Just Saying So, Doesn't Make It So

The great casualty of the mainstream mass media, is their insistence that their saying so, makes anything the truth -- or they wouldn't have said so.  They believe there is no higher truth than whatever they say, no matter what they say -- because they are the self-proclaimed arbiters of that truth -- and they got it from others self-certified to know, even if they do not understand anything themselves -- but have learned through their mass communication courses, how to seem like one does.

It's very annoying for those who actually and really know what they are talking about -- to have to listen to the self-proclaimed authorities on the subject matter they have chosen to define as their own turf and jurisdiction -- especially in those fields where the truth is self-evident to most people, without anyone having to tell them authoritatively what to think.  So usually what these self-proclaimed experts do, is to create fields of expertise, that never existed before their creation of it -- as though that were of singular great importance of itself, and not in the context of any real world experiences.

In that manner, they can proclaim what they know as being "brilliant" because it is unintelligible and not self-evident except to a special group of people indoctrinated to all see the same things as brilliant -- even if no others can see that also.  And so bureaucracies and hierarchies are created and maintained, to ensure that everyone is properly indoctrinated (educated) to see things the same way -- and never to challenge that authority, because that is not what everyone is entitled to do.  Only a self-selected few, can do all the thinking for everyone else -- and the job of the mainstream mass media, is to see that everyone else does think that way -- as their specialized role in the great social machinery.

It doesn't matter that what they say and know, has no basis in fact or experience -- just that they "know," what everybody else does, even if it isn't true -- because that is not their business to know or determine, but only to follow the directives of those in authority.  And somebody is always in authority besides themselves, and what their own senses are telling them -- because they think the rules override the realities for which those rules were created to simulate.

Those can be fatal errors when one presumes that they have the right of way and are safe to proceed -- without first verifying that presumption with the actual realities of traffic conditions.  That is the most obvious situation there can be glaring differences between what one thinks -- and what is actually happening.  Those are most of the problems in the world -- the separation of thought -- from the actualities of reality in our daily lives until one is no longer effectively functioning in the world most do -- but only in their thoughts and memories of the world cut off from the verification of the senses.

One almost expects that among the aged -- as the great problem characteristic of the problems of aging -- but also is a problem of those at any age, who are effectively disassociated and disaffected from their own awareness of their environment and context.  Such people argue that they are "right" and should assert their rights, even at great danger to their very lives, safety and equanimity -- thinking in their minds, that they are in a duel to the death, with every person and thing they encounter -- which ensures that one day, they will be -- prematurely and disastrously, which should be the conditioning to avoid.