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From:
href="http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071113.html"
rel="tag">Dilbert Internet Archive
There is elitism, and anti-elitism. In pure form,
both are bad. I recommend, as an alternative, something
called mutual respect.
In politics, there is a long history of us-versus-them-ism.
In the 2004 elections, this was used effectively, when
certain persons got everyone all riled up about the spectre of gay
marriage, which was sold to the public as a threat to heterosexual
marriage. It worked; it got people to vote, and it may have
swung the election. This year, it is illegal immigration.
Make no mistake, this is mostly about racism, or perhaps some
racist-classist hybrid. It certainly has nothing to do with
national security, or jobs, or the economy. In fact, there is
evidence that the crackdown is having a negative economic impact.
We have 95,000 houses for sale in this
area and 36% of them are vacant. Foreclosures are up 566% over last
year. This year, as part of the immigration hysteria, voters passed a
law to penalize business owners who hire undocumented workers. For
years the immigrants were tacitly welcomed to build cities like Phoenix
and Las Vegas. Now, with tighter economic times immigrants serve as
scapegoats and a diversion from other issues. This fragile group is
scared. Many of them own houses and they all pay taxes and contribute
to the local economy. What if a big chunk of these people leave?
Catastrophe.
That is from Ran Prieur's blog, here.
He doesn't keep permalinks; perhaps that means he's an anarchist.
I don't know. Anyway, the date of the post is
11/13/2007. Enterprising souls can find the post from the
date, if so inclined.
Anyway, the flap about illegal immigration is a kind of propaganda, a
way of manipulating the masses. And some people are just
begging to be manipulated. It makes them feel good, I guess.
But how does this manipulation work? Is there a history to
it, a science, that we can understand? Yes, of course.
Academic types are always analyzing everything. In
fact, there is a revealing and informative series of videos by
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis" rel="tag">Adam
Curtis, originally shown on BBC:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self"
rel="tag">The Century of the Self.
The videos are archived on Google Video,
href="http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Century+of+the+Self">here.
The series consists of four 1-hour segments, so it is not a
trivial exercise to watch them. Even so, it is worth it, if
you happen to be one of the few persons who does not like to be
manipulated.
Manipulation, by the way, can be viewed as a sort of social game.
One person sends an invitation, and the other accepts.
People like to play games. The thing is, the
transaction is not so reciprocal as it is made to appear.
The Century of the Self describes the relationship
between psychology, public relations, and political propaganda.
Although the psychological theory involved is flawed, and
most of the implementations are flawed, they still manage to be
effective.
One premise of the documentary is that Freudian theory led to the
understanding that people are influenced by unconscious motivations.
It also led to the notion that people in general are governed
by dangerous primitive instincts.
Both of those things happen to be true, although the way they are
portrayed is dated and overly simplistic. Psychoanalytic
theory holds that unconscious motivations can be understood via the
interpretation of symbols. The problem is that most people
understand the interpretation of symbols in a sort of Newtonian,
non-relativistic way.
Newtonian physics allows us to calculate the velocity of an object
based upon the mass of the object, and the amount of energy applied.
The problem is, as the speed of the object approaches the
speed of light, its mass starts to increase. So the simple
equations no longer apply: it becomes necessary to account for the fact
that the mass changes along with the speed.
Likewise, the meaning of a symbol changes over time.
Moreover, I would argue that the speed of this change is
increasing as a function of changes in society. The faster
society goes, the harder it is to figure out what the symbols mean.
As if that is not complicated enough, there is another problem: as soon
as the meaning of a symbol is interpreted, the meaning changes.
Interpretation is possible, but it takes a nimble mind to
keep track of the symbols and their meanings.
My impression, watching the documentary, is that propagandists have no
appreciation of the subtleties of the science that underlies their
work. Nevertheless, they have enough of an understanding to
be able to use them in a clumsy-but-effective way.
Now, getting to the matter of elitism, recall that I mentioned the bit
about people being controlled by dangerous unconscious impulses.
According to Curtis, that led to the belief that government
is justified in imposing control. Obviously, the problem with
that hypothesis is that the leaders are, of course, governed by the
same primitive impulses as everyone else. That is where the
elitism comes in.
A skilled psychoanalyst is aware of his or her own impulses, and is
able, to some extent, to account for them. This is true even
though some of the impulses always remain inaccessible to the conscious
mind. Of course, that part of the process remains tricky.
There probably is no way to eliminate the tricky part, and I
am not sure we would want to, even if we could.
Similarly, I don't think we can ever eliminate the scourge of
propaganda. Freud had been hopeful that widespread
understanding of his theory would lead to a more enlightened
population. Near the end of his life, he became cynical on
that point. What we have seen instead is a sort of
psychological arms race. As the population becomes more
enlightened and sophisticated, the propagandists become more
sophisticated in their methods.
At present, the propagandists have the upper hand. They can
devote much time and money to the battles. The victims,
meanwhile, are busy with their lives. Many do not prepare for
battle, because they do not realize that there even is a battle.
New media can be helpful. However, they are helpful only to
the extent that they are not controlled by a centralized authority.
That, by the way, is why
href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2857522.ece?openComment=true"
rel="tag">Net Neutrality and
href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2007-11-13-fcc_N.htm">media
consolidation are such important issues.
Curtis' documentary discusses the way in which the ideas of democracy
and free enterprise have been conflated, as a result of a deliberate
propaganda effort. It is important to realize that the two
concepts are separate. Having more of one does not guarantee
that we will have more of the other.
Just as we cannot be rid of the unconscious mind and its baser
instincts, we cannot be rid of elitism. Some, but not all,
elitists believe that they have the right to control others.
Letting them have control of the media would be a big mistake.
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