Wednesday, August 22, 2012

My Conclusions on "Defining Literacy"

My last post has been up for a while and I was very pleased with the comments that came from it. I've had a bit of time to consider the various points made so here are my conclusions:
First, there seems to be a good bit of disagreement as to what "literacy" actually means. Is it being able to read labels on medicine bottles, or read and understand books, or is not reading/text required at all? From a Western perspective, I think we link literacy with reading/text/the written word. Other cultures may combine literacy with orality, but Western cultures do not, that is there is a distinction. To this I would add that this form of Western literacy was a requirement for much of our history since the invention of the printing press. Without this form of literacy, science and rational capitalism (as opposed to traditional capitalism) would never have changed the world the way they have. Without this literacy it would have been impossible for the modern world to exist as we know it.
Second, there seems to be a strong link between literacy, as in the ability to read and understand complex texts and the possibility of mass democracy. As I.F. Stone writes in his book, The Trial of Socrates:
Elementary education for all citizens was achieved early in Athens, at least a century before Socrates, and literacy seems to have been widespread. This reflected the rise of democracy. But the higher education remained the monopoly of the aristocracy until the Sophists came along. They provoked upper-class antagonism by teaching the art of rhetoric - for the ability to speak well in public was the open door to middle-class political participation in the debates of the assembly and the higher offices of the city. page 42
Not only that, but having the laws posted publicly was one of the great reforms of this pre-Socratic period as well. Ignorance of the law was thus no excuse as long as the laws were posted where any citizen could read and discuss them. Ancient Athens had no lawyers as we understand that profession today, since every citizen was expected to understand and argue the law themselves.
Notice that I have qualified the type of democracy I'm talking about, that being "mass democracy" as existed in Athens in Socrates's time. Small communities could be democratic without literacy but beyond a certain number, writing becomes a necessity. Before we get all warm and complacent with our current good fortune, let's consider my next point . . .
Third, while there is a connection between literacy and modernity and democracy, there is also one between it and propaganda, that is manipulation in the modern mass state. This is how Jacques Ellul described it in his classic, Propaganda of 1965:
Primary education makes it possible to enter the realm of propaganda, in which people then receive their intellectual and cultural environment.
The uncultured man cannot be reached by propaganda. Experience and research done by the Germans between 1933 and 1938 showed that in remote areas, where people hardly knew how to read, propaganda had no effect. The same holds true for the enormous effort in the Communist world to teach people how to read. In Korea, the local script was terribly difficult and complicated; so, in North Korea, the Communists created an entirely new alphabet and a simple script in order to teach all the people how to read. In China, Mao simplified the script in his battle with illiteracy, and in some places in China new alphabets are being created. This would have no particular significance except that the texts used to teach the adult students how to read — and which are the only texts to which they have access — are exclusively propaganda texts; they are political tracts, poems to the glory of the Communist regime, extracts of classical Marxism. Among the Tibetans, the Mongols, the Ouighbours, the Manchus, the only texts in the new script are Mao’s works. Thus, we see here a wonderful shaping tool: The illiterates are taught to read only the new script; nothing is published in that script except propaganda texts; therefore, the illiterates cannot possibly read — or know — anything else.
Also, one of the most effective propaganda methods in Asia was to establish "teachers" to teach reading and indoctrinate people at the same time. The prestige of the intellectual — "marked with God’s finger" — allowed political assertions to appear as Truth, while the prestige of the printed word one learned to decipher confirmed the validity of what the teachers said. These facts leave no doubt that the development of primary education is a fundamental condition for the organization of propaganda, even though such a conclusion may run counter to many prejudices, best expressed by Paul Rivet’s pointed but completely unrealistic words: "A person who cannot read a newspaper is not free." pp 109-110
Following Ellul, the modern mass state has to create a mass culture to support it and win the support of the population since traditional norms will not necessarily support the actions of said state. Basic literacy - especially mass education for children - is the best means of achieving this goal. This is what Ellul refers to as the first stage of literacy, basically reading at the level of a 5-6th Grader. The second, and higher level, that is being able to "reflect and discern" what one has read and dividing a text into what one agrees with and what one does not or is unsure of, is possessed by only about 10-15% of the population, according to Ellul.
How exactly does this come about? How does basic literacy open the door for propaganda and manipulation? The modern citizen of a mass state is an individual, one isolated from traditional forms of thought and alligance. There is little connection with community, family or religion in the traditional sense, whereas there is a host of lesser connections with "society", most of them increasingly of the materialist/consumerist sort, well those and "nationalism". This view went back to the turn of the century, but became fairly unquestioned as a result of the First World War. Walter Lippmann is Public Opinion (1922) wrote:
BECAUSE of their transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer may scorn the "star-spangled" ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as much as the king who told himself that Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it." [Footnote: The English Constitution, p. 127. D. Appleton & Company, 1914.] For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break the transference of emotion from the individual mind to the institutional symbol. And the first result of that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol, like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the beginning of a long upheaval.
These great symbols possess by transference all the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that each individual has for the landscape, the furniture, the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a static society, his only reality. That core of images and devotions without which he is unthinkable to himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up these devotions, and can arouse them without calling forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if possible associated with them. The question of a proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and then the People is inserted in the symbol American, so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied in the death of those who sleep in France.
Because of its power to siphon emotion out of distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand. pp 150-51.
The leadership/elite of a state (Lippmann makes no distinction) use symbols to influence and manipulate the masses. But what of the "self-sufficient" individual? Lippmann dismisses that notion quickly. That's not the way the mass reacts, since while the individual thinks and reasons, the mass "feels". How else are they to know what to believe if they are not told essentially what to believe? Lippmann concludes this chapter with some of the most disturbing conclusions ever put on paper by an American intellectual:
That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough.
The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.
Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach. p 158
I think literacy as I have defined it very important in Western development, but I am reminded by my earlier reading of Ellul and Lippmann that Venkat makes an important point when questioning what exactly literacy is and the assumptions that we make in regards to it. If anything the events of the last ten years in the US have only reinforced the validity of what Ellul, and earlier Lippmann, had to say as a result of experiencing the power of state propaganda starting almost a century ago.

37 comments:

  1. Good post, here are some initial thoughts which are a bit stream-of-conscious, so sorry about that in advance:

    I wonder what Lippman would think of the dispersion taking place in communication today. It seems to me that elites are less and less able to control the message and propaganda is more about rallying the faithful than building consent much less consensus. Today people can choose their own sources or media and communication and so they can and do select what "propaganda" they receive. Conservatives watch Fox, liberals watch MSNBC, etc. I know I select my own media and information sources and most of the traditional forms of "mass" communication did not make my cut.

