Collated by Maireid Sullivan 2016, updated 2020
Work in progress
"A propaganda claim doesn’t need to be true;
it just needs to be repeated over and over again until people believe it is true." – J.P. Thomas
First, the pessimist: "Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." – Bertrand Russell Then, the optimist: "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." – Abe Lincoln
Deceitful, manipulative, persuasive or informative?
“No longer are we surrounded by fields, woods, and rivers, but by signs, signals billboards, screens, labels and trademarks: this is our universe.”
French philosopher Jacques Ellul, The Ellul Forum
Wikipedia: French philosopher, sociologist, lay theologian, and professor who was a noted Christian anarchist. Ellul was a longtime Professor of History and the Sociology of Institutions on the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences at the University of Bordeaux. ... The dominant theme of Ellul's work proved to be the threat to human freedom and religion created by modern technology. He did not seek to eliminate modern technology or technique but sought to change our perception of modern technology and technique to that of a tool rather than regulator of the status quo…
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul, 1962 "a seminal study and critique of propaganda." English translation 1965 - Available on the Internet Archive Abstract:The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965/1973) (Propagandes 1962: original French edition) is a book on the subject of propaganda.
This book appears to be the first attempt to study propaganda from a sociological approach as well as a psychological one.
It presents a sophisticated taxonomy for propaganda, including such paired opposites as political–sociological, vertical–horizontal, rational–irrational, and agitation–integration.
The book contains Ellul's theories about the nature of propaganda to adapt the individual to a society, to a living standard and to an activity aiming to make the individual serve and conform.
Introduction
Jacques Ellul's view on propaganda and his approach to the study of propaganda are new. The principal difference between his thought edifice and most other literature on propaganda is that Ellul regards propaganda as a sociological phenomenon rather than as something made by certain people for certain purposes. Propaganda exists and thrives; it is the Siamese twin of our technological society. Only in the technological society can there be anything of the type and order of magnitude of modern propaganda, which is with us forever; and only with the all-pervading effects that flow from propaganda can the technological society hold itself together and further expand.
Most people are very easy prey to propaganda, Ellul says, because of their firm but entirely erroneous conviction that it is composed only of lies and "tall stories" and that, conversely, what is true cannot be propaganda. But modern propaganda has long disdained the ridiculous lies of past and outmoded forms of propaganda. It operates instead with many different kinds of truth– half truth, limited truth, truth out of context. Even Goebbels always insisted that Wehrmacht communiqués be as accurate as possible.
A second basic misconception that makes people vulnerable to propaganda is the notion that it serves only to change opinions. That is one of its aims, but a limited, subordinate one. Much more importantly, it aims to intensify existing trends, to sharpen and focus them, and, above all, to lead men to action (or, when it is directed at immovable opponents, to non-action through terror or discouragement, to prevent them from interfering). Therefore, Ellul distinguishes various forms of propaganda and calls his book Propagandes –that plural is one of the keys to his concept. The most trenchant distinction made by Ellul is between agitation propaganda and integration propaganda. The former leads men from mere resentment to rebellion; the latter aims at making them adjust themselves to desired patterns. The two types rely on entirely different means. Both exist all over the world. Integration propaganda is needed especially for the technological society to flourish, and its technological means–mass media among them–in turn make such integration propaganda possible.
A related point, central to Ellul's thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without "education"; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary, he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls "pre-propaganda" -- the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as "facts" and as "education." Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information; (2) the feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they consider themselves capable of "judging for themselves." They literally need propaganda.
In fact, the need for propaganda on the part of the "propagandee" is one of the most powerful elements of Ellul's thesis. Cast out of the disintegrating microgroups of the past, such as family, church, or village, the individual is plunged into mass society and thrown back upon his own inadequate resources, his isolation, his loneliness, his ineffectuality. Propaganda then hands him in veritable abundance what he needs: a raison d'être, personal involvement and participation in important events, an outlet and excuse for some of his more doubtful impulses, righteousness– all factitious, to be sure, all more or less spurious; but he drinks it all in and asks for more. Without this intense collaboration by the propagandee the propagandist would be helpless.
Thus propaganda, by first creating pseudo-needs through "pre-propaganda" and then providing pseudo-satisfactions for them, is pernicious. Can wholesome propaganda be made for a wholesome cause? Can Democracy, Christianity, Humanism be propagated by modern propaganda techniques? Ellul traces the similarities among all propaganda efforts–Communist, Nazi, Democratic. He thinks that no one can use this intrinsically undemocratic weapon– or rather, abandon himself to it– unscathed or without undergoing deep transformations in the process. He shows the inevitable, unwilled propaganda effects of which the "good" propagandist is unaware, the "fallout" from any major propaganda activity and all its pernicious consequences. Most pernicious of all: the process, once fully launched, tends to become irreversible.
