How the World can be Improved.

By Rafael Barracuda

If we want to improve life on earth and our own lives, it is necessary to find a new guide: one that can meet the challenges of our time and of the future. The old guides were good in principle, but have become bogged down in calcified structures, often accomplishing the opposite of what was originally intended.
The development of society makes it necessary to find new guiding principles from time to time. To do so, however, we need to know what the history was, how the present society is structured, and how it is likely to develop.
The author aims to discover this by highlighting the following topics:

Information: truth and lies
Conspiracies: real and imagined conspiracies
Nodes and choices: in history and as individuals
Education
Religions
Cultures and subcultures
Good and evil
Resolving conflicts
Freedom
Justice
Security
How a poor country can become rich.
Nature and the environment and global warming
Art
Creativity
The meaning of life
Peace
Reform of the United Nations
Health: Physical and mental
Advice on how to become happy 
 

What ultimately matters is how to safeguard and promote life on earth.
According to the author, making the right choice at certain crucial moments (called "nodes") is of great importance.
Ultimately, it is about love and the unity of all and everything,
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rafael Barracuda
• Release date: Aug 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005980252

Rafael Barracuda

The author was born in 1943, during the war, in a village in the eastern part of the Netherlands where his father was a pastor. As a child he fantasized about a cosmic system of colors and numbers. He attended art school for several years, but as a landscape painter, he had problems with the education where only still lifes were painted. In the 1960s, he made big hitchhike trips, practically without money, to Greece, Turkey, Morocco and in 1964 to Afghanistan, India, and Nepal. He had always been interested in different cultures, especially in terms of landscape, music, and lifestyles. He was also interested in politics, but there he made a wrong choice in the 1960s. Despite that, years later that choice was miraculously made good again. Partly because of that personal experience he considers making a good choice so important. Later in life he went to study psychology. His final paper was on ethnic culture and happiness. Then he worked for about 15 years as a researcher in happiness at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He has been an enthusiastic folk dancer until the corona era.

Book preview

Chapter 1: Introduction and overview

With the question, how can the world be improved?, the next question automatically arises, what can we humans do about it?

We do not control everything, but we can look at what we do control, and that is when we are faced with a choice. 

Then we can ask ourselves: Do we have the choice to abuse nature and others and do we have the choice to seek harmony with nature and others ?

Do we choose the quick money and power at the expense of others or do we choose to seek a solution and spiritual peace together.

The choice is what to do with the earth, what to do with society, culture, what to do with our lives and what to do in our contact with others.

Every choice has implications for the future, this is especially true for special choices that start a whole new trajectory.

Leaving things as they are now is also a choice.

Sometimes a good choice demands breaking with a habit or learning a new one: that takes extra energy. We don't like that then, but in retrospect we are glad we made that choice. After all, otherwise we would have been much worse off.

The important choice is:

Do we want a culture at the expense of nature or do we want a culture in harmony with the and our nature ?

In order to make a good choice, we must first know what the fork is.  That's why the right information is very important. But also how to interpret that information: in other words, it's about how to think. Therefore, this book focuses on thinking methods and information processing. What is fake news and what is really true ? Is there such a thing as paranormal phenomena, for example ?

But also what is the role of ethnic cultures ? 

What is the role of modern subcultures ?

What can be the role of art ?

What can be the role of various religions and philosophies ? 

What can be the role of Islam ?

How should we end terrorism and war ?

To what extent does heredity play a role ?

To what extent is environmental degradation and global warming a real problem

contribute to a healthy happy world ? That is discussed in Chapter 18.

Improving the world suggests that everything is completely fixable by us.

It doesn't.

The world is only partly makeable: we have to deal with heredity, with the legacy of the past, with nature and with unruliness that can arise. But that makeable part is only used in a very small part because people do not think in the right way and are bound by habits that do not take them forward.

An improvement of the world can take place only if the mind of people is improved.  After all, every action of human beings begins in the mind. The most important thing for that is for people to think better, get a good attitude, find a good lifestyle and build a better culture (or rather, better cultures). The point at issue is that people CAN change, that is, not just deteriorate, but improve.

Our goal is a world in which everyone can be healthy and happy. And not only man, but also his natural environment: a healthy environment, the animals, the plants, because without a healthy environment man himself cannot become healthy.

The question, of course, is whether that goal is achievable.

Happiness, for example, requires world peace.

Pessimists say world peace is impossible.

But look at Europe. For centuries the scene of wars and in the 20th century the scene of world wars that cost millions of lives. But since 1945 there has been peace between England, Germany, France and other countries. A war between Germany and France is now unthinkable. So: If the impossible becomes possible in Europe, perhaps it can also become possible in the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, Putin

threw a spanner in the works by going to war after all: probably the latest outburst of Russian KGB terrorism: nevertheless, the biggest problem of our time.

He was able to do this by making the Russian people believe his lies.

For what we do, how we behave, what we build or tear down, begins first in our mind. Therefore, improving the world can also only begin first by improving the mind: by learning the truth and gaining a better worldview. For general orientation, a kind of basic philosophy is included at the back.

When it comes to the world, it's about the whole world, not just our own little world. Nor just our own country. The climate does not care about the German or Belgian border. The clouds that form over the sea enter the western part of the country and drift to Germany and beyond. The economy and security of the Netherlands is also connected to the rest of the world. Our cell phone is made in Asia, as is the car and the gasoline for the cars comes from the Middle East and the tea from Asia, the coffee from Africa and South America as well as many other daily foods.

This connection with other regions has always existed. Prehistoric man migrated from Africa 70000 years ago all over the world.

The eruption of the Tabora volcano affected the entire world.

A deviation from Earth's orbit around the sun would endanger all life on Earth.

Since countries have existed, some have tended to think that the world ends at national borders, but for 60 years, the connection with the rest of the world has been greater than ever.

