One more thing about society, which looks like a mockery for me: the belief, that in democracy regime people are able to shape their own justified opinions about politicians and to choose their governors by themselves...
...for me, it's obvious that it's impossible. Even if we are talking about "true", "transparent" democracy without any law violations and with (formally) equal opportunities for competition between candidates, people don't actually choose anything by their own reasoning.
The main reason why, is: average politician is much, much more smart and sneaky than average voter. So, again, even in the conditions of "true", "transparent" democracy, if candidate has enough money (and don't have undeniable incriminating evidences - true or fabricated), and thus, enough tools and professionals of convincing, (s)he will be able to convince voters to vote for him or her. No matter, how good politician really is, and how it's really beneficial for voters to vote for them. It may be done even without any direct lie or violations of anything! Just, again, because (s)he is smarter than voters and thus can manipulate them easily.
Once upon a time, when I didn't have a good education yet, and thus worked at low-qualified temporary works, I heard about the job on "social polls" on some "political thematic" (without clarifications) with a payment significantly bigger than I usually got for similar work. The work was - just to promote this poll, i.e. come to the people on the street during the day and call them into a temporary building with a chairs and table, where "poll" happened with a short discussion after. A promoters also should give free coffee or Coca-Cola to all participants, who agreed to do it. I don't feel comfortable working with people so much, but payment seduced me, and I've come to that job.
During the work, I started to wonder very soon, how many money were paid to organize this? Cans of coffee and Coca-Cola were small, but we gave more than hundred of them every day. Successfully attracting one person to the poll was paid nearly 2-3$ for every promoter like me, but each of us invited dozens people every day... and it all happened during nearly a month, so it looked quite costly. Who paid for it?
To answer this question, I looked into the content of the poll. Making the long story short, poll asked people: which candidate do they want to choose as a governor and why? Also the poll had the attachment, where different candidates were listed with a short description for reference. Each candidate had also a short list of "merits" and "flaws", written in this attachment.
And - what do you think? Almost all candidates had ridiculous "merits", which looked more like a mock, than like a true merit. For example, one candidate had a "merit": "he has the same surname, as famous sportsman mr. XXX". Only one candidate had adequate list of merits. And the opposite, the attachment said, that almost all candidates had very significant, repulsive flaws. Only one had very insignificant, ridiculous flaws. And, of course, it was the same guy, who had a great, significant merits, according to the same info list. After looking at this, it became obvious, who exactly paid for the "poll". But my curiosity wasn't satisfied enough. This "manipulation" looked extremely primitively and obvious for me, and I wondered: how people actually reacted to it?
To satisfy my curiosity, I started to come to the door of the temporary building closer from time to time and to listen to the whole "poll and conversation" sessions. And those sessions, which I heard, went the following way. At the beginning of the session, when our chief asked people, who is their favorite candidate, everyone named different guys. But after filling in the poll and conversation (which went in the same direction and style, as an attachment to the poll), when people were asked again, for whom will they vote...
...the most (sometimes all) of them answered that they'll choose the same candidate (guess, which one)! Not saying, that a couple of people were not actually people from the street, but our workers, and they always were the first, who was asked the questions, and they answered them very confidently, naming and admiring desired candidate. So, obviously, other people were even more prone to agree with them, due to inherent crowd conformism.
Sometimes among the questioned people, were one or two persons, who understood, what's going on and either started to be furious about it, or laugh. But they were usually suppressed by the crowd.
I started to perceive it like something absurd and funny as well. But it influenced my work in the wrong direction. Because, after this, when I continued to pick people from the street, it was too hard for me to hold myself from sick sarcastic smirk, when I asked them to come with me and showed them the can of coffee. And it was even more funny to see, how after the "poll", after swallowing such a primitive manipulation, they returned from the building, making smart faces. I looked at them and barely could hold myself from laughing at them. Which made me less efficient as other promotersâ
As I said, I'm bad in working with people...
However, after doing that work, I managed to buy new smartphone and to live for a couple of weeks without money restrictions, so I was more or less satisfied of it. Besides, it was an interesting and very informative experience, which gave me a lot to think about.
And which showed me, how easy is to manipulate and convince people, even in such a primitive ways (of course, if you don't gave yourself away with a sarcasm, which is the most hard part for me). And they will sincerely think that it's their own "opinion"...