David Davis
“Is school-syllabus-and-broadcast-imposed-popular-culture a deliberate Enemy-Class “initiative” to help stamp out individual critical thought and thus also liberty?”
Panis et Circenses, anybody?
As I will be away from my computer for about 48 hours [and no, I am not being “detained” for anything, at least not yet] i leave you people with this interrogative to toss about like a dogbone.
Simon Heffer has a suggested antidote for one part of the fightback.
This is because I and a local friend here from Lancs, also a crusty, cynical oldie like me, have been invited by the BBC, no less, to go to London and film one or more “rounds” – depending on how we last the course against pairs from “other regions” – of a /NEW/ TV quiz show. The terms of acceptance to go on the show forbid me from telling you the format (I do know it) or the prize structure [nugatory, that’s all I will say] as it will not be broadcast until October, we are told.
A post-mortem, about how terribly badly I did, will be delivered to you all, possibly on Tuesday – provided that I do not feel so completely humiliated by my failure to comprehend the more “contemporary” departmens of knowledge which ordinary graduates of scumbag*** schools find so easy to acquire.
***Not their fault that their schools gave them classes in “modern media”, instead of the Western Canon. They’ll just do better than me in all the questions about football, all other sports, celebs, global-mega-TV shows, soaps, actroids and actressoids, Harry Potter, novels in the Booker Prize in the 1980s, specific bars in Magaluf, and the like.
“Is school-syllabus-and-broadcast-imposed-popular-culture a deliberate Enemy-Class “initiative” to help stamp out individual critical thought and thus also liberty?”
Yes and no. It’s like the question,
“Is religious schooling and Stars On Sunday a deliberate religious-class “initiative” to help stamp out individual critical thought and thus also liberty?”
In other words, it tends to depend on whether you agree with what is being indoctrinated or not. The enemy class don’t, in the main, meet in smoke-free rooms to plot the downfall of liberty. They act as one simply because they all agree with each other, and that is self sustaining because access to the Enemy (hegemonic) class is dependent on displaying and thus holding the class’s shared value set. Just the same as in a thecracy, the cultural terms (believing in the religion) are set by priests, and you don’t get to be a priest unless you believe in the religion. So it’s not a conspiracy in the normal sense; conspirators are aware that they are doing something wrong- they are deliberately “conspiring”. The enemy class are simply synergising; they all move in approximately in the same direction because they genuinely believe that that is the right direction to move in. Some enemy class bod at the BBC writing about environmentalism isn’t a conspirator; they genuinely believe that environmentalism is not only correct, but the only possible correct view.
I think part of the problem is that we fondly imagine we are fully rational beings whereas in fact we can all be steered by our “comfort hooks”.
The truth is gentle, the easiest thing to obfuscate.
The following is excerpts from Creativity And Perversion, Janine Chasseguet Smirgel, 1996
Ideas do have consequences. Mass murder, idealized by Sade, became mass murder carried out by Hitler. Civilization is a fragile thing, and once perversion rules, there are no limits to the human imagination. We thought Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were the worst, but now we see Islamic Jihadis strapping bombs to babies and blowing them up. Once again, we are in a struggle between civilization and perversion. Some remain puzzled by the alliance between modern day left-liberalism and jihadism. Perversion explains the puzzle.Civilization has been built painstakingly on difference: male and female, yes and no, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. There are rules, laws, customs, hard-won scientific knowledge. Civilization is a fragile guardian of reality, which must be defended from the onslaught of barbarians wishing to abolish rules and differences.
In each of our psyches the perverse temptation must be fought, if civilization is to survive. The more advanced the civilization, the more intense the appeal to throw off constraints. Often individual rebels are rewarded with the title of ‘artist’, but Sade was an artist whose ideas were realized in Nazism.
Celebritylife.org tracking back – DISCUSS: “Is school-syllabus-and-broadcast-imposed-popular-culture a deliberate Enemy-Class “initiative” to help stamp out individual critical thought and thus also liberty?”…
Celebritylife.org tracking back – DISCUSS: “Is school-syllabus-and-broadcast-imposed-popular-culture a deliberate Enemy-Class “initiative” to help stamp out individual critical thought and thus also liberty?”…
IanB’s right for the most part in that Joe Random Ecowarrior at the beeb is not a member of some cell or … er wait, hang on … the chances are that he is a member of some organisation with an agenda, such as Greenpeace of FOE or whatever, and maybe he or she is a member of other organisations with a coherent world view and a plan. Like oh… this one:
spgb or any other of scores of such organisations. Including the Labour party. The Fabians (who actually did describe themselves as an “open conspiracy”) are still around. Common Purpose (I’m not mental! I swear!) look pretty conspiratorial.
So it’s just that its not a secret conspiracy nor funded by the KGB. And in fact Save the children are more dangerous, much more dangerous, than the old commies. They’re better funded (with state money) and have better propaganda too.
This network of organisations with common interests all following the progressive agenda, who’s members are an “intellectual” class that’s largely directly employed by the state as teachers, or admins in the welfare system or the health service or in the museums of nothing or Minitrue.
That’s, as Ian says, a proper hegemony.
What does it take to fight that?
It does seem to be a conflict between those who believe humans can cope with freedom and those who think that there needs to be the controllers and the controlled. I have read that the urge to contol other people is the root of all human problems. The real war is between those who are for liberty and those for slavery and domination.
After a substantial impetus globally to push back the forces of control and coercion over the last three decades it seems those forces have regrouped successfuly and made massive gains in the last few years, with the collusion of those one might have thought were for liberty in the west. So one can only assume those who have been so working against liberty have a common agenda against freedom in the east, west, north or south.
The people who run governments and the other control apparatus are clever. They have to be to climb the slippery pole and they are also capable of very tough action when required. They are competent , clever, cunning and able. So, with what is happening in the world, one can only assume the enemies of freedom are on the loose, and that the current regression from such liberty as has been achieved is deliberate.
The battle lines between those for freedom and those for control are perhaps not exactly where one expects to find them. And where one “expects to find them” is perhaps part of the mind manipulation excercise they undertake to hide, confuse and obfuscate those who oppose their agenda.
Great post! I’ll subscribe right now wth my feedreader software!