It was observed by Andrew Breitbart that politics is downstream from culture.
Be sure to read this post by Daniel Greenberg on the use of cultural technology in the culture war.
Related: this Grim’s Hall review of the movie Maleficent, a new version of Sleeping Beauty. The reviewer connects the implicit cultural messages of the move with the reaction of the Obama administration and its supporters to the Benghazi debacle.
Glenn Reynolds said today that “Personally, I don’t think we’ll fix America’s political problems until we fix its media problem.”
See also my related post Metaphors, interfaces, and thought Processes.
David,
I completely buy the thesis that a captured mass pop culture is a big factor in the social and political disintegration we have been witnessing over at least the last century and that it seems to be gathering both speed and strength. Thanks for all the great links, very educational and thought provoking.
Upon reading Daniel’s blog post, I was motivated to leave a comment. I was unable to do so, possibly because his article was posted in ’13. Perhaps it is worth considering here as part of the necessary steps to counter the increasingly subversive ownership of our culture.
“If this paradigm is to be effectively used to instill truth rather than false memes, etc., then it has to start in childhood. In order to do that the government, progressive effective monopoly in education has to be broken so that the early and deeply held “programs” and “sub-programs” are receptive to the later more sophisticated ideas. This is why the younger generation of adults seems so receptive to the broader cultural progressive influences than ever before. Values, in my experience, are generally firmly instilled by late adolescence (which I am beginning to believe extends well into the 20’s) and only subsequent significant emotional events are going to cause any major shift.
“While I found the reduction of human intellect and emotional processes to a metaphor of computer programming in a networking environment of some benefit to help describe the relationship between emotional and rational decision making, group identity versus individual identity, action motivations, susceptibility to external influences (especially mass cultural) whether direct or indirect and the increasing bipolar nature of our cultural values; I believe it largely ignores the spiritual and non-communication experiential parts of our learning, believing, practicing and testing. I applaud the effort, and presentation as it will especially engage those who really get the mechanistic computer network interface analogy. It will help me to engage others who identify with that perspective.”
Mike
I’m often struck by how ‘through the looking glass’ and Orwellian leftist methods are. I was taught in Catholic grammar school, for example, not give into peer pressure but to make decisions for myself based on objective and moral analysis. To have strength of character in that respect. I tried to teach that to my children as well.
Leftists are constantly accusing those who’ve had religious school education of being robots or narrow minded or intolerant. Yet it’s Leftists who consistently rely on peer pressure, othering, intolerance, hypocrisy, lies, half truths, distortions, crime, oppression and any other tool at hand to attain and keep power. All the while trumpeting their moral and intellectual superiority to those benighted conservatives and libertarians with whom the disagree. And the media and schools are their trumpet. And effective they are.
First order of business should be getting government out of the schooling business. As for the news media, the best I think we can do is educate our children that news programs and newspapers are anything but. They are propaganda organs. Talking to your children in a way that helps them think about and understand the world is also helpful.
Michael,
Well said. Keeping alternate sources of information widely available on the internet, cable channels, etc. will eventually provide enough competition that truth can be readily tested by those trained as you were to find it.
Mike