    Your comment here:

    The modern citizen of a mass state is an individual, one isolated from traditional forms of thought and alligance. There is little connection with community, family or religion in the traditional sense, whereas there is a host of lesser connections with "society", most of them increasingly of the materialist/consumerist sort, well those and "nationalism".

    ....reminds me of Brink Lindsay's great essay on partisanship from a couple years ago:

    It’s not just that partisans are vulnerable to believing fatuous nonsense. It’s that their beliefs, whether sensible or otherwise, about a whole range of empirical questions are determined by their political identity. There’s no epistemologically sound reason why one’s opinion about, say, the effects of gun control should predict one’s opinion about whether humans have contributed to climate change or how well Mexican immigrants are assimilating — these things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Yet the fact is that views on these and a host of other matters are indeed highly correlated with each other. And the reason is that people start with political identities and then move to opinions about how the world works, not vice versa.

    So yes, most partisans are “better informed” than most independents, because they have a political identity that motivates them to have opinions and then tells them which ones to have as well as the reasons for having them. Consequently, partisans may have more information in their heads, but their partisanship ensures that this information is riddled with biases and errors and then shields those biases and errors from scrutiny.


    Emphasis mine. I think that's an accurate characterization and isn't limited to mere partisanship. I think society and ideas about "community" are based less on location than they once were. But, maybe that's just my perception since I have to move frequently.

    I've lived in Florida for 8 months now and there isn't any sense of "community" where I live - it's one of those soulless
    nice" suburban neighborhoods where neighbors hardly know each other - even those who've been here for years. And then there are "virtual" communities like Milpub and many others. I've never met any of you face-to-face, but I think I "know" and trust you all more than the guy who lives two-doors down from me.... It would probably be different if my family was "settled" but, like literacy, I our definitions of "community" are changing.

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  2. The drive to create a literate citizenry is selective, at least in current U.S. practice. Tuition costs confine attainment of higher levels of literacy to the affluent, as witness newly minted Phd’s with six-figure, death-do-us-part student loans. Universities then hire the lucky few at $2500 per course, with no benefits and no possibility of tenure. These dwellers on the revolving bottom earn something like $10,500 per year. Higher education has become financial suicide for working people.

    In pubic secondary schools, race is the criteria. For example, the National Education Policy Center reports that blacks are about three times more likely to be suspended than whites and twice as likely to be suspended as Hispanics. Disabilities increase the odds of suspension. Nebraska leads the pack with 37.8 % of its disabled black students suspended.

    Expulsions are another and poorly documented phenomenon. But we do know that nearly a quarter of the black students at California’s Bakersfield High School were expelled during the 2009-2010 academic year.

    Reagan and his imitators somehow convinced the middle class that casualties are inevitable and not to be wept over. Crazy people deserve to live under bridges, black males belong in prison. Now that the middle class is next to go down, one can take a certain grim, karmic satisfaction at their plight. But that’s slender pickings and hardly the way forward.

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  3. And - in regards to Paul's comments about selective literacy, let's not forget about the original example used here. Greece DID have a very large and very illiterate social segment - slaves.

    I recall reading that Athens had more slaves than any of the other classical Greek city-states; guesstimates run as high as one per household. The Phalerian census of Attica done between 317 BC and 307 BC enumerated 21,000 citizens, 10,000 non-citizen freemen, and 400,000 slaves.

    So for all that Greek literacy was important, one should perhaps wonder...important to whom?

    The other thing I think we need to think about is the effect - and, sorry, seydlitz, I know I go on about this forever - of selective memory.

    Most of us are children of the Great Social Peace, that period between 1940 and 1965 when the political and social disparity in white America was perhaps as narrow as it has ever been. The radical Left had been defenestrated with the Red Menace of Stalin and Mao, while the Right had been tarred with the Fascist brush of Hitler. The myth of "press objectivity" was at its height, as was the belief in technocracy.

    But Civil Rights and the GOP's Southern Strategy, along with the privitization and deregulation of damn near everything unraveled all that. We turned - not as much (in my opinion) down a dark new road but back down the old one of sectional, sectarian, and populist-versus-elitist division.

    As Andy points out, we began returning to self-selecting our sources of information, just as in the 1850s there were "Whig papers" and "Democratic papers" or broadsheets that touted Jacksonian democracy versus Jeffersonian, or anarchist or Wobbly papers versus the newwspapers controlled by the magnates...

    Now I agree that there are all sorts of NEW wild cards in this deck. But I'd argue that we've played this hand before, and we should know where it leads; and that's a place where the non-two-yacht families among us should fear to go.

    But I honestly don't see a coalition that has both the power and the political and social cohesion to defeat the return-to-the-Gilded-Age consensus that our politico-economic elites have hammered around our collective necks.

    Glad I learned to mop floors in the Army. It'll be useful cleaning up at the Big House...

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  4. Sorry to all if I am rehashing any old arguments, I am just getting into this discussion. But here are my thoughts on defining literacy:

    Let's assume we have a highly educated person, who reads English at the college level. But this person lives in the mountains of Tibet and has no access English books, and no access to the internet. Is he literate?

    1. What is the purpose of literacy? What do we require a literate person to be able to do with the literacy?

    2. Does literacy have to have a caveat of relevancy? If a hispanic immigrant comes to America, reads and writes in Spanish, but can not read English, is he illiterate?

    It seems to me that literacy is has a strong cultural bias. Is computer "literacy" a factor today, or maybe better stated, is access to the internet a form of "literacy?" Being denied access to the internet (or having restricted access) is a form of keeping people in the remote corners of the earth.

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  5. bg: In order of your questions:

    1. As seydlitz points out, Western society is pretty much predicated on literacy. We do everything from inform, communicate, to propagandize and socialize through print.

    As far as "what we require", well, that's kind of the point of his argument. As I understand it, he's saying that the original ideal of U.S. democracy was the informed participation of the citizenry, largely through the reading, analysis, and debate of ideas through print - and that the single largest (and most destructive) change has been a transition from literate deconstruction and analyses of text to an "image-based" model of mass communication that preys on the public's emotions and "feelings".

    2. Of course. I cannot read Spanish, so I cannot comment or participate intelligently in the politics of Mexico or Spain except through the intermediacy of someone else's interpretation. But I would add a caveat that your example is not a very strict one; there is a large and far-reaching Spanish language media in the U.S. So a well-read Spanish speaker need not be illiterate in the sense of understanding and critiquing U.S. events through print.

