Monday, April 30, 2012

“Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, cannot say.”

War is fought on many fronts, from intelligence to actual confrontation. The intelligence war alone has multiple parts – from protecting own information and feeding false information to the opponent to affecting the morale of the other side. The amount of true information is usually not a problem, there is so little of it anyways. But making sure the fake information is believable and reaches a wide audience, now that is tricky.

History has shown us the power of information over the people. May it be the Vietnam war, where too much information caused dismay among the crowds and eventual retreat, or perhaps Nazi Germany, where by giving the Germans an old code book, the Allies managed the Normandy assault with a lot less difficulty than without having fed the opposing force fake information. Information is also important inside a single society.

“How many people actually belonged to the Nazi party? The Communist party? The Jihad party? A very small number. But there were always plenty of other people who were happy to do the work for them, and others afraid enough to let it happen.” – J.M.Straczynski

Argument ad hominem is a popular weapon of choice of nearly every politician aiming for power.

“Nobody takes power, they are given power by the rest of us.” – J.M.Straczynski

And by the process of elimination and manipulation of public opinion, it becomes a straight road to chaos. Because by allowing a single small group of people make a powergrab is one of the final steps to oppression, as proposed by Isaiah Berlin. This would be the case of positive liberty – the kind where people believe that their leaders know what the right things to do are. The negative case would be when the people limit the power of their leaders and hence believe that every person has to think of the bigger picture and that everyone can be fallible. The trick is to find a balance between these two liberties, as both extremes have a detrimental effect to the society, as extremes so very often do.

For now, let us contemplate on the idea of Gods and Their fluffy existence or a single one and His lonely existence.

“Probably too much wine, women, and smoke.”

“He didn’t do any of those things. To see him dead, how terrible for him!”

“Why, he wasn’t missing anything?”

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