6 ms·

It's odd that certain societies don't value discovering or reporting the truth, but instead attempt to create it.

by Neon2012 17y ago

MikeCapone 17y ago
Don't confuse a whole society with the people who hold power (and thus control the guys with the weapons).
- ahk 17y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism. One could argue it's because of the education/brain-washing but the facts remain.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Much as opposition to it by people in the US is viewed through the prism of nationalism.
    - Groxx 17y ago
      Because the rest of the world doesn't like free speech? Americans may throw the term around more often, but I wouldn't equate holding it important to nationalism. If anything, American nationalism has forced free speech on America, not the other way around (and yes, I'm aware of the many failures. Not saying it's perfect).
      - grandalf 17y ago
        In America there is not any particular issue that is so contentious that free speech is actually curtailed. But there is tremendous social pressure for people to voluntarily curtail certain forms of speech. If the US had a less stable society, chances are certain kinds of speech would be considered more dangerous, and we'd progress from certain forms being considered socially inappropriate to being banned outright. This has happened in our past... and the usual framing of it is that we've progressed past such mistakes. In reality the pressures that force such things have abated. China still faces these pressures...
        Groxx 17y ago
        If the US had a less stable society... I'd be interested to see what happened with free speech during the civil war days... I really don't know, no class has covered it and k-12 grade school has made me sick of US-history (flat-out fabrications and ridiculous exaggerations in tons of cases, and super super super dry info with few connections for the remaining). It'd be a good measuring point for this, though, as that's about as unstable as you can get. Yeah, slave-free-speech was blocked, but that's arguably mostly because they weren't really viewed as people, thus didn't have that right in the first place. Anyone know?
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
        plinkplonk 17y ago
        "I'd be interested to see what happened with free speech during the civil war days." Lincoln greatly expanded the power of the Presidency in the name of War time expediency, but there were people within the Union who fiercely criticized Lincoln and his government and its policies till the very end of the war. Very different from the situation in China. (Just try criticizing the Party 60+ years after the Revolution!). Besides, any flirtations with restrciting Freedom Of Speech lasted hardly 4 years, not half a century as in China. But then the USA had a very strong tradition of Freedom OF Speech wheras such a concept was alien to China. That said, Hong Kong seems to be relatively politically vibrant, in spite of being ruled by the MAinland. I suspect once people get used to thinking for themselves and having the freedom to express their thoughts for a generation or two, it is hard to eradicate completely. Coming back to the point of freedoms during the US Civil War, see http://www.etymonline.com/cw/habeas.htm http://www.etymonline.com/cw/habeas.htm Excerpt "the full question of whether the Constitution gave the president a special power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during wartime never got to the Court. In large part that's because the administration made sure it didn't. It had a valid fear that the Court would rule against there being such a power under the Constitution, and such a ruling would undermine the war effort. On the other hand, by keeping the matter away from the Court, the administration could largely accomplish its policy. Opposition, especially in the press, clamored for a test case to settle whether the arbitrary arrests were legal. Secretary of War Stanton thought it would be wise to do so, too, but Attorney General Bates talked him out of it. In a letter of Jan. 31, 1863, Bates wrote to Stanton that a Supreme Court decision against the habeas corpus policy "would inflict upon the Administration a serious injury," and would do more good to the rebels "than the worst defeat our armies have yet sustained." Bates said he would support a test case if he thought it had a chance of success. "I confess to you frankly, that, knowing as we do, the antecedents and present proclivities of the majority of that Court (and I speak of them with entire respect) I can anticipate no such results." This was after Lincoln had appointed three justices to the bench. Bates had intimate contact with the justices, and his judgment of their likely verdicts was well informed. "Many loyal men deny this power to the President," he wrote to the Secretary of War, "and, however confident we may be that he possesses it, it is no imputation on the loyalty of the majority of the Court to presume that on this point they agree with their political school."
  - raquo 17y ago
    > Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government I also think so, but this statement is as popular as is its opposite. Does anyone know of some real studies on this matter?
    - est 17y ago
      Here is the bottom line: If it's beneficial to everyone, like Tibet, the Chinese would support the government If it's government's monopolistic interest, everyone condemn the government.
  - elai 17y ago
    It's also a bit of a survival tactic. Saying you don't support the government can be bad for you.
  - MikeCapone 17y ago
    > Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism. How do you know that? Without free elections and trustable surveys, it's hard to know.
    - Groxx 17y ago
      Because I, at least, pretty frequently hear from person X about their friend Y in China who supports their government and what's being done. Yes, it's effectively impossible to actually measure it, but I get that feeling too from my browsing history.
    - metamemetics 17y ago