    And, finally, yes, "literacy" is absolutely economically, culturally and even regionally biased. Doesn't mean that a strong-willed individual can't overcome that bias - think of a homeless guy or a woman too poor to afford the Internet using the public library to keep up with events - but that the bias does make literacy more difficult to obtain and maintain.

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  6. Gentlemen-

    Thanks for the thoughtful responses. Andy brings up partisanship, but I think that more an effect of the "total propaganda" present in the US today. Partisanship doesn't seem to be about issues, but "values", supposed world views, usually "the enemy" assumed to hold those diametrically opposed to "our side". Notice that the "enemy" is a "Liberal" or "Conservative" (although neither of those terms retain much of their original meaning) depending on the positions taken. Propaganda is all about exploiting anxiety and hate, both of which are the main emotions present in US political life today.

    Primary school provides the initial level of literacy, but to achieve the next stage requires the commitment of the individual. It seems that basic literacy is defined today as reading and understanding labels and being able to balance a checkbook, since one hears the term "economic literacy" as well. Notice how this notion plays well to the idea that if you are economically unsuccessful it's basically due to your own actions/inactions/inadequacies, that is don't even blame the "system". LIBOR?

    Which brings me back to the point I made in response to Chief's comments on the last thread pertaining to the Gilded Age. If we are re-entering that cycle again how come our reactions are so different? How is it that after all our history since 1890, we're even AT this point in time? One hundred years ago Americans had a clear idea of what their economic interests were and who had their thumbs on the scales . . . and they were angry and demanding change. Today the closest thing we have to Populists movements run out of gas quickly or fold into the Republican Party before the next national election cycle. Four years after the greatest economic crisis since 1929 we're acting as if nothing happened at all . . .

    Why? Because we are not citizens any longer, not in any meaningful way, we are rather a mass atomized propagandized pulp.

    How is this possible? People in general have lost sight of what their interests actually are and how politics is meant to protect them. Instead money controls the system, buys candidates and office holders while the voters make "moral" statements by voting for the candidate who best represents their "values".

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  7. bg-

    You bring up a good point regarding foreign languages, or should we say the native language should one be in a non-English speaking country. I'm like a little kid here in Portugal. I can read some and speak enough to get by, but am for all purposes essentially semi-literate at the most.

    So, that's not so good, but that is not the advantage of being/living in a foreign country. Rather it is what it gives you to compare with the US. I lived for 12 years in Germany so I have that as well and my German was fluent at the time, so I was fairly active in that society. It provided me with not only something to compare US society to, but also a different view of what the US was. Learning a foreign language provides one with not only a different way to speak but with a different way to think, since each language carries with it its own logic and cultural assumptions.

    Perhaps living in a foreign country and learning (and having to use daily) a foreign language is the best way to attain this next level of literacy? Any ideas?

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  8. Paul-

    I don't think race is the criteria as to who gets a better education.

    Back in the Jim Crow South there were black and white schools, but it was the teachers who made all the difference. Whether you were in a drafty brick building or a rickety wooden structure, it was the people who counted. With competent and dedicated teachers you could achieve a lot.

    No, imo, It's class. Class, and the money it can bring. We have an extensive Black and Hispanic middle class in the US today. Asian too . . . "African-American" president, just like we had a "Redneck" president before . . . oh, that's not quite right is it? Class again after all . . . Clinton was the real redneck and we know what happened to him.

    As to the advantages of having to master a foreign language, I think you probably have a lot to say, living as you do "down south". Al, too, I'll bet . . . And of course . . .

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  9. Thank you, Seydlitz. I’ve certainly not mastered Spanish – I can generally make myself understood, but rapid conversation is like a rippling brook. Meanings flash and disappear. English is also becoming strange. Sometimes an English language tv program comes on with Spanish subtitles. At first, the guttural noises fail to make sense. A few moments later, one adjusts and is back on familiar ground.

    While much of what I write about the United States is critical, the world would be much poorer without the American talent for social experiment – gender and racial equality, LGBT rights, animal rights and now an ongoing redefinition of our place in nature. Probably no other culture has such a passion for re-invention. And the rest of the world copies. Putin can thank the USA for Pussy Riot.

    In Mexico there is no leverage, except among a few university students, for such experimentation. On the other hand, humanity shines through. Strangers greet you, without judgment, recognizing your right to exist. Smile at a girl, and she smiles back. When our ancient Volkswagen breaks down, the ladies of the family pitch in, fetching the grumpy old man his tools, hovering by to be of assistance. And when the old Vocho can be persuaded to run, we chug along singing and laughing. It’s not a bad life.

    And, Seydlitz, I think you’re right about social stratification. It’s undergone a shift from color to class, which is remarkable in a way.

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  10. Sorry I'm late to the party, things to do...

    Seydlitz noted early in his comment that we never resolved the question as to whether literacy means just the technical skill of receiving input via the written word or whether it includes all of the skills of the "literati" such as debate and analysis. I think this is a key distinction in this part of the discussion.

    The primary reason is that I don't think the group has sufficiently considered the impact of technological change on the dissemination of information. In ancient Greek times, the fastest way to get your point of view heard was to put up a poster in a public place and have everybody read it as they went by. Today a YouTube video serves much the same sort of purpose but does not require the recipient to be literate in either sense of the word.

    It is even likely that the YouTube video sponsor prefers that the recipient NOT meet the higher standard of literacy because it is likely they'd sit down and take apart the message in ways that the sponsor would rather avoid.

    As a minor note, all of Seydlitz's sources were written before the full impact of television on the public were understood. As I think further about the current situation, we still don't fully understand television's impact, we just BETTER understand it than we did in 1965 when Seydlitz's last source was written.

    It is not in the interests of the leading elite to educate people to the point where they continually pick apart your arguments. The more interesting question is: what is the minimum level of education needed to be able to communicate with and motivate the public. I would argue that technology is causing that level to drop precipitously and that is having a devastating effect on education in this country as it is no longer viewed as a necessary evil by the ruling elite.

    Side note: Good teachers make a big difference in education. Dedicated parents are CRITICAL in student educational achievement. It does not matter how good the teacher is if the parents are rotten. Similarly, outstanding parents can overcome the worst teachers, but only at great cost.

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  11. After thinking about it a bit more, and I really like what Pluto brings up, we are functionally fixated that literacy = reading. I submit that someone who can't read, but can watch television and understand the programming may be literate to a certain level.

