Indoctrination

This is my first blog post. If I decide to continue with blogging, the site will be upgraded with the usual bells and whistles that other sites have. In reality, everything you see on the internet is just someone like me typing their thoughts but with all of the pictures and graphics and even videos, it makes it seem all very official and professional. For instance, The Huffington Post started out as a very small blog, and now has many different writers, with not one of them having any thoughts or ideas that are conservative. Which brings me to the subject of this blog post of indoctrination and what is truth.

Suppose you grew up in Iran instead of America, and were told to read the Koran every day for one hour. Your parents carried it around with them and from a very young age you were told that everything in the Koran was the absolute truth, and you were not to question it but to believe it. Not just part of the Koran but every word of it. Along with telling you that fire is hot, water is wet, rocks are hard, you were told that the Koran is the absolute truth, and when or if you ever questioned any of the writings, you were admonished that you should never do that and if you continued, Allah would be extremely upset and might even kill you if you did not believe. Over the years, your brothers and sisters, friends, relatives, co-workers and everyone in your city all spoke in reverent tones about the Koran, and any time someone dared question the "truth" of the writings, no matter how odd the "truth" seemed, such as Allah wanting non believers killed, they were met with scorn, ridicule, or even being killed by their own parents or siblings.

By the time you had reached your teens, you would most likely have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the beliefs given to you by all of those around you, as being the 100% truth. No one you know questions it. For the most part, those who have given you these "truths" have never lied to you about anything else, they love you, they had protected you, they provided for you, and so why would you have any reason to question them about Allah? Since you had been told that the Koran was the truth, when you read it or heard a passage, your mind played a trick on you and made you believe that every sentence you read WAS the truth, and the constant reading and repetition into your brain made it so that you could not sort out the truth from the fiction. If you dared question any of the passages, you knew that in itself was a sin, so you read and believed everything as being the "truth". Over time, you became one of them, the believer in the Koran. Not only that, you believed so much, that you now were the teacher of others, telling anyone around you the "truth" that you have found.

I am mystified and dismayed that humanity can be so gullible and easily swayed. Unless you are a reader who is a devout Muslim, you would have to admit that such a person had indeed been indoctrinated into a belief system. Whenever I try to point this out to someone when it comes to their own belief sets, I get "Oh, THEY can be indoctrinated, but I certainly am not. I have the truth and they don't."

This indoctrination occurs with many things, politics included, and applies equally to all people, including liberals and conservatives. This is one of the reasons the Democrats lost in the most recent election. Almost all of the major news (which are just BIG blogs) were of the same mindset as the Democrat running for offices, and their writers continually wrote about how bad and evil the other side was, while extolling the virtues of the candidate they wanted to win. They only associated with people of their same beliefs, and only wrote about how their belief system was better for the people, and how they were sure to win because they had the "truth" and the other side was bad. The news people (blog writers) had been indoctrinated to believe their opinions were the truth and wrote them as so, and never considered they could be wrong. No evidence or information could convince them they were. Like a Koran believer, their mind wouldn't allow them to consider other views. They all lived in their own little bubble of like believers and imagined that they had the corner on truth because the press was their cheer leader and assured them of victory. They never bothered to listen to opposing views and to consider the wants and needs and hopes and dreams of the people in the small towns across America.

We need to step out of our own little bubbles and examine who and what we are, and why we are what we are. We need to look at other viewpoints, and question what we perceive as the "truth", whether that be religion or politics, and if we believe what we do just because another person does, or even because many other people believe what you have been told to believe. The "truth" to a Muslim is identical to the "truth" of a Christian or Mormon or Scientologist, and we owe it to ourselves to examine our beliefs. The Muslim thinks Christians are complete fools and the Christians "know' that Islam is false. So then, which of these two groups possess the "truth"? You know the answer if you are a Christian. It is that, of course, the OTHER side has been indoctrinated, but you certainly have not been and could not be, because YOU cannot be fooled.

Some things to consider for anyone reading this very first blog, or as The Huffington Post or Washington Post would say..NEWS post.