The specific subject of the post title is contained in section (2) below.
1. Some thought provoking comments from Rappoport, firstly on the discounting of an individual's existence as regards its capacity for healing, which takes place in some branches of medical science and practice (though imo without doubt, if the relevant compounds and technology which have been discovered are used wisely, they can be of incredible value too). Rappoport's full post can be found here and is well worth reading because of the illustrations he provides to understand his observations more fully.
When it comes to what is laughingly called medical science, the basic energy, drive, ambition, outlook, and inner vision of the individual is discounted. His emotional force is discounted. The resilience of his immune system is discounted. The power of his spiritual beliefs is discounted. His ability to overcome obstacles is discounted. And of course, his natural right to make decisions about his own health is discounted.
Instead, he is viewed as a mechanical unit reacting to germs, with a high potential for failure. This is pure insanity. This is where all the purported sophistication of basic medical science winds up: in a dead end. LIFE itself was eliminated from the equations and formulas...
2. And secondly in the same article, some extremely interesting comments about the actual perceptual/cognitive process which takes place when a viewer is watching typical TV news programming type media.
Television, in the main, does not attempt to impart knowledge. It strives to give the viewer the impression that he knows something. There is a difference.
Knowledge, once established, is independent of the viewer. Whereas the impression of knowing is a feeling, a conviction, a belief the viewer holds, after he has watched moving images on a screen. THIS is what the addicted viewer prefers. He wants no part of knowledge.
And further:
When you export this pattern out to a whole society, you are talking about a dominant method through which fake knowledge is groped and held close.
“Did you see that fantastic video about the Iraq War? It showed that Saddam actually had bioweapons.”
“Really? How did they show that?”
“Well, I don’t remember. But watch it. You’ll see.”
And that’s another feature of the modern acquisition of “knowledge”: amnesia about details.
The viewer can’t recall key features of what he saw. Or if he can, he can’t describe them, because he was inside them, busy building up his impression of knowing something.
Narrative-visual-television story strips out and discards conceptual analysis.
Later in the day after reading this and it striking me as quite fascinating, I was listening to a conversation I found on YouTube between two individuals I suspected at the outset were alt-media agents. They were really consummate pros as they spoke together for approx 1.5 hours, oftentimes with a sort of drama and excitement passing between them - and just as Rappoport expresses above, I sensed a feeling in me that I was 'now in the know', or just about to be anyway. Yet after all was said and done, they really had said absolutely nothing of any consequence whatsoever. A few odd words of unsupported gossip was somehow turned into something way 'bigger' and seemingly 'substantial'. Anything which was maybe building, eventually turned into a nothingness/anticlimax - yet they were immediately able to pick up from this moment and start afresh.
There were no concepts, nothing I could repeat now of value about the subject. And yet, all the time, there was a sense of getting to know and 'being in the know'. So strange!
