[Peace-discuss] Corn Festival -- RE: Sweet Corn Fest Fri & Sat!

Tue Aug 31 13:37:05 CDT 2010

Without really wanting to turn this into a protracted debate, I find that like many discussions on this and other lists the thread has taken on a life of its own and no longer bears any real tangible relationship to the contents of the original posts that initiated the thread.  

For starters, I never said or implied that education or information has NO  effectiveness in changing public opinion; I did say that I did not think that "education" alone was not a very effective tool and that I felt that its efficacy is over-rated and not significant in the scheme of things.  Of course, there may have been instances in history where education, information, and changes in theoretical and philosophical thought and in cultural beliefs have altered behaviors and courses of action' but these instances are not routine, frequent, or the norm unless one considers considers "revolutions in thought and practices" as being any change, modification, alteration, or reform to be revolutionary; and one does not restrict the notion to those changes which are radical paradigm shifts which change the core presuppositions and premises upon which the system of established thought and practices are based.  Obviously, I consider only the latter to be revolutionary and instances of critical thinking educating and furnishing information that serves as an agent of effective change. Reform in peripheral non-constitutive structural and substantive elements of or in a paradigm or system, in my opinion, comprise relatively insignificant - although not always inconsequential - changes or modifications rather than radical or revolutionary changes.

Secondly, I have lost the original emails that started the thread, but I believe that I was not the first one to use the term "brainwashing" but merely used it because it was used in the original postings.  It is a term that I typically do not use because I feel it has little real meaning in most of the instances where it has been used.  To me, it suggests the complete deletion of all previous ideas, values, beliefs, and norms from a subjects mind and the replacement of those contents with new contents which the subject then dogmatically, fanatically, and uncritically accepts without any question as unproblematic.  In responding to the suggestion that the masses have been "brainwashed" by the corporate establishment and media, I noted that I did not think it was as clear cut as an issue of mere "brainwashing" but that it was more complex than that.  Furthermore, it was Stuart, I believe, who employed the terms, "education" and "educating" and said: "Well, we're all products of our education, right?  Why shouldn't anti-war group participate in educating the population?"  It was vague and ambiguous to me as to how general his use of  the notion of "education" was intended to be in his exposition.  I noted that I felt that the so-called process of "education" and "educating" taken generally was a much broader and informal process than formal education, public relations and advertising propaganda, media presentations, etc.  I also noted that - if we are all products of our education, if the current education of the public is propagandistic and/or ideologically based brainwashing, and if anti-war groups have a right to and should participate in "educating the public" - I was at a loss as to how to differentiate between why the establish version of educating was a form of brainwashing or propaganda and the anti-war version of educating would not be, how they differed in their nature, intent, and purposes.  It appears to me that you and the others who have responded are using the notions of "education," "educating," and "brainwashing" in a very different way than I and that your use revolves around the idea of formal institutional notions of education and the postulated abstract ideals of the goals and purposes of the formal institutional educational processes and around a view of brainwashing as being identical to ideological propagandizing.

As for your question,  Have you personally never changed your opinions via increased information and study— "brainwashing","  yes I have.  But the times that it has involved a drastic, radical, constitutive, revolutionary change or involved a paradigm shift in thought and behavior are rare and far between - mostly the changes that took place were minor modifications and alterations within the established and accepted paradigm that I was socialized into.  It was analogous to accepting the premises without any radical calling of them into question and treating them as problematic that one should  get and needs to get the certification of a college degree to survive in this society and restricting ones decisions and actions to questions of what the degree should be in and where one should get it which might change with the acquisition of new information while the presupposition that the college degree was desirable and necessary never underwent any changes because of new information in part because it was never called into question.  Again, I never said that radical revolutionary shifts in paradigms was impossible or that such revolutionary changes did not take place. 

As for it being "brainwashing," that depends on how you define it; but I suppose it was a form of "brainwashing."  I never said that I was exempt from brainwashing or what others have been subjected to or influenced by.  

>You seem to imply that there are no valid standards in choosing one argument against another, that all arguments are equivalent in their effectiveness to convince an audience, that all argumentation is "brainwashing". I cannot believe it, and neither do you, for you indeed write to enlighten your audience just so by argumentation. i.e., education. 

Here I know that my views are in conflict with yours and those of most others in this society and that, being in the minority, there is little point in rehashing the points of my underlying philosophical position.  Let's just say that I believe valid standards that you suggest for deciding the validity of arguments, facts, effectiveness, and usefulness are defined by and within, have meaningfulness and significance within, and are acceptable and valid within the context and parameters of a given system of thought and that  systems of thought are themselves grounded in and bounded to philosophical positions which are culturally dependent and relative.  Thus the valid theorems of Euclidian Geometry may not hold or be valid within non-Euclidian geometry; what is logical within one system of logic may not be within another.  What is valued and accepted theories and methods practiced as meaningful in one culture may not be viewed or hold the same position in another.  Western culture values and accepts Western notions of science and the scientific method; but other cultures may not and have not.  They have their own notions of science and scientific method, which Western science and scientists have ridiculed and dismissed.  But for these other cultures, worldviews as to the workings of the cosmos and what comprise facts and valid factual realities may be and often were quite different from what they are for contemporary Western cultures.  The Trobianders did not have lineal notions of reality and causality; such things were not only alien to their way of thinking but irrelevant to their way of life and of no practical significance in their society.  In their systems of thought, western standards of validity had no meaning and made no sense.  Does that mean that they were ignorant, primitive, unknowledgeable, wrong headed, irrational, etc.?

