"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." ~Henry David Thoreau
Cognitive liberticide
Liberticide = “destruction of liberty”. adjective liberticidal = “destructive of liberty”. after the French noun combining form liberticide: liberté, liberty + -i- + -cide, killing.
Latin etymology: libertas, liberty + caedere, to kill (cf. tyrannicide & regicide).
∴Ergo: Cognitive liberticide = “the destruction of cognitive liberty”.
bernay
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. "
~ Edward Bernays on the first page of his book entitled "Propaganda" published in 1928.
Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and applied his ideas about the unconscious mind to mass-psychology. Bernays is allso called the father of public relations and the father of spin.
ExplicationIn classical Greek mythology (i.e., Homer’s Iliad) myrmidónes were commanded by Achilles during the Trojan War. According to the legend Zeus created them from a colony of ants (myrmex). Cf. Sir Francis Bacon's metaphor on ants, spiders, and bees (Novum Organum Scientiarum, 1620). Per analogiam, ants are scientists who are rule conformist followers who lack the capacity to reflect (i.e., metacognitively/epistemologically) on what they actually do. They work myopically within a given Kuhnian paradigm without asking quintessential overarching questions and, ergo, without any awareness of the bigger picture.Quotation:Even entertainment can be politically of special value, because the moment a person is conscious of propaganda, propaganda becomes ineffective. However, as soon as propaganda as a tendency, as a characteristic, as an attitude, remains in the background and becomes apparent through human beings, the propaganda becomes effective in every respect.
Joseph Goebbels, Facism and the Female Form, 1942, p.170-71