Forced to Accept Misinformation
Young people continue to be told “this is so” without being encouraged to check on it by their own observations. This is part of the process of oppression, part of the process of preparing us through the oppression of young people to be victims of not only young people’s oppression but all of the other oppressions.
In some cases, human beings are forced to accept misinformation for lack of any other information. If you can’t look into a room yourself, and somebody else sticks their head in there and says, “The room is full of water,” that is as good a fact as you have. But if the person is for some reason intent on deceiving you, it is not a very good fact. If you accept it, it may lead to lots of wrong conclusions.
Or, if the person is in the grip of restimulation, such as a terror of drowning, and sees water everywhere because the recording* is playing, then you have some false data, false conclusions, false generalizations.
A great deal of the re-evaluation that follows our discharge consists of spotting, sorting out, and throwing away these falsehoods that we were told were true, and had little choice but to accept as true, but which have interfered with our functioning and ruined our perception of reality ever since we accepted them.
From The Benign Reality, page 23
* Distress recording