My ego prefers to be the kind of person who ends up at truth over being one who has fooled themselves into thinking they have already found it, which makes changing my mind easier than others find it.
I am pleased to say, others have also remarked that I am closer to this ideal than others they know.
Yeah, that's what everyone says.
One of my childhood life-lessons, which took far too many examples to internalise, was all the people who are very happy to follow the crowd because it is the crowd.
In fact, what you're doing now suggests my approach is so alien to you that you yourself are right now not only not even telling yourself this but also labelling yourself as someone who does not say this.
Scount mindset: the discovery of the truth to the best of our ability without fear or favour.
The metaphor is: A scout who tells the general his troops are strong when they are weak, that the enemy is weak when it is strong, is a bad scout.
The opposite is a soldier mindset: a soldier who fears to fight when ordered, no matter the strength of the enemy, isn't a good soldier.
You can call the search for truth an agenda in its own right if you wish, but it lacks the "primarily used to influence or persuade" aspect of propaganda.
That's a mind-slave mindset. Why is the scout working for the general and not for himself?
And a general needs the same *mindset*, even if they must also engage in performative ho-rah-ing to the troops.
A general may need to order their troops to die for the greater good, they may need to lie to the troops to up morale, but if a general lets themselves believe they're strong when they're weak, they're bad at being generals. If they don't listen to their scouts, if they shoot the messenger, they're bad at being generals.
There's also debate and ego-less teaching for the sake of truth-seeking.