Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheeple


Sheeple
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sheeple is a term of disparagement, a portmanteau created by combining the words "sheep" and "people"; a reference to herd mentality. It is often used to denote persons who acquiesce to authority, and thus undermine their own human individuality. The implication of sheeple is that as a collective, people believe whatever they are told, without processing it to be sure that it is an accurate representation of the real world around them. The term is generally used in a political or religious sense.

The label seems to have originated among conspiracy theorists in the United States of a far right political persuasion. The Wall Street Journal first reported the label in print in 1984, where its reporter encountered the word used by the proprietor of an American Opinion bookstore affiliated with the John Birch Society.[1] In this usage, taxpayers were derided for their perceived blind conformity, as opposed to the conspiracy theorists and tax protesters who thought independently. "Sheeple" are people who pay their taxes and accept what the government and the mass media tell them. [2] A piece of folk poetry circulating among conspiracy theorists puts this usage in a nutshell:

Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I am way too smart to believe in a conspiracy.[3]
Acceptance of government intrusion and regulation is another hallmark of the "sheeple" according to those who use the epithet. The Guardian reported that an Alaskan reacted to news of a survey that said that "four out of five Americans . . . would give up some freedoms for greater security" by labelling this majority as "sheeple".[4] In a column entitled A Nation of Sheeple, columnist Walter E. Williams writes that "Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation Security Administration nonsense. In the name of security, we've allowed fingernail clippers, eyeglass screwdrivers and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane."[5]

Common usage also applies the term to devoutly religious people, particularly Christians; however, it is also used to describe devout members of any religious persuasion, and perhaps its particular application to Christianity is a combination of the fact that Christians are the majority religion in the Americas and Europe where the term is commonly used, and the fact that Christians describe themselves as a "flock" and Christ as a "shepherd."

In political usage, it can be used to refer to a member of any political party, and is especially applied to those who take a hard party line stance or who are especially trusting of any politician.

However, the term is also used more broadly to describe any person who the speaker feels is exceedingly conformist, including members of consumer culture and popular culture at large.

The term has also come to be used to describe hoplophobes and other similar persons - people with an illogical fear of weapons, fire, cars, machinery etc, and certain other things such as men in camouflage or ethnic minorities. In this sense it is used particularly amongst gun and knife enthusiasts.

Macmillan English Dictionary
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/New-Wor...606-sheeple.htm


sheeple noun [plural]
people who are easily persuaded and tend to follow what other people do

‘I hope I can pass on a few thoughts … to encourage people to see that they are living in a conditioned illusion and we can change it any time we want. We can be people and not sheeple.’
(David Icke in a discussion of his new sci-fi channel show, June 2002)

The term sheeple, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1984, has been used increasingly in the last couple of years due to the enhanced marketing potential afforded by online and satellite channel media. It is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to saturation advertising, going out and buying the ‘must-have’ fashions and fads of the moment. Sheeple is also used more generally to refer to people who don’t tend to think for themselves but basically follow the crowd or believe what the media tells them. In a June 2002 Guardian newspaper article, it was used in reference to individuals who had taken part in a survey resulting in the claim that ‘four out of five Americans had said they would give up some freedom for greater security’.

The citation at the beginning of the article is from an individual who is a rather extreme believer in alternative ways of thinking, but his use of sheeple is the same, i.e. people should think for themselves, whereas sheeple’s thoughts and reactions are based on what they have been led to believe by others.

Background
The plural noun sheeple is what is technically referred to as a blend, a combination of the words sheep and people. A blend is a new word formed from parts of two (or possibly more) words in such a way that it cannot be further analysed into morphemes (i.e. the smallest meaningful components of words). Other more familiar examples are brunch (breakfast and lunch) and chunnel (channel and tunnel). The concept of a blend (also called a portmanteau word) is nothing new. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, written in 1872, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words of a poem and he replies: ‘Well slithy means lithe and slimy. Lithe is the same as active. You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.’

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
all mimsy were the borogroves
and the mome raths outgrabe."


It's been ages since I heard that ! ha, brilliant !