In doing so, we are not only dealing with products from other countries, but also with the people who made the products and with other people from other cultures.

However, not everything is social, political or economic.

It is also important what we do as individuals, what we do personally. It is also important that we can work on ourselves, that we can improve ourselves. How to make yourself happier, how to make yourself healthier.

It is certain that unhappy people, often contribute to the unhappiness of the world, while happy people, can also make the world a little better.

Happy people make other people happy, too.

Therefore, several paragraphs focus on the individual.

(sections 2.3.2.2. to 2.8 on personal nodes and sections 6.3.4. to 6.6. on how a person can become a bad person)

In addition, the chapters on mental health (Chapter18) and the chapter on advice for a better life (Chapter 19) were specially added.

Ultimately, you can ask the question:

What good is a better world if we ourselves are not happier and if people are not happier?

Living happier, better and healthier lives is related to how we treat others.

For intercourse that makes both ourselves and others happier, we must recognize that there are norms and values that go beyond those of one's own group.

Jesus and other great minds have proclaimed this for a long time.

The 14th Dalai Lama summarized this as follows:

It is about arousing love, desiring the happiness of all living beings and wishing that those beings deprived of it will have happiness and its causes.

This means that if the behavior or views of our own ethnic, religious or political group would be detrimental to that value, we should criticize our own group in it and if necessary try to correct it.

Anyone can do that and anyone can help make the world a better place.

But in doing so, there is a need for a new guideline, which includes the good core of religions and leaves out the bad aspects, combined with the wisdom of thinkers from all cultures and the insights of science, with the experience of practice and history. Or as Einstein said:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

To that end, everyone can stick to their own beliefs or ideology as long as they remain connected to the spirit of love for fellow man, nature, the world and the cosmos. For this, however, choices must be made, which are not always easy. If they don't cost money, they often cost human energy. Sometimes you have to go against the grain. Habits and convenience too often win out over right insight.

This book proposes practical solutions to many of the world's problems, such as how to make a poor country rich, how to better protect the environment, as well as how to easily and inexpensively prevent and in some cases cure diseases and defects.

Although the book is ultimately about the road to a healthy and happy world, it does not further discuss what happiness actually is or, as is usually the case, where happiness is most prevalent, partly because the research methods used to determine it are, in the author's view, dubious. This book is about the path to health and the path to happiness: in other words, what conditions must be met to get both ourselves and a healthy and happy world ?

For anyone who wants to improve the world, it would be good to start by making the following promise:

1.1. I promise not to ever harm anyone just because they have a different religion or ideology or politics from me, even if those persons think they are my opponents and even if I think their opinions are wrong. Anyone may have a different religion or political belief than me.

It is important to have this as the first point because under the guise of improving the world and ideals, the most horrible things have happened to opponents of those ideals. Examples: The Inquisition, the conquistadores, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, the Congo Free State of Belgian King Leopold II, Pol Pot and the violent Islamic jihad, now being taken up by the so-called Islamic State and El Qaida and by Russia.

You can have the finest ideals, if you put them into practice in the wrong way, you bring calamity instead of improvement.

Therefore, you cannot blame anyone for being skeptical of do-gooders, and in fact that skepticism is justified. It is up to you to prove the skeptics wrong.

Why this book was written ?

The idea is that knowing the problems and applying the solution can prevent misery and therefore make mankind happier:

1.2.1. More than half of the deaths and illnesses of people under 75 in the world are preventable.

Deaths or disabilities from accidents can be avoided by making the situation safe.

An example is the circular saw, which used to be responsible for sawing off workers' hands or arms, but can now be secured in such a way that it is practically impossible.

Another example is deaths or injuries from earthquakes or floods.

In 95% of cases, it is not the earthquake itself that causes the deaths, but collapsing buildings, which fall on people. Building earthquake-resistant homes and buildings can prevent this.

Most diseases are also avoidable through a healthy lifestyle.

Almost all people who smoke get cancer or COPD after some years. So: Never start smoking and if you smoke: quit immediately.

Most people with heart problems suffer from stress, or have an unhealthy lifestyle. Later in the book, it discusses how to change that.

Certain diseases in the Third World such as cholera, typhus, malaria, etc. would be easily preventable if the government or local community took the initiative to: build a water pipeline, toilets with sewers, or in large underground sealed septic tanks. From there it could be reused to use methane gas for cooking and the rest for fertilizing agricultural soils.

The impact of mental health problems can be reduced, which is described in Chapter 18.2.

Hereditary diseases or defects are usually preventable by a different choice of sex partner, or the selective choice of whether or not to have children by use of contraceptives (among other things) or if it does occur nowadays scanning the foetus or genetic engeneering or eventually by virotherapy.

Still, people with disabilities will continue to be born. We must, of course, accept them as equals. We, the environment and the government, have the task of making their lives as good as possible, despite their disabilities.

1.2.2. More than half of all social misery in the world is preventable.

More than half of everything, but in some cases all misery can be avoided, in some cases 60%, and in maybe 10-20% nothing at all, depending on the situation and your place in that situation.

Wars are avoidable and if there are, they should be ended justly.

Wars are usually caused by dictators or chauvinistic leaders who do not want to recognize the rights of other countries and peoples.

It is important for every nation, especially if it is a great nation or a powerful country, to recognize the equality of all other nations and peoples, especially if it is a less powerful country and to be critical of its own history and of excessive patriotism and chauvinism. Tolerance is a prerequisite for peace.

It is important that dictators be removed from power and a democratic regime put in their place, because dictators can declare wars far too easily.

It is also important to expose all the lies and fake information from warmongering countries, such as the Nazis and Russia, because if soldiers knew the truth, they would not go fight for a bad cause.

People feel unhappy because of loneliness.