In the end, it just may be the case that all argumentation is "brainwashing" in that it seeks to replace one set of understandings and beliefs with another as being the valid factual truth that one should take and treat as unproblematic and not call into question. Ultimately, we accept even the valid standards of proof as articles of faith (how do you prove that the laws of probability in theory or in practice are operating in any given instance or even the probability that the laws of probability are functioning without resorting to the self same laws of probability that you are attempting to prove?)

I am now going to put a fork in it because it is done.

From: Morton K. Brussel 
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:14 PM
To: Laurie Solomon 
Cc: Stuart Levy ; peace-discuss at anti-war.net ; davegreen48 at yahoo.com ; Carl Estabrook AWARE ; Bill Strutz ; rbkutz at gmail.com ; Ron Szoke ; MartyneConrad Wetzel ; dharley at illinois.edu ; Jenifer Cartwright ; Karen Medina 
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Corn Festival -- RE: Sweet Corn Fest Fri & Sat!

Laurie, 

Quite remarkable these comments: 

  …one should be asking the question of  why the anti-war groups are any different or better than their opponents in both their educational practice and content.  Are not they also engaging in a form of brainwashing?  Isn't it just a case of my old man is tougher than your old man?  It appears to me that if one engages in the same sorts of brainwashing practices (e.g., educating) as one's opponents, then one has become the monster that one is fighting and is no better than one's opponent for all practical purposes (disregarding ethical and moral beliefs in the righteousness of one's content which the opposition also sees as being true of their position and content).

One can reasonably infer from these lines that information has no effectiveness in changing public opinion. However, history is replete with revolutions in thought and politics of one sort or another as people became aware of their plight through the arguments of others as well as through their own experience, and to call the supply of information involved in this process "brainwashing" seems abject.  Has the claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq because of its possession of WMD not been refuted and rejected by information a form of brainwashing? Has the claim that the U.S. was bringing democracy to Iraq and now Afghanistan not been gradually rejected by the facts reported of what is happening there? You seem to adhere basically to the notion that there is no truth in human affairs and that in any case knowing the truth cannot change minds; there are only opinions and ideologies.  A rather inflexible and dismal position I think. It is true that formal education has its propagandistic and nationalistic aspects, but that does not contradict the idea that education can be enlightening, that there is such a thing as an education that enriches and broadens the individual. 

 Have you personally never changed your opinions via increased information and study— "brainwashing" ? 

You seem to imply that there are no valid standards in choosing one argument against another, that all arguments are equivalent in their effectiveness to convince an audience, that all argumentation is "brainwashing". I cannot believe it, and neither do you, for you indeed write to enlighten your audience just so by argumentation. i.e., education. 

--mkb

On Aug 29, 2010, at 1:07 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:

  Stuart,

  That would be a legitimate question if all things were equal which they are not; and at one time, I might have agreed.  I have long ago given up on the efficacy or education alone as an effective tool (particularly in the case of its use by the underdog or minorities).  It takes much more than mere education or educating.

  However, on another note, if it is true that we are all products of our education as you suggest - although I see us all as being products of a much broader and informal social process of socio-cultural socialization which takes place long before any formal education and when the young members of a society  cannot read, write, talk, or comprehend sophisticated media propaganda - formal education and mass media propaganda merely serve to reinforce the basic socio-cultural norms and values that we have been made to internalize as we are growing up, except possibly in the cases of immigrants to a society who may have internalized slightly different norms, values, and beliefs as to the proper ways to act and think. But assuming that we are all products of education and that anti-war groups have as much right to engage in educating as other groups, one should be asking the question of  why the anti-war groups are any different or better than their opponents in both their educational practice and content.  Are not they also engaging in a form of brainwashing?  Isn't it just a case of my old man is tougher than your old man?  It appears to me that if one engages in the same sorts of brainwashing practices (e.g., educating) as one's opponents, then one has become the monster that one is fighting and is no better than one's opponent for all practical purposes (disregarding ethical and moral beliefs in the righteousness of one's content which the opposition also sees as being true of their position and content).  In the words of Sancho Pancho in Don Quixote, "whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it is going to be bad for the pitcher."  Brainwashing is brainwashing regardless of the content; and uncritical acceptance of the content of any brainwashing that leads to the lack of questioning of one's own premises as well as those of others comprises the production of mental midgets and moral idiots in my book.

  --------------------------------------------------
  From: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
  Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:27 PM
  To: "Laurie Solomon" <ls1000 at live.com>
  Cc: "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com>; <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>; "Carl Estabrook AWARE" <galliher at uiuc.edu>; <davegreen48 at yahoo.com>; "Bill Strutz" <bill.strutz at gmail.com>; <rbkutz at gmail.com>; "Ron Szoke" <r-szoke at illinois.edu>; "MartyneConrad Wetzel" <mc-wetzel at hotmail.com>; <dharley at illinois.edu>; "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart7 at yahoo.com>; "Karen Medina" <kmedina67 at gmail.com>
  Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Corn Festival -- RE: Sweet Corn Fest Fri & Sat!

    On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 12:22:17PM -0500, Laurie Solomon wrote:

      Here, I guess we differ.  I do not think is as clear cut and easy a matter as

      brainwashing.  The mere fact that they are so easily brainwashed, so

      unquestioningly dogmatic and uncritical, and so inclined to come to the

      defense of the corporate ideology even when it is clearly against their

      immediate interests suggests to me that enlightenment of them would just be

      another form of brainwashing with a revised dogma.

    Well, we're all products of our education, right?  Why shouldn't anti-war groups

    participate in educating the population?

  _______________________________________________
  Peace-discuss mailing list
  Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
  http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20100831/0174b56b/attachment-0001.html>