Ellul critically reviews what most American authors have written on the subject of propaganda and mass media, having studied the literature from Lasswell to Reisman with great thoroughness. Accepting some of their findings, he rejects others, particularly the efforts to gauge the effects of propaganda. Ellul believes that, on the whole, propaganda is much more effective, and effective in many more ways, than most American analysis shows. Particularly, he rejects as unrealistic and meaningless all experiments that have been conducted with small groups; propaganda is a unique phenomenon that results from the totality of forces pressing in upon an individual in his society, therefore cannot be duplicated in a test tube.
To make his many original points, Ellul never relies on statistical quantification, which he heartily disdains, but on observation and logic. His treatise is a fully integrated structure of thought in which every piece fits in with all the others–be they a hundred pages apart. In this respect his work resembles Schopenhauer's The World as Will and idea, of which the philosopher said that the reader, really to understand the book, must read it twice because no page in the book could be fully understood with knowledge of the whole. This procedure can hardly be suggested to the reader in our busy days. But he ought to be warned that to leaf through this book will not suffice. Paul Pickrel, in Harper's Magazine, said of Ellul's The Technological Society of Ellul – "a great man" –had written with "monumental calm and maddening thoroughness … a magnificent book." Ellul's Propaganda is no less maddening, monumental and thorough.
What, in Ellul's view, can mankind do? At the end of this book Ellul reaches neither a pessimistic nor an optimistic conclusion with regard to the future. He merely states that, in his view propaganda is today a greater danger to mankind than any of the other more grandly advertised threats hanging over the human race. His super-analysis ends with a warning, not a prophecy. February 1965 Konrad Kellen, German-born American political scientist, intelligence analyst and author.
2. Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995) "Father of Public Relations" And Leader in Opinion Making, Edward Bernays was born in Vienna to Ely Bernays and Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's sister. Bernays graduated from Cornell University in New York in 1912 with a degree in agriculture, but he chose journalism as his first career. During the First World War, he handled a number of "propaganda projects" for the US Government, "eventually helping the Woodrow Wilson Administration promote the idea that US efforts in World War I were intended to bring democracy to Europe" - Indiana University Professor of Medicine Richard Gunderman,The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations, The Conversation, July 9, 2015.
Excerpt: Edward Bernays had a talent for applying slogans in marketing propaganda: “The most interesting man in the world.” “Reach out and touch someone.” “Finger-lickin’ good.” Such advertising slogans have become fixtures of American culture... While no single person can claim exclusive credit for the ascendancy of advertising in American life, no one deserves credit more than a man most of us have never heard of: Edward Bernays.
The Career and Times of Edward Bernays, by Frank Fletcher, 2014
(pdf - read or download the full text)
Abstract Using mass psychology to develop corporate and political persuasive messages. Edward L. Bernays influenced the evolution of the public relations field and in-turn the times he lived in from World War I through the start of the Information Age. This paper looks at Bernays’ career and legacy. It considers how Bernays’ work was influenced by his uncle Sigmund Freud. Also it looks at Bernays’ role in helping the development of consumer capitalism. Finally the paper discusses Bernays’ legacy as a pioneering genius in the field of public relations, but also the criticism that Bernays was an elitist willing to abuse the powers of mass persuasion.
"Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet"
Two Obituaries provide informative historical overviews: 1. The New York Times, March 10, 1995: Archived
Edward Bernays, 'Father of Public Relations' And Leader in Opinion Making, Dies at 103,
Excerpt: an early leader in the public relations field who devised or developed many techniques for influencing public opinion…. Mr. Bernays was one of the first people to expand what had been a narrow concept of press agentry, or working to influence government policy, into a far more ambitious -- and controversial -- realm of seeking to influence and change public opinion and behavior...
2. The Independent UK, March 22, 1995
Excerpt: In later years, Bernays would say that his success was attributable to his having true "Freudian instincts."
The Bernays moved to New York in 1892, and lived in an area of the city near Mount Morris Park (5th Ave & 120th St), now lower Harlem, and it was there that he and my grandfather, Frank E. Karelsen, met and became lifelong friends.
Although Bernays graduated from Cornell University in New York in 1912 with a degree in agriculture, he chose journalism as his first career. During the First World War, he handled a number of "propaganda projects" for the US Government...