Sky, what would you recommend using as a term for people who have surrendered their right to be called "citizens", because they no longer participate in a functioning democracy ? How do you describe this mewling, blundering, blind, sometimes vicious and brutal, quavering mass that trundles to and fro, blown by the winds of a transparent propaganda that anyone with an iota of intelligence could see through, and yet they cling to their Limbo's and their Herr Coulter's sibilant musings like Godzone troof ?
It's arrogant of me, but I can't quite call them citizens, because they are just empty consumer shells, incapable of making the effort to understand, frightened of knowledge, terrified by the unknown, scared of "strangers" and "difference", huddling together in their malls and fast-food joints, breeding and consuming with obese rapidity and tilting the planet into the abyss with the collective weight of their ignorance.

They think they voted for bush, too.....

I think "sheeple" fits the bill, really ? Or is that Bill Oreilly..??

I see you've taken the first step. Label the group you don't like with a derogatory tag. Second step is to deny them the legal rights granted to "real people" (i.e., the ones who agree with you). Third step is to set up the concentration camps.

Yeah, Jubal, it reads like that, doesn't it ?

Guess it's just anger at Scooter free-wheeling off laughing into the sunset, and the overwhelming feeling of helplessness at the lunge to all-out war with Iran, or whoever else displeases the desperate dangerous idiots in the Black House. Anger at the apathy of the vast majority of fellow citizens that seem unwilling and unable to see beyond the headlines, and pose a very real threat to democracy by their apathy and indolence. Anger (a destructive sentiment, I know..) at the stubborn resistance to reality clung to by so many people against so much evidence to the contrary.

I don't want everyone to agree with me, OK, maybe the world would be a swell place, but at least that they take slightly more interest in events which only a fool would say "Oh, I can't change that, I'm only one small person..."

Jesus was only a man, Geronimo was only a man, Benjamin Franklin was only a man, Anne Frank was only a girl, Marie Currie was only a woman, Lenin was only a man...........Boy George was a bit of both, but they changed the World. Whether it was for good or bad, they moved people. Now all I see is apathy by the masses, and a kind of enforced ignorance. Dammit, 41% of American's questioned in a poll (and yes, I don't rate poll's that highly, but they serve as a useful "pinch-of-salt" indicator, a snap-shot of history in the making..) believe that Saddam had links to 9/11. What do you think these people deserve ? What will wake them up ?

I'll quote some stuff, because I just feel that way, and words escape me at the moment...

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink.."

The information is all out there for people to open critical minds too, ignorance is no longer an excuse in this day and age. To be uninformed is as dangerous as being a terrorist. Uninformed people voted in to power a group that can only be described as fascist who have been responsible for around a million deaths, and they're only warming up....that is capital, as far as I can see. Irresponsible voting, mindless support for discredited and possibly illegal, and certainly anti-Humanist, practices and ignorant herd-stampeding to media manipulation is not healthy to find in citizens. In the 21st Century, it's not normal, either.

"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all." JFK

"Politics ought to be the part time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and priviliges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage." Dwight D. Eisenhower


It's a fine line to tread between waking the people, and becoming the enemy. Can you see that line, Jubal ?

I just thought your statement bore a striking resemblance to some of the White House's declarations and implications that anyone who didn't agree with them were terrorist supporters.

You do disapprove of that kind of rhetoric, don't you?

Yeah, I do. Partially because it oversimplifies a complicated problem, and partially because it's just plain wrong.

The problem, as I see it, is that if the public were not, er, sheeple, they would have run Snow out of town, and the rest of the cabal with him. That the Black House can issue edicts like this, can espouse blatent and flagrant nonsensical paradigms like this "Us or them", "Good versus Evil" bollocks, well, what more can I say pertaining to the unblinking, numb, vacant thousand-yard stare of the public.

When you see the excitation and hubub around Paris and her panties, the sheer depth of involvement and knowledge that the public get into over vulgar trivia, and the gentle sighing of the breeze over an empty field as Scooter putters off towards the plains of Lie-berty and Just Us (somewhere in South America, apparently..) with a smirking chuckle and a "Dick saves." pendant flapping in the breeze....well, it just makes me spit.


"Ptooo !"

Thank you Jubal and Rousseau for the excellent discussion on this topic.
There's something here to think about, and your discussion has helped the consideration.