    I think that a definition of literacy should include the following: ability of a population to receive and decode encoded messages over available mediums in a defined environment. If mediums (paper, internet, tv) aren't available, than literacy is irrelevant. If you don't speak the language (can't decode), than you aren't literate in the defined environment. By this definition, someone who can't read, but can watch television and understand what is going on is literate! I don't think the ability to send feedback is a requirement of literacy, if the purpose of literacy is to communicate a message to a receiver, however, the ability to provide feedback does improve the communication, and therefore we should consider different levels of literacy.

    We should address different levels of literacy that are based on: Ability to provide feedback, Access to information, accuracy of information, diversity of sources of information (different languages as Seydlitz suggests), and timeliness of the info (is the news 1 minute old or 1 year old). These factors will rate the level of effectiveness or various degrees of a literate population.

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  12. Seydlitz, you asked for comments about literacy and, as usual, I wandered off in the previous post, chasing rabbits and metaphors. Okay, literacy from the point of view of someone who lives in a foreign country and hardly ever hears English has these aspects:

    1. Reading knowledge of the native language is somewhat useful, but is by no means sufficient.
    2. Making oneself understood is the second stage of literacy, far more useful than reading.
    3. Real literacy is the ability to follow a conversation. If you can’t do that, then you are in the same desperate situation as a deaf person. Conversation, what people say to each other and to you, describes what must be done, what happens next.
    4. The first stage of comprehending what people are saying involves maybe a hundred nouns and a list of what might be called action verbs, words like “move,” “lift,” “stop,” and so on.
    5. Mexican working people who have returned from the U.S. all seem to have that basic understanding of spoken English.

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  13. Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" explains the techniques of scientific propagandization by elites Lipmann alludes in a modern context. Good read, though you have to wade through some "Chomskyisms."

    FD Chief, your read on Athens and the slave situation is going down a good track. Solon may have drawn the brite-line against slavery, but it didn't apply to everyone. Your other point, that America has ho'd this row before, is equally valid.
    Literacy as an instrument for making people superficially literate of an elite's propaganda is a well established aspect of any kind of popularly enfranchised government. When the "everyman's" opinion is purported to matter, an elite is wise to suggest to him what his opinion ought to be.

    Seydlitz, is the following your thesis: "[W]e are not citizens any longer, not in any meaningful way, we are rather a mass atomized propagandized pulp."

    I suppose you have to define what it means to be a citizen in a meaningful way, writ large. Is a good citizen one who is best satiated by the state; one who best accommodates the state; or one who best cooperates with the state to advance a common ideological agenda?

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  14. Looks like I have some catching up to do . . .

    First off, welcome Jeremy Renken to our humble blog!

    I think we have a whole series of different concepts connected with "literacy" but which are distinct. This is unavoidable given the level of complexity we are attempting here and given the fact that I have introduced them in a not very systematic manner . . . more as they came to mind in response to ya'lls comments and contemplation. So let's make a list:

    First we have a straight forward definition for literacy, which I think we agree is linked to culture. In Western culture this means the ability to read and communicate via text. If we follow Ellul here we can say there are two levels of literacy, the first basic 5th-6th grade level or being able to read labels, and the much more advanced one of "opening a critical dialogue" with the text. This later level can be promoted by the educational system (or not!) and very much relies on the individual to develop, is essentially an on going, even unending process.

    Second, we have the distinction - at least in the West - between orality and literacy as in Venkat's original post which trigger my first thread. I think the example of foreign languages really brings this distinction out. Paul's last post is talking mostly about orality and operating as an individual as part of a foreign community. But what if you have to deal with the state/society? What if you wish to know what is going on beyond the local community and its net of social relations? You're probably going to have to read and the better you can read and understand, the clearer your situation will be. I would add that as a foreigner operating in a foreign language and culture you are at an obvious disadvantage for a number of reasons. The more you can act the "sophisticated native", the better. I personally was able to approach this in Germany, but have never been able to in Portugal.

    Third . . .

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  15. Third, we have the distinction between technology and medium as presented by Postman (1985) on the last thread. Pluto's right, we haven't gone into this aspect enough. Consider again Postman's comment as to the distinction between the two: "A technology, in other words, is merely a machine. A medium is the social and intellectual environment a machine creates." (AOTD, p 84). Thus the medium includes all the assumptions, expectations, changes in thinking that result as a social response to the new technology, or as McLuhan wrote before, "In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology."

    http://www.gingkopress.com/02-mcl/understanding-media.html

    So, the effect television has had on US society, but of course not only US society, as a medium and its effect on the more advanced stage of literacy is the question. I am assuming that the effect has been profound based on what I see as the degeneration of US political life. For background on this view we have not only Postman, but this

    http://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Elimination-Television-Jerry-Mander/dp/0688082742/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3OPOIYJ2SJ7IC&coliid=I75LCI9K6C0ZQ

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  16. Just another thought regarding the third distinction above. The printing press was technology as well and that associated medium created/allowed for the creation of what Postman calls "Typographic society" with all the social changes it was able to usher in. It promoted and was very conducive to certain forms of communication and thought, as is TV . . .

    Fourth, let's consider the connection between democracy and literacy I have introduced on this thread following I.F. Stone's view of literacy being a necessity for democratic participation in the Greek polis. Those who served in the Athenian army as Hoplites (supplying their own equipment) or cavalry were citizens by default. Later this was extended to those lower classes serving in the navy so we do see a democratizing process going on.

    I think we're being a bit hard on the Greeks who did after all come up with the concept. That we don't find their version of democracy as squeaky clean as we would like is not their fault, rather lies in our attempting to transplant our own values/assumptions to them. The democracy of the time would reflect the social relations/economics of the time, so slavery fits into it. Without slavery the polis, let alone the later Roman Empire would not have existed, which would leave us where exactly?

    It's important to remember that the Greeks were ambivalent about democracy, seeing it not so much as an ideal but a form of government with specific shortcomings . . .

    Thucydides records Athenagoras as comparing democracy with oligarchy, "It will be said , perhaps, that democracy is neither wise nor equitable, but that the holders of property are also the best fitted to rule. I say, on the contrary, only a part; next, that if the best guardians of property are the rich, and the best counselors the wise, none can hear and decide so well as the many; and that all these talents, individually and collectively, have their just place in a democracy. But an oligarchy gives the many their share of the danger, and to context with the largest part takes the keeps the whole of the profit; and that is what the powerful and young among you aspire to, but in a great city cannot possibly attain." 6.39

    I think the Greeks were much clearer on what democracy actually was, then the "mechanism" that we label such today . . .

    Fifth . . .