A change in culture or subculture, so that no one is lonely anymore, can prevent that. That change may involve people treating each other differently: seeing each other as human beings rather than as tools to accomplish something. That change may involve men and women treating each other much more easily. True loneliness can only be solved by finding a life partner, and that can be arranged in most cases. See also Chapter 17 on the desired future society.

People feel unhappy because others act toward them.

A change in culture is necessary to prevent people from hurting each other. A description of a good subculture can be found in Chapter 5, Section 5.3.2.8. and Chapter 17. How to educate is in Chapter 3.

Further recommendations on how people can get along better are in Chapter 19. A possible explanation of some people's unpleasant behavior can be found in Section 6.3.4. on how a good person can become bad and how a bad person can become good and in Section 6.6.1. which discusses physical causes of unpleasant behavior.

People feel unhappy because they have to do heavy, unhealthy and boring work.

When robots are employed, unhealthy, boring and dangerous work becomes obsolete.

But even before then, people may be able to think about what work would suit them better. Except for forced labor, people are free to work or not, and do not have to accept unhealthy work.

If you open your mind to it, there may be ways to find better, healthier work, but don't just look at the pay.  For example: Working in a mine may pay well, but is that extra money worth your lungs breaking down from COPD, causing you breathing problems for years and living 10 years shorter ?

People feel unhappy because of poverty.

That too can be solved. See Chapter 10 which deals specifically with that.

People feel unhappy because they made the wrong choice in a situation.

Preventing wrong choices is the subject of Chapter 2, especially Section 2.3, which deals with choice situations or nodes.

People feel unhappy because of conflict.

Social conflict is the subject of Chapter 9.

People feel unhappy because of possible war and the political situation. Conditions for peace are described in section 16.5.4. with proposals to resolve some current political issues.

But mostly it is about personal conflicts. This is discussed in Chapters 9 and 19: Personal Opinions.

Environmental pollution and global warming is a threat to humanity.

What to do about this is the subject of Chapter 11 and Sections 16.3 and 16.5.5.

People feel unhappy due to lack of human rights.

Chapters 6 and 7 are about that.

People may feel unhappy because they have done things that they know are bad, causing the victims to hate them.

Therefore, it is important to behave well. What is good is reflected in the Golden Rule, which is found in all world religions: Do not do to another what you do not want done to you either.

People feel unhappy because they have lost their guide wire.

In fact, that is the main reason for writing this book.

A new guide can be drawn from Chapter 2 on how to improve your thinking, Chapter 5 on cultures and their influence and especially Section 5.3.2.8 and Chapter 4 on religion, Chapter 6 on morality and Section 6.7. on the usefulness of ethics, Chapter 15 on the meaning of life and the purpose of life, Section 16.1. on what is minimally necessary to live and Section 16.1.1. on what is most precious in life and Chapter 19 on: Advice for a better life.

None of this means that ALL misery is preventable:

Certain shit stays. Death is inevitable, as are certain disasters and diseases.

For now, we are still dealing with bad leaders, causing disasters.

Wars that happen to us could have been avoided by the leaders of the warring countries, especially dictators and aggressive countries, but those leaders have not done so, which is why civilians and soldiers sometimes become victims, without being able to do anything about it.

But precisely when misfortune is absolutely unavoidable, it is important that people learn to deal with misfortune.

You can only accept the inevitable and try to make the best of it from that bad situation and then build a new future.

All too often, however, we think something is inevitable, whereas if we really do our best, take the initiative and start looking for the solution, and don't let setbacks hold us back but continue to look for the solution, that solution actually comes into view. It is then up to us to make that solution a reality.

Chapter 2. Improve your thinking

Thinking, thank God, is free.

You don't HAVE to think: you can simply accept the situation as it is, close your eyes and enjoy the sunshine. Delightful: to stop thinking. Thinking can disturb more things than not thinking; moreover, thinking takes energy.

Free thinking is best: free thinking is done in bed when you have enough time: you let your thoughts go with the flow, without obstacles: this can be done both before going to bed, and after waking up.

Moreover, it is often wiser to follow nature without reason than to follow reason without nature. The same can be said of your instinct or feeling.

Often it is wiser to follow your instinct without thinking, than to follow your mind without your instinct.

But for certain situations it is very helpful if you can think and act in a certain way. Then you can use certain methods of thinking. You can learn that. That way you can raise your IQ by 10-25 points.

Without thinking well, we cannot solve problems, and one of those problems is that a large part of humanity is not healthy and not in good shape, either physically or mentally.

Another problem is that society cannot be improved and therefore health cannot be improved if we do not think properly.

In doing so, it is important to start from facts. However, sometimes certain facts go directly against what we have been taught and we have to change our theory of reality to be able to place them and recognize facts as such, otherwise you keep talking nonsense, even if it is generally accepted nonsense. But nonsense leads to dangerous and unhealthy states.

Therefore, it is important for anyone, anywhere in the world, to try to improve their thinking.

There are at least 3 situations in daily life, in which it is necessary to be able to think well.

1. When your intuition lets you down and you have to make a judgment call

Suppose someone suddenly lost their wallet at work.  You might think, That one got be pickpocketed. But who did it ?  That one colleague who dislikes you, who was just in your office ? You accuse her, but she denies it at every turn and says you're picking a fight with her. Then suddenly the cleaning lady arrives and asks, Has anyone lost a wallet?" Ashamed, you will have to admit that you falsely accused that one colleague. 

In short: one should not be guided by bias. It is then important to examine the matter objectively.

2.  When someone is quoted spreading a nasty message.

You should not blame the messenger for the message. That is, you must properly distinguish between direct and indirect speech and the difference between the speaker quoting and the quoted.  Direct speech is the sentence, I like soup.  Indirect speech is the sentence: He says I like soup The first sentence is usually true, but if someone says on the basis of the second sentence that I like soup, they can be ugly wrong: because I don't have to like soup at all.

