PROPAGANDA
VS
CRITICAL THOUGHT
How to recognize propaganda,
indoctrination, self-deception, and ideology
— with lack of critical thought —
as driving forces within terrorism, warfare, corporate greed,
and political and religious
fundamentalism
Because the issues in this website are so critical for readers in general, as well as specialists, new headings, highlights and other changes have been implemented to steer readers to the most important details.
Fresh insights about ethical issues which divide us urgently need to be re-visited from the perspective of what distinguishes latent viruses of propaganda and ideology in these issues from critical thought and feeling.
Propaganda and self-deception exist among both extreme and moderate liberals and conservatives, as well as among some mainstream thinking, entertainment, and music which is intended to manipulate feelings.
Papers and articles in this short website search for clues to the often hidden presence of indoctrination and invite readers to add their own creative ideas about self- and other-deception.
Two styles of thinking face each other across a growing chasm.
- Authoritarians and ideologists, both conservative and liberal, function more emotionally than they realize. Authoritarians work from unexamined assumptions and sources more than from reason or direct evidence. They include well meaning fundamentalists or literalists who prefer “orderly error to complex truth." They do not perceive how indoctrinated they have become.
- Critical thinkers, by contrast, question and test the certitude
of their assumptions. They engage in competent reflection and unmanipulative appeals
to emotion. They examine opposing positions fairly. Integrating their heads with
their hearts, they have the courage to think for themselves and challenge the paradigms
of those who control different fields and movements. They strive to distinguish
reflections whose logic and evidence are critical from those which derive from
ideology, indoctrination, and self-deception.
Roderick Hindery, retired professor in Comparative Religious and Social Ethics, Temple University, invites you to join the dialogue on which style of thinking you prefer and what kind of world you want to live in.
Visit my blog for further dialogue on these and related topics.
My most recent paper, "Comparative Ethics, Ideologies, and Critical Thought", is the first paper that appears to the left. My next most recent paper, May 12, 2006, “Skepticism and Agnosticism as Ideology”, is added after the sixth paper below.
The two papers "Viruses in Academe: Indoctrination and Intellectuals", (November 2001) and "Facing Up to Indoctrination and Self-deception in Religious Groups, New and Traditional" elaborate on ideas and counter-positions set forth in my recently published book "Indoctrination and Self-deception or Free and Critical Thought?" (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press: 2001).*
The fourth paper, Denial in Private and Public Life: Emotional Anemia in Ethical Though" illustrates propaganda's counterpart within the self: self-deception and denial. It focuses on war against Iraq as an example of denial on several scores.
A fifth paper, "Advocacy in Academe: Academic versus Confessional Theology" touches on distinctions between propaganda and advocacy in academe — in religious studies, theology, and other disciplines.
A sixth paper, "Identifying Religious Terrorism through Profiles of Propaganda", analyzes ways to identify religious terrorists before they act physically.
A seventh paper, "The Anatomy of Propaganda in Religious Terrorism", published in the Humanist, April 2003, 16-19 makes the sixth paper's full article available.
The eighth paper, "Skepticism and Agnosticism as Ideology" was written for this website.
All these papers imply that many other social and ethical issues can be fruitfully revisited in the context of what distinguishes propaganda and self-deception from critical thought. These papers are shared to invite scholarly exchanges about issues seen anew in the context of propaganda and self-deception as opposed to thinking critically for one's self.
The second paper was delivered to faculty and students of Arizona State University, Dept. of Religious Studies, in November, 2001. Some of the third paper was presented at the SCE, Western Region Meeting at Loyola Marymount University, February, 2002. The fourth paper was delivered at the SCE meeting on February 7, 2003. The fifth paper was published in the CSSR Bulletin in March/April 2003.
The sixth paper summarizes my article in The Humanist (April 2003, 16-19) about how to identify religious terrorists through their profiles of propaganda.
*SPECIAL DISCOUNT
With prepaid college bookstore orders for either graduate or undergraduate courses, books can be obtained at discounts for only $30. Inquire about details at Customer Service, Mellen Press: U.S./Canada: (716) 754-2788 UK: (01570) 423-356 sales@mellenpress.com
"Propaganda Vs Critical Thought" is the web site of Roderick Hindery, retired professor of social and comparative ethics, Temple University.
Web site of Roderick
Hindery
retired professor, Temple University
“Schooled by adversity, our empathy for others will grow more robust as we weather and withstand ideology, propaganda, and indoctrination.”
“Whenever we refuse to parrot ideological self-interestedness and manipulation, we take up the best defense against them; and we exercise our own freedom to its fullest by a love which confirms the freedom of others.
“A second spring may yet arrive when religious and other humanistic traditions, new and old—radical, liberal, and conservative—shun thinking like robots, and proclaim from the rooftops the irreplaceable gift, grace, and adventure of thinking, not ideologically, but freely and critically for oneself.”
--Roderick Hindery
Updated January, 2012