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  17. Fifth is the connection between literacy and propaganda. First a note on sources. Lippmann and Edward Bernays wrote the classic works on propaganda which serve as our original sources. Ellul provides an entire theoretical system for propaganda expanding especially on Lippmann. A good general history is Stuart Ewen's PR!. Chomsky is a linguist first of all and his book on propaganda is more a critique of US domination both at home and abroad which of course includes propaganda. It is interesting to note the "manufacture of consent" is Lippmann's term from Public Opinion, p 158. I think Chomsky's concept of "media filters" interesting, but if I am interested in propaganda I would go to the original texts. It is interesting the Ewen has a lot to say about Lippmann and Bernays but nothing to say about Chomsky.

    I think that Lippmann, Bernays and Ellul all agree that modern societies essentially require propaganda to function and that a basic requirement for propaganda is basic literacy, which allows the propagandist to "get the word out". I think Edward Bernays makes the connection clear here:

    "Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.

    I am aware that the word "propaganda" carries to many minds an unpleasant connotation. Yet whether, in any instance, propaganda is good or bad depends upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correct- ness of the information published. . . . Propaganda, 1928, p 48

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  18. Sixth, and finally, I'll label simple the "political angle". Jeremy commented:

    -Seydlitz, is the following your thesis: "[W]e are not citizens any longer, not in any meaningful way, we are rather a mass atomized propagandized pulp."

    I suppose you have to define what it means to be a citizen in a meaningful way, writ large. Is a good citizen one who is best satiated by the state; one who best accommodates the state; or one who best cooperates with the state to advance a common ideological agenda?-

    First, the subject of these two threads is literacy, not really political disintegration. I'm a Clausewitzian strategic theorist who thinks in terms of "ideal types". Here we have the ideal type politically active citizen of 1890 compared with the ideal type couch potato of 2012. These are mental constructs with which we can compare reality as we see it. Did all US citizens fit the ideal type of 1890? Do all fit the couch potato of today? Of course not, but the constructs are meant to sharply define these distinctions. The ideal types are meant to be extreme and not really correspond to reality, but allow us to compare a concept with subjective reality. Sometimes the descriptions get a bit polemic, but this thread is not intended to be polemic. If that were the case I would have labelled it so.

    Further, Jeremy comes up with an excellent question, how do we define citizen? Which from his examples seem to be more how we define "state".

    We've been down this road before here at MilPub. One thread that comes quickly to mind is this one from two years ago:

    http://milpubblog.blogspot.pt/2010/08/approaching-concept-of-community.html

    Recall the Niebuhr quote in the comments.

    I would define a state - following Weber - as a compulsory political organization with continuous operations using an administrative apparatus to monopolize "legitimate" violence/coercion within a specific territory. I would define a citizen as a patriot to one's political community who puts the interests of that community before their own, that is, is able to balance personal interest with "justice".

    The connection with literacy is not only in terms of state propaganda, but how the dominate medium affects the political community, and thus the role of the patriot/citizen . . . Notice too that a basic "tension" is assumed to exist between "political community" and "political organization" . . . that is between patriot and state . . .

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  19. Interesting post! It started out on literacy and the discussion now includes propaganda, democracy, slavery, and ancient Greece. I have been out of touch lately, but would like to put my oar in the water.

    I am not sure how to define literacy, but I do know that the ancient Greeks (Athenians specifically) had it. Most historians say Athens originally built her first state navy (the Delphic Oracle’s wooden wall against Persia) with silver dug by slaves from the Laurium mines. Those 200 triremes made their battle kills with a bronze ram. So they only used about 10 to 12 upper class hoplites each and maybe just two or three sons of the old aristocratic class to act as pilot, coxswain, and trierarch (Captain). However the triremes did use speed as a weapon, so they needed upwards of several tens of thousands of rowers to man the oars (170 was typical on an Athenian trireme). Slaves were not trusted as most were Persian or Anatolian or Phoenician POWs. The Athenians never bred slaves like the Spartans or like early America and slaves were not used in Athenian naval triremes. That practice was a later medieval use in the galleys of Venetians and Ottomans. So the Athenian Assembly granted full citizenship to the non-land-owning lower classes in order to get enough oarsmen (200 triremes x 170 per). Those lower class men of Athens were the ones that won the battles of Artesium and Salamis and drove Xerxes back to Persia. They later took advantage of citizenship and learned to read, write and participate in politics.

    Aeschylus, the great Greek playwright and propagandist, was a veteran of Salamis. Themistocles and Cimon, both Athenian strategists of that time were adept at having plays written for political purposes. Pericles, perhaps one of the greatest users of rhetoric for propaganda in the ancient world was a naval veteran and strategist. His speeches were compared by a contemporary to the work of bees: “sweet as honey, leaving a sting behind in the memories of his listeners”. Another propagandist for Athenian naval power was Sophocles, a naval commander in the Samian War. Even our first acknowledged historian, Herodotus, engaged in a little propaganda, although he was honest enough to admit that his thoughts were to write down the historical traditions of the Greeks – not necessarily to believe them. On the other hand there was much in Plato’s dialogues that could be said was propaganda against Athens Navy. Didn’t he write the myth of Atlantis as a parable on the demise of thalassocracy or naval power?

    Much later, 70+ years after Salamis, the Athenians did grant thousands of slaves freedom and full citizenship during the Samian War when they again ran short of oarsmen. When the Phalerian Census was taken, Athens was completely under Macedonian control. The Athenians with their slaves, their imperialist abuse of many of the Aegean islanders, and their disenfranchised women were certainly not the greatest democracy. But weren’t they the first state or city state democracy that we know of? And did they not debate slavery fiercely? Was it Socrates or some of his students that argued to end it? Again a first! I am not counting tribal hunter gatherers and pre-Neolithic societies where slavery was unknown.

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  20. One thing I forgot to mention. Athenian democracy had something going for it that we do not: Ostracism. Any citizen could be called accountable to be voted off the island a la 21st century reality tv shows and and lose their citizenship. But this was mostly used against politicians and failed admirals or generals. Even Thucydides was banished from Athens for failure to save Amphipolis from the Spartans.

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  21. mike-

    Nice.

    bg-

    Still thinking about your comments on "decoding/communication/feedback" . . .

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  22. "If we are re-entering that cycle again how come our reactions are so different? Four years after the greatest economic crisis since 1929 we're acting as if nothing happened at all Why? Because we are not citizens any longer, not in any meaningful way, we are rather a mass atomized propagandized pulp."

    Do you want the long version, or the short?

