[MD] Are we the people stupid?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Although the analysis as presented is hopelessly dichotomistic and mired in
SOMist mindset, I'll bite. Why not? What better things have we to do but combat
political propaganda and distortion, eh?

Are people stupid? I find it ironic that someone who's lambasted "the folk" for
being "undiscerning" when it comes to popular tastes, turns when it is
politically expedient to trumpet their ability to discern. Which is it? Are the
folk "too stupid to know what good music is"? And yet "smart enough to elect a
president based on complex understandings of political enmeshing, economics and
sociology"?

The answer is, of course, being "stupid" or "smart" pertains to skills or bodies
of knowledge. It also pulls us back to ZMM, when Pirsig discussed the
"romantic" and "classical" modes of understanding. (I won't quote at length,
but I would suggest those who've dismissed ZMM as a "hippy, new age" book to be
more-or-less dismissed, go back and reread it).

Also tied up in this analysis is the SOMist view of "individuals" and "culture"
as disparate, wholly unrelated entities, that are at odds, with one seeking to
enslave the other. The emergent, and dialogic, interrelatedness of
individual-culture is once again missed in favor of the old "individual against
culture" rhetoric.

Values are made salient by a cultural semiotic into which the biological
individual emerges, and dialectically appropriates. Simplistically, we see
through language (Pirsig's green flash, for example). In ZMM, Pirsig writes of
the "part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a
figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape
without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all." This "figure"
is the analytic knife, which slices and dices based on the cultural values, the
static social patterns into which the individual is enculturated.

Pirsig quotes Edward Sapir in Lila, saying "The fact of the matter is that the
"real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits
of the group." Following this, he quotes Kluckhohn, saying...

"Any language is more than an instrument of conveying ideas, more even than an
instrument for working upon the feelings of others and for self-expression.
Every language is also a means of categorizing experience. The events of the
"rear world are never felt or reported as a machine would do it. There is a
selection process and an interpretation in the very act of response. Some
features of the external situation are highlighted, others are ignored or not
fully discriminated.

Every people has its own characteristic class in which individuals pigeonhole
their experiences. The language says, as it were, "notice this," "always
consider this separate from that," "such and such things always belong
together. " Since persons are trained from infancy to respond in these ways
they take such discriminations for granted as part of the inescapable stuff of
life."

Which is why when you write in your analysis, that "individuals' views of  human
nature suggested they were shaped by political attitudes in general", Pirsig
would respond with "duh". Of course so, but not "just" political attidues, also
religious, hierarchic, sociologic, and many of the other fundamental "beliefs"
of the culture. Thus, a religious culture that viewed man as "born in sin" will
have a different view of human nature from one where man is "born divine".

The mercantilistic language, which is an economic attitude, and which has
greatly altered our view of "human nature", and has given us a "profit-wealth"
lens with which we derive the worth of the individual, is merely one example of
how language shapes our understandings of ourselves, our neighbors, and
humanity.

That said, there is little doubt that "political correctness", and indeed all
movements of censorship, have gone far too far in their idea that forcing a
change in the language can change the way we interrelate. It places "language"
as the top, rather than the metaphysical firmament by which a culture's
language ultimately derives. The goal then, as Pirsig undertook, should not be
to restrict the use of words, but to attack the metaphysics from which those
words spring. To do the former would be like plugging a dam with one's fingers,
rather than rebuidling a broken dam from the ground up.

Mentioned again is the notion that the people are wholly uneffected by
advertising, and insinuates that a suggestion that they are is somehow
"paternalistic". And yet year after year, the research journals of consumer
psychology and marketing and advertising demonstrate the exact opposite. A
dirty little secret, perhaps, by those who hold the mercantilistic appraisal of
humanity and seek to continue profiting off the manipulation of others. Whether
seemingly innocous stuff like painting the walls of your restaurant red so as
to decrease lingering time and increase table turnover, or market studies that
find that the same product will differently based on the advertising campaign
it uses, the journals and trade magazines of the advertisers and marketeers are
open for any and all to see.

Are people stupid? It has been remarked (to make a brief tangent) that Goethe
was the last man to know everything. This remark stretches back to the notion
of the "Renaissance Man", when a broad range of knowledge was encouraged and
valued. Pirsig remarked on this in ZMM (referring to Ancient Sparta), "He is in
fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing areté. Areté implies a respect
for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of
specialization."

In today's climate of specialization, and a public disdain for the "liberal
arts", such broad knowledge is not only not valued, but actively discouraged.
The Academy has buckled to the will of the market and has revamped degree
requirements so as become really a large trade school, where the student can
pass on their way to a "job", asked only to acquire those skills and knowledge
directly related to the "job requirements".

The point is that SOME depth of knowledge is required to make any type of
"classical"-based discernment on any given topic. Whether in buying popular
music CDs or electing a president. I was continually amazed, and continue to be
amazed, that there are people who are basing their "feelings on Iran" on a
completely ahistorical perspective that is informed ONLY by media soundbites on
the days news. Ask anyone in the streets why it is, for example, that Iran is
so far along in nuclear technology, and my guess is that few would know.

Are people stupid? No. But that does not mean they have nothing to learn.

Arlo