A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

Sometimes a little knowledge might help. Citizens in a democracy, are not necessarily the proposers, but collectively they are the disposers, and if they abrogate that role the decision making can be left to special interests, who do not necessarily have the general interest in mind.

(That sounds like boilerplate, but it might be a place to start). The caveat being that the democratic process is effectively representative, so that those elected broadly represent those who elect them, a condition often met in the breach. Reading from the same page for most representative assemblies becomes not merely remarkable, but miraculous. So we are familiar in two-party democracies that the consensus of what is acceptable has been decided elsewhere. For example, in the greatest democracy on earth, public opinion is held to be so malleable, that the responsibility for running it is left to the media. Who knew that the watchdogs were eating the lambs? But that was the American Way, and therefore attractively imitable, especially for Australia. Beyond such limitations, captured by the party-electoral system, representatives might express the views of constituents, or failing that, voice their conscience in public debate. Representative systems are so crook and broken, they beggars belief.

The dangerous thing is not to have the knowledge necessary to follow the discussion. In this context, the “public relations” approach to politics, in which in the earliest guise for example, cigarettes are “the torches of liberty”, is inimical to the democratic process, however successful. Successful messages tend to be covert – and endlessly repeated.

Wikipedia provides some background on “the industry”, including its founder, Edward Bernay, grandson of Freud and innovator of the cigarette stunt. The article notes, in part:

In describing the origin of the term Public Relations, Bernays commented, “When I came back to the United States [from the war], I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans … using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we found the words Counsel on Public Relations”.

. . . Bernays was the profession’s first theorist. Bernays drew many of his ideas from Sigmund Freud’s theories about the irrational, unconscious motives that shape human behaviour. Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). He saw public relations as an “applied social science” that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and “herdlike” public. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,” he wrote in Propaganda, “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The notion that things are not what they seem to be, and never as they are presented, is as much Marxian as Freudian. Increased perception is the measure of any theory. Science as a method of enguiry based on respect for evidence and provisional truth, but if some phenomena keep repeating themselves regardless of circumstances, such as energy flows from hot to cold bodies, those observations might be regarded as more general truths.

Public Relations is a method, often of deception, that uses science. How to do people come to make political judgments and how can they be influenced to make decisions that prove favourable to special interests? How can advertising or selling not be manipulative, and if not manipulative successful? One response is that nothing is perfect, caveat emptor.

Political knowledge is a process that requires a understanding of the back story, which is often presented more as opinion than analysis, and the aim is seek to reverse the priorities so opinion is based on analysis. The task of political analysis is to uncover spin, deception, sometimes ignorance and error, not always of the other person. I have to tell you I am ignorant about the two major issues which humanity now confronts: the underlying science of the planetary climate and of the global financial crisis. A little knowledge might be useful not merely to follow the story and uncover the plot. The purpose of analysis is to determine what questions might usefully be asked.

Paul Krugman in The New York Times, for example, provides a lucid explanation of the banking crisis. The limitation of ideology, to which I would suggest on objective grounds the mainstream media is prone to, is that public policy alternatives are not considered. He limits his prescription to the United States, although the example of the abandonment of Lehman Brothers had international consequences. He condemns the alternative of bailing out the large banks that effectively bails out the stockholders and leaves the risk with the taxpayers. There is a third alternative that he does not entertain. But should not the state run major banks that would otherwise be insolvent, a block on economic recovery, and provide a return to the taxpayers for public goods? The implicit reason seems to be that public owners could not manage risk as well as private owners, but on reflection that gets us into a bootstrap problem.

Who would have thought that the financial crisis had a direct connection to the environmental crisis? Who in the mainstream media would open such a pandora’s box, somewhat akin I suppose to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, except it contained the audacity of hope. The connection between the global economy and planetary environment is a peripheral vision, unable to be perceived or entertained it seems by the mainstream, which of itself does not deny its reality. David Korten is an economist and he asks the question: Why not an economy of real wealth? Similarly, Benjamin R Barber poses the double questions: Can the market system finally be made to serve us? Or will we continue to serve it?

Could it be that the internet is a tool of liberation that enables us to break out of our imposed ideological blinkers by widening the source of information by allowing us to solve the fundamental global problems with which we are confronted?

ELSEWHERE:

Journalism, not unlike other activities is about asking questions, which have to framed before the phone call is made or the interview conducted. If one accepts the premise that political blogging is also about asking questions then the relation to journalism and blogging is close. Blogs do not require a business model.There is an interesting – or is that parasitic relationship? -between journalism and the PR Industry. Don Arthur, at Club Troppo, considers the low regard for journalists in the UK.

Sometimes I do not check my facts and I am ashamed of myself for not having done so. I have to say nobody ever seems to bother me about it. Still the effect might be greater through the public media. There is a need for an antidote, which might take the form of Pure Poison.

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