    The short version is - in my opinion - not that we're an "atomized pulp" but because of a whole series of social events and changes that occurred in the U.S. between 1932 and about 1975.

    The labor movement fell apart. Beginning with the rise of the big industrial unions like the AFL-CIO the labor bosses stopped propagandizing and unionizing - they saw what happened to the IWW and feared for themselves - and concentrated on saving jobs and hiking wages and benefits.

    The old agitators - the IWW types - got flattened by the wartime labor-unrest-suppression and then, after WW2, by the Red purges. Those that remained were forever tarred with the "commie" brush.

    The rentiers regrouped and, starting with Taft-Hartley, began hammering at the working class. While all the time beavering industriously away at those every workers to convince them that they were NOT "working class" but "middle class" and thus above things like strikes and beating up scabs. Union-busting went from amateur to professional, and the fat suburban rivetheads were conned into not giving a shit as long as they got their $14.50/hr plus benefits.

    The crowning blow was the vicious return of racial politics in the Sixties and the rise of the religious Right in the Seventies and Eighties. Any remaining hope for any sort of working class pushback died with the GOP's "Southern Strategy" and the straight-in-the-vein infusion of God and abortion nonsense into people who should have been looking to see who was offshoring their jobs rather than who was fucking without a license...

    So - not so much about the Evil Teevee, and a lot more about societal and demographic and political events during the period.

    "I think we're being a bit hard on the Greeks who did after all come up with the concept. That we don't find their version of democracy as squeaky clean as we would like is not their fault, rather lies in our attempting to transplant our own values/assumptions to them. The democracy of the time would reflect the social relations/economics of the time, so slavery fits into it. Without slavery the polis, let alone the later Roman Empire would not have existed, which would leave us where exactly?"

    Pretty much where we are; with a not-so-subtle concept of "democracy" as a graduated franchise, where some animals - the wealthier, "better-bred", greedier, pushier, better-connected ones - are more equal than others.

    That's not "being hard on the Greeks", seydlitz, that's a fairly accurate presentation of Greek "democracy". It's not a bad system...if you're a citizen. I'm not trying to way the Greeks were monsters or idiots or modern U.S. Republicans or something like that.

    But their system benefited the elites. So does ours.

    Hmmm...

    So, any discussion of literacy and citizenship and the effect of propaganda and media on both that doesn't begin by starting with this entire system of a graduated-franchise society that has entirely different levels of education, literacy, and enfranchaisement for different kinds of people is almost certainly doomed to be the phlogiston chemistry of philosophy; ingenious but utterly mislead.

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  23. And, Seydlitz, I think you’re right about social stratification. It’s undergone a shift from color to class, which is remarkable in a way."

    That's a nice comforting thought, but is contradicted by most of the research to date. Color IS still class in much of the U.S. for many of it's people. And the demographics of color back that up; the pleasant myth of the "black middle class" is our way of forgetting that the best way to be born poor in the U.S. is to be born black.

    Here's the 2010 census poverty figures:
    9.9% of all non-Hispanic white persons
    12.1% of all Asian persons
    26.6% of all Hispanic persons (of any race)
    27.4% of all black persons.

    And remember, that's "poverty" - you gotta be pretty goddamn poor to be in "poverty" in the U.S.

    So, it's nice that we have a nice little "black middle class". But let's not kid ourselves; who would trade comfortable whiteness for being a black teenager?

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  24. And here's the point I'm trying to make with this, guys; it's comforting for us smart folks to blame the damn teevee, advertising, and the photograph for where we've come to in this country.

    But in so doing we comfort ourselves that we haven't been ignoring or excusing the rapacious theft of the New Deal social contract we all thought was a given, done deal.

    Look at this year's GOP platform; it's runamuck with the looniest forms of goldbuggery, crony capitalism, and ignorant anti-science. We've let that happen, we've looked away while the economic and political Left in this country triangulated and deregulated and capitulated to the Randroid whackos and the Christopaths.

    And here we are. Not because we're illiterate, but because we pulled down our own pants and gave the birch rod to the Birchers, the Goldbugs, the Robber Barons, the Theocrats, and the Oligarchs.

    And now all we really need to read is the handwriting on the wall; "Mene, Mene, Tekel, u-Pharsin" - "God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."

    The Religious Right would find that - I hope - intensely ironic.

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  25. If we are re-entering that cycle again how come our reactions are so different? Four years after the greatest economic crisis since 1929 we're acting as if nothing happened at all Why? Because we are not citizens any longer, not in any meaningful way, we are rather a mass atomized propagandized pulp.

    The thing is, were people in the late 1920's/early 1930's less propagandized? Hard to say IMO. Look a couple of decades before that and our long war in the Philippines. A year or two ago, I went back and read contemporary articles about the war and the parallels to Iraq were a bit eerie.

    And there was a different political system back them - one based more on patronage than ideology (and patronage ruled the day in the late 19th century).

    I think the big factor, however, is the social contract Chief mentions. A lot of it is stronger than ever. Lose your job in 1929 and you were seriously fucked (and for me I'm speaking family history here - my mother's Dad lost his job, then murdered his boss and died in prison. That didn't work out so well for the wife left behind to raise five kids).

    Lose your job today and you're much less fucked - probably 12-18 months of unemployment plus other state benefits. In most modern families both parents work, so if one loses a job, there is still some income. The social safety net is, in other words, doing its job, even if it's not doing it perfectly or efficiently. All that keeps the prospect of political violent down which keeps the status quo going....

    Finally, this:

    Here we have the ideal type politically active citizen of 1890 compared with the ideal type couch potato of 2012.

    Is that really a fair comparison? Did the 1890's not have the equivalent of "couch potatoes" or do we today not have the equivalent ideal "politically active citizen?" In 1890 about 14% of the population weren't even native born and only 1/3 of the population were urban residents. Today it's less that 7% foreign-born and more that 75% are urban. And then there are women and blacks who were not able to be politically active - at least not by today's standards. So who represents the 1890 ideal type?

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  26. FD Chief-

    A pleasure as always.

    Have you read Postman? He makes quite a coherent argument and his book is available on-line . . .

    http://wxy.seu.edu.cn/humanities/sociology/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20100825/20100825050135586.pdf

    Think of this concept of medium working through the same demographic and social changes that you mention . . . it explains a lot. He's been very influential and some have tried to knock him down, but none very convincingly.

    Now to the details:

    You commented, "The labor movement fell apart. Beginning with the rise of the big industrial unions like the AFL-CIO the labor bosses stopped propagandizing and unionizing - they saw what happened to the IWW and feared for themselves - and concentrated on saving jobs and hiking wages and benefits."

