THREAD: Navigating the sea of disinformation.

1. The main stream media [MSM] is accused of spreading fake news, while Social Media currently feels like swimming in an alphabet soup.

Sourcing accurate information is getting tougher and tougher.

2. While some news is exposed as fake, most of it would best be considered as misleading or highly contextualised.

The means that truth is easily distorted.

Distorting truth requires a clever narrator and a willing audience.

3. Today in Australia, some debunked “news” about Stormy Daniels was reconstituted from years earlier.

It offered zero evidence, but did fuel a conversation about how horrible it must be to be Melania.

I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It was an obvious hit-piece.

4. This story is similar to a pile of excrement putting on lipstick and make-up and telling the world it is a super-model.

The wider population is beginning to see that there is a narrator and there is a script.

One truth in the above story: “A storm is coming”

Yes it is!

5. The examples are everywhere. This thread is not to highlight them again, but illuminate the patterns which engage our mind.

Firstly, disconnect from the idea that truth exists on a good platform or a bad platform.

The MSM can report truth and social media can peddle rubbish.

6. This happens every day.

We all need to be wise as we carefully examine the soup of "information" currently being presented to us.

A loose cannon on Twitter it doesn't mean they are a bad person. Equally, not every MSM reporter is bad.

Much wisdom is required at this time.

7. Consider that all opinion is offered through filters of belief.

When researching, they key is to not be invested in any outcome, but just explore the evidence.

“Follow the money.”

There is no doubt anymore that we are living in a world of rampant disinformation.

8. Whether we are becoming aware of this disinformation, or if it is a new phenomenon, is largely irrelevant.

What is relevant is that we are being engulfed by it.

It would serve each of us to explore how brilliantly we’ve been divided.

9. Ponder:

- Who created this divide?
- How did personal opinion become weaponized?
- Was this coordinated?

I don’t mind various opinions, but I deliberately support those who expose the systems that block transparency and justice.

10. I don’t support those who shut down exploration. They are cowards.

Truth is truth, wherever it lives.

Equally, lies don’t live in defined categories; they can exist anywhere.

11. Social Media is a wild conversation, comprising incredible research, fun speculation, unfounded nonsense, outright lies, accusations & total mockery.

How can we ever sift through the tsunami of partial-truths and distorted nonsense being offered up for our viewing pleasure?

12. Here are some tips to identify propaganda:

13. We all believed propaganda because this is how we were trained.

We've forgotten what real news even looks like.

News presents things that have happened. Sometimes news provides evidence of wrong-doing.

Real news should actually be quite boring.

14. News should present facts, simply and clearly, allowing the reader to conclude for themselves.

Ideally, news will activate expansive thinking, rather than constrict the mind into believing scripted narratives.

15. How did news stray so far away from its role in maintaining basic accountability in society?

HT to @kaoskalked. In our discussions, he observed the subtle battle over who controls the global narrative and asked if we could be in an ancient mind-battle of Plato vs Socrates.

16. Plato relied on knowledge while Socrates invited questions.

Don’t be fooled by Socrates having mentored Plato. The nature of thought-progression means that ongoing questioning will always induce answers.

Keeping such an organic (or Socratic) enquiry open is quite difficult.

17. Offering answers that titillate people’s belief is far easier and instantly rewarding.

This is where Plato may have quietly ‘come against’ his mentor and created a future battle for human consciousness.

Do we choose to expand our consciousness or constrict it?

18. Now, the keen reader will notice that Q uses a Socratic method to expand thinking via continual questioning.

Questioning is not easily controlled and will always expand our thinking.

19. Conversely, the Media and modern academia tends to adopt Plato’s method, referencing backwards into a never-ending ream of open source history to try and explain and contextualise everything, thereby ending any further discussion about any other possibility.

20. The spirit of Plato seeks to end conversation by arriving at known facts, thereby ending all research and exploration.

It is Plato who sits behind the “conspiracy theory” accusation.

21. Conversely, the spirit of Socrates will continue exploring.

Socrates understood unlimited possibilities and the paradise of uncertainty.

While this is an over simplification of Socrates and Plato, this comparative metaphor helps us understand how we process information.

22. With so much information luring our minds into the next phase of belief, it is time to ask:

Do we trust our current beliefs, or should we keep on questioning?

Plato or Socrates?

23. When it comes to news, those who have challenged the traditional narrative have been shut down by the accusation of “conspiracy theorist”.

This is an accusation against research and questioning.

We are now learning that their only crime was embodying their inner Socrates.

24. History tells us that Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and was sentenced to die by drinking the poison hemlock.

This story sounds like he caught the Arkansas flu!

Never stop questioning and exploring.

/END/