Noam Chomsky on How He Found His Calling Renowned linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky shares his take on his career and his drive to educate the public on world affairs.
(...) Why didn't they vote? Well, there are things they know intuitively, which are well studied in the political science literature. One of the things it does quite well is study polling, which is very extensive. So we know a lot of what people think, and there's very good work comparing attitudes as indicated by polls with policy - and there's some pretty striking results. The sort of gold standard in this work right now is Martin Gilens' recent book, which is quite good. What he points out is that the lower 70 percent have no influence on policy, so they're essentially disenfranchised. And then as you move up higher, you get a little more influence. When you get to the very top, they essentially get what they want. Polling results aren't sharp enough for him to deal with the crucial segment of the population - the top fraction of 1 percent - which is where the real concentration of wealth is, and undoubtedly the real concentration of power. But you can't show it, because the polls aren't good enough.
Going back to why people don't vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand without reading political science texts that it doesn't make any difference how they vote. It's not going to affect policy, so why bother?
On top of that are all the various difficulties that are imposed on less privileged people to vote. We know about all that. It starts with the fact that the voting is on Tuesday. It's a workday, so you can't take off from work, and it goes on from there. So that affects it, but my guess is - I don't think it's been studied - the primary reason for not voting is just the recognition that it doesn't make any difference. Those guys up there aren't interested in me anyhow, so why should I bother?
So what you have is a highly class-based electoral system which is almost overwhelmed by the fact that in order to even participate in the election, you have to have a huge amount of money. You get that money from the pockets of wealth, the corporate sector and wealthy individuals, so you're naturally indebted to them. (...)
Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses.
Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if you prefer, government by education. But education, in the academic sense of the word, is not sufficient. It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events, and the dramatization of important issues. The statesman of the future will thus be enabled to focus the public mind on crucial points of policy, and regiment a vast, heterogeneous mass of voters to clear understanding and intelligent action.
The criticism is often made that propaganda tends to make the President of the United States so important that he becomes not the President but the embodiment of the idea of hero worship, not to say deity worship. I quite agree that this is so, but how are you going to stop a condition which very accurately reflects the desires of a certain part of the public? The American people rightly senses the enormous importance of the executive's office. If the public tends to make of the President a heroic symbol of that power, that is not the fault of propaganda but lies in the very nature of the office and its relation to the people. (...)
The public actions of America's chief executive are, if one chooses to put it that way, stage-managed. But they are chosen to represent and dramatize the man in his function as representative of the people. A political practice which has its roots in the tendency of the popular leader to follow oftener than he leads is the technique of the trial balloon which he uses in order to maintain, as he believes, his contact with the public. The politician, of course, has his ear to the ground. It might be called the clinical ear. It touches the ground and hears the disturbances of the political universe.
But he often does not know what the disturbances mean, whether they are superficial, or fundamental. So he sends up his balloon. He may send out an anonymous interview through the press. He then waits for reverberations to come from the public—a public which expresses itself in mass meetings, or resolutions, or telegrams, or even such obvious manifestations as editorials in the partisan or nonpartisan press. On the basis of these repercussions he then publicly adopts his original tentative policy, or rejects it, or modifies it to conform to the sum of public opinion which has reached him. This method is modeled on the peace feelers which were used during the war to sound out the disposition of the enemy to make peace or to test any one of a dozen other popular tendencies. It is the method commonly used by a politician before committing himself to legislation of any kind, and by a government before committing itself on foreign or domestic policies.
It is a method which has little justification. If a politician is a real leader he will be able, by the skillful use of propaganda, to lead the people, instead of following the people by means of the clumsy instrument of trial and error.
The propagandist's approach is the exact opposite of that of the politician just described. The whole basis of successful propaganda is to have an objective and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an exact knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances to manipulate and sway that public.
"The function of a statesman," says George Bernard Shaw, "is to express the will of the people in the way of a scientist."
NG: What then is the relation between the psyche and politics?
NY: First of all, the psyche and politics are not separate spheres. They operate together, although the mechanisms they deploy and their forms of visibility differ.
I am certainly not the first to highlight the absent, repressed, or the hidden in the political; how what is said often conceals what is left unsaid or how the visible veils what goes unrepresented. In a world characterized by a multitude of conflicts and hatreds, it would be misguided to continue overlooking the forces of the political unconscious.
Yet, my contribution has to do with my examination of the ideology of hatred. I believe that by excavating the ideology of hatred we can reveal how the political unconscious operates in the current political climate—through desire and its repression, through love and its disavowal, and through attachment and its elision. Once the unconscious workings of the ideology of hatred are laid bare then other future discourses, which recognize their ambivalence towards the other, suddenly become possible. (...)
