The Hegelian Dialectic
Throughout our lives, we are motivated by emotions. Those emotions, when evoked strongly enough will override any and all sense of reason. This is so apparent that the great philosophers who laid out the rules of logic, thousands of years ago, found that such an appeal to emotion was contradictory to those rules.
The very men who founded this country, and fought in our Revolutionary War, were “freedom fighters.” They were fighting to rid themselves of a system of government which did not, in their opinion, represent their interests in the way they thought a government should. They found that government to be unfair, tyrannical, oppressive. In fact, they found it so much so, that they were willing to take up arms against their brethren, and kill them or die themselves to achieve the necessary change… to get out from under the thumb of a king and an empire.
I have no doubt that in that time, the king of England found necessary to influence the men in uniform, fighting against American revolutionaries, to view them as subversives. They challenged the crown and mother England and, possibly even God. These men had to be vilified. If your enemy is human, you will show mercy and compassion. That would be unacceptable. That’s not how wars are fought and won. That’s not how those in power keep their power.
Those in power stay in power by creating an atmosphere of fear. We can recognize this throughout our own tiny American history. It has been employed by many powers around the world, and probably started when people started to socialize. In despotic totalitarian dictatorships, you have armed guards harassing people, killing people in public with little or no reason. In more “democratic” states, where the people do have some influence over government, the Hegelian Dialectic is often used, whereby a problem is created to induce a specific reaction and a solution is offered, making those offering the solution appear to be “saviors” of sorts. Imagine for a moment that to keep a people docile, you just needed to present the people with a problem. That problem would make them fear. You relieve them of that fear and they will revere you.
How difficult would it be to manufacture fear?
Have a look at this…
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