Its such a reward in of itself to share your sentiment that is truly important o for lack of a better word focus on Consensus. Thats my goal lately. I wrote a piece which directly was inspired by you and David Brooks recent article. and would love to know what Martin Luther King would say. Anyways, Im not a writer, but I m going to keep writing and reading your stuff, because this is where we need to be. To be in Consensus.
I think that you really have a good intention with your analysis and ideas here. At the same time I am thinking about the following. What if "the ruling class" is the middle-class? Most people who voted for both Biden and Trump are middle class. Even in Europe, as in Sweden, most voters are middle-class and all political parties in the parliament are competing for the middle-class voters. Even the traditional leftists as Social-Democrats are today more of a middle-class party.
Middle class people were swayed to vote a particular way, but this was a result of well-financed influence campaigns. By 'ruling class', I mean those pouring huge amounts of money in to sway the voters.
The image that you featured on this posting reminds me of this line from Malvina Reynolds famous song - "little boxes made out of ticky tacky, little boxes all the same".
She was not of course just referring to ticky-tacky houses but to the herd like nature of the programmed/propagandized nature of the people altogether.
All manipulated by what Vance Packard described in his book The Hidden Persuaders.
You also have to take into account that much/most of popular culture and politics is now driven by social media which is chock-a-block full of lies and mis-information. Donald Trump specializes in the use of such media.
Hunh. I came down to the comments intending to propose social media as the solution. I'm old enough to remember the days of only 3 channels on television. The ruling class had waaaay more control over us back then. If there was less misinformation, it's only because we were limited to their carefully curated misinformation.
There's an unavoidable tradeoff here. You can't give power to the people _and_ suppress the contradictory chaos of their misbegotten beliefs and desires. All you can do is take personal responsibility for sorting the truth from the lies, with enough humility to hedge your bets. But truly, it's a lot easier to do that in the social media age, where you have direct access to folks on the ground all over the world, than it was in the days when all you could do was trust what the three networks were telling you.
But I think you're spot on in your assessment of why the ruling class be that way. I got an atypically elite education, and the idea that we should remake the world was the ideological water we were swimming in. We'd argue about what to do with our power, but leaving well enough alone wasn't really on our radar.
Its such a reward in of itself to share your sentiment that is truly important o for lack of a better word focus on Consensus. Thats my goal lately. I wrote a piece which directly was inspired by you and David Brooks recent article. and would love to know what Martin Luther King would say. Anyways, Im not a writer, but I m going to keep writing and reading your stuff, because this is where we need to be. To be in Consensus.
Thanks!
I think that you really have a good intention with your analysis and ideas here. At the same time I am thinking about the following. What if "the ruling class" is the middle-class? Most people who voted for both Biden and Trump are middle class. Even in Europe, as in Sweden, most voters are middle-class and all political parties in the parliament are competing for the middle-class voters. Even the traditional leftists as Social-Democrats are today more of a middle-class party.
Middle class people were swayed to vote a particular way, but this was a result of well-financed influence campaigns. By 'ruling class', I mean those pouring huge amounts of money in to sway the voters.
The image that you featured on this posting reminds me of this line from Malvina Reynolds famous song - "little boxes made out of ticky tacky, little boxes all the same".
She was not of course just referring to ticky-tacky houses but to the herd like nature of the programmed/propagandized nature of the people altogether.
All manipulated by what Vance Packard described in his book The Hidden Persuaders.
You also have to take into account that much/most of popular culture and politics is now driven by social media which is chock-a-block full of lies and mis-information. Donald Trump specializes in the use of such media.
I agree that social media is a big problem we need to address.
Hunh. I came down to the comments intending to propose social media as the solution. I'm old enough to remember the days of only 3 channels on television. The ruling class had waaaay more control over us back then. If there was less misinformation, it's only because we were limited to their carefully curated misinformation.
There's an unavoidable tradeoff here. You can't give power to the people _and_ suppress the contradictory chaos of their misbegotten beliefs and desires. All you can do is take personal responsibility for sorting the truth from the lies, with enough humility to hedge your bets. But truly, it's a lot easier to do that in the social media age, where you have direct access to folks on the ground all over the world, than it was in the days when all you could do was trust what the three networks were telling you.
But I think you're spot on in your assessment of why the ruling class be that way. I got an atypically elite education, and the idea that we should remake the world was the ideological water we were swimming in. We'd argue about what to do with our power, but leaving well enough alone wasn't really on our radar.
I'm not saying social media is bad, I'm just saying that the way social media exists now is not ideal.