Chomsky on Fighting Back
What can one person do?
In answer to that question, one statement of Noam Chomsky’s cuts through a world of complexities and helps counteract the feeling of powerlessness that falls upon people trying to do the right thing in a complex and dangerous world:
“YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE
FOR THE PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES
OF YOUR ACTIONS.”
If you do not fight back, the “predictable consequences of your actions” are more of the same: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and more numerous. The rich and powerful, as if they were acting on orders from God, kill democracy and people in Third World countries and install dictators with whom American Interests can Do Business, using weapons and armies paid for by you to rob, torture, and kill innocent people … and they will use the media to blame the victims, therefore, we blame the victims, even when the victims are our own ancestors or the extended families of our lovers and friends.
The most important thing is to train
your mind so that you will not be duped.
Practice thinking critically and asking
questions. Passive acceptance is a
dangerous habit.
Question Everything …
Every day offers opportunities to exercise your critical faculties and pay attention to what is really being said and what is really happening. You are constantly confronted with media images. If you pay attention to what you are hearing and keep in mind who is paying the bills to have it “brought to you by…” you can read between the lines.
Ultimately your survival may depend on how well you read what it is you are seeing. Human beings are endowed with awesome capacities for perceiving and understanding their environment, and those capacities are never more powerful than when they are engaged in survival. When you realize that your survival may be at stake, your energies focus.
The soundbite thought pattern constantly bombarding you reinforces fragmented thinking and disrupts attempts to pursue a train of thought to any sort of conclusion, or explore anything beyond its surface. But it does not prevent you from thinking about things in depth yourself, if you want to. You cannot assume that you are being told the truth or that those in charge have your best interests at heart. Such an assumption in today’s world is extremely naive.
If you listen carefully and exercise your critical faculties, you can greatly enhance your chances of survival. Or you can choose to just play the game so that you stay in good with the power brokers. But who knows when it’s your turn to become part of the forgotten and abandoned ones?
