Propaganda - Description and Feel

PROPAGANDA IS EFFECTIVE BECAUSE it works on an emotional level. Most of our decisions are based on a combination between the perceived results of previous experience, the emotions we experience regarding the current situation, and logical analysis of the problem. Inside that mess is also perceived estimations of our skills, probable success, and evaluation of the forces and elements against us, if any.

What motivates us is not logic however, but emotion.

The propagandist uses symbols, attitudes and morals that are embedded in the target audience to control and limit the emotional state of his target. This is desirable because the emotional response is deep, powerful, long-lasting -- and not controlled by rational awareness or evaluation of the situation. An intellectual, rational response is not desired and is not sought.

There is a novel, one of my favorites by Philip K. Dick, We Will Remember It for you Wholesale, which posed a question -- If you remember spending six weeks as a Billionaire touring Europe and socializing among the world trenders. If it is a pure memory, wired into your matrix, did it happen? Did it? -- if it did, if the vacation could be authored, crafted by experienced and expert travelers, and tailored to your preferences and desires, would not that experience (which you could acquire in only a few hours, rather than six weeks) be more appealing than real travel to foreign lands with its reality of bungles and lost luggage and missing reservations, menacing dark streets, and weird toilet paper in the bathroom?

False Brain Information and Your Diet Plan

A while back I wrote up a post about the Malable Variance of Time, where I showed how inaccurate our minds can be on a given topic which -- for the most part-- has been exactly the same from the day we were born. We have a ton of awareness experience with time, and it would seem on the surface that we should be pretty good at guessing how long we have been waiting for an event to occur. But we're not. We suck at recalling amounts of time something has been going ont, or how long we have been waiting on it to happen, or how long it has been since it happened last.

In this post we are going to look at how easy it is for our minds to tell us that what we are eating is just fine, and that simply putting a beer into a short round mug, instead of a tall thin mug wouldn't possibly be a factor in consuming nearly twice as much as we think we did. That would be silly. Right?  --- At least you can be of comfort in knowing that I'm just as suseptable to this as you are. Because Knowing about it won't stop it from happening to you.

The nuts and bolts of writing a Scene

Want to see a grown writer roll his eyes into the back of his head, stick his fingers into his ears and start chanting "na na na na na" like a four-year-old? Easy, just start talking about structure. Things like outlines and guidelines and scene structure and anything that smacks of planning and non-creative activity that will stifle the flow of electric wow-ness.

This paradigm of belief is based on the misconception and confusion regarding creativity vs creation. Creativity is a force, an energy, and a chaos, which if guided through  a filter of brainstorming often results in plots, ideas, characters and dramatic paradigms for a story. Creation, is the process of structure applied to the wild energies.

Timeline of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2011)

2001 in Afghanistan

• October 7: (9 p.m. local time): the United States, supported by Britain, begins its attack on Afghanistan, launching bombs and cruise missiles against Taliban military and communications facilities and suspected terrorist training camps. Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat were hit.
• October 9: A cruise missile kills four U.N. demining employees and injured four others in a building several miles east of Kabul.
• October 26: Abdul Haq killed.
• November 6 - Zari, Keshendeh and Aq-Kupruk fall to the Northern Alliance¹
• November 8 - Pakistan, being the only nation that still had diplomatic ties to the Taliban, asked Afghanistan's rulers to close their consulate in the city of Karachi.
• November 9: Battle of Mazari Sharif.
• November 10 - The Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters both claimed that the strategic northern Afghan city of Mazari Sharif was taken by Northern Alliance fighters.
• November 11: Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton, and Volker Handloik are ambushed and killed.
• November 12 - Taliban forces abandon Kabul ahead of advancing Northern Alliance troops.
• 2001 uprising in Herat.