There’s a YouTube video of an interview between a Ukrainian reporter and a captured Russian soldier that reveals the depth to which propaganda embeds belief in people. The Ukrainian interviewer uses his cell phone to call the soldier’s mother and allows him to speak to her. The young soldier tries to explain that what he has seen on the ground in Ukraine runs counter to what Russian media and officials proclaim, but the mother simply says he has been brainwashed. From inside Russia, she tells her son in Ukraine what is happening in Ukraine. You can see the emotional effect in the soldier’s eyes as he finds himself being accused of lying.
The Russian’s mother has been persuaded that the Ukrainians are evil minions of the Americans because, she reports, Biden’s son has had dealings with Ukraine. She is also convinced that Ukrainians are a threat to Russia because they are Nazis. And it doesn’t seem to matter to her that her son is trying in the phone call to explain a different reality. There’s a similar interview with another soldier who has a conversation with his grandmother. The view from Russia is that the young men are brainwashed.
From the perspective of outsiders, the statements by the mother and grandmother seem out of touch with the reality easily viewable on numerous videos, including those that report on the massacres of civilians. But, then, the Russians at home might have little or no access to YouTube videos or outside news channels. And, in another “but, then” they might choose to see only videos favorable to what they already believe. I assume just about everyone leans toward seeing that which is self-confirming and reassuring.
That confirmation (bias) process is tough to avoid in the twenty-first century because of the many ways we receive information and the frequency we receive it. For example, once we view a couple of related product or services websites, the algorithms in Heavenly Cyberspace choose to show us more of the same. So, if we look at a video favorable to Ukrainians and unfavorable to Russians on YouTube, the next time we turn on the computer, we see videos with the same perspective. The repeated exposure to “more of the same” embeds it within the nucleus of our being. Once there, it is almost as long-lived as a proton which, by the way, lasts 1.67 X 10^34 years—give or take a week.
To speed up the process of proton decay, the physicists at CERN use the Large Hadron Collider in which accelerators ram protons into protons. The process requires an enormous expenditure of energy. The interviews with soldiers and their relatives in Russia reveal that beliefs emplaced deep in the nuclei of people are just as difficult to break as protons are at CERN. In spite of the young captured soldiers’ efforts to convince their relatives that the situation in Ukraine is not what Russian TV proclaims, the Russian women prefer their reinforced belief over their offsprings’ experiences.
The belief those women hold that Ukrainians—fellow Slavs—are evil is unshakeable and unbreakable.
Because we are all subject to durable propaganda, our own biases are difficult to break. Obviously, ramming them into contradictory realities doesn’t guarantee a decay. Those interviews reveal the cohesiveness of belief.
At CERN, the protons whiz around a giant loop till they collide at nearly the speed of light. We might suppose that going round and round to ram into realities that contradict our beliefs is an effective way to break them. The words of the mother and grandmother, however, reveal how difficult the process is. Their beliefs did not break even during a prolonged collision with the realities their children revealed.
The Russian’s mother has been persuaded that the Ukrainians are evil minions of the Americans because, she reports, Biden’s son has had dealings with Ukraine. She is also convinced that Ukrainians are a threat to Russia because they are Nazis. And it doesn’t seem to matter to her that her son is trying in the phone call to explain a different reality. There’s a similar interview with another soldier who has a conversation with his grandmother. The view from Russia is that the young men are brainwashed.
From the perspective of outsiders, the statements by the mother and grandmother seem out of touch with the reality easily viewable on numerous videos, including those that report on the massacres of civilians. But, then, the Russians at home might have little or no access to YouTube videos or outside news channels. And, in another “but, then” they might choose to see only videos favorable to what they already believe. I assume just about everyone leans toward seeing that which is self-confirming and reassuring.
That confirmation (bias) process is tough to avoid in the twenty-first century because of the many ways we receive information and the frequency we receive it. For example, once we view a couple of related product or services websites, the algorithms in Heavenly Cyberspace choose to show us more of the same. So, if we look at a video favorable to Ukrainians and unfavorable to Russians on YouTube, the next time we turn on the computer, we see videos with the same perspective. The repeated exposure to “more of the same” embeds it within the nucleus of our being. Once there, it is almost as long-lived as a proton which, by the way, lasts 1.67 X 10^34 years—give or take a week.
To speed up the process of proton decay, the physicists at CERN use the Large Hadron Collider in which accelerators ram protons into protons. The process requires an enormous expenditure of energy. The interviews with soldiers and their relatives in Russia reveal that beliefs emplaced deep in the nuclei of people are just as difficult to break as protons are at CERN. In spite of the young captured soldiers’ efforts to convince their relatives that the situation in Ukraine is not what Russian TV proclaims, the Russian women prefer their reinforced belief over their offsprings’ experiences.
The belief those women hold that Ukrainians—fellow Slavs—are evil is unshakeable and unbreakable.
Because we are all subject to durable propaganda, our own biases are difficult to break. Obviously, ramming them into contradictory realities doesn’t guarantee a decay. Those interviews reveal the cohesiveness of belief.
At CERN, the protons whiz around a giant loop till they collide at nearly the speed of light. We might suppose that going round and round to ram into realities that contradict our beliefs is an effective way to break them. The words of the mother and grandmother, however, reveal how difficult the process is. Their beliefs did not break even during a prolonged collision with the realities their children revealed.
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