CUSTODE is a framework for the ongoing, recursive evolution and teaching of information literacy.
The personal ability to competently evaluate information is critical to the collection of privileges we’ve come to call “freedom” or “human rights” or “justice.”
The world is at present badly lagging in both the general population in teaching people how to identify and mitigate bias – external or internal, positive or negative – and the unethical or malicious application of persuasive tactics in communication, particularly via mass media.
In late 2021 when CUSTODE began, our world was in low-to-mid-grade chaos across the board.
Covid. The rise of fascism and autocracy around the world, including the United States. The increasing corruption and suppression of independent journalism. The rise of social media as a tool of advertising and propaganda.
The ongoing erosion of our capacity to fully understand implications and to completely reason out potential cause-and-effect scenarios in advance, among other key reasoning tactics, is taking with it our ability to even notice that it’s eroding.
Nearly all of the issues contributing to this chaos and entropy are rooted, fundamentally, in our failure to prioritize the development of competent critical thinking and information evaluation skills.
Nearly our entire current way of thinking is inadequate to this moment in human history.
That absolutely must change if we’re to seriously slow and reverse the current decline into chaos without a great deal of unnecessary suffering.
The purpose of CUSTODE is not to simply be part of the solution to that problem, but to help canonically define the problems and their solutions, and to execute those solutions, and to assist and advise in every possible way anyone else who wants to execute these solutions, whether within themselves, among their social circles and family, or as educators at any academic level.
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