“Propaganda is here to stay”
In Propaganda, (1928), Bernays argued that public relations is a necessity:
After the success of the books Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and The Public Relations Counsel (1927) - now on Archive.org, Edward Bernays publishes the emblematic work that will coin him as the “Father of Public Relations.”
Quickly the book Propaganda would become the reference work for Communication professionals
CH 1. Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (1928).
Excerpt PDF
THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. 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.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that 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—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.
It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.
3. Marshal McLuhan(1911-1980) author of The Medium is the Message (1964) MIT has shared an excerpt from CH 1. Understanding Media (pdf)
Excerpt from his Biography:
"McLuhan was still a twenty-year old undergraduate at the University of Manitoba, in western Canada, in the dirty thirties, when he wrote in his diary that he would never become an academic. He was learning in spite of his professors, but he would become a professor of English in spite of himself..."
The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool
WIRED, January 1, 1996 In the tumult of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant anew. But if you think you know Marshall McLuhan, or what he stood for – think again.
Excerpt: McLuhan wrote to one detractor with whom he was especially irritated. "I have no theories whatever about anything. I make observations by way of discovering contours, lines of force, and pressures. I satirize at all times, and my hyperboles are as nothing compared to the events to which they refer."
. . .
Also, McLuhan was never a cheerleader for the technological elite. "There are many people for whom 'thinking' necessarily means identifying with existing trends," he wrote in a 1974 missive to the The Toronto Star. In this letter, McLuhan warned that electronic civilization was creating conditions in which human life would be treated as an expendable fungus, and he passionately protested against it. >>>more
4. Tribute: Jean-Paul Sartre(1905-1980)
Hell is Other People! By Olga Ignatieva-Vanhanen September 18, 2013
The line comes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous one-act play No Exit. The original French title of the play is Huis clos; the title is an idiomatic expression used in the French legal system to mean hearings held in private, “in camera.” The fact that “huis clos” is basically a legal term is appropriate for the play, because its three main characters die and are sent to Hell. It turns out that they are sentenced to spend eternity in a small room they will never be able to leave with no one but themselves for company. They quickly discover that they are capable of becoming each other’s worst enemies. At one point, one of the characters says, “Hell is other people.”
At first, it seems the play is a misanthropic statement. But Sartre always said that that was a misinterpretation of what he had intended. So what did he mean? He did not mean to say that other people are hellish, cruel, or bad. According to Sartre, we are incapable of developing reasonable or real opinions of ourselves via ourselves. So how do we derive our opinions of ourselves? Via others. If we think highly of ourselves and if the feeling is genuine, we probably got that opinion via the adulation or respect of others at some point. Or at some point, we managed to achieve some major successes in life. These successes were acknowledged by others in various ways. I assume that people who think poorly of themselves have gotten these views from others too.
Later Sartre provided a clear explanation of it:
“Hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us".
We want to be our own masters, yet we cannot be. We are doomed to need others, whether we want to or not. This is the “no exit.” It’s also the “Hell is other people.” We are doomed to require respect and even adulation from others. We long to free ourselves from this addiction, but we cannot. We are trapped.
What do people really want? They want to be liked, admired, respected, and treated with adulation. I would argue that almost all healthy people want this.
This is the lesson of “No Exit.” We are addicted to this continuous praise and admiration, or at least respect, of others, but too often we just don’t get it, or we don’t get it the way that we want to get it. Most of all, we want people to love, respect and admire us “for ourselves and only for ourselves”.
How many people are really interested in befriending us or loving us just because we are great people deep down inside? Not as many as we would like. But this is what we long for. We resent that people only respect, befriend or love us based on superficial crap, ignoring our inner awesomeness. It’s a constant source of frustration, an existential dilemma. It’s the meaning of “Hell is other people.”
But there is a further element in the play. In blaming “other people” the characters in the play, Sartre says, are pointing fingers in the wrong direction. Why should the world be responsible for the actions of any of us? Who should I blame for what I am except myself? Ultimately No Exit doesn’t say that hell is other people; it says, with Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, that “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” We construct a hell for ourselves, Sartre says, when we refuse to take responsibility for our own actions, leaving us at the mercy of the opinions of others. “Hell is other people” is the expression of damned souls who will remain in the hell they created until – the play does offer the occasional very dim ray of light – until they learn to own up to their own behaviours, and until they begin to choose to help each other – to put someone else’s good ahead of their own. In the sense I am describing here, “Hell is other people” is exactly what Sartre does not say. A character says it, because he steadfastly refuses to see that he and he alone is responsible for his own behaviour. The characters have built hell with their own hands; they are the ones who will have to take it apart again.