This is difficult for some people who rely only on their intuition and do not want to acknowledge that their intuition sometimes falls short, as well as for those who can only understand one message and cannot understand that there are multiple perspectives. They then confuse the message with the messenger and then falsely accuse the one who is telling it. This then creates the embarrassing situation where the real culprit is left out of the picture, while the one who is telling it was actually trying to help you, but is falsely accused. This leads to a more difficult relationship with the one communicating the message.

3. You are faced with a new unknown situation that presents a problem, which you must solve in order to continue living normally.

2.1.1. Why does knowing the truth matter to us ?

Some make light of the truth. Don't worry about it. Who cares if it's true or not? is said.

Following are 5 reasons why it is important to know the truth.

1.As a result, you understand things that are otherwise incomprehensible.

It helps improve your knowledge if you know how something is really put together. As a result, you understand (better) the connection with other knowledge.

Why does Geertruida hate Jan? Isn't Jan such a nice uncle, who doesn't hurt a fly ? But Jan lied to her about her biological father, depriving her of an inheritance and never getting to know her siblings, who are now untraceable. That's a truth you didn't already know.

2.You can't solve problems (or solve them properly) if you don't know how things really work.

E.g. an auto mechanic who doesn't know why a car that won't start because it looks like nothing is wrong because the battery and everything is functioning normally. He can't fix that car because he doesn't know that in the car there is a safety switch in a hidden place (behind the glove compartment) that interrupts the supply of gasoline if the car has received a shock from e.g. taking a curb while driving.

3.It saves a lot of time and it is much easier if you know how something really works:

If you need to go somewhere, but you don't know how to get there because you have no navigation and also no map, you may have to search for a very long time before you find your destination, if you find it at all. Whereas if you know the right way, you have found the destination in 1/10 or less of the time.

It can be a matter of life and death to know what is real.

A pharmacy assistant helping a customer, who asks for a pill but cannot find the pill and finally just gives him a pill that looks like it, because the patient is a heart patient, that pill may cause that patient to have a heart attack.

Or: a motorist driving in the mountains in the dark when the lights are out can drive straight into the abyss because he cannot see that there is an abyss there: in other words, because he does not know that there is an abyss there.

Your host asks you to choose between 2 glasses of lemonade that look the same to a host. But one glass contains a deadly poison. Then you need to know which glass contains it. Then you can always accidentally knock that one over.

4.If the story is wrong, there are unpleasant consequences.

Groups form based on a story. That narrative may be: there-and-there, we must take that side because such-and-such is the enemy.

Now if you read or hear a story that is not true, you are choosing the wrong group to be part of. This is what Nazis, communists, fundamentalists and criminals have used to mobilize people actually against their own interests. Thus groups, which would normally be friends, are pitted against each other and senseless wars, senseless hatred, or senseless violence or all sorts of other damage occurs.

5.You can't make the right choice if you don't know the real deal.

In the million-dollar hunt to win a million, you have to know which suitcase the million is in, otherwise you get nothing.

If you borrow money from a seemingly neat but in reality criminal lender, you may think that the loan got you out of trouble. But because the lender has lied to you about the interest rate you have to pay, you get into even bigger trouble, causing the debt to mount up so fast that you can't pay anything at all and finally get evicted from your house by a bailiff.

True or false

True or false is the basis of computer logic.  For an assertion, one looks to see if it is true. Then it gets a 1 or not true, then it gets a 0. It is also the basis of a search system. One searches until the title of the book matches the book itself. If it does, it is true. If it doesn't, it's not true. Sometimes there are books with the same title. Then one repeats the search process with the name than the author, possibly with the year and publisher.

Note: Although you know the truth, it is not always helpful to tell the truth directly bluntly. By doing so, you can hurt people and disrupt your relationship with people. You yourself may also get into big trouble as a result.

Sometimes you just have to keep your mouth shut for a while, even if you're sure otherwise. Often it's about little things, where the other person insists that it's not. But what does it really matter?

Yes, no games don't convince anyone. And everyone has incorrect or incomplete ideas about certain topics. Arguing about whether it is true or not only damages your relationship with that other person. And that relationship is far more valuable than being proven right on certain issues.

Only if it is really important to that other person or the situation should you bring it tactically and carefully, often in portions on multiple occasions, unless it is an emergency.

2.1.1.2. Fallacies and fake news: 2

.1.1.2.1. Fake News

Lying is mainly the specialty of Nazis, Communists (Marxist-Leninists) and spies. Of course, any group that is out for power and considers it secondary to the truth lies, as do supporters of jihadist organizations and organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. But systematically reversing the truth, noting the victims of one's own movement as perpetrators, has been a specialty of Nazis and especially the Russian secret services, such as the NKVD, the KGB and the FSB since 1917 and of all the individuals, organizations and regimes they brought to power, such as the Chinese Communist Party, Chavez in Venezuela, Assad in Syria, Kim in North Korea and many dictatorships in Central Asia. Surely, falsifying the truth and even making fake evidence is mainly an occupation of the Russian secret services. It started already through the party newspaper: Pravda, which means the truth.

No newspaper in the world has lied as much as precisely the Pravda.

The reason lies in what Lenin said, namely, that propaganda is about winning the people to the revolution and that that is secondary to the truth.

If the lie helps in that goal, it is fine according to him. The end justifies the means. Propaganda is the 4th wheel of the revolution, which is to conquer power, and that, according to Lenin

, is more important than the truth. 

He himself set the example in this regard, promising democracy and when it came down to it, not implementing it.

Not surprisingly, Lenin, who was a spy for the Germans, reasoned this way. After all, lying is the lifeline of spies. Putin was also head of the KGB, which could only function through lies.

For that, Russia has an army of so-called trolls, which are people employed by the state, who are paid handsomely to spread lies, and turn the truth around. One of the locations known in the West, where part of the troll army is based, is in the so-called: Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. Internet trolls have also been appointed in 30 countries.

