I guess a better question would be how could someone separate good information from bad information? Take this analogy: It’s like the 1999 movie The Matrix, what is real, the matrix (a metaphor of current society) or the real world where no one is being productively drained by “authorities.” The so-called external authorities are like the computerized parasites (politicians, for example).

Dr. Julian Jaynes theorized that people were not conscious until around 1000 BCE in Greece, 400 BCE in India, and 500 BCE in China. I do not mean consciousness as in awake versus being asleep, but as in a subjective awareness of time, self, and possibility. But when ancient societies became too complex for people who where not self aware, those societies broke down. In theory, the only way human beings could survive was to reorganize the mind to take objective facts and subjectively interpreting them. But there is a flaw in this type of mind. If people can foresee a possibility that may not be there, they can also imagine a set of ideas that are not true, in another words, dishonesty. In short, it is dishonesty that allows people to rationalize laziness, default to responsibility, and so on, and is the root cause in the flaw of our current society. When someone defaults to self-command, that person is looking for an authority other than that person’s own. This external authority can be a politician, theologian, an idol, a book, a horoscope, or whatever. At that point, the individual who gave his or her own person to someone else can be manipulated to accept most of what their “authority” tells them. Meanwhile, this authority does not have to actually work for a living, or at least take praise that person did not earn.

Most of the time, this little fact happens below people’s awareness because it seems normal to them.