    Disagree, Samuel Gompers of the AFL was for " 'pure and simple' trade unionism, strictly divorced from ideology. For theory and for intellectuals he had the utmost contempt" (see David M. Kennedy's "Over Here", page 71). I think the main stream trade unionists like Gompers were glad to see the IWW out of the way. They also fully supported the war in 1916, that is the year before our actual entry. I think you are mixing up the labor movement in Europe with that of the US which was always a different beast.

    You commented, "So - not so much about the Evil Teevee, and a lot more about societal and demographic and political events during the period."

    My argument is not "the Evil Teevee" but following Postman, how the change in the dominate medium of communication interacted with these societal and demographic trends you mention and essentially "switched the tracks" and set us as a society/political community on a whole different pathway. You mention a whole lot of very complex history covering over 60 years, but things started going off the rails when? The 1980s? The 1960s? Why not the 1930s or 40s?

    I commented, ". . . Without slavery the polis, let alone the later Roman Empire would not have existed, which would leave us where exactly?"

    To which you responded, "Pretty much where we are; with a not-so-subtle concept of "democracy" as a graduated franchise, where some animals - the wealthier, "better-bred", greedier, pushier, better-connected ones - are more equal than others."

    Wow, how can you make that assumption? Those civilizations required the institution of slavery to develop. Can you name any great ancient civilization anywhere on earth that did not have slavery in some form? How were they to build the infrastructure necessary to maintain the necessary level of organization? Or is your argument that the existence of Greek and Roman culture were not requirements to what we know as Western civilization today? It would have all developed anyway?

    cont . . .

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  27. FD Chief-

    You commented, "But their system benefited the elites."

    Yes, but Athenian democracy allowed the citizenry to actually debate, decide and vote on major issues. See my Thucydides quote above.

    You commented, "So, any discussion of literacy and citizenship and the effect of propaganda and media on both that doesn't begin by starting with this entire system of a graduated-franchise society that has entirely different levels of education, literacy, and enfranchaisement for different kinds of people is almost certainly doomed to be the phlogiston chemistry of philosophy; ingenious but utterly mislead."

    So, the sequence is the problem? I didn't plan/have this entire discussion thought out when I started, so I just should have forgotten the whole thing? Not to mention, how would dominance and stratification (and their influence on the distribution of/access to resources) not be lurking in the wings with me given my approach (following Weber)?

    You commented, "That's a nice comforting thought, but is contradicted by most of the research to date. Color IS still class in much of the U.S. for many of it's people. And the demographics of color back that up; the pleasant myth of the "black middle class" is our way of forgetting that the best way to be born poor in the U.S. is to be born black."

    If color were class, there would be no black middle class. I don't really follow you r argument here. Are you saying that the stats show that if you are poor you are probably black and you're still being poor is a result of racism? I think we need to unpack those stats you've provided.

    Have you considered that based on those same stats, 72% of Afro-American children are born to unwed mothers? The poverty threshold varies as to size of household with the more people the higher the threshold and generally unwed mothers have a harder time getting by, are more likely to live in poverty, so these numbers would be higher. Also the need for them to then move in with relatives pushing the threshold higher, but the numbers living in poverty higher as well . . .

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  28. Andy-

    You bring up good points. Were the people of the 1920s and 30s less propagandized? If we assume that propaganda is a necessity of the modern state, they were subject to propaganda, but they had at the same time more traditional sources of orientation than we have today: extended family, community, religion, trade unions/cooperatives to offset what they were hearing from the government/powerful "oligarchic interests"/advertising. This is something the classic propagandists were struggling with, how to get past these "group prejudices and desires where specific allegiances and loyalties exist(ed)" quoting Bernays. Consider also that the propagandists didn't see much of a difference between government propaganda and advertising.

    Plus the main medium of communication was still print, so people were looking for rational arguments, sequences of ideas set out clearly, understood facts in terms of context, could recognize emotional appeals quickly. Today, defining literacy as some do as the ability to read labels leaves those critical faculties unmentioned, as if they were not part of literacy at all.

    You mention the Philippine American War. Consider the level of literate opposition to that conflict and who it was coming from, Mark Twain for one. Consider the public outcry against our policies there illustrated by the reaction to the "water cure" and how quickly TR distanced himself from torture and condemned it. Consider the role of the press in focusing and sustaining public attention. There were 44 military trials for what we would call today "war crimes" including two US field commanders.

    Now compare that to Iraq and the US public's reaction to torture, which was not the field expedient variety seen in the Philippine conflict, but sanctioned at the highest level . . . In fact the current GOP presidential candidate has promised to return to "aggressive methods" . . .

    Finally the "ideal type US citizen of 1890" doesn't have to apply to any one person , but rather is a complexus of specific characteristics, just as the "ideal type US citizen couch potato of 2012" doesn't either. I'm sure one could find a couch potato in 1890, but that would not change the overall political life of the country which was very different from today. The Populist movement almost overthrew the two party system. That system only survived by the Democratic Party assuming most of the Populist platform. It remained a power for almost two decades. Now compare that with the Tea Party folding into the GOP before the first presidential election post-economic crisis . . . Could the distinctions be any clearer? Those distinctions make up our two ideal types.

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  29. "The American motion picture is the greatest un-conscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.

    The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment."

    Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, p 166

    I would only add the Lenin and Goebbels saw the power of motion pictures as "the greatest un-conscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day" as well.

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  30. FD Chief-

    You commented: "The rentiers regrouped and, starting with Taft-Hartley, began hammering at the working class. While all the time beavering industriously away at those every workers to convince them that they were NOT "working class" but "middle class" and thus above things like strikes and beating up scabs. Union-busting went from amateur to professional, and the fat suburban rivetheads were conned into not giving a shit as long as they got their $14.50/hr plus benefits."

    There is a lot, as usual, that I agree with here. I think we're talking a more exact timing . . . when exactly do you think the "Wunderpunkt" was?

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  31. Hm. OK. Let's regroup and reorganize a bit here.

    Let me try, first, to restate the EEI of your post.

    1. The 20th Century (particularly, tho with roots in the late 19th) has seen a fundamental change in the nature of Western communications, from a literate one - where information was transmitted through print - to a visual one, where images predominate.

    2. This has either coincided, or precipitated, a significant change in the relationship between the "mass" and the elites in Western societies (with the added implication that this change has been for the worse in the sense that the simplified forms of communication lend themselves better to propagandizing and persuasive/coercive speech rather than intelligent disputation and discussion.

    Am I good so far?