The employees send out messages every day for Facebook, Twitter, to newspapers, and all media, which are supposed to make people believe that not Russia, but America, Nato or their own government is the enemy, undermining their well-being....

To this end, idiotic theories are concocted, such as from Q-Anon, that the Democrats in America are part of a satanic pedophile network, abusing and killing children, or that the 2001 attack on the World Trade center in New York, was the work of the CIA: an inside job, just like the Kennedy assassination.

Population groups are pitted against each other: for example, lies are spread to blacken immigrants, while at the same time supporting right-wing anti-immigrant groups, such as Le Pen in France. Also, the uprising of the Yellow Hesjes

was orchestrated from the Kremlin. (In France, this is already very easy, since the largest union, the CGT, was set up by Communists who swore allegiance to Russia.) As long as there is unrest and conflict.

800px-55_Savushkina_Street

Figure: One of the offices from which the Russian troll army is directed, 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Putin has ensured that only information is disseminated from Russia, approved, by his political censors. All independent news sources have been banned or prevented from working by false charges.

All official channels of Russia serve the lies, which ignorant people, even in the West, adopt without question. Even in wikipedia: To better understand Wikipedia's vulnerability to both ignorant disinformation and intentional disinformation, a pilot study was conducted by the EC last year that focused on four known pro-Kremlin disinformation disseminators SouthFront, NewsFront, InfoRos and Strategic Culture Foundation. All four are linked to Russian intelligence.

At least 690 articles referred to these disinformation disseminators. Most of the articles in question referred to southfront.org (57 percent), followed by news-front.info (27 percent).

VPRO Tegenlicht wrote in 2020: " Sowing confusion is a powerful weapon. Our online newsfeeds have become a battleground for the superpowers. The Russians in particular seem to be masters at strategically deploying disinformation. Russian trolls constantly produce whole and half falsehoods, fake news that appears on social media and news sites.

Their goal in doing so: sow confusion, play off populations and put alliances under tension. This is the war of the future."

Examples abound, but so as not to make it too long just a few:

After the MH17 passenger plane was shot down

on Putin

's orders in revenge over EU sanctions, the Russian troll army sent 65000 tweets in 2014 blaming Ukraine, the victim. Nos.nl of 13-5-2019 wrote:

"Employees of a Russian troll army blamed Ukraine in more than 65,000 tweets in the two days after the downing of flight MH17 in 2014. After analyzing 9 million tweets, De Groene Amsterdammer writes that the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg was much more active than previously reported.

The international investigation by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has revealed that on July 17, 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was brought down over a Ukrainian village by a Buk missile from a Russian Army brigade in Kursk. All 298 occupants were killed.

After the downing, a centrally coordinated, aggressive disinformation campaign ensued, writes the Green. Various theories were launched in pro-Russian media to exonerate Russia. This included the St. Petersburg agency, which specializes in influencing discussions on social media.

At first, the trolls did not seem to know exactly what was going on. For example, they wrote that pro-Russian separatists had downed a Ukrainian plane.

Only the next morning did the message become unequivocal that the Ukrainian military had shot down the Malaysian aircraft. Around 11 a.m. the trolls launched three hashtags: #KievhasShotBoeingdown, #KievProvocation

Another example is from Yevhen Fedchenko in stopfake.org on 6-2-2016:

For the Kremlin, propaganda has become an important part of the information war. Over the past decade, the Russian propaganda machine has been structured and effectively applied, reaching a climax during the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent devastating war in eastern Ukraine. It began in 2005 with the creation of Russia Today (later RT) and each year more media" are added to this global network.

Another propaganda arm, Sputnik International, opens a new office almost weekly somewhere in the world, employing qualified local journalists who produce radio and distribute multimedia in nearly 30 languages. According to their website, Sputnik points the way to a multipolar world that respects all national interests, culture, history and traditions of each country.

This is simply one of the many examples of duplicity employed by the propaganda channels. In reality, their goal is to influence global public opinion, distort reality and act as a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

Initially, the Russian propaganda machine is designed to reach a much larger audience than just Ukraine or Russia's neighbors. The actual ambition is global media domination. General Breedlove, NATO's top commander in Europe, recently said that this is not just about Ukraine. Russian activities are destabilizing neighboring countries, and the region as a whole. Although he was referring to the military part of the Russian-Ukrainian war, propaganda remains as a very important part of this war: a global war over interests, views and values.

Paul Globe points out that our idea of national security should not be limited to military action. In this sense, the Russian propaganda apparatus is a threat to global security. It not only distorts the truth to sow hatred and manipulate the political and historical context in Russia itself - to set an anti-Western course and fuel a bellicose attitude toward Ukraine - but it is also used on a global scale as a powerful weapon against fundamental human values. One of the main pillars of contemporary Russian agitprop is denying that democracy in a general sense, with free media and free elections, exists anywhere in the world. The core of the Kremlin's propaganda, both inside and outside Russia, is a postmodernist denial of everything.

Today's Russian propaganda system is often compared to that of the Soviets during the Cold War. Of course it borrows techniques from the KGB's scripts; many concepts are easily recognized, from the puppeteers from Washington to the secret agents, but now it is fundamentally different. Ideology was an important part of Soviet propaganda, which clashed with the values of the West's counterpropaganda. The central role played by communist ideology ultimately made Soviet propaganda weak and inappropriate; such ideological views appealed only to specific (leftist) political parties or countries.

Current Russian propaganda does not contain a new ideology, because Russia has no ideology. Instead, it derives its values from everywhere. In this way, the system can produce a large number of little propaganda channels, each with its own specific target audience. The more messages the better; it multiplies the confusion. In the words of Peter Pomerantsev, you can say that the goal is not to provide a unique story, but to create a collision of stories with the aim of confusing the audience with different messages. Of course, you can easily discern some excellent stories: that Ukraine is a fascist state formed by the corrupt U.S. government killing its own people in Ferguson; that Ukraine is a collapsed country; or even that it is the Americans/NATO fighting in Ukraine - and that, of course, there are no Russian troops on Ukrainian territory.