We Progressives tend to have an arrogance in which we consider ourselves to be smarter than the crowd.
Hell it even at times helps us to think we're smarter than each other.
We Progressives also tend to think of our selves as leaders of Critical thinking, as if somehow we know best because we are less certain of our convictions. Less certain? Yes, because if you are certain, then you have no reason to think critically. That is, unless all you really intend to do is to be critical of everybody Else's thought, but not your own. And then you have a faux critical thought process, and don't qualify to join the club.

I know many people who don't really care about politics. My sister is a Radiologists and her Husband is a Chiropractor. Neither of them really take much interest, except what they see on-line while getting their mail or on the TV news. This does not make them sheeple. Both are leaders in their community and are active with the Chamber of Commerce. They are both bright, active, caring, thinking people who full well have the capacity for critical thinking, and use it regularly. I know several dozen similar people. Folks not plugged into politics such as we are, but who none the less do not qualify for and do not deserve the denigration of the term, "Sheeple".

A basic human characteristics can best be described this way.....

"Birds of a feather tend to flock together"

Meaning, those of us who are politically active tend to hang with, have conversation with, and discuss the things of shared interest with people who tend to think and feel as we do. If not, this forum could not exist, and is exactly why this forum exists. That said, think about and be aware of your particular perspective, and remember that yours in not the only perspective. And also keep in mind that it is and should be our desire to educate these people, and we can only do so if they choose to be educated. They will never want to listen if we call them names and make it clear to everybody that we think and consider ourselves intellectually superior, because we are not and they are, Sheeple. If you fail to consider these realities, and you follow the heard in using such a negative and degrading terms, then you to are a Sheeple too. But even more you're also a hypocrite.



There, but for the grace of god, go I!

I have to agree with Sky here. There are a million reasons why certain people don't get involved in politics, and a million reasons why others do. We're human beings. We're complex and multi faceted.
My sister and her husband are bringing up three daughters aged thirteen, eight and two. They're also running a business together. They're interested in the world around them, but they don't have the time, energy or inclination to go digging around for 'alternative' news sources. They vote most elections, and sometimes the vote unaware of the issues. But they're not sheep, they're busy!
My boyfriend does not give one single solitary sh*t for politics or the environment or anything that I consider vitally important. He doesn't vote, and doesn't care. In my opinion that makes him a fool but it in no way makes him a sheep. He follows NO heard, lives his life completely by his rules (or so he thinks! Ha! The elite of the NWO rule.. I keep telling him that, but he doesn't care!)
The point is, no matter what motivates a person to do what they do, or not do what we do, is entirely their business and entirely their right.
I can't judge them... I don't know them! Those that I do know, I know choose to live differently than me because they are living their lives, their circumstance; I live my life, my circumstance.
Sheeple don't exist, people do. And whether we like, appreciate, or approve of their seeming political apathy we certainly have no right to judge it or to attach a derogatory label to them!

Yeah, that's pretty fair comment, Karen, and you too, Sky.
It's all a matter of perspective, though. People used to be, I think, more involved in politics, partially because of the Cold War, which had a fear effect that stimulated political involvement, or at least focalised people on issues and events. Once the wall came down, and once the "Evil Empire" was revealed as a bit of a bogey-man propped up by the arms industry of BOTH sides, I believe that people began to get complacent. During the Clinton years, after the burst of excitement that was GW 1, interest in politics dropped almost off the scale, Clinton was a good guy, the Palestinians and the Israelis were shaking hands and patting backs, peace was breaking out in most places, excepting the odd genocide here and there, the foaming-at-the-mouth salafists where being beaten into little fleshy cubes by the Algerian army, and radical Islam was becoming as attractive as herpes. It actually looked like some kind of sanity was creeping steadily over the Human race as it trundled towards 2000.
Then Rabin was assassinated, the Taliban got frumpy, OBL found some fun new games to play, the neocons squeezed and slithered out into the open and became obsessed with Clinton's cigar seasoning habits, and bush was "ahem" elected.
I think this confused most astute observers, imagine what it did to people who had become politically apathetic and distracted by the concerted efforts of some of the most influential media power ever concentrated in so few a hands since Goebbels went and hung around with some bad dudes in the '30s....