Imagine a world where you respect, befriend and love others not for their money, status, power, achievements, possessions, and superficial looks or winning personalities. Imagine a world where we respect, befriend and love others and vice versa purely for their inner greatness and not for any other reason. I believe that this is the world that Sartre wants us to imagine.
5. Complex Ideas can enter consciousness automatically San Francisco State University: April 13 2016
Assistant Professor of Psychology Ezequiel Morsella's research provides support for "passive frame theory," a potentially groundbreaking idea that suggests consciousness is more of a conduit for information in the brain rather than an active creator of information. >>> more
Abstract In ironic processing, one is more likely to think about something (e.g., white bears) when instructed to not think about that thing. Entry into consciousness of such content may be automatic, reflecting the ‘encapsulated’ nature of the generation of conscious contents. Based on this research, the Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT) reveals that, following the activation of action sets, conscious contents can arise involuntarily and systematically in response to external stimuli. In the most basic version of this paradigm, participants are presented with visual objects and instructed to not think of the names of the objects, which is challenging.
Here, we addressed one criticism of the RIT—that the effect arises only for automatic processes (e.g., forms of cued-memory retrieval) and not for more complex processes (e.g., symbol manipulation). Participants were first trained to perform a word-manipulation task similar to the game of Pig Latin (e.g., “CAR” becomes “AR-CAY”). Such a task involves complex symbol manipulations that are associated with processes in frontal cortex. After training, participants were instructed to not transform stimulus words in this way. The RIT effect still arose under these conditions. This striking finding is relevant to theories of cognitive control, psychopathology, and conscious/unconscious processing.
6. Political "mind control" tactics George Lakoff is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. His July 23 2016 Blog, "Understanding Trump" gives an outstanding analysis of political "mind control" tactics during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
"There is a lot being written and spoken about Trump by intelligent and articulate commentators whose insights I respect. But as a longtime researcher in cognitive science and linguistics, I bring a perspective from these sciences to an understanding of the Trump phenomenon."
From the Moral Hierarchy, to White Evangelicals, Pragmatic Conservatives, Laissez-faire Free Marketeers, to Direct vs. Systemic Causation, Political Correctness and on, Lakoff unequivocally answers the question:How Can Democrats Do Better?>>> more
7. When is a Lobbyist Not a Lobbyist? By Howard Marlowe, President of the American League of Lobbyists The Hill, December 21, 2011
Excerpt:
... Unlike Gingrich, several thousand of my professional colleagues aren’t ashamed of the lobbying we do. We help business, labor, schools, hospitals and others get their message communicated effectively to the right people and at the right time. Many of us don’t niggle over percentages, but rather take the approach that over-reporting is a more prudent way to go. Unfortunately, there are a lot of good reasons to stay away from registering and reporting altogether. The reports take time to prepare. They enable the media to name you in what passes these days as investigative journalism. The President won’t meet with you, take your political donations, or let you serve on a federal Advisory Committee. All of these restrictions apply only to registered lobbyists. Why not call yourself a consultant, advisor, attorney or even an historian and avoid all of these negatives and the public stigma as well?
This brings us back to Gingrich and the thousands of others who legally do not register as lobbyists but who reasonable people would say are engaged in lobbying. The law needs to be changed so that all of us who are paid to influence public policy are required to register and report on our activities. Since lobbyists don’t have a vote in Congress, we need to continue to work with elected officials to close the loopholes and make lobbying more transparent. Most of all, we need to make sure that everyone who lobbies is called a lobbyist and required to register and report our activities.>>>more
8. Cambridge Analytica Cambridge psychologist Michal Kosinski's research on the privacy risks exploited by Cambridge Analytica, measuring the efficiency of their methods, was first published in the The Guardian, 2015:
Excerpt: A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz’s campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor, paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey. As part of an aggressive new voter-targeting operation, Cambridge Analytica – financially supported by reclusive hedge fund magnate and leading Republican donor Robert Mercer – is now using so-called “psychographic profiles” of US citizens ... uncovered longstanding ethical and privacy issues about the way academics hoovered up personal data by accessing a vast set of US Facebook profiles, in order to build sophisticated models of users’ personalities without their knowledge... >>>more
9. Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind New York Review of Books, April 20, 2017
Reviewed
by Tamsin Shaw, Associate Professor of European and Mediterranean Studies and Philosophy at NYU. Review excerpt: The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis
We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral economics are being employed to determine the news we read, the products we buy, the cultural and intellectual spheres we inhabit, and the human networks, online and in real life, of which we are a part. Aspects of human societies that were formerly guided by habit and tradition, or spontaneity and whim, are now increasingly the intended or unintended consequences of decisions made on the basis of scientific theories of the human mind and human well-being. …
Frank Babetski, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence analyst who also holds the Analytical Tradecraft chair at the Sherman Kent School of Intelligence Analysis at the CIA University, has called Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow a “must read” for intelligence officers. ...
