When I was growing up in Lithuania, then occupied by the Soviet Union, indoctrination was simply part of life.

Of course, as a child, I did not call it indoctrination.

I called it school.

I remember being in the second grade and reading Stories About Lenin’s Childhood. For those who may not be familiar with Soviet history, Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the founder of the Soviet state.

But that was not the Lenin we met in second grade.

We met Volodia—the affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.

Young Volodia was wonderful.

He helped his mother. He was kind to his brothers and sisters. He respected older people. He studied hard. He was thoughtful, responsible, generous—apparently a model child in every possible category.

I remember thinking:

Wow. What a wonderful boy.

And why wouldn’t I?

I was eight years old.

Nobody handed us another book afterward called Now Let’s Look at What Happened Later.

Around that age, children became Octobrists, named after the October Revolution of 1917. We received a small red-star pin with the face of young Volodia in the center.

I remember wearing mine.

Everyone did.

At eight years old, I had no idea about revolutions, political terror, executions, civil war, ideology, or the enormous human cost that followed the Bolsheviks’ rise to power.

I knew only the smiling little boy on my pin.

And I believed the story I had been given.

For quite a while.

Years later, when I began learning history beyond the sanitized version presented to Soviet children, the picture became considerably more complicated.

That experience stayed with me.

Not because I now believe that everything we are taught is false. That would simply be replacing one form of certainty with another.

But it taught me to ask a question that has followed me throughout my life:

Who told you that?

Who told me this was true?

Where did the story come from?

What was left out?

Who benefits if I believe it?

And perhaps most importantly: Have I ever examined it for myself?

It is an uncomfortable question because so much of what we call “our beliefs” did not begin with us.

We inherit ideas from our parents, schools, governments, religions, cultures, newspapers, television, professors, experts, friends—and now, of course, algorithms.

Some of those ideas are true.

Some are partly true.

Some were once true and are no longer.

Some are opinions wearing very respectable clothing.

And some have simply been repeated so many times that eventually nobody remembers to ask where they came from.

Repetition is remarkably persuasive.

Hear something once, and you may question it.

Hear it a hundred times, and it starts sounding familiar.

Hear it for twenty years, and suddenly it becomes “common knowledge.”

Human beings have always told stories about the world. We probably could not function without them.

The problem begins when we forget that a story is a story and start treating it as the entire picture.

And propaganda, of course, is not exclusively Soviet.

Every country has its preferred narratives.

Every political movement has them.

Every institution has them.

Every generation has them.

Even families have them.

Sometimes we grow up believing that Uncle George was a great businessman when, years later, someone quietly explains that Uncle George actually went bankrupt three times and Aunt Mary paid all the bills.

History is not the only place where editing occurs.

This is why I do not think the answer is to distrust everything.

That would be exhausting.

Imagine investigating every statement before breakfast.

“Is this actually coffee? Who told me that?”

At some point, we do have to function.

But perhaps healthy skepticism means occasionally stopping when something feels absolutely obvious and asking:

How do I know this?

There is another danger too.

Once people discover that they have been misled about one thing, they can become vulnerable to believing the opposite of everything.

If the official story was wrong, then surely the unofficial story must be right.

Not necessarily.

A rejected illusion does not automatically reveal the truth.

Sometimes it simply creates room for a new illusion.

That is where discernment becomes so important.

We should be able to question conventional ideas without automatically rejecting them.

We should be able to consider unconventional ideas without swallowing them whole.

We should be able to say, “This sounds interesting. Let me look.”

And perhaps, after looking, say:

“I still don’t know.”

There are worse places to be.

As I wrote in my previous Editorial, the longer I live, and the more I learn, the more comfortable I become with not knowing everything.

But there is one thing I know from experience:

If someone gives you a beautiful little red star with the face of an exceptionally well-behaved child in the middle, it might be worth asking a few questions.

Preferably before wearing it for several years.

So every once in a while, I take one of my comfortable certainties off the shelf, dust it off, and ask:

Do I actually know this?

Or have I simply known it for a very long time?

And then comes my favorite question:

Who told me that?

— J.B. Gattini
Founder & Editor
Enlightenment Media News