<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household. The indoctrination techniques definitely worked on me and I am generally a very rational person. When I was young I couldn’t; explain why evolution and other scientific theories were wrong, I just knew they were because the source of truth (Bible) implied those theories were wrong. I didn’t even notice the contradictions in that worldview until I was in my teens even though I was mathematically minded. It is exceptionally difficult for children raised in a particular ideology to see the contradictions within that ideology. My strong sense of rationality eventually detected the cognitive dissonance, but for most it never happens and the ideology sticks for life.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I suspect that it is much easier for teenagers and adults to shirk off new ideologies and brainwashing since they already have a worldview in place to default to, which I think explains why the brainwashing didn’t work on the GIs. That’s why you have to get them when they’re young, really young.<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 8, 2022, at 9:50 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" class="">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">We attained our neurological maturity around age 25. Before that, just how dumb were we? Were we very impressionable? Able to be led around by older and wise others? Or were we just a little bit of an independent thinker all along?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here's a phrase from today's paper? "..she was part of a larger movement of teachers indoctrinating students with liberal ideology..." Repub Ryan Walter said "There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom" Conservative OK?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">(the teacher in Oklahoma has provided students with a link to a library that let them read banned books) </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I don't know how much you know about brainwashing and indoctrination. I don't know much. But I do know that extensive studies were done after GIs returned from North Korean prison camps where they had been subjected to brainwashing, some of them for years.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Results: they found no GI who was brainwashed by any definition. The techniques simply did not work. GIs pretended to go along with the program.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Note that the GIs were not neurologically mature.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just how susceptible are our children to indoctrination? Me? I am a born contrarian and skeptic. But I don't know how I would have been affected by such a program, though I suspect that nobody and nothing could have just wiped out my opinions and replaced them at any age.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">So I think this whole thing is sort of a straw man - few if any are attempting indoctrination, and few are fully affected, and most of those kids will develop different opinions before they leave school.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Remember 'Don't trust anyone over 30?' Teachers are like parents - they get ignored and what the peer group thinks is far more important. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;">We received 'sermons' on all kinds of topics from parents and teachers and pastors throughout our youth. How much stuck? Of that that stuck, how much of it was thoughtless. believed just because we were told? bill w</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: "comic sans ms", sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class=""></div></div>
_______________________________________________<br class="">extropy-chat mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" class="">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br class="">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat<br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>