I know that for most political scientists or sociologists, theorizing the psyche within the political and the social is irrelevant to practice and to questions of war and peace. But I believe that this pervasive perspective will lead us nowhere in terms of changing the conditions of conflicts rooted in hatred.
Just think of the repeated, obsessive notice in the NYC subways: “If you see something, say something.”
Such an utterance not only speaks of suspicious objects, but creates relational mistrust that paradoxically bonds people of all walks of life together through a fearful gaze, suspicion and prejudice. So, hatred has become a political apparatus that creates a community through the horror of the strange and the different.
The pervasive refusal to raise the question of the unconscious, dismissing it as irrelevant to politics, engenders all kinds of theoretical blind spots. This is not to say that hatred is only unconscious or invisible. On the contrary, hatred is a forceful experience with devastating and injurious consequences. But in sharp contrast to its manifestation, the mechanisms of its production remain obscure.
For me, the most urgent task is to explore these blind spots, which I believe can shed light on how the ideology of hatred is manufactured. This, in my mind, is the key problem of the ideology of hatred. (...)
An intelligent but dangerous man. I would say that a constant supply of propaganda can create an infinite amount of notional demand (as opposed to always limited effective demand). (Good) propaganda works as a positive feedback loop for notional demand. A closet contructivist or critical realist hiding behind a positivist fig leaf.
What makes me think you must be the brother of a good friend of mine?
It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will tend to defeat itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public. My opinion is that it will not. The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.
Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man.
The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.
Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
An intelligent but dangerous man. I would say that a constant supply of propaganda can create an infinite amount of notional demand (as opposed to always limited effective demand). (Good) propaganda works as a positive feedback loop for notional demand. A closet contructivist or critical realist hiding behind a positivist fig leaf.
It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will tend to defeat itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public. My opinion is that it will not. The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.
Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man.
The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.
But times have changed. The steam engine, the multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken the power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually gained power which the king lost. For economic power tends to draw after it political power; and the history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king. ~ Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
Noam Chomsky is a towering champion of free speech, an incisive analyst of power structures and a courageous critic of foreign policies at home in the US and abroad. He is one of the most cited academics on the planet and has been described as “the greatest intellectual influence in the western world”.
Understandably, huge crowds flock to hear him speak, as they did when he delivered a lecture at Sydney Town Hall while accepting the Sydney Peace Prize. The jury’s citation for their choice read:
"For inspiring the convictions of millions about a common humanity and for unfailing moral courage. For critical analysis of democracy and power, for challenging secrecy, censorship and violence and for creating hope through scholarship and activism to promote the attainment of universal human rights."
Chomsky’s award comes at a time of violence and protest around the world, say the Prize organisers. Across the Middle East brave people challenge authoritarian rule, yearn for human rights and for a state of their own. Yet, instead of deliberating on how we might also foster dialogue about justice, Australia is seen to be producing an ugly state of politics. Those who express the needs of the planet and of vulnerable people are regularly demonized by radio commentators, demeaned by powerful leaders, and even threatened in the streets.
Hear what Professor Chomsky has to say about “revolutionary pacificism”, after an introduction by Stuart Rees from the Sydney Peace Foundation.
For Carl Sagan's birthday (Nov. 9) an interesting bit of Chomsky:
I’ll begin with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn’t have developed intelligent life. Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it’s very unlikely that we’ll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let’s take a look at Earth.
And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation. And he had a good argument. He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago, there is a very small group. We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that’s a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. His argument was, you’re just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won’t find it here for very long either because it’s just a lethal mutation. He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed.
With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.
sagan was wise beyond his years and with a few sentences (or a book or two if you like) exposes our problem or the key to our survival or destruction
and that is human fallibility, especially in science and scientific method (the application)
human fallibility is due to bad or flawed philosophy and philosophy, our operating software if you will is the single most important issue ever
nothing else is even remotely close
(as the human species) you can have what you believe to be the best technology, science, etc. and if you have flawed philosophy you'll fail every time
the environmental issue is a great example of using science or the scientific method to identify an issue and then expecting a solution from an openly corrupt political system (which is just the opposite or diametrically opposed to the scientific method)
talk about human fallibility
yet we have what we believe to be intelligent people falling in line behind that corrupt system, knowing full well (if we're using logic, reason and rational thought) that it will fail
how is that?
could it be that the vast majority of us have spent at least 15,000 hours in politically sponsored training/conditioning to lead us to believe in a system?
if mitt romney as child was enrolled in a mormon school, he would probably learn some math, science, literature, history, economics, etc.
he's also learn through the same conditioning that belief in the book of mormon is rational, reasonable and logical
peace
edit* the answers we seek, the science, is here, right in front of us
it's as easy as picking up a book or looking at a website (try Abundance by Peter Diamandis or gordon mcdowell's youtube channel for starters)
politically entrenched lobbies/interests are guiding the policy we see, not science or bacon's methodology
