People cannot make correct decisions if they believe lies:
In May 2013 the reputable polling company ComRes asked a representative sample of the British public the following question: “How many Iraqis, both combatants and civilians, do you think have died as a consequence of the war that began in Iraq in 2003?”
According to 59% of the respondents, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war.
This is similar to the fact that on the eve of the Iraq war, 70% of Americans thought that Saddam was involved in 9/11.
The information problem, that people believe what they hear repeated, and the way it interacts with our media system is another problem we’re going to have to tackle if we want a long cycle of prosperity after this cycle ends.
Everythings Jake
This is the most interesting question to me. Propaganda works, too well. We now have a 100 years of the legacy of Bernays and Goebbels (of course it extends back further than that, but in terms of social sciences application). I assume big data is working hand in hand with psychologists, etc. to analyze and predict patterns of behavior. Studies in the last decade or so have shown that fact is not terribly persuasive, that people confronted with fact tend to become more deeply entrenched in their position. What the hell is the response to the Frank Luntzes of the world? How do we combat that? I’ve tended to think it’s probably still through the simple hard work of solidarity, unionism, but it must not stop at the workplace. People must feel there is comfort to be found in collegiality that extends across the spectrum of their lives. In some sense, I think these were the early successes of Union movements in the U.S., before they became insular and cooperative. But I am open to, hungry for, other suggestions and perspectives on the question.
Bruce Wilder
People believe to belong. It is our impulse to social affiliation, which provides the emotional underpinnings to belief and conviction. Even the inquiries of science take place in the college of science, in which collegiality and jargon, reputation and honor, etc. — social artifacts — feature.
I was reading this morning the chapter of Barbara Tuchman’s Proud Tower, where she discusses the l’affaire Dreyfus, the great upheaval that gripped France in the last decade of the 19th century, as authoritarianism rallied to defend rank incompetence.
Authoritarianism needs propaganda, just as it needs arbitrary decision-making, because it does not have the healthy power to make use of facts or reason. It isn’t coincidence that the most reputable institution in the U.S. is the same military that cannot win a war in one of the poorest places on earth, spending a multiple of that benighted country’s GDP. Or, that so much wealth is being generated out of disinvestment, stealing pensions, destroying viable businesses, etc.
It is a symptom of political weakness and disorganization, a political vacuum.
Sunshine McButtercup
Absolutely. This mini-documentary detailing Western propaganda is making its way through the pipes. The source of production matters not because it’s dead on balls true.
http://superchief.tv/leaked-north-korean-documentary-exposes-western-propaganda-and-its-scary-how-true-it-is/
I love the clip near the beginning of some contest show hosted by Oprah where people are screaming and crying over the chance of winning some fancy sneakers or a new blender. Reminds me of the Black Friday herds.
tc
I think Bruce Wilder is dead on target with his believing/belonging statement. The conservatives in my family and my circle of acquaintances see themselves as intellectually brave and contrarian for opposing liberal ideas and the lax morals that go with them, when really they are just too cowardly to confront real authority like the military or big business interests or to go against the prevailing sentiments of their peer group. Much easier to gripe about the blahs and illegals mooching and ruining everything. Too cowardly to even admit to themselves.
Same dynamic on the what-passes-for-left-in-the-US when it comes to facing up to Obama’s failings as a liberal. They can’t face the fact that we are fukt from both ends, as when they try to shut the Cassandras down for pointing out the problems unless they’ve got a solution (a very simple one at that) ready to solve it all for them. Mustn’t be negative, dude, that’s not cool.
Celsius 233
At bottom, isn’t it about the abdication of personal responsibility?
Formerly T-Bear
Bruce Wilder December 5, 2013
Might add: the ‘failure to maintain and manage complex relationships’ to your list even though it may underlay the other symptoms listed. Gresham’s dynamic obtains wherever value rests, and power (and its attendant wealth) may be the ultimate value. Making a connection with an observation that psychopathic has certain survival qualities the less endowed don’t demonstrate, power and wealth are naturally attractive to the psychopath as paramount survival means. This makes it important for those other social interests to know, understand and control those having the psychopathic condition and strongly limit their access to power. To fail to do so creates the conditions now at play.
Where once the play of the corporate psychopath was contained and limited to and spent in corporate politics, only a selected cream allowed access to the machinery of corporate power, that filter no longer is in place and the machinery of corporate power is now firmly in control of unmodified, unregulated psychopathic propensities, and that piper will be paid. It is possible a means of bringing corporate power back under social control can be found but that is not probable. The most probable means of regaining control seems to be the collapse of power itself, made increasingly possible through the collapse of complexity and the means of managing complexity. As always, an alternative to and understanding of the necessary conditions to rebuild the social organization would not be amiss.
alyosha
@Sunshine – thank you so much for the link to “Propaganda”!