Use mono-think to support your infallible and all-powerful side in the Cold War
Fight the Lies of the Other-Thinkers with Zeal
There are plenty of shared pints of beer in that alternate reality — it’s just not us drinking them
In his article about the day on which Australians honour their war dead, Paul Smith in his story “No Silos, Please, We’re Australian” reaches the following conclusion.
What it comes down to is this: I tell myself, I no longer want you to change when we are disagreeing. I am the one who can change, not by changing what I believe, but by not insisting that you are wrong if you don’t believe what I believe.
I find myself heartily agreeing with Paul.
If people would recognise that you can rarely change another’s mind, they would stop trying to do so and concentrate on modifying their own mindset so that it allows reaching a compromise despite disagreement.
The first step in the mentioned metamorphosis could even be the admission that people with opposing views are human beings and also deserve to live, possibly even argue.
This would come quite handy in our current twitter-happy times of hatred channelling towards any number of persons deemed to be agents of the designated enemies of the now, laser-targeted by governments and corporate mass media intoning moral outrage in their echo chambers.
Sorrowfully, I see no way of this happening any time soon unless governments — or their suzerains — embed citizens with behaviour-modifying brain chips.
But I fear the government-mandated programming would do little to promote empathy towards the not-samers and other-thinkers because that would impede the efficacy of waging war on people with whom you would, in a parallel universe, share a Friday pint or a shot of Moutai.
Disclaimers to the Above, and Assorted Imperatives
I do not agree with myself. Comrades, I will reform.
Vodka is evil, Bourbon is good.
Discard languages, forget countries, un-know people. Forget your memory is your suitcase.
Attack vigorously all individuals of the assigned now-enemies on social media and elsewhere.
Embrace double-think and erase all false personal recollections of the now-enemy.
Identify traitors and practitioners of non-pliability. Each morning, verify first yourself.
Détente is an un-word.
Highly kinetic non-peace is the only way to infinite peace.
Obtain ten 130 mg Potassium Iodide tablets per family member and a battery-powered MW transistor radio. A gas-mask is optional.
Paul Smith’s story on silos is here.