I've noted how intractible so many are in strongly held opinions often obtained by propaganda.
I look for ways to help people get past the propaganda, and it's not that easy a thing to do.
There's the old saying about 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink', that seems to capture these difficulties.
I ran across this 1958 excerpt of Aldous Huxley - most famous for "Brave New World", but he also wrote a followup book deserving more attention:
This is from long enough ago that the media was in the baby stages of the things he talked about - it's now much further in the advancement he talks about.
One thing to note is that when media is very good at these things, people notice them less and less, to where you can say it's going on, and people will not agree.
We have very clear issues today, such as the small wealthy class greatly winning a 'class war' and taking control of our politics, but the people do not unite and oppose it.
Hm, who can say anything about why?
In this very forum, I've noticed that many topics get one and two word responses, as if they're arguments - the very 'inability for rational discussion' he mentions.
Under Bush, the political battle was sometimes discussed as the 'reality based' versus the Bushies - and it hasn't really gotten any better, ideology dominating public opinion.
In fact, I've come to largely view history as always having such problems, and the 'good periods' having more to do with luck than the right reasons causing them.
When great policies were enacted, it probably wasn't because the public had overcome these things - but in spite of the fact they hadn't. There were often accidents or coincidences or circumstances deserving more credit than some 'rational approach' to governing.
For example, the CIA has taken on a life of its own as an instrument hard for elected leaders to control that has had periods of great excess in operations, and has been described as 'an operational organization hiding behind the cover of its intelligence gathering functions', the operation side with a far larger budget.
Now, the rational hasn't worked too well about fixing this. The creator of the agency, Harry Truman, over a decade later - a month after JFK was killed - wrote an article saying the agency had gone out of control and needed to be reigned in, and was not doing what he had designed it to do. The article was published in one morning edition of one paper and immediately forgotten and ignored. JFK himself had said he wanted to 'cut the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them in the wind', with little effect.
What ACTUALLY did curtail some of the excesses was the accident of how some of the activities being leaked and exposed, while the executive branch wanted to cover that up. Rivalries between groups and individuals, the politics between a Democratic Congress and a Republican president, the unrelated spirit of Watergate influencing the attitudes, seem to have played a bigger role in fulfilling the democratic obligation for informing the public and bringing some reform than any 'rational governing' had.
The civil rights movement had very little success from its rational arguments at the time, largely ignored - in a city in Atlanta, leaders including Martin Luther King couldn't even get blacks to show up for a demonstration, mush less whites to listen - which led to the accident that instead, they invited black CHILDREN, who they could get to show up - to the criticism of many blacks and whites for using children this way - and the fact that that this town had a very racist and activist sheriff who used police dogs and fire hoses, which the leaders had actually apparently counted on, despicable though that may seem, created the photos that then actually did stir the conscience of a nation where the rational arguments about the immorality of inequality had not.
And even then, a main reason why those images had impact in government, was the unrelated issue of the cold war - it was at the same time the US was competing with the Soviet bloc for the hearts and minds of third-world countries, that these photos were devastating to use as propaganda for the Soviets, and this made JFK determined to prevent such incidents for reasons again unrelated to the rational issues of race.
People often don't ask, why did society suddenly come to decide that equality was right regarding race, not in 1820, or 1910, or 1940, but in the 50's and 60's?
They often don't understand why, it was 'just progress'. Just progress that took hundreds of years. Less for the 'right reasons' and more for other reasons.
Even unintended thins like the implications of segregation in WWII, that helped lead to the desegregation of the military; and things like there being the national pasttime of baseball with a Jacki Robinson finally allowed to play and helping make the issue clearer to people, even the role of television helping that issue be clearer, many such things played important roles - apart from 'rational discussion on race'.
It's scary to consider the idea that in fact, the powerful and organized interests usually do win, and how much it depends on things like 'accidents' to prevent that.
Rupert Murdoch's flawed businesses have not been countered by rational discussion much - but the accident of a 'phone hacking' practice had more effect.
Huxley's comments on how propaganda works seem pretty pertinent to me for how things go on today, as the culture fails against corruption as Huxley said it could.