Thus you see a disproportionate number of absurd and utterly colossal news stories. One of the most remarkable fake stories is that of a three-year-old boy from Slavyansk allegedly crucified by Ukrainian soldiers. The news was brought by the Russian government-owned television channel ORT. This outrageous lie was based on one witness statement from a woman who, as it turned out later, had never been to that place and, moreover, was married to a former Ukrainian policeman who had defected to the Russians after the annexation of Crimea. This "crucifixion" story carries back to World War I, when it was first used, and to Games of Thrones in which it recently appeared. But most essential is the explanation of why this story appeared on television in the first place. When broadcaster Irada Zeynalova was asked about it privately, she replied, It shouldn't be the journalists who prove that this event happened; it's up to all of you to prove that it didn't happen.

StopFake.org has investigated and debunked more peculiar stories, including Ukrainian military aircraft spread HIV over Donbas to punish local population (to encourage locals to flee the territory), President Obama bans the use of balalaikas [Russian stringed instruments] in the U.S. until 2020 (to inflate anti-American sentiment among Russians somewhat) and Two slaves and a patch of land for Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Donbas (to demonstrate the alleged barbaric conditions in the Ukrainian military). Looking at these stories individually and using a basic level of critical thinking and media literacy (while unaffected by the constant wave of propaganda from all sides), most people find these stories entertaining and not very newsworthy.

Nevertheless, this approach has proven effective. It focuses on bringing absurd stories that are based on belief and not fact, on rumor and not knowledge, then spreading them frequently on television and social media. This makes the constructed information popular (even viral), potentially highly influential, and difficult to debunk.

Conspiracy theories are especially difficult to disprove. Indeed, supporters of conspiracy theories tend to believe that there is no such thing as coincidence: someone is guaranteed to pull the strings, a brain that constructs the realm of politics and media, war and peace, elections and commerce. In this shadowy world, blame the other and whatasboutism are substitutes for facts and rational decisions.

This makes the public happy with and receptive to Russian propaganda. In many corners of the world, people are relieved when they can hold someone else responsible for their problems. Taking advantage of irrational and disillusioned thinking is what really distinguishes contemporary Russian propaganda from its Soviet predecessor, and what makes it so effective and dangerous."

Since Russia tries to distort and reverse the truth in such a professional way that many people believe in the lie, it is very important to know the truth, the reality.

In Russia's war against Ukraine, Russia is using the old KGB method: Reversing the truth: Russian soldiers are shelling civilians, firing rockets at Mariupol air raid shelters in the theater, but for Russian television blaming Ukraine.

Russians torture, rape and murder residents of Butscha, but blame Ukrainians.  Russians

shelled schools and hospitals, but blamed Ukraine. Blaming a victim is one thing, but it is all the more inhumane when they themselves were the victims.

Every time with all of Russia's war crimes, they blame the other side. Unfortunately, a large part of Russians, believe this, mainly due to lack of other information. In fact,

in Russia under Putin it is forbidden to talk about a war, if you do so you can get 15 years in prison or concentration camp. Putin only calls it a special military operation, with Russian so-called peacekeeping forces, intended to liberate the Ukrainians from Nazism. Of course that's total nonsense, where note President Zelensky himself is a Jew, and while the Russians shot up the monument to Babi Yar, commemorating the massacre of the real World War II Nazis, with missiles.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Russia is not just taking military action against military personnel, but is deliberately and actively killing civilians, even if they have nothing to do with the military.

That was the Russian strategy in Chechnya, where the Russians massacred a large part of the population. Grozny, the capital, was known as, the most devastated city on earth. They did the same thing in Syria, to keep their puppet Assad, is standing. Syrian cities were also totally destroyed and schools and hospitals bombed. The same thing they are doing now (April 2022) in Ukraine.

Figure: Russian strategy against civilians: top left: Grozny, Chechenye, bottom left: Aleppo, Syria, Right: Mariopol. Source: International Red Cross and Times of Israel

The war Russia is waging in Ukraine and other countries is only possible because a large part of Russians, as well as other countries, including America, France, Italy, Greece, Brazil, South Africa, etc. believe in the fake news.

In more than 30 countries it is actively promoted by local agents of the Kremlin and certain political parties, such as Trump in the United States of America, Le Pen in France, Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands, etc.

The Russian TV channel Pervi Kanal showed images from Le Pen's headquarters. There were bottles ready with the label: Marine présidente 2022 even before the 2nd round, although Western media predicted that Macron will win.  In 2014, Le Pen's party received a 9 million euro loan from the Russian-Czech FCRB bank.

Fake news must be debunked. This can be done by checking it against debunk. eu, but you can quickly draw conclusions yourself based on certain characteristics.

If it comes from a state, where there is no independent press, and where criticism of the government is forbidden and punished, then you don't have to believe it a priori.

Someone who speaks the truth is not afraid of criticism, but someone who lies is.

Furthermore, you have to ask yourself: What is the background of the person delivering the news ?

Is it an internet troll, (someone paid to spread lies) ? 

What has he posted in the past ? Has he also lied in the past ?

Does that person or the organization he works for have an interest in his story ?

Fake news will not save Russia. There will come a time when all lies will be exposed. Jesus said, What is whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops. (Luke 12:3)

2.1.1.2.2. Thinking errors.

The following are some well-known common thinking errors:

A common mistake in thinking is wishful thinking. Because of your own interests, your own needs or those of your group, you can't believe anything that doesn't match them.

Example:

My idol (e.g. pop star or hero) cannot be a child abuser

My son couldn't possibly be a rapist

That leader is a wonderful person. I'm sure that one didn't kill anyone. Those so-called proofs are made up by the enemy

But also vice versa:

It is impossible for the enemy to have done such a good deed, for they are monsters.

