Mark Twain and the Compounding Effect of Indoctrination and Wisdom
Filled with wisdom and biting satire, Mark Twain is a well of amazing quotes. You need only know a little bit about me and my brand to know why the above quote is one of my favorites. It might as well have been the official press release of this project and my crusade against the sacred cows humanity serves.
As stated by Mark Twain in the above quote, most often people just repeat some version of what they were taught when they were young and impressionable, not realizing that the people who taught them were also repeating what someone told them, and so on and so forth (see: “The Power of Accepting When You Are Wrong” for more on this). This is wonderful when what is being taught are tales of wisdom and virtue around the campfire of some ancient native tribe… not so great when it’s the politics of today that have power over the futures and even lives of others. My father’s fear based Christianity mirrors that of his father’s. The Marxist professor indoctrinating their students is most likely just repeating a (more extreme) version of what he or she was taught when they were in college.
You can see how based on this, the descent into stupidity and/or fundamentalism could be, and often is, rapid.
Tactically speaking, in order for indoctrination to be successful, it must be injected with fear or righteousness. (Or both, which is even better.)
The reign of the Roman Catholic church only worked because of the underlying fear of hellfire and exile from the tribe (excommunication).
Socialism (and the suffocation of economic growth—which is wealth and progress) only works if you truly believes it is righteous to use violence to ensure that no one has more than another.
Burning witches at the stake only works if you believe that the act is in service of divine righteousness, rather than simply setting actual, screaming human women on fire.
The modern “Progressive” Left must fear individual liberty and believe it is righteousness to wage war on economic freedom, free speech, and even language itself.
A forced segregation, ethnic “cleansing,” or genocide must require you to truly fear a particular subset of people, and believe that it is righteousness (to some “greater good”) as you persecute, imprison or murder another human being.
It is this focus on fear and righteousness that prevents the indoctrinated from stepping back and asking two pivotal questions:
What does the practical application of what I’ve been told to believe look like in the real world?
Who is actually served by what I believe?
Asking those questions causes the whole charade of indoctrination to fall apart. For example, true societal growth can never be equal, thus the real world practical application of a classless (read: Socialist) society can only be forced equality through restriction. Limitation through violence. The fundamentalist pursuit of “equality” can only serve to make life worse for everyone, never better.
If the 10th century English peasant had asked of his Catholicism, “Who does this serve?” he would have found it to be the church, who used indoctrination to amass wealth and power while expending a great deal of energy ensuring their necessity was never questioned.
Skillful indoctrination also requires that any outlier who dares to question the powers that be is treated as a societal pariah or an outright enemy. “An enemy of the faith!” “An enemy of the proletariat!” etc. This way the subjects police themselves. It is far more difficult to send soldiers to hunt every dissident than it is for the indoctrinated to hunt them down themselves. The KGB, effective as they were, still had limited manpower. But if you, the Kremlin, can convince your citizens to report their neighbors for violations…well, that’s how ten men can rule over ten million.
Indoctrination seeks to eliminate INDEPENDENCE.
If the ultimate goal of any indoctrination is dependence and fealty to a power structure—the Church, the Nobility, the State, etc—first you have to eliminate independence. One of the best ways you can do this is to create fear. A man who has independence doesn’t need the golden chains promised by a ruler, just like a woman who isn’t afraid of hellfire isn’t going to give her money to the bishop while her children starve.
For those of us that ride for Liberty, this is what we’re up against. Indoctrination takes time, but with time comes a deadly compounding effect. In 2020 the government grabbed power on a scale that would have been inconceivable to the average American not even twenty years ago. To that end, what the government got away with in the aftermath of 9-11, would have never happened in 1980. And so on and so forth. True indoctrination—a belief in the absolute necessity of a centralized power structure paired with a belief in the need for complete, universal submission to it—takes time. People don’t lose their independence overnight. This ever-nearing system of a top-down, centrally-planned society has been in the works for decades. The pieces are finally all in place, the citizenry are docile and dependent, and its final expression is ready to be implemented.
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Now, one could look at Twain’s quote above and say, “Daniel, you’ve gotten everything you know and believe secondhand as well.”
And you would be right. But that’s where the comparison ends. What I believe may be secondhand, but it is NOT "without examination,” and it was received from authorities who did diligently “examine the questions at issue.” Many examined the questions in ways that had never been done before (and at great cost to themselves, since this examination often contradicted the prevailing power structures).
Therein lies the key difference between my secondhand beliefs and those of the indoctrinated. Indoctrination always serves a power structure. My beliefs do not. In fact, my beliefs are all entirely built around the idea that the power structures humanity has accepted and dutifully served throughout history are, in fact, NOT necessary.
The man with a Thin Blue Line flag on his truck who thinks the Pledge of Allegiance should be mandatory and anyone who burns a flag ought to go to prison is a generational product of secondhand indoctrination by the Warfare State. What I have learned and believe challenges the necessity of the Warfare State itself.
To the same end, there’s a reason those in power have let Marxism slither into every aspect of learning and media over the last 75 years, while the writings of Ludwig Von Mises (the father of Austrian, free market economics) have been suppressed and relegated to anonymity outside of a few stubborn heretics. Marx touts the righteousness of the Welfare State. Mises undermines the necessity of its existence. Marx is no threat to the establishment. Mises is.
I am deeply grateful for the secondhand knowledge I have been able to learn from. Without it, my path to freedom would be all but impossible. I’m not that smart. I need the works and teachings of those that came before me. Those once-in-a-century minds who broke from the herd and not only questioned authority, but had the courage and brilliance to put their new ideas into cohesive written form.
I’m not one of those generational great minds. Far from it. I don’t have the capacity to create something wholly original and paradigm-shifting. But what I do have is the desire to seek out the works of those that have. I have just enough natural capacity to break from the herd—to resist societal conditioning—but I still need someone to show me the path. I may be an early adapter when compared to the totality of humanity, but I’m still just a follower. And I’m carrying the torch of those who came before me.
In the spirit of Yin and Yang, wisdom shares a common thread with indoctrination. Both are compounding energies.
Indoctrination is like the compounding interest of a credit card. It increases rapidly, eventually burying you in a hole so deep you can no longer see anything other than what is directly in front of you. Wisdom is like the compounding interest of a long-term investment. It is slow and steady, takes time to grow, and few have the patience for it. But, when allowed, the rewards it creates are wealth, peace, and endless possibility.
Nothing good ever happens fast. As history has proven, rapid change in society is never for the better. True progress, and its soul enlightenment, takes more time. Indoctrination is undermined and power structures crumble when the works of those first brave outliers are passed down and shared from one truth-seeker to another.
So be of good cheer. Wisdom is also compounding, just at a much slower and steadier rate.
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Are your beliefs and the underlying ideologies wisdom or indoctrination?
Are your beliefs based on examination, or repetition?
What institutions and power structures are served by your beliefs?
I encourage you to ask yourself these questions, free of judgement. If you are willing to be truthful with yourself, and you find that you are indeed a victim of indoctrination, guess what? WE ALL WERE AT SOME POINT! That’s how societal conditioning works. Be gentle with yourself, but do something about it. Truth and wisdom are out there. They just require a little effort to find.
Here’s a hint: you’ll know you’re on the right track when you start encountering opposition.
Or, if you’re one of the people who’s overcome your own indoctrination and challenged core beliefs, please share with us how you did it.
And of course any other questions or comments, let us know below!