Save234
I look for ways to help people get past the propaganda, and it's not that easy a thing to do.
There's the old saying about 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink', that seems to capture these difficulties.
I ran across this 1958 excerpt of Aldous Huxley - most famous for "Brave New World", but he also wrote a followup book deserving more attention:
This is from long enough ago that the media was in the baby stages of the things he talked about - it's now much further in the advancement he talks about.
One thing to note is that when media is very good at these things, people notice them less and less, to where you can say it's going on, and people will not agree.
We have very clear issues today, such as the small wealthy class greatly winning a 'class war' and taking control of our politics, but the people do not unite and oppose it.
Hm, who can say anything about why?
In this very forum, I've noticed that many topics get one and two word responses, as if they're arguments - the very 'inability for rational discussion' he mentions.
Under Bush, the political battle was sometimes discussed as the 'reality based' versus the Bushies - and it hasn't really gotten any better, ideology dominating public opinion.
In fact, I've come to largely view history as always having such problems, and the 'good periods' having more to do with luck than the right reasons causing them.
When great policies were enacted, it probably wasn't because the public had overcome these things - but in spite of the fact they hadn't. There were often accidents or coincidences or circumstances deserving more credit than some 'rational approach' to governing.
For example, the CIA has taken on a life of its own as an instrument hard for elected leaders to control that has had periods of great excess in operations, and has been described as 'an operational organization hiding behind the cover of its intelligence gathering functions', the operation side with a far larger budget.
Now, the rational hasn't worked too well about fixing this. The creator of the agency, Harry Truman, over a decade later - a month after JFK was killed - wrote an article saying the agency had gone out of control and needed to be reigned in, and was not doing what he had designed it to do. The article was published in one morning edition of one paper and immediately forgotten and ignored. JFK himself had said he wanted to 'cut the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them in the wind', with little effect.
What ACTUALLY did curtail some of the excesses was the accident of how some of the activities being leaked and exposed, while the executive branch wanted to cover that up. Rivalries between groups and individuals, the politics between a Democratic Congress and a Republican president, the unrelated spirit of Watergate influencing the attitudes, seem to have played a bigger role in fulfilling the democratic obligation for informing the public and bringing some reform than any 'rational governing' had.
The civil rights movement had very little success from its rational arguments at the time, largely ignored - in a city in Atlanta, leaders including Martin Luther King couldn't even get blacks to show up for a demonstration, mush less whites to listen - which led to the accident that instead, they invited black CHILDREN, who they could get to show up - to the criticism of many blacks and whites for using children this way - and the fact that that this town had a very racist and activist sheriff who used police dogs and fire hoses, which the leaders had actually apparently counted on, despicable though that may seem, created the photos that then actually did stir the conscience of a nation where the rational arguments about the immorality of inequality had not.
And even then, a main reason why those images had impact in government, was the unrelated issue of the cold war - it was at the same time the US was competing with the Soviet bloc for the hearts and minds of third-world countries, that these photos were devastating to use as propaganda for the Soviets, and this made JFK determined to prevent such incidents for reasons again unrelated to the rational issues of race.
People often don't ask, why did society suddenly come to decide that equality was right regarding race, not in 1820, or 1910, or 1940, but in the 50's and 60's?
They often don't understand why, it was 'just progress'. Just progress that took hundreds of years. Less for the 'right reasons' and more for other reasons.
Even unintended thins like the implications of segregation in WWII, that helped lead to the desegregation of the military; and things like there being the national pasttime of baseball with a Jacki Robinson finally allowed to play and helping make the issue clearer to people, even the role of television helping that issue be clearer, many such things played important roles - apart from 'rational discussion on race'.
It's scary to consider the idea that in fact, the powerful and organized interests usually do win, and how much it depends on things like 'accidents' to prevent that.
Rupert Murdoch's flawed businesses have not been countered by rational discussion much - but the accident of a 'phone hacking' practice had more effect.
Huxley's comments on how propaganda works seem pretty pertinent to me for how things go on today, as the culture fails against corruption as Huxley said it could.
Save234
