One way of looking at the systemic incessant attacks on education and intellectual pursuits, by the corporatist power structures who have taken control of our entire system of government is that it serves the purpose of keeping a very large segment of the population from reaching higher stages in the development of cognitive thinking.
The decades-old trend to de-fund public education across the country in favor of "vouchers," and home schooling, and the most recent emphasis of misguided programs like "No Child Left Behind," which focused on teaching for standardized tests, are part of this trend.
Ultimately, the result is the dumbing down of the population. This situation explains why a very large segment of the population has an underdeveloped ability for abstract thinking:
The final, most complex stage in the development of cognitive thinking, in which thought is characterized by adaptability, flexibility, and the use of concepts and generalizations. Problem solving is accomplished by drawing logical conclusions from a set of observations, such as making hypotheses and testing them.
Of course, there are many other tools the American Corporatocracy uses to (cognitively) control the population. Those include the effects of carefully planted misinformation and propaganda which is distributed in the airwaves as it were a toxic mist that permeates the entire media landscape. It also includes the implementation of carefully-planned strategies that are calibrated to push the worker to work longer and longer hours, for decreasing share of the economic pie, thus keeping her stressed and living at a subsistence level.
In reality, this is nothing new. All ruling elites throughout human history have relied on some sort of generalized mind control of the populace; it is the only way countless number of people would let themselves be subjugated and exploited by a very tiny group of people.
Devoid of their ability to reach higher levels of "abstract thinking," a significant segment of the population is thus rendered incapable of forming accurate concepts and generalizations about seemingly-unrelated trends.
This helps explains the phenomena whereas people tend to see the world in accordance to their own socioeconomic situation. This of course is a very "primitive" and "base" way of understanding the world, and helps explains the "cognitive dissonance" exhibited by a very large segment of the population.
And this affects everybody, whether conservative or liberal (some more than others, of course). So if you have someone in the lower scale of income distribution (poor, homeless, economic distress) they see the world a certain way (not very positive, by and large). Someone who is still doing really well (economically) sees the world in a different way.
This situation helps oppressive ruling elites to keep the population divided. As the oppression and exploitation increases, then the middle class diminishes, and is replaced by lower classes.
But the key is that because economic insecurity and distress creates such a psychological toll on people, by the time the lower classes increase, as the middle class keeps shrinking, their ability to mount a credible challenge to the creeping fascism also diminishes.
During this process you also see the entrenchment of a increasingly oppressive and brutal police state.
This is the situation today in the United States. The entire system of government is a de facto Neo-Fascist Corporatocracy. The fascist police state legal framework meant to consolidate power is being completed right now, but it has been in the works since the 9/11 event(s).
This is the reality, and it applies to all, but because each socioeconomic segment of the population has a different cognitive perception of reality, we end up with a generalized social Cognitive Dissonance effect. Ultimately, this is the way oppressive systems gain power; it creeps in.
In the U.S. what we have is a Neo-Fascist Corporatocracy. It's neo-fascist because the fascistic strategies are different and new. For example: The planning and implementation of a massive fraud to take millions of homes from citizens. It's a Corporatocracy because the ruling power reside in corporate board rooms, who have taken over our government.
The only way to stop the ascendancy of this system, which is consolidating power right now, is if a large-enough segment of the middle class is able to conceptualize this reality.
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