Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 2:30 pm
So again I must note that I do not find your method a good one
What "method" is that?
All I've done is point out exactly what Chomsky himself has said. That's not a "method," so much as it is simply "evidence."
What I mean is that if your argument against Chomsky's positions, or his general stance, has integrity, you would not need to refer to someone you seem to want to reference as an authority.
I did not do this.
I did not say, or suggest, "you should believe this article for its authority." You made that idea up, yourself. In pointing to the article, what I was pointing to were Chomsky's own words, some of which were quite absurd, by any standard. I was inviting you to use your own intelligence on those quotations to see the truth of the situation.
That's all.
Take for example Edward Bernays who wrote in
Propaganda:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Funny. Why doesn't he say "...in all societies"? Or why doesn't he add, "...and far worse in a totalitarian, Marxist society"? For both are true.
In a democratic society, at least in theory, the press is supposed to form a "fourth estate" that calls politicians and other power brokers to public account. That our press has failed in this mission is obvious and horrendous. But the Marxists' states are far, far worse in this regard. If you can't expect truth from the BBC or CBS news, how can you imagine you're going to get more from
Pravda?
Is the guy shilling for Marxism?
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
That might be right. But if it is, it's even more certainly so in Marxist societies. Democratic ones at least keep the facade of impartiality in their journalism: Marxist journalists, by their own admission, do nothing but propagandize for "the Party."
What I would say, in relation to the idea-content in this paragraph (by the man said to be the father of the public relations industry in the US and by extension in the world) is that I would recommend that all people, certainly children and youth, should be introduced to the examination of the question and problem of power-relations and also of manipulation through the various media which I do not have to name.
Yes, of course.
But that will only have possibility in a democratic society. In a Marxist, totalitarian one, it will do nobody any good to know whether or not they are being manipulated, because their opinions count for nothing anyway. The government has the power, and does what it will. Just look at China right now, and you'll see that in action.
Would this mean, let's say automatically, that I am a Marxist activist with a specific Communist agenda intent on tearing down the structures that operate in the United States?
If you were, you'd be a sad case. I don't think you are.
But the reason it's so easy to complain about the US is simple: it's only in a place like the US that your complaint has any power. It would have none in Russia or China, none in Cuba or Venezuela, and in North Korea, would get you killed.
People who complain about the US are like the Feminists who campaign for women's rights only in the tolerant West. They don't care about women in the rest of the world -- the women in Saudi, for example, can die in a ditch, so far as modern Feminists are concerned. They only protest cases in which they already have lots of power and safety, as they do in the US. Just so, people who complain about the US and never mention Marxist states are being cowardly, since every criticism about dishonesty, exploitation, poverty, suffering, the poor and so forth are immeasurably worse in Marxist states than in places like the US.
If they meant what they said, they'd be criticizing the Marxist states first of all. They could get around to safer places like the US after the truly grotesque human rights abuses elsewhere had been dealt with.
The most obvious example I could submit here would be to imagine that the psychological and ideological method which Bernays refers to were described as part-and-parcel of a Communist or a Nazi propaganda-machine whose intention was to corral people and direct them to specific lines of action.
Well, you're obviously not one of the cowards, if you undertake to reform those first. Good for you.
So, it is often the case that we can, and with thorough dedication, examine the propaganda- and manipulation-systems of others, while we avoid examining, with equal thoroughness, our own. It is a basic and known human flaw, is it not? To see the splinter in another's eye and avoid seeing the beam in our own. [Matthew 7:5 "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.]
Well, that injunction is personal, not political. Matthew's not saying Christ taught that your own political system should be criticized first, but that your own personal conduct should be, before you judge another person. As for political systems, Christ said no such thing as that it is somehow noble to criticize your own rather than somebody else's. He actually knew (and said) that there are no political answers to problems that are always, in their deepest nature, spiritual and personal rather than collective and political.
It is obvious that a critical analysis of *power-systems* is necessary. Yet the question of who does it, and why it is done, is also necessary as well.
Maybe. And there's value in analyzing where and how power is being used. But there are greater forces at work than mere power. One would be corruption. Another would be personal sin. And before power can be analyzed, these first need to be evaluated and understood. For contrary to Chomsky, it is not power that is the basic source of problems, but mankind itself.
...what more interests me is the declaration about the use of notions of good and evil in programs of social and ideological control.
I don't believe good and evil reside
in systems. Good and evil reside in people...all people. A "system" is, by all accounts, nothing but a construct that comes out of whatever is inside people, especially the people who create and perpetuate the system. That's why the problem of personal sin is deeper than any political problem. For inevitably, any political arrangement is bound to become corrupt because of the people who make it and sustain it. That corruption has to be dealt with: absent that, there are no political solutions, either on the right or on the left.
In respect to James Lindsay and his work which I regard as relevant and well-grounded (the definition of 'complicity' that you submitted
here), I would respond by saying that when I speak of 'complicity' I mean it more in the sense I indicated ...
Complicity in the sense that I use the term -- and I clearly say this -- is simply an observation that the more one gets enmeshed in *worldly affairs*, the greater the danger, as in Mark 8:38 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
We can only loose our souls individually. To be sure, one way we can loose ourselves is by trusting in politics to fix things, without any attention to our inner conditions. But the quotation in Mark is again, personal: it's "what shall it profit
a man," or "
a person," if you prefer, not "what shall it profit
a political strategy or system."
And here's something even more important, which I shall repeat: the charge of "complicity"
only makes sense if one is speaking of a known-to-be-evil thing. I can't charge you of "complicity" in feeding ice cream to orphans, because doing something nice for orphans is (almost) universally conceded to be a
good thing. But I charge you with "complicity" if you are involved in beating or starving orphans, because I take the beating and starving of orphans to be
objectively evil.
But if there is no objective truth to something being identified as "evil," then neither is there any evil in being "complicit" with that thing. So you need an account of objective evil to underwrite and make sense of any allegation of "complicity."
For neo-Marxists, perhaps the only sin they will recognize is "discrimination." They don't prove it's evil; they just want everybody to take for granted that it is. And that's why they feel they want to use the term "complicity": because even while denying that they believe in any objective evil, they actually do. It's just that the evil they believe to be objective is, in their case, arbitrarily chosen.
For "discrimination" is actually only a word that means, "to see a difference" between things. A discriminatory racist makes bad judgments about people based on skin colour. But a discriminating wine taster knows the difference between Chateau Lafitte and alcohol-water. So "discriminate" is actually a neutral term, but one endowed by the neo-Marxists with only its negative connotation. It's their word for ultimate evil, objective evil.
So neo-Marxists are, unrecognized to themselves, perhaps,
moralists; and more, they're even
presupposers of objective right and wrong...if they use the word "complicity." And, of course, they do.