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posted by dennisn on April 11th, 2012 at 9:06PM
Are you trying to say your family and friends are indoctrinated / brainwashed by the state, currently? Perhaps you should ... uhh... mention this to them? :)
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posted by dennisn on April 11th, 2012 at 9:15PM
(I don't mean to say State propaganda/brainwashing plays no part -- it certainly does -- but I guess I'm not as pessimistic as you to argue that our fellow citizens are merely products/victims of "The State", rather than the producers of it. For example, your family and friends may argue that we need borders to stop heroin from coming in from overseas. They may hold many such (superficially) sensible opinions. Are you sure these opinions (which necessitate our much hated "artificial borders") are simply state-propaganda/brainwashing, or self-derived (flawed) ideas?)
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posted by jenni on April 12th, 2012 at 9:08AM
Sadly I think many people, not all, but many, just regurgitate other people's ideas without clearly thinking them over and most of the time the ideas are coming from mainstream media/other forms of censored news sources which are owned by the same people and corporations that control everything else blah blah blah, perhaps they are the state, not my final answer. People do what they are told. Coming up with our own ideas is a rarity today. People tend to just live day to day... and as I write this I am saddened because I am horribly pessimistic. Oh well, c'est la vie. Also forgive my writing skills and their lack of properly structured syntax.
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posted by dennisn on April 12th, 2012 at 9:15AM
I specifically asked about your parents and your friends, to avoid these kinds of (evasive) abstractions -- to avoid talking about "unknown distant other people". Does your comment apply to them?
Also, I suppose you are also raising the question of responsibility -- at what point in one's life is one responsible for one's actions? If I murder someone, can I be absolved of guilt and simply say "I was regurgitating what other people forced me to think/do"?
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