That psychiatrist who says I'm schizophrenic is lying. I'm perfectly normal

That person who says I did wrong about it is my worst enemy.

One should always be willing to look critically also at oneself and critically at what you had always thought. But people tend to deny anything that goes against their interest or desire. This is stupid, because only by knowing the truth, even if it is not what you would have desired, can you avoid getting into (more) trouble and can often really solve the problem.

A nice summary of fallacies gives the site:

yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ an initiative of the School of Thought.

From it we quote the following fallacies. That site calls them fallacies:

Another common fallacy is to mistake the indirect mode for the direct mode. Linguistically, the direct mode is, I am crazy, , while the indirect mode is, He says I'm crazy, which by no means necessarily means that I'm crazy too, but HE says it: Who is he?  Especially when unpleasant things are told about you in the indirect mode, simple people can blame the messenger for the message. This can lead to unpleasant situations, where you make the one you wanted to warn an enemy, while the real enemy remains unaffected.

2.1.1.2.3. Admit your mistakes and fix them.

Over time, sometimes others point out to you a wrong line of thinking that you have. The key then is to examine that to see if it is so and to be honest with yourself. With all thoughts, try to recognize if they are wrong, and if they are, you need to admit those mistakes and fix your thinking.

Knowing reality consists of 2 parts: knowledge (what you know) and thinking (how to use the knowledge).

2.1.1.3. Characteristics of Truth .

Truth does not change when you view it from different points of view. Truth is based on facts. Every fact is true, undecided or untrue.

A politics or a philosophy of life is based on a great many beliefs. If one claims that those views are based on facts, one can try to test each fact by truthful methods.

On that basis one can say whether any assumption or proposition of that worldview or politics, which one claims is based on fact, is based on truth or not. Of course, one must investigate whether the fact has been tested by others or in the past. Unfortunately, not all statements of fact are so unambiguous.

Many statements are true only under certain conditions:

A statement might be: A piece of white paper can never be a piece of gray paper.

However, this is true only under the condition that the exposure of the paper is constant in the room where the paper lies.

Suppose a ray of sunlight falls on a piece of gray paper and the white paper is in shadow, there seems to be no difference.

Or that the white paper is in a dark room. If you then take a black-and-white photo, the white paper looks like gray. Hence, for a good photo, the white balance must be set properly, automatically or not.

Also, many facts we cannot test in practice or cannot test properly, so there remains debate whether it is true or not.

Truth does not care about commonly accepted notions, of tradition, family, love or hate, conventions, morality, ethics, faith, economic interests, society or politics.

Examples:

- There was discussion in Belgium about the claim that Mrs. Delphine Boël is an illegitimate child of King Albert II. This could be confirmed by a DNA test. If it turns out that this endangers the stability of the state, one can try to stop or falsify the result. But the result reflects the truth. The same applies to children of those (pretend) holy persons: priests, gurus, etc.

- If religion claims that the sun revolves around the earth, rather than the other way around, astronomers can extract evidence confirming or disproving that claim. A church court cannot disprove the truth revealed by that evidence because it does not rely on astronomical observations.

- If a religion claims that the earth is 6,000 years old, when it can be proven to be more than 4 billion years old, then it shows that the statement that the earth is 6,000 years old is not the truth. The age of the earth cannot be determined by a belief in a particular religion.

- If it can be proved that the workers in a communist country have much less to spend and worse working conditions than in a comparable capitalist country, and also have less freedom, then that overturns the claim that the workers have it better in a communist country than in a capitalist country. For this, one can compare, for example, purchasing power, the number of working hours, working conditions and the freedom of the individual such as free travel and privacy.

Since some countries have (had) capitalist and communist variants, this facilitates comparison.

And even if not one country has both variants, one can look for a country similar in culture and history.

No appeal to Great Philosophers, Infallible Scientists, Heroes of War, Heroes of the Fatherland can undo the conclusion of that comparison.

- The idea that sexuality plays a role only after age 18 can be undermined by surveys in which young people under 18 indicate that sexuality plays an important role in their lives. This is made all the more likely by the fact that human biological development indicates that sometimes a girl as young as 12 can have a child and a boy can become a father at 13.

- The amount of nitrogen emissions from pigs and cows is not independent of their numbers. The more pigs, the more nitrogen oxide, ammonia and other gases, as with all mammals. That the possibility of bankruptcy of the livestock farmer by not being able to take more animals does not change the fact that those nitrogen oxides are produced.

The following lists some thinking methods that may be useful in solving problems

.

2.1.1.4. Learn as many different methods of thinking and learning as possible.

Basically, all thoughts and conceptions must be critically examined if we want to know the truth. Thus, we should not assume anything on authority alone, nor should we assume anything just because most people think so. Everyone himself must critically examine his own thoughts.

To achieve good thinking, you must first be able to parse language. You need to know what a verb is, a subject, a direct object, cooperating object, adjective, a noun, an adjective, and so on. Then, in a long compound sentence, you need to parse what the main clause and what the sub clauses are. Only then can you find out the meaning of a sentence.

It is also important that you know the exact meaning of each word you use. Don't use words you don't know the meaning of. Therefore, it is important to know the definition of a term.

To communicate well with each other, you must agree on the definition.

You need to know the context for the final meaning of a word or phrase.  Certain texts have a very different meaning in one story than when they occur in another story. Therefore, you should never simply take texts or phrases out of context. What matters in the end is the story.

You need to be able to think of a word or concept as being replaced by a symbol or code. For example, Netherlands by NL or for a certain kind of the color blue 44BBFF in the Internet language HTML.

