Indoctrination, propaganda, and brainwashing have all the same connotations. Depending on whom you are talking with, you may get someone to say that indoctrination is just education and that would technically be true. However, indoctrination is generally understood to be information that is falsely intended to fool, trick, or coerce people into a belief, which could range from life to religion to politics and everything in between. When children are young, they generally take on a belief given to them by others who are in authority such as parents, teachers, and government officials.
These beliefs are not always accepted immediately but are adopted through constant repetition by those “in authority” and presented with vigor, certainty, and assuredness, not unlike a traveling snake oil salesman on a wagon train proclaiming loudly that his secret potion has cured many and by members of the audience who confirm that they were near death and what he’s selling is the truth. Some of them were shills and some did indeed recover from their sickness and attributed it to the snake oil serum while many others recovered without taking a drop of it. But when a crowd is whipped into a frenzy by many agreeing that the con artist is right, the lie catches on and is believed as if it is true because so many accept it and affirm it. Like a revival meeting, doubters are turned into believers one by one and are pushing and shoving to be the lucky ones to get in on the magic cure for what ails them.
Suppose you grew up in Iran instead of America and were told to read the Koran every day for one hour. Your parents carried it around with them and from a very young age, you were told that everything in the Koran was the absolute truth, and you were not to question it but to believe it. Not just part of the Koran but every word of it. Along with telling you that fire is hot, water is wet, and rocks are hard, you were told that the Koran is the absolute truth, and when or if you ever questioned any of the writings, you were admonished that you should never do that, and if you continued, Allah would be extremely upset. Over the years, your brothers and sisters, friends, relatives, co-workers, and everyone in your city all spoke in reverent tones about the Koran, and any time someone dared question the “truth” of the writings, no matter how odd the “truth” seemed, such as Allah wanting nonbelievers killed, they were met with ridicule, scorn, and contempt.
By the time you had reached your teens, you would most likely have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the beliefs given to you by all of those around you, as being 100% true. No one you know questions it. For the most part, those who have given you these “truths” have never lied to you about anything else, they love you, they have protected you, they provided for you, and so why would you have any reason to question them about Allah? Since you had been told that the Koran was the truth when you read it or heard a passage, your mind played a trick on you and made you believe that every sentence you read WAS the truth, and the constant reading and repetition into your brain made it so that you could not sort out the truth from the fiction. If you dared question any of the passages, you knew that was a sin, so you read and believed everything as the “truth”. Over time, you became one of them, a believer in the Koran. Not only that, you believed it so much, that you now were the teacher of others, telling anyone around you the “truth” that you have found.
I intentionally used Islam so as not to upset those who live in America who grew up in an area where the predominant belief system is based on the Judeo-Christian bible. If I was writing this for a Muslim audience, I could use the example of Americans being told every day that the bible is true and you will suffer dire consequences for nonbelief. When we believe things, we do so because of many factors but primarily because those beliefs are reinforced by our family, our friends, and the society in which we were raised. Were you to go into any town in any corner of the world and ask anyone whether or not they believe things that are not true, you will not find one who says YES and if he does, he is lying.
I have no wish to cast any aspersions on religions with this post but use the two major religions to show how humans are made to believe. This indoctrination, propaganda, and brainwashing have been going on for as long as man has walked the face of the earth. The Bible even starts with a story that a devil tricked Eve into a false belief. One should wonder why God did not want Adama and Eve to know anything, and before the devil came along if they were simpletons living in blissful ignorance. My main website is named IndoctYOUnation because this trickery and deceit hasn’t abated one bit. It has exploded with the creation of the internet, and humanity is being harmed every single waking hour by hate, lies, deceit, and anger by those we humans who are “in authority” such as politicians, doctors, attorneys, media hacks, along with a whole host of others who claim superiority of knowledge over we mere mortals.
Many children are not equipped to separate the wheat from the chaff unless they have a solid foundation of good moral values. Both Christianity and Islam teach moral values. Some are good and some are not so good. Religion is waning today because of the not-so-good parts and moral values are not being instilled in humanity as a result. I wrote Magical Morals with that in mind. Everyone is stronger when they live their lives with a good set of moral values. They can think and reason about what everyone is telling them and are strong enough to weather the barrage of lies and half-truths that they get from others. They will be less prone to be taken advantage of or bullied and manipulated into beliefs just because lots of people believe something.
