Enlightenment

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A bad start, A good start.

It all started with the American elections of 2016 December. I remember waking up one day, astounded. I had gone to bed the previous night thinking how bonkers it would be if Trump won the elections. How could this seemingly insane person win the freakin' elections? This sparked my interest in American politics. Everyone in my circle had been bashing and ridiculing this guy for months. I started out the traditional way, watching videos of ignorant Trump followers. It was fun while it lasted; witnessing horribly ignorant people making a fool of themselves on the internet. These people lacked common sense, and a general understanding of the world. The curiosity gradually receded, and I got busy with other things. Months later, I was back, now binging on liberal-bashing vids, which was a result of watching those SJW bashing vids, which was a result of watching those instant Karma vids, which was a result of watching those public outrage vids (I used to stay up real late at nights, with no purpose those days). Ah, the liberals were making fools of themselves too! Faith in humanity restored. These sjws were rebels without cause. Aren't we all? They were fighting against oppression, injustice, bigotry, racism, sexism, chauvinism, and a litany of evils. But so carried away they were, that somewhere, they had lost their point and were sometimes fighting a lost cause, sometimes a non-existent cause. In a bunch of these videos, I saw this one man so effortlessly destroy people in debate. And he did it with charm and disdain. He had something about him. He wore a smile on his face all along, making sly, snarky, witty remarks at the opposition profusely. I also saw another man debating about transgender rights, and if its a valid gender at all, or it should just be considered as gender dysphoria. Just Google 'Ben Shapiro The Boy scouts vid'. This person maintained a serious and an honest demeanor, but was very trenchant and snarky nonetheless. Both these people belonged to the right. They are Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro respectively. Their style of communication and debate excited me, and pulled me to watch more videos of them just crushing their opponents. Also this guy, Steven crowder, is a good debater. Many of these Sjw and feminist bashing vids were very right wing inclined. The truth is, you can find videos of both the sides destroying the other side if you merely provide the search term. Now, this brings really disturbing effects. What happens is this traps us in a bubble of our own political ideologies by reinforcing our views. After all, the whole society is just make-believe. What these people believe is that winning an argument makes us right. REKT. GOT HIM. NOPE. Just for the heck of it, watch a few videos holding the exact opposite ideology of your views. Gain some perspective. It's an insidious world out there on the internet. Stay informed.

Inspiration from an unexpected source

Mags shared a link on Youtube once. It was a couple of Pranic healers on a NEWS channel claiming to cure illnesses through phone. They were speaking all sorts of gibberish and trying to make a living through chicanery. One person showed up 20 minutes into the news interview. His first line was "What is this nonsense?" The news anchor had been meek, but not this guy. This one wanted to prove a point. And he did. He proved LIVE on Television that these people were nothing more than quacks. The look on his face showed his contempt for this absurdity. More noteworthy was his insight into science and history, and his proficiency in English and Telugu as well. *This was BBG!*Babu Gogineni, the cutie pie sent here to exterminate lies and delusions and bring 20-20 vision back in place for the society . I've since watched more than a hundred vids of this guy swooshing into news debates, tearing the ignorants apart with science and logic and conscience. His prey were past-life therapists, astro psychologists, numerologists, celebrity astrologers, priests, pseudo scientists, and other proponents of flawed dogma. He one-handedly raised serious questions about the state our state, our country and the rest of the world is in. He was all about Rationalism. All this binge-watching raised some serious questions. Is Religion the root of all problems? How deeply rooted was I in religion and blind faith and superstitions? How deeply rooted was my family?I'm an Atheist, but my belief was slowly being supplanted by false beliefs, just because literally everyone around me wasn't even talking about this, and I was about to cave in to this ideology.I distinctly remember the Teachers' day gaffe, where I called-up 2 of my close friends at midnight since the moon had a halo around, and my father had told me that it forshadowed humongous disasters. I was really embarrassed when nothing happened the next day.

Analogy

See how scary it is in North Korea. Kim Jong Un is THE God. People literally cry when they get to see him. Children are made to pray in his honor in schools everyday, when we know he's not (I'd recommend that you watch the VICE documentary series on North Korea). It's a saddening life that they lead, not knowing how the rest of the world is, horribly restricted by the law of the land, most of the country without electricity at night. How absurd it is, right?Wait, there's already something like it in the rest of the world. It's religion. And it's institutionalized too! Don't go out during an eclipse. You will have serious health problems this year. But, perform this simple pooja for a nominal amount, and I can make it void! The problem with religion is, it's been left unquestioned for far too long that people have taken it to be true.And questioning something that we've been brainwashed about all our lives, generation after generation, every single day, will just turn these people against us. The idea has been too deeply planted.We've been taught this since we were kids. Kids are stupid. They believe what we tell them. Tell them blue is orange, they will believe blue is orange. Tell them there is a world in outer space, with flying elephants and a world at the earth's crest with demons with horns, THEY WILL BELIEVE IT. That is the most critical time in a person's growth, and these people are targeting the impressionable kids. Anyway, that's a topic for another day. Talking about Babu again, I like his approach to debate as well-Zero tolerance, zero fucks given to sweet talking.

One final question, Is it enough to win the debate? And does majority mean correctness?