor Richard Falk, an International Law Scholar and former UN Special Rapporteur, has acknowledged my insights into scripture and global affairs. In response to my commentary on his article about Israel-Palestine, he wrote: <em>“Ray: Such a learned and responsive reading of scripture… With appreciation and warm greetings, Richard.”</em> His words remind us that moral clarity and intellectual rigor are still valued—even in these troubled times. He also affirmed my observation that, from Leviticus to Ezekiel, the God of Jews and Israel calls for a single state for Jews and Palestinians—a vision many Jews today reject. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>One of the first actions under Trump-Musk was the firing of Inspectors-General, who were responsible for exposing waste, corruption, and fraud. By law, Inspectors-General cannot be fired without a 30-day notice to the Senate, requiring the Executive to provide a reason and secure Senate consent. Yet, Senate Republicans have abdicated this prerogative, demonstrating a moral backbone as weak as a jellyfish.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Both Republicans and Democrats cowered in fear during the violent Trump-led insurrection on January 6. Today, Republicans seem more terrified of Trump and his mob than they were that day, prioritizing their personal well-being over the well-being of these UN-United States. As the saying goes, <em>“If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.”</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The Kansas City Times, on September 13, 1976, reported: <em>“He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November TO DO GOD’S BIDDING: To tell the World, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered.”</em> This 1976 vision is now unfolding before our eyes, as the world watches America’s decline with bated breath.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>He is me.</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The Trump Religious Sect of Christianity seems blind to the words of Jesus: <em>“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”</em> James, the brother of Jesus, is even more explicit: <em>“Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you… Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.”</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The erosion of accountability and the rise of unchecked power threaten not only the United States but the entire world. The time to act is now. The world is watching, and history will judge your actions—or inactions. I urge you to reclaim your moral courage, uphold the rule of law, and act in the service of justice, not power. The days of this nation may indeed be numbered, but it is not too late to change course. The choice is yours, and the stakes could not be higher.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Peace</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Ray Joseph Cormier</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>http://www.rayjc.com</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></blockquote> <!-- /wp:quote -->
14.2.2025 02:44Comment on Chronicle and Signpost: Ray Joseph Cormier-SIGNS OF THE TIMES by Ray Joseph CormierThe SIGNS OF THE TIMES article I originally posted on September 1, 2013, is too long and convoluted. To refine and improve it, I turned to one of the growing number of AI platforms for assistance. The result is a significant improvement over my original writing and organization, making the narrative clearer and more engaging. … Continue reading Chronicle and Signpost: Ray Joseph Cormier-SIGNS OF THE TIMES
13.2.2025 19:01Chronicle and Signpost: Ray Joseph Cormier-SIGNS OF THE TIMESThe Blame Game: A Reflection on Human Nature and Biblical History Blaming others is nothing new; it dates back to the very genesis of humanity, as recounted in the Bible. When God placed Adam, made in His image, in the paradise garden of Earth, He gave him clear instructions: Everything here is for you to … Continue reading KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
13.1.2025 12:00KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVILThe NATO Summit in Washington ended. The MSM and the Public has not grasped it yet, but the Future they have in store is MORE WAR! The MSM doesn’t have much to say about that. There’s much more discussion in the Alternate media. Here’s a sample from Jeffery Sachs, an American economist and public policy … Continue reading US-NATO:WAR-PEACE
14.7.2024 00:44US-NATO:WAR-PEACEThe phrase “speak truth to power” originated in the Civil Rights and Peace movements of the mid-20th century, and first appeared in print in the title of a 1955 antiwar treatise published by the American Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. I think the 1st example of speaking Truth To Power comes … Continue reading SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
21.6.2024 10:03SPEAK TRUTH TO POWERAs a News Junkie, I read many reports and analysis by many paid MSM Professionals on the consequences of Israel’s April Fools Day 2024 ACT of WAR attacking the Sovereign Diplomatic Territory of Iran in Damascus in violation of another International Law. The US West excuses and ignored it, already forgotten in the rapidly changing … Continue reading AFTERMATH – ISRAEL’S ACT OF WAR ON IRAN.
7.5.2024 14:53AFTERMATH – ISRAEL’S ACT OF WAR ON IRAN.NOTE: This was posted Saturday morning, before Iran retaliated in a sublimely measured and effective way later in the Day, to Israel’s Act of WAR against Iran on April Fools Day 2024 It’s hard to make sense of Israel’s Massacre and blatant Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their Homes in Gaza the World can see … Continue reading ISRAEL’S APRIL FOOLS DAY
13.4.2024 18:26ISRAEL’S APRIL FOOLS DAYAbby Martin Debunking Israel’s ‘Human Shield’ Defense in Gaza Massacre I have noticed since the US-Israeli Massacre of the People of Gaza started, Israel has systematically destroyed the Hospitals and Health Care in Gaza. The Israelis always tell us Gaza’s Hospitals have Hamas terrorists operating in there, not Doctors, and so far it’s just accepted … Continue reading WAR CRIMES WE SEE AND SAY NOTHING
2.4.2024 17:20WAR CRIMES WE SEE AND SAY NOTHINGThose with a TV can see by the images shown every Day, Israel is perpetrating a genocide on the Palestinians of Gaza in a way much worse that the original Nakba aka catastrophe of 1948 that forced Palestinians to flee to Gaza because of Zionist TERRORISTS. Just looking at the destruction of Palestinian homes in … Continue reading Greater love haS no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
13.3.2024 18:42Greater love haS no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.