Friday, February 16, 2018
One thing I learned in college years ago is just how out
of date our belief systems are.
Most of what we believe these days was already out of
date by the time of Voltaire.
Most Americans cling to beliefs associated with The
Enlightenment -- this idea that human kind can be made perfect through the
accumulation of knowledge. In other words, the more we know the better we
become.
World War I largely discredited this idea although many
people did not yet know it at the time, sending off our best and brightest in
the belief that they were engaged in a “war to end all wars,” – a foolish idea to
believe evil can cure evil.
This folly became most evident in the run-up to World War
II when accumulated knowledge was use to perfect the means of mass slaughter –
the best and brightest in science and technology developing the best and most
efficient means of eradicating human life.
While most serious scholars have since concluded
education alone does not make for a better person, the masses continue up the
same old road like sheep led to slaughter.
This ignorance is not an exclusive attribute to the
uneducated.
In fact, the better educated in our society -- trained in
the illusion of the Enlightenment – arrogantly assume they are somehow superior
to the less educated, having gone through all the hoops degree programs can
provide, when in actuality they are no closer to possessing “truth” or “moral”
high ground than the masses they think of as uncouth.
A number of post-Nazi thinkers believe mankind cannot be
perfected, and that we live with fundamental flaws that education cannot cure.
This may explain to some degree the reversion to primal
violence we see among out best educated when they profess to be standing up for
all they believe as right and good.
Most people regardless of their intentions revert to
animal instincts under the right conditions.
As with the theory of enlightenment political theory
shows that democracy is also an illusion, an out of date concept as as
unattainable as perfection through the accumulation of knowledge.
Democracy is the religion of our time, with many people
believing in it the way ancients did their Gods.
The theory of democracy is that people will gather, study
the issues, and then decide the direction they want their nation to take
through an elective process that installs leaders with the same or similar
beliefs.
First of all, this assumes that all the participants are
well-versed in all of the issues and then come to a decision about which is
best.
To begin with, the majority is not versed in all aspects
of issues, and this is particularly true of the better educated among us.
Contemporary political theorists believe that those with
the most knowledge tend to be at the extremes of the political spectrum, those
most motivated in the political process seeking to push the largely politically
ignorant masses to the direction of their choice.
Most of those in the middle are generally ignorant not
merely about critical issues that affect their lives, but also about what they
actually see as their own core values.
Some studies show that people interviewed said one thing
about their beliefs, only to vote for candidates that largely did not reflect
those beliefs.
These people often accepted thumb nail slogans as
beliefs, such as pro-life or pro-choice, and often accept promoters of these
beliefs as the sole source of their information and arbitrators of truth.
Most people are rarely exposed to more than one side of
an issue and studies show this is as true in the era of the internet as it was
pre TV.
And ignorance isn’t exclusive to the unwashed mass as the
so-called enlightened would like us to think.
Educated people are often as ignorant politically because
they are generally exposed to limited sides of issues, often imposed by if not
a liberal educational system, then one so entrenched in the outdated concepts
of the Enlightenment as to be utterly out of touch with reality. This is not a
new issue. The ivory tower concept has plagued the educational system since the
monks.
Right wing proponents try to portray this as liberal
propaganda, but this misses the point as well.
As long as educational system sees itself as possessing
the only avenue to truth and encapsulates education into simplified talking
points that students take in and regurgitate like cows, those students will
always be as ignorant politically as those who learn their truths on the
street.
One very significant example is the how cursory social
study education about the Civil War generally claims it was only about freeing
the slaves, when the war was about much more than that. Some history majors get
it, but most of the general population graduates with a very limited reality.
Specialization is also a problem because it further
reduces what a student is exposed to, forcing perfunctory thumb nail lessons on
general knowledge before plunging him or her into a world even more abreacted.
This kind of education does not expand a world view.
More troubling for the concept of democracy is human
nature itself.
A number of studies show that most voters are not merely
uninformed, but choose to be that way.
They do not seek out alternative views to their own.
People believe what they want to believe regardless of
conflicting evidence and then to block out anything that disagrees with their
own preconceived notions
In this regard, politics has become very much like sports
and which people support a particular team regardless of who the members of
that team are or what they stand for – once a New York Giants fan, always a
fan, regardless of who the quarter back is.
Even the so called unaffiliated voter is a fantasy. They
are simply people who do not know what they believe in.
One theory from the 1960s sees true believers on either
end of the political spectrum desperate to motivate the ignorant masses to
their side.
So we see a proliferation of scare tactics and smear
campaigns as spin doctors in some think tank like witch doctors of old
calculate what formula they might use to magically shift the balance of public
perception.
The so-called fake news of today is largely an attempt to
use these political touch s tones in order stir up support for one side’s cause
with media and others desperate to find the right combination that will somehow
connect with the special logic old time political observers claim influenced
voting habits.
It is a precarious science at best – because manipulation
can backfire, media seeming to be a dishonest broker in a game in which people
believe it serves as umpire.
Worse still, it stirs up some primitive beast inside the
masses that once unleashed with no longer be predictable or controllable, nor
will it likely move in the intended direction, lashing out at all, good or bad,
right or wrong, left for right.
For all the Russian conspiracies, the claims of sexism,
or all the other media spin being spun, those who love Trump will continue to
live him, those who hate him will continue to at him, and the rest of the
masses will largely be confused by the constant agitation doing little to
enlighten anybody except to create more and more hate.
All we are doing is taunting the mob to action without
any idea of what the mob will do once it acts.
No comments:
Post a Comment