    From here we got into the comments section, where - as usual - we all ran our divers ways with this. Greece, Rome, Obamacare...

    Taking aside all the various macguffins about Roman and Greek democracy (which - as I simply pointed out, are not particularly good analogues for our own, given the immense portion of those polities that were completely and utterly disenfranchised and yet, by their simple existence, tended to warp the fabric of those polities to support that peculiar institution. It is not a reflection on those societies as societies "good" or evil", but simply on the utility of using them to support this linkage of literacy = citizenship) and who did what to whom when, my point is still -

    While I tend to agree that there HAS been a fundamental change in the way we communicate since the advent of the televised image, I disagree that there is enough evidence to link some sort of overarching change from informed citizenry to lumpen atomized/propagandized mass with this change in information transmission as a stand-alone factor. There may be correlation but I don't see evidence for causation stronger than, say, the return to power of the regressive elites from their forty years in the New Deal wilderness, the demise of the "Fairness Doctrine", the ongoing destruction of the New Deal social compact, the ankommen an Macht of the religious Right and the hijacking of the economic and political interests of the "lower-class white people" demographic by the oligarchs, preachers, and flag-wavers.

    So...I know I've hammered you on this before, but my question still stands; you have an ingenious theorum, and one that other social scientists have subscribed to. But where is the evidence? Andy raises some excellent points about the difference between the reactions to U.S. torture between the early 1900s and 2005, but I would offer the counterargument that, similar to the mass reaction to the revelations of Iraq, the mass of the U.S. public in 1905 "supported the troops"; Mark Twain got no further than Ramsey Clark did...

    (con't)

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  32. Overall I tend to agree with you that the HAS been a sea-change in U.S. politics. And I would put the schwerpunkt somewhere in the mid-1960's to late 1970's.

    That's when the American Left made the commitment to bringing the "outsiders" to the Big Table; the blacks, first, and since then all the other "out groups" - the women, the gays, the hispanics (other than the Cubans, who never saw themselves AS an "out group"...).

    And the U.S. Right made the decision to simply leave the Table - or, rather, to refuse to admit that the Left had a legitimate social and political disagreement with them over who should get the bennies of the Social Contract and to simply eliminate the Left to the degree which it could.

    THIS has caused the massive explosion of political dishonesty, propagandizement, deception that characterizes current U.S. political speech. Certainly, the Left has responded (sorta, kinda...) but the real scorched earth started with Goldwater and has metastasized since then.

    And the political polarization that has accompanied it has, I think, made the physical changes in the mode of political speech almost irrelevant.

    Look at the ridiculous mendacity of the Romney campaign. Listen to the silly rhetoric about "freedom" and "liberty" thrown about as if Obama was Attila the Hun and Tojo all rolled into one. The prevarications and obfuscations of the Ryan "Plan" wouldn't confuse a sentient kindergartener.

    But all the good Republicans in attendance shout and applaud. It's not that they don't HEAR the lies. They don't CARE. The comfortable lies (War is peace, freedom is slavery, we have to fight them there so we won't have to fight them here, Job Creators won't Create without teeny tiny taxes, poor black people are poor because they're lazy negroes who have kids outside of marriage) are preferable to thinking hard about the painful alternatives.

    So...I'm not saying that you might not be on to an idea - I'm saying that 1) I'm not convinced that your idea is as critical to the Decline of the Republic as you believe, and 2) that doing things to reverse the trends in literacy may not - probably will not - reverse that Decline.

    I wish I could be more optimistic. I wish I believed that raising our populace to the standards of literacy and textural analysis of the elites of the previous centuries would reverse the Great American Idiot Stampede.

    But I don't.

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  33. While it cannot be denied that the assault on the New Deal succeeded, the debacle of the American left had other causes, not the least of which were the Soviet show trials, nuclear weapons paraded about, like saints relics, during May Day parades, and tanks in the streets of Budapest. Artists, intellectuals and decent people everywhere turned away. Working men in the 1950s used say in tones of gentle wonder, “I make more in a week than my grandfather made in a year.” Next stop was the suburbs and the Republican Party.

    Propaganda certainly played a role. But propaganda is friable; stresses accumulate and some often minor event shatters the whole construct. Nor is it difficult to abandon an imposed world view. We all have our secret doubts. When the story implodes, we shrug and say, “Huh, I always knew better.”

    As bad as things are – half of the voting population favoring Romney, more than 80,000 prisoners held in perpetual solitary confinement, medicine devolved into extending the lives of the very rich, etc., etc., -- things can change. History is full of surprises.

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  34. FDChief-

    You commented: "While I tend to agree that there HAS been a fundamental change in the way we communicate since the advent of the televised image, I disagree that there is enough evidence to link some sort of overarching change from informed citizenry to lumpen atomized/propagandized mass with this change in information transmission as a stand-alone factor."

    I don't think I've ever made that contention. Where have I stated such? Please show me so I can correct it . . . Multi-causality in social development is an assumption I make, so if I'm arguing single causality, well that's a contradiction. For instance, one of the factors for this sea change that we both agree happened is de-industrialization and the end of much of the basis for a blue-collar middle class.

    I do think that the use of modern propaganda techniques, as outlined by Lippmann and Bernays, along with the switch of dominate mediums from print to TV is part of the explanation for what we've seen going on, but as to the overall result, the ideal type of 2012, there would be other causes as well. Once again in social science we very rarely come to any definite conclusions on the causes of social change, be it the rise of modern capitalism or the collapse of the Roman Empire.

    Also I was the one who brought up the public reaction to torture in 1902 compared with after 2004 . . . I see the effects of propaganda manifest here as well, but I would not say they are the sole cause of this very fundamental change in outlook . . .

    Although modern propaganda matched with the dominate medium of TV and the decline of literacy seems to have set the stage for much of what has followed. The rise of these specific interests and their agenda would be however separate and a separate cause of the overall phenomenon . . .

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  35. Paul-

    History is full of surprises, and many of them are very unpleasant.

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  36. To expand on my last comment to FD Chief,

    which I think is an important point and central to the political angle of this topic. Propaganda is a means, not an end, or simply a tool, just as "Terrorism", or cyberwarfare, or information warfare are. But a tool for what and what would be the motivation behind using propaganda in the way described? That leads us to a whole series of very important questions . . . and maybe my next thread. The second Grand Strategy thread keeps getting pushed back, sorry . . .

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  37. This post was included in Zenpundit's latest "Recommended Reading" list . . . as was my original post on literacy.

    http://zenpundit.com/?p=13930

    Thanks Zen.

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