Intellectual vs physical force

In our Age, in our society, everyone can acknowledge to be free. No one can exert physical force to induce us into situations, except for the State itself. Our governments enforce the universal declaration of human rights, being the wisdom resulting from two world wars. To be free, citizens need to know their rights and how to use them. The governments instruct schools to teach the constitution, but textbooks are rather history books than explicit useful instructions to educate the future citizens. But this is a problem of education, not of establishment. The rights and the laws are in place, and it is our duty to learn them, appreciate them, teach them, and guard them with our own lives.

There is a new forefront in the struggle for democracy, which we refer to as the achievement of higher standards. Force is to a totalitarian system, like conditioning is to a democratic system. Conditioning is the intellectual device used to influence or control society. To exert conditioning is to exert intellectual force. The universal declaration of human rights is not up-to-date on this matter. We all recognise force when we see it, but we may not recognise conditioning just as easily. It exists, however, and its use can be deliberate. Some make a living out of it, selling professional services. We all see their product, but fail to understand how it works, and thus fail to defend ourselves from it. The plateau is reached when most is at stake, namely, when asking for political power via consensus. Asking the government to protect us from conditioning is like asking to a Nazi to protect us from violence. We need to develop a new level of awareness.

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