I can't really be angry that people don't give a flying V about politics, because that's what has been sold to them by the manipulated media, whispered in their ears, insinuated at every turn by shadows in the dark recesses "Don't bother your pretty head with all that politicsss nonsense, you can't change anything anyway, so whatsss the use about trying to be interested, here have some sssleeze, or have a nice Christian sssing-along...."
Distractions flooded in from all corners, and people forgot to be able to see the forest, because their POV was blocked by the tree's and bush's....

If you don't give a shit for the NBA, life will go on. If you don't care for model trains, life, too, will go on. But politics is an altogether different ball game, and to be ignorant or uninterested is an act of civic negligence. That it is a desired and sought-after effect by certain slithering men in power makes it all the more urgent that people become interested. It won't take much effort, and it may just change the future of the planet for the better.
I'm preaching to the convinced here, I know, but I preach to the non-convinced with as much force and persuasion that I can muster. "I can't do big things, but I can do little things well..."
Waking the slumbering apathetic citizen is possibly one of the hardest combats known to humankind, and it can be a painful and unrewarding task sometimes, but once that swollen monster begins to move with rightousness, sense and purpose, it has a power that no force can easily stop. Making sure that the sense and purpose are clearly defined is the vitally important part.

Sky, is a Radiologist like a Scientologist...??

Watch the movie "Flags of our Fathers"

It's about the guys that raised the flag on Iwo Jima.
It's NOT a gung ho patriotic movie, it's about those boys and what they went though both putting the flag up and the Bond tours after.

Watch the movie and you'll understand why these boys were ordered to volunteer to do the tour. You'll see that even during the most patriotic endeavor of the 20th century, apathy was a huge problem. And if apathy was such an issue in WWII, why should now be any different, especially given the mood of people such as AFW who can never seem to find any reason to be hopeful about the future. I mean, if there's nothing we can do, then who cares?

Everybody has a perspective, a lens through which they see and interpret the world.
Just because their lens is different than yours is a pretty piss poor reason to put them down.

Now this I appreciate. - Apathetic BF notwithstanding!
Thank goodness that most of the people I know and mix with are at least interested. It lends one a good starting point. The thankless task of waking up the sleepers is a tough one, but I don't think that will stop any of us trying. 5 years with this BF and I'm still trying! (I'd get less time for perverting the course of justice! )

True that, and what are the odds of your BF ever giving a political damn if you use words that tend to indicate that because you're politically aware, you're somehow smarter, more capable, more intelligent and more or less morally superior to him by using words like or calling him a Sheeple?


The discussion isn't about apathy. This is not good no matter what and yes, everybody outta be politically aware.
The question and point of this thread, is the use of terms like "Sheeple".

It IS quicker and shorter than calling someone an "uninformed citizen and potential voter for positive change in the political heirarchy" though......




OK, OK, I'm just leaving...

It is at that!

Though still not as conveinent and the two syllable "Sheeple", how about something like,
Those who I don't consider fully informed. Or, Those that doen't yet fully understand the consequences.
Or if you just gotta have an easy word, how about "Centrist"?

Hmmmm,no. Centrist is someone who has realised that the extremes are both autodestructive, but that both sides have good ideas, and a blend would possibly make the planet function far, far better.

Sheeple still sounds right for people in a democracy who make a conscious decision to ignore politics, or those unfortunate enough to have been excluded from the edyewkaishun system, due to class, poor finances, or base animal stupidity. It's more polite than other words I can think of, anyway.....


Ultimately, you are right though. Calling the plebs...ooops, the CITIZENS names that may be interpreted as derogatory doesn't do the cause of humanity and civilised, involved-citizen political debate much good at all. I'll pat the next citizen I pass on the street, and see if they start purring and roll over to have their stomach rubbed. Perhaps it would be easier if I wore a "Cheney/Satan 08" campaign button ?

Perhaps, but my personal observations have been that a centrist is one that hasn't been fully informed one way or the other.
A TRUE centrist would like the best of both, but in these times it's more and more difficult to do that.
In reality a Centrist would be one or the other, if they were better informed.

To avoid being labeled, that word, not anly does one need to be informed, they must also be upset and active.
If heaven forbid, for what ever reason they actually agree and like how things are, we find it all to easy to label them sheeple. When in my opinion a much more accurate word would simply be, "incorrect".