You have to be able to abstract. If a child sees a chair and hears the word chair, she can make an association between the sound of the word chair and what she sees and feels as a chair. But the child only knows the one chair with four legs. Only after the child has seen several other chairs, with 1,3, 4, 5 legs in different forms from armchair to folding chair, and everywhere is given the word chair, then the child has made an abstraction that she calls chair.

You have to be able to think in analogy: that is, something goes like something else: Because bare trees have branches that in turn have thinner branches, and because bare trees resemble veins in the human body, those veins can branch into thinner veins again. The important thing is to learn to recognize patterns.

Furthermore, if you want to make statements about a subject, you must first gain as much knowledge about that subject as possible.

The goal of science and mathematical logic is often to design a model, a schematic representation of reality. Then to see the model as part of a process: how the model changes over time and other circumstances.

Furthermore, you must have a certain general development to be able to place knowledge about that particular subject in context and possibly judge it by a certain value.

A good example of new research and thinking methods is described in Futures techniques: see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_techniques

General development is paramount if you want to be able to separate fantasy from reality. General development must then be combined with thinking properly.

2.1.2. Conspiracy Theories .

Many conspiracy theories are based on fantasy and originate in a story or novel, but and real conspiracies also exist.

It is very important to distinguish real conspiracies from conspiracies based on fantasy or fabrication.

It is not always easy to make that distinction. In order to make that distinction, you have to distrust all information in advance, be constantly critical and skeptical, and above all, see what the original source of the story is. Usually we know a story 3rd or 4th hand. The original source is usually in a foreign language: English, Russian, Chinese. If it is of interest to the press, some journalists translate it, in many cases violating the context. After such a translated story is included in the newspaper, it appears somewhat distorted usually on social media or a website. In other words, even good information usually appears somewhat distorted to the average reader.

But in addition, deliberately fabricated stories and lies are spread by paid Internet trolls from Russia or other countries or Nazis or jihadists. Therefore, when we find the original source, we must ask ourselves:

What interest could that source have in such a story ?

And with every story or theory, you have to look up what the critique of dt story is. How does that story relate to the criticism of the story ?

How credible is this criticism or is it also motivated by interests ?  What do we know about all parts of the story from scientific sources ?  Find all the names of the story on the Internet.

How neutral and scientific is the original source ?

By what incontrovertible facts is the story supported ?

To what extent is the story is contrary to existing knowledge about all parts of it ?

Thus, to answer these questions, one should not rely indiscriminately on one source, but should do one's own conscientious research, and this is possible only if one is sufficiently generally educated or if one looks everything up from a source that is more than 80% reliable, such as English-language wikipedia or scientific information that is not influenced by capital, faith or politics.

2.1.2.1. Real conspiracies

Real conspiracies exist:

Totalitarian organizations and secret services are known to have committed and still commit conspiracies. Examples include: the Communists, the Nazis, the Fascists, Russian KGB aka FSB, the U.S. CIA, the secret services of other countries, as well as some church organizations or sects, Muslim extremist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, organizations such as Scientology, which falsely calls itself church but is in reality a criminal organization, etc.  One Christian organization working in secret in America is The Fellowship: Very similar to the Muslim Brotherhood, but without a violent wing.

These organizations have a plan to gain power and influence. They have a secret organization in addition to an overt organization. They infiltrate existing organizations in government agencies, in publicly known institutions.

Also some companies, sometimes international companies and monopolies spread fake stories and fake information in order, for example, to eliminate competition or present one's own position more favorably than it is. Finally, fake information and certain conspiracy theories come from criminal organizations, such as the Mafia. Even smaller criminal groups in the crosshairs of a judge or police officer may try to use fabricated stories to blacken that judge, if they cannot corrupt him.

It is likely that the development of ghetto culture was created and promoted by racist cells of individuals from the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) and Nazi groups.

There are several indications that the secret service the FBi or the CIA tried to addict the black population to drugs in the 1960s and 1970s. And it's likely that the senseless violence that rappers promote and culminate in street gang wars like those of the Crips and Bloods is the product of racist cells. After all, that is the dream of the KKK: blacks killing blacks.

According to a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice report, blacks were 6 times more likely to be victims of murder than whites and 94% of blacks were murdered by blacks. The average age of black men from 10 to 35 in the ghettos in the United States is lower than in the poorest African countries where 80% of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day, less than Zimbabwe, Afghanistan or Bangla Desh. This is the ultimate proof that the celebrated ghetto culture is a bad culture.

Besides the already mentioned Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to make the world Islamic, a nice example is the KGB conspiracy. That conspiracy aimed to make Russia the dominant power in the world, controlling the politics of all other countries. That KGB strategy was made explicit once again by Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent who defected to Canada in 1970. The first stage of that plan is the great brainwashing to demoralize the population. According to Bezmenov, it is not espionage that the KGB (now called FSB) is primarily engaged in, despite what the popular media tell us. 85% of the work is a slow process what we call ideological subversion or psychological warfare.

This is done openly, usually as a legal process. You can see it if you pay attention. Bezmenov defines ideological subversion as follows:

What it essentially means is: changing every American's perception of reality to the extent that despite an abundance of information, no one is able to draw meaningful conclusions in the best interests of themselves, their families, their communities and their country.

This process, which Bezmenov says takes at least one generation, is already complete.

As an example, he cited the activists of the 1960s who rose to power in government and business in the 1980s and 1990s. He said:

As I said earlier: real information no longer matters. The facts no longer mean anything to a demoralized person. Even if I shower him with information, with the authentic evidence, with documents, with pictures, even if I take him to the Soviet Union and show him a concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it. Only when a camp guard busts his balls with his military boot, THEN he will understand. But not before that.

Now some people are thinking, Well, but that was in 1970. Meanwhile, the whole Soviet Union has disappeared. Isn't that something of the past?

A portrait of Valeri Gerasimov appeared in the Volkskrant on Oct. 12, 2018. He is chief of staff of Russian combat groups and also head of the GROe, Russia's military intelligence service. The