words, money, columbus day, gay marriage, terrorism...
My wife often pokes fun at Socrates; in particular, passages where Plato recounts a pupil saying something to the effect of “Yes Socrates, that is my opinion, too, now that you’ve explained it to me.” Admittedly, this is kind of funny. But it is also valuable. Plato, through his teacher, demonstrates for us how an intelligent, literate mind, can be guided towards certain ideas and conclusions.
Socrates is generally portrayed as one who promoted logic and critical thinking, as fine tools to sculpt thought and feeling into clear ideas. More recent examples show me a malignant aspect of these skills, words used as chains and mauls to create narrow, or even false, ideas within people, and the societies they form.
Most of us have heard about economic systems where the wealthy have stongly influenced, or actually controlled, the resources of the poor. I’m suggesting that in our mass-media environment, the wealthy, through well educated communicators, can strongly influence vast numbers of people who are less educated. As an example, not long into the current US invasion of Iraq, a large percentage of American citzens believed that the people who simultaneously hijacked, and crashed four passenger jets in September, 2000 were from Iraq. In reality, most were from Saudi Arabia, and none were from Iraq. When dealing with factual data, for every accurate answer there are nearly infinite innaccurate ones. So, just saying that our population is stupid, or ignorant, doesn’t explain how millions of conscious, literate people came to the same, wrong conclusion.
The answer is, so quote our president, “strategery.” Most of us, between jobs,meals, housechores, etc. do not have a great deal of time for critical thinking. We catch headlines, soundbytes and the occasional short interview, but little Danny’s karate lesson is always going to be more important than in-depth, critical analysis of the information his mother is hearing. Anyone who uses mass media to affect people’s behavior understands this. Advertisers know that recognition and repetition work. Our political leaders also use this mechanism. By carefully placing the word “Iraq” within or around sentences involving the word “terror” or “nine-eleven,” people will inevitably link the ideas, and not necessarily understand how or why.
There is also a limited degree of trust we place in sources of information, that is not always well placed. A good friend of mine, one of superior intellect and good education (though perhaps not of world history), once told me that he'd just learned that Christopher Columbus did not call the native people of the Western Hemisphere “Indians” the way our history books summarize, but rather, used the phrase “una gente en Dios,” (a people under God). Further, that India wasn’t even a country to be referred to until it was formed in the 20th Century. This of course is all nonsense, carefully built by historical revisionists, trying to defend the tradition of Columbus Day. This patently false information came to him through channels that also carried many truths, and with good language skills. That this “pig in a poke” style of logic can be used to fool him, convinces me that few to none of us are immune to such intellectual shenanigans.
I don’t have a solution just now. I don’t even precisely know when to trust information as opposed to when not to. I have figured out that I have to listen carefully to words, and particularly phrases, that get repeated often enough to catch my notice, and question them at their deepest levels. Here are a few examples that are sure to upset somebody...
"Tax relief"
Relief implies a hardship or burden being lifted... So Taxes must be bad, and burdensome. And we need them taken away in order to gain relief... Uh question: Do I end up agreeing to any of this by so much as using the phrase?
“Gay Marriage”
What is really different about “gay” that requires either attack or defense?
What is “marriage?” What is it really for? What does it actually do or not do?
What relations does either term have with law, rights, responsibilities?
“War on Terrorism”
A long-term battle, worthy of all human resources against an poorly defined idea? Any “ism” denotes an idea or school of thought, Does it mean “a belief in scaring people into changing behavior?” Well that doesn’t work. We ALL do that... Lets make a new word for the belief in slaughtering people for the sake of public discourse. How about “brutalism” that has overtones of the verb brutalize, and it more specifically embraces injuries and destruction, not just the more abstract “terror.”
How about it: “zero-tolerance for brutalism.” It’s even more broad, and none-too-catchy, but more people could understand it and decide it’s worth bombing campaigns and chargless arrests in outdoor cages and.....hmmmm... ...New plan: let’s just make some laws against blowing stuff up and treat those that do like criminals...hmmmmm......
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Well I'm outta time so I'll just hope I can pick up later. Maybe I'll find a conclusion somewhere in here.