🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <okln565sew.fsf@proline.sbc.man.ac.uk>, Phillip Lord
<plord@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk> wrote:

>>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net> writes:
>
>
>  Peter> In a way.  However, keep in mind the principle of
>  Peter> self-reference.  Look at all the stuff Chomsky has written
>  Peter> about how entities make people believe things.  Now,
>  Peter> remember, he's *smart*.  He's playing the same game; he says
>  Peter> things because he believes that, if he says these things, the
>  Peter> resulting belief systems and values will be the ones he wants
>  Peter> to see.
>
>        It seems to me that what you are saying here is that when 
>Chomsky writes something he is trying to convince people of his view
>point. I would say that this is a perfectly rational and reasonable
>thing to want to do when writing something.
>
>  Peter> This is completely orthogonal to any concept of "truth".
>  Peter> It's propaganda, and well-done propaganda, but you have to
>  Peter> evaluate his goals independant of his reasons for them,
>  Peter> because the reasons themselves are manufactured to "support"
>  Peter> the goals.
>
>        This is true of everyone's writing. There are some people in
>the world who feel that they alone can sit down and pontificate
>unaffected by their circumstances and their belief systems, and using
>this god given ability can divine their way towards the "truth". Its
>total crap of course. Personally I feel that I may be biased, I may
>base my view points on a series of self maintaining internal
>consistant arguments which bear no relationship to reality, and I may
>only be seeking to propagandise others to my view point, but I am at
>least aware that I am doing this, and more over quite open about it. I
>tend to respect Chomsky for the campaigning aspect of his work, which
>would have a lot less impact if he did not allow his humanity to come
>through in the name of some bogus search for "academic truth".
>

Not so. There are plenty of cases where after enough cries wolf, people
simply switch off. Once upon a time, it was a serious insult to be called
a racist---now, there have been enough bogus claims that some person is
racist for saying something someone else didn't like, that the supposed
insult has become meaningless. Same for sexist. There have been enough
lies about how foreign aid to poor countries is actually helping those
countries (as opposed to lining a dictators swiss bank account, builing
useless white elephant factories, fulfilling some rich country agenda,
etc) that most of the western world now has little faith or interest in
foriegn aid. Here in San Francisco, there have been enough blatant
untruths about street homeless people (that they're family folks, just
like you and me, who happened to fall on hard times) that once again, most
people are tired of the lies and simply want to ignore the problem. 

Politically-minded types generally seem to lag 15 years behind the rest of
the nation in mindset, hence they have not twigged onto this yet---a
politician, if called a racist, would respond in horror by trying to deny
the accusation, rather than simply belittling the supposed insult as
meaningless. This is probably why you and Chomsky feel that obvious lies
are a sensible tactic. However remember the lesson of Bill Clinton's
affair---the people are not always as ignorant of the agendas of others as
it may seem.

Maynard