How to Combat America's Rote Memory Hate Indoctrination

If you’ve been thinking of sponsoring me, why not do so today :) Upgrade at 30% offI truly believe that people are not inclined to be cruel. The military has to train soldiers to overcome their innate reluctance to kill. Even sociopaths usually have to work their way up to inflicting violence against people by first tormenting animals.A commonly held assumption is that human beings are inclined to be evil, even though that's not been scientifically established. We know that acts of abuse happen with appalling frequency but we don't know why. The good news is that if it's not human nature, then it's learned behavior that we have the opportunity to correct and overcome.How do we achieve that goal?I propose that a significant part of the problem is that we've been indoctrinated to believe that there are some horrors that cannot be overcome. Through uncontested belief, we become the inadvertent authors of our own torment.In other words, we've been conditioned to adopt an ideology based on hate and fear.It happens when lies are repeated so often that people adopt them as sacred concepts through rote memorization.I often see good and rational people attempt to overcome this conditioning through a strategy that relies on critical thinking. They'll offer facts. They'll cite studies. They bring forth evidence that disproves a widely held assumption.But the influence of indoctrinated beliefs weathers these assaults like a stone in a storm.Perhaps the worst part is that people who are beholden to rote memory hate conditioning show signs of distress when you press them on their misconceptions. I've seen people respond to factual statements with tirades of threats and profanity. I've seen people exhibit nervous twitches, facial ticks, and desperate laughter.The fact is many people are tormented by the awful beliefs that they've been trained never to question. The presence of contradictory evidence causes them to experience pain. It's as if they're at war with themselves as they struggle to make sense of a world that doesn't align with what their pastor and parents and preferred politicians have told them to believe.Logic isn't going to make them change. We have to do something else.Consider your own experience with conditioning. Once you've learned how to ride a bike, you can't forget that skill because of a conversation. No matter how talented somebody might be at debate, they can't talk you into forgetting how to ride a bike.That's how we need to think of America's hate conditioning. It's not logical. It's instinctive. It's an involuntary response.When I was growing up, there were a lot of conversations about the dangers of rote memorization. I made the deliberate choice to avoid that learning tactic when I could. I saw tests as an opportunity to improve my critical thinking skills. I became very good at mining a test for answers by paying attention to the information that was provided in the other questions.This worked well for me until I took Spanish. My first test was a wake-up call because I discovered a foreign language isn't something you can learn through critical reasoning.This was an important revelation because I'd come to believe rote memorization was bad. However, it turns out that was a mistaken belief that I had been conditioned to adopt. The truth is that rote memorization works in harmony with critical thinking. You are not equipped to perform critical thinking unless you have learned certain information.Mathematicians need to memorize the rules that are necessary to perform calculations. Chemists have to memorize the names and properties of elements. Linguists have to memorize words and verb forms.We can't get into the habit of separating rote memorization from critical reasoning. They work together in harmony and exist simultaneously. It's similar to how a basketball team competes against another team through the cooperation of teammates. If cooperation and competition can happen at the same time, so can rote memorization and critical thinking.The collective realization we need is to recognize that if you've been maliciously implanted with cruel beliefs, you have to take deliberate steps to override those assumptions. You have to accept that you can't think your way out of the problem.Another place that conditioning plays a role is in sports. If you develop a sloppy basketball shot, we call it a “bad habit.” Coaches help players overcome this through repetition with a focus on replacing the bad habit with a good one. Through this process, the malicious conditioning is neutralized.We have to do the same thing with malicious beliefs. We have to take our uncharitable assumptions, and override them with a more accurate understanding of human behavior. This will improve our openness to critical reasoning because it will decrease our resistance to perceiving evidence that disproves our basic assumptions.One example of a malicious indoctrinated belief is the false assumption that skin color is an indication of sinfulness. This is the essential definition of racism. It's inherently absurd because Jesus Christ himself was of a race that white supremacists have indoctrinated themselves to reject. Yet white supremacists often insist that they “uphold” Christian beliefs, despite the obvious contradictions.Enduring this perpetual cognitive dissonance puts them in a state of hostility.A mechanism to overcome this indoctrination would be to insist on more historically accurate representations of Christ. Representation is important because it helps overcome the hate conditioning designed to equate cultural diversity with sinfulness. This conditioning compels otherwise rational people to respond to certain groups with aggression based on nothing more than their appearance.We've also seen a concerted political effort to equate the word “immigrant” with words like “illegal” or “criminal.” I've been personally trying to combat this by emphasizing that immigrant means educated since most immigrants speak more than one language. Immigrant means hard-working and compassionate. Immigrant means human. Immigrant means citizen. We have to be deliberate in our thinking or the conditioning will control us.Our malicious assumptions can have a compounding effect. One example is the prosperity gospel which has been leveraged to equate poverty with sinfulness. To a large extent, the American public has been conditioned to believe that wealthy people are good and poor people are inherently bad.What this leads to is an underlying belief that we can't have programs that help impoverished people because we unconsciously equate poverty with sinfulness. As a result, we’ve trained ourselves to believe that helping one another amounts to assisting evil.We need to cultivate a greater awareness that it's ineffective to combat rote memory hate conditioning through critical thinking. Instead, you have to peel back the ideological layers until you get to a point of agreement that's not tainted by malicious indoctrination.Our job is to identify and override the various ways hate is indoctrinated as an inadvertent consequence of our traditional or cultural beliefs and behaviors.Rote memory hate indoctrination hurts people. Once a false concept has been fused with identity, denouncing evil can be interpreted as a personal attack. We have to be more deliberate in encouraging others to put their false beliefs aside.One way to pierce the veil of deceit is to ask questions about basic values. What kind of future do you want for your kids? Are you concerned about the safety of your kids? Do you want your kids to be treated with dignity? Do you want to be responsible for actions that hurt others?Do you want people to look at your child's skin color and assume that they are sinful and deserving of punishment?Once we put the focus on true human beliefs, we are empowered to override the rote memory hate conditioning. But this process takes time and patience. It’s like becoming a coach of compassion.Progress and prosperity come from questioning our unchallenged assumptions.Hate beliefs imposed on us through rote memorization are wrong, and maintaining those assumptions transforms good people into enablers of evil. The sooner we recognize this reality and fix it, the better it will be for all of humanity.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe