The organized political, social and religious associations of our time are at work to induce the individual person not to arrive at his convictions by his own thinking, but rather to make his convictions those which are being ready made for him by others.
Any man who thinks for himself - and at the same time is spiritually free, is to those who would influence or control his thoughts, something inconvenient and even dangerous.
Such a one, refusing to be controlled by the notions of others, does not offer them sufficient guarantee that he will merge into that organization the way they wish.
From every side and in the most varied ways it is dinned into him that the truths and convictions which he needs for life must be taken from the associations which have gained rights over him at the expense of his own GOD-given free will.
He comes at last to believe himself unqualified to make serious claim to thoughts of his own and concludes that the great important decisions are made by those much higher in standing. (In this case, scientific and religious circles.)
Dr. Albert Schweitzer
Nice post, moses. I basically agree, with two qualifications. You say
I would just say
a) that this is not just of “our time”, but has happened all through history. The means have gotten more sophisticated, certainly.
b) there’s no hard and fast line that can be drawn between the insidious manipulation of individual thinking for greedy profit of one sort or another, and the reasonable socialization of individual thinking that makes culture possible. It’s a continuum, which makes our choices difficult.
All the power structures we build, and that evolve in our societies, have this Janus-faced nature: governments, corporations, religions, all strike a balance between exploiting and benefitting their constituents. Eternal vigilance is the watchword for getting the most out of our self-created, and self-creating, webs of power.