"smart devices" (an oxymoron?)
Definitely an oxymoron, and a devaluation of human thought.
people are not able to form their own opinions,
I was just cogitating on this earlier today. We have been taught how, and often what, to think via the education system. This is all reinforced via various media from very early ages to very old. Case in point, the medical system we have today. Most of us are unable to imagine that there could be an alternative to regularly putting toxins in the body in order to create health. It is hard to imagine that anything that does not poison one could have any effect. I suppose supplements are a counterexample, but those, in addition to having many toxins in them to get them into easily ingestible forms, are for the most part unnatural and probably of little use to the body. I ramble. Forgive me.
My point is that we are conditioned to live in a particular paradigm, and to be unable to envision any other possibilities at all, let alone wonder if they could be real. Those of us who try to think outside the paradigm (many of them readers I imagine, and listening closely is as valuable as reading) can actually live in a different paradigm, a different world.
Oops! Rambling again!
Weddings, bar mitzvahs, and galas of all types exhibit another skill our youths have not developed: how to dance. It's only older fogies on the dance floors these days, with the younguns looking at their phones at their tables. They've haven't learned how to party.
The medical industry preys on people, but I don't think it is the doctors themselves (usually), but the way they have also learned, and how they are also manipulated by the pharmas. It is just another wealth creation mechanism, at the cost of human health.
I think even many readers are conditioned based on what they read. They are looking for what they enjoy, not what helps them grow. But, at least they have a chance to discover - without reading, most do not.
I am going to make sure Smallsteps can dance - and my wife will doubly so!
We met dancing. :)
You met dancing, that's beautiful!
Doctors absolutely believe they are working for good. They have been heavily indoctrinated to live and think in a narrow, unimaginative, medical paradigm. Those doctors who do figure out they are not having healthy outcomes, either continue to play along, or lose their licenses.
I think I have placed this under one of your posts before:
Upton Sinclair