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Mark Joyner episode number 98 in this is day 8 of the 30-day morning person. So let us ask the question. Are you truly independent?

To my fellow Americans. I'm not in America right now. I am in Thailand is actually July 5th for me, but I know that the celebrations are kicking off now. Everybody's probably been out there barbecuing and hanging out get ready for some fireworks here kind of miss miss all y'all back in the States. Wish I were uh participating in that.

I love love Fourth of July. It's a great great time, but let's talk about what this means, you know independent. So this was us getting our independence from the British right? But it seems that we are still quite dependent. On many things Upon which I believe we should not be dependent.

For example, we are dependent on outside sources for most of our thinking and I don't believe that most of these outside sources have our best interests in mind. If you are getting your political opinions, for example, spoon-fed to you by articles that you read. I don't think you are necessarily doing yourself any really big favors most of the political discussions that I hear involve people more or less parroting stuff that they read in different Publications and the degree to which these things are high or low brow depends on the publication's they're reading and the highbrow Publications are just better disguised forms of propaganda that use more highfalutin language and have more of Air of academic validity. It is still just as much propaganda as the rest of it. Some of it is. More obvious than the rest now. It is not very obvious to us.

When these pieces confirm our biases when we read a piece that is just getting us more information to support the beliefs that we already have. Well, there is this phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance where you know, when we find information that conflicts with our beliefs we tend to reject that information and we tend to seek out information that supports our beliefs.

I'll give you a really interesting example of a study that was conducted with that. They asked a bunch of people too. Choose which car they like This was an actual formal academic psychological study done in controlled conditions and they had people select a which of these cars do you think is the best one after letting them select which car they thought was the best they showed them a series of advertisements and what they found was that after you selected a particular car as the one that you liked you would spend more time looking at the ads that were for the car that you selected.

So what was this informing us? Well, it could mean many things. It could be interpreted. Of course in many different ways. But there are a lot of ways that this particular hypothesis this explanation that I'm about to give you can be interpreted but it has been reproduced in many many different ways and I think you can probably see this in your own behavior and behavior of others and the notion is this that once you decide that you are X Y or Z or you like X Y or Z.

You are going to seek out evidence to support that because We don't want to be wrong. Now this is why when you identify as a particular political stripe or another you are going to tend to conform with the way that that particular group of people thinks. All right.

So for example, when I was a younger man, I identified quite strongly as a Libertarian for a while there. I still very much share a lot of the libertarian sensibilities. I you know, I agree with a lot of what they have to say. However, you know, I think that all of these different political ideologies are based on last centuries technology. I think that almost all of this stuff needs to be rethought in the face of the changing landscape of technology that we exist in right now. So when I was a Libertarian if I found myself thinking about things I would tend to you know think how a Libertarian would think, you know, people would say, oh, well, you're a Libertarian you must think this way

How could you think that you're a Libertarian and I would feel sort of a certain amount of dissonance in my mind. If somebody called me on something that was not consistent with the way an entire group of people that likes to ascribe that label to themselves. Tend to think why is that a problem? That's a problem because I don't want to necessarily agree with an entire group of people. I may agree with some of what you have to say and I may disagree with a whole lot of what you have to say.

I don't want to be pigeonholed into a particular way of thinking because I have adopted a label on myself. Think about it.

I would like to be able to say well maybe this ideology that I have adopted is not serving me. Exactly. Well, I would like to be able to pick and choose little bits and pieces from all of these ideologies and create my own thinking form my own opinions and I would like to reserve the right to evolve those things over time as new information comes to light and as I change and as my needs change, we are all free to do this, but most of us do not know that we are free to do it.

I know some extremely intelligent people who identify with, you know, very very strongly with particular ideologies and they will fight tooth and nail to defend those ideologies even in the face of very very very clear evidence to support to support the notion that their their opinion is wrong.

And they will drudge up all kinds of Specious and facile information to support their particular beliefs. So are you independent? Are you really really really think about it?

If you identify with a particular ideology not necessarily just political of of any type if you have an opinion about diet or you know about health or a marketing technique or or anything for that matter you are going to tend to conform your thoughts to that that is a type of a mental prison. It is a prison within visible bars.

That was the first section of the Simpleology print book. In fact, it was called the prison with invisible bars and it was showing you exactly how these mechanisms work in our mind and how they control us. Why is this important to know because if you don't understand how this works you need to know that there are people out there who do and they will mercilessly and shamelessly exploit these cognitive phenomena to take advantage of you and to push you in particular directions.

Does that sound paranoid to you it should not because it's definitely a field of study that people are involved in deliberately people in politics in marketing in any form of persuasion or another are deliberately thinking about these things and the most Exploitable parts of our mind are these types of phenomena now this particular phenomenon that I described is but one of many many different types.

You should make yourself very very Adept on these topics. You should this should in Maya summation should be the foundational important stuff that everybody learns at a very very young age.

Now, if you guys want to take a deep dive on this stuff you guys can go to Amazon and buy the simple LG print book or you can probably find it at your local bookstore. If you have any local bookstores left because they are few and far between but most of the book stores that I go to have it you can call them up and see that book outlines many many different phenomena of the the flavor that I just described to you and shows you not only how to identify these in spot them but also new ways of thinking that will allow you to navigate the world in a healthier way.

Make you more independent

with that said you guys have beautiful Independence Day in the United States if you were not in the United States, I hope you have Independence to I hope we all do and wherever you are you have beautiful day, and I'll talk to you soon.

I probably won't be doing these over the next two days because Flying out to Bangkok to go see an event put on by this awesome dude, Sebastian Bay ha who invited me up there to hang out at his event and very much looking forward to that, but I will be back in on Monday morning back in the saddle. Who knows maybe I will be able to squeeze one of these in but I kind of doubt it will see. But anyway, you'll have beautiful day. Take care.

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