The guiding idea for the World Well-Being Project is that we need not rely on our faulty subjective judgments about what will make us happy or what path in life will give us a sense of meaning.2 But if those studying behavioral influence are targeting the form of well-being that we value and the kind of happiness we seek, then it is harder to see how people’s being “better off, as judged by themselves” genuinely preserves their freedom. And this concern is not a purely academic one. The manipulation of preferences has driven the commercialization of behavioral insights and is now fundamental to the digital economy that shapes so much of our lives.
...
And,
"In 2007, and again in 2008, Kahneman gave a masterclass in “Thinking About Thinking” to, among others, Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon), Larry Page (Google), Sergey Brin (Google), Nathan Myhrvold (Microsoft), Sean Parker (Facebook), Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla), Evan Williams (Twitter), and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia). >>> more Back to top
10. Personal Delusional Systems "Everyone has the capacity to dream up what ever they want." Neuroscientist Dr. John Kitchin aka Slomo:
The Man Who Skated Right Off the Grid
Op-Docs | The New York Times
Published on April 1, 2014
Dr. John Kitchin quit a medical career to pursue his passion: skating along the boardwalk of San Diego's Pacific Beach:
"I feel like I'm on the tip of a great iceberg of consciousness. ... Once we see the light, we are not satisfied until we experience a kind of divinity... Everyone has the capacity to dream up what ever they want. In psychiatry, this is known as Personal Delusional Systems."
This is the story of one person "who got away - simply doing what he wants to."
Excerpt from Josh Izenberg the filmmaker's report: I’ve long been fascinated by people who make seismic changes late in life. It goes against the mainstream narrative: Grow up, pick a career, stick it out, retire. I was also curious about Slomo’s concept of “the zone,” a realm of pure subjectivity and connectedness that he achieves through his skating. The only thing Slomo loves more than being in the zone is talking about the zone, so it wasn’t hard to persuade him to take part in a documentary film. Slomo’s combination of candor and eloquence made him a natural on camera, and his background as a neurologist legitimized his metaphysical theories about skating, lateral motion and the brain.
Read the full story here
"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. ... It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. ... Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible."
Welsh philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Impact of Science on Society (1952)
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813: Writings 13:333--35, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8
Excerpt: What is populism, exactly, and where in the world is it taking root? Which parties and political leaders deserve the populist label, and what happens when they get into power? Perhaps most difficult of all: is rightwing populism, in particular, really on the rise, and, if so, why might that be? . . . Simply put, populism is a language that frames politics as a battle between the will of ordinary people and corrupt or self-serving elites, and can exist on the left or right. A few weeks later, we launched The New Populism, a series of essays and reported dispatches . . . >>>more
Team Populism
[from Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, New Hampshire, Venice, Johannesburg, Delhi, Zurich, Glasgow and Hartlepool, hosted by Brigham Young University, USA]
– Team Populism brings together renowned scholars from Europe and the Americas to study the causes and consequences of populism. We seek to answer why some populist parties, leaders or movements are more successful than others.
– Our general argument is that populism is best understood as a combination of individual and contextual issues (“demand side") and the availability of successful leaders (“supply side").
– We expand on this broad framework by studying multiple levels of analysis, and we draw on different methodological tools, including experiments, surveys, and comparative analysis. To facilitate this work, individual teams are organized around functional tasks.>>>more
MORE How to spot a populist The p-word is much misunderstood. It’s as old as democracy, and has perhaps never been as popular as it is today. So who are the key protagonists?
by Mark Rice-Oxley and Ammar Kalia
3 Dec. 2018
The Guardian
Excerpt: What is populism?
That’s a vexed question. Populism is usually described as a strategic approach that frames politics as a battle between the virtuous, “ordinary” masses and a nefarious or corrupt elite.
It can be used by politicians who are either left- or rightwing, and occasionally neither.
It is not sustained by a single consistent ideology or issue position. In the words of the leading populism scholar Cas Mudde*, it is “a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’”. >>>more
