Overt versus Covert, 2

Fellow comes over to you and tells you, «Hello, do you mind if I slaughter you rather thoroughly?» You'd feel induced to a given degree of circumspection, isn't it? Another fellow comes over to you and tells you, «You know I'm your friend, always been, and I'm telling you this only for your own good, mind, you know all too well that everybody covertly thinks that you ought to give in to those who know best and give up looking with your own eyes and… (shrink yourself one way or another).» Would you feel induced to the same degree of circumspection?

The line between the two methods of suppression is your alarm threshold. Hence those who use the covert method have every interest in raising it: the higher your alarm threshold, the more suppression can take place without you realising it. In the real world this is enacted on two fronts: one is nipping in the bud your brilliance, your curiosity, your critical sense and your gumption, and diverting your attention, by perverting education and popular culture; the other is nipping truth in the bud with a totalitarian control on the hierarchies controlling the information channels.

And therefore that’s why you never “think” about the “reasons why”, but just “look”, why you never “listen” to the “explanations”, but just “look”: what’s really there? What’s the real final product of their actions – and even more that of their advice?

And it’s obvious this is particularly true – and particularly worth strictly adhering to and putting into actual practice – in the face of opposition: when someone begins to “object” to your plain looking and asking questions and demanding answers and verifying them, by either raising hell or the quicksand of reticence, elusiveness, diversion, that’s where you know the chances someone is trying to cover up something unpalatable reach the peak.