      From talking to people born in China that live\study in the U.S. One would predict they wouldn't support the PRC as highly on virtue of having left it and perhaps being better educated. But everyone I've met seems to.
  - hyperbovine 17y ago
    Says who? The government-sponsored opinion poll? Or perhaps the independent one where everybody was too scared to answer truthfully.
  - albertsun 17y ago
    It's entirely possible to support one's government overall while disagreeing with many of the things it does. I support the US government as a whole, but I think many of it's policies concerning Iraq, Guantanamo, the "War on Drugs," immigration, etc. are despicable. I think the same holds true for most of China's citizens. Most certainly realize that the government does bad things but this is far outweighed by the good things that it has done for the country in terms of economics development and stability. Remember that a majority of China's population remembers a time when starvation was a very real risk and most were resigned to a future as subsistence farmer's living in a commune. Then realize that for someone who has lived through that to where China is now in terms of economic opportunity, free speech is just not that big of an issue. Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that there's a necessary trade-off between economic development and free speech. My point is that most of China's population is too busy celebrating the miracle of development to care about free speech. Instead of taking for granted that economic development happened, they still remember the very real prospect that it might not have happened and still see improvement's that can be had there.
  - papersmith 17y ago
    My impression is that the "nationalists" (as in blind patriotism, the word has a different meaning in Chinese) are a vocal minority among the priviledged urban youths who grew up during the economic boom. The older generations who lived through Mao's days, the less priviedged middle-class kids, and the rural population tend to have very mixed opinions. Also, Chinese opinions tend to be very mixed to begin with, which can give off the wrong impression to someone from a society that is used to partisanism. This artwork portrays "opinions" among German and Chinese very well: http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/2783/1.jpg http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/2783/1.jpg
    - Perceval 17y ago
      Here's a good article on young nationalists in China: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_... It's not clear that nationalism in China equates with blind support for the Party.
- yters 17y ago
  Why don't all their high speed hackers turn against the gov, then? They have a lot of the gov's power, plus anonymity afforded by the medium of attack.
robak 17y ago
oh yes Mr "Mission Accomplished" and "Weapns of Mass Destruction"... you're talking about Americnans, right? Or all this propaganda now about the Economy. At first there wasn't any crisis and now it's already over. Get real!
jbooth 17y ago
Most people don't want the truth, they just want something that feels good to repeat to themselves. "It's the American's fault!", "It's the Arabs' fault!", "It's the neocon's fault", "Drill baby drill", "Keep the government away from my medicare"...
- aero142 17y ago
  That is a nice list of things you don't like.
  - jbooth 17y ago
    Actually a bunch of them contradict each other, so it's almost impossible for me to dislike or like all of them.
- caffeine 17y ago
  Indeed .. most people (see roback's dead comment below) have no clue what their mantras even mean.
stcredzero 17y ago
Go to your public library and check out _Manufacturing Consent_. It's about how the US and its allies create it.
- drunkpotato 17y ago
  I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, but I did try to read Hegemony or Survival. It was an exercise in frustration and ultimately I didn't finish. Chomsky, on the rare occasions when he does back up his assertions with references, almost invariably references only himself. Combine that with a bombastic style that yet still manages to be obtuse, boring, and repetitive, and it's a recipe for a disastrous book that can convince only those who are already convinced and angry and looking for an argument from authority. It sounds like Manufacturing Consent has an interesting thesis. I would like to read more about it but preferably from someone more readable, more scholarly, and less prone to hyperbole and unsupported claims.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    While I'm neither a Marxist nor a Chomskyite-anarcho-syndicalist, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I'd say it's a pretty straight-forward application of Gramsci's theory of hegemony to the United States. Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, wrote his theory while in jail, outlining two forms of domination: direct coercion, and rule through civil society. Hegemony is the latter—the production of seemingly spontaneous consent for the policies of the (capitalist-controlled) state. The capitalist ruling class accomplishes this through the production of an intellectual class and related institution that support and justify the current order. The public absorbs these ideas and narratives and thus consents to the exploitative capitalist order. Chomsky just applied that idea to the United States during the Cold War (although I'm sure he would say it's still applicable). The capitalists control the corporate media, they set up foundations that fund think tanks, they lobby the government. All reporting is dependent on advertising from corporations that won't brook deviations from the current order. So an overall discourse is created in the U.S. by corporate control which makes sure the debate stays within certain bounds of dissent, but never goes so far as to be dangerous to the capitalist system. If you don't buy Gramscianism and don't see capitalists as capable of running society's discourse in a coordinated and conspiratorial manner, you probably won't buy Manufacturing Consent's argument. On a side note, I was reading it in a Starbucks in London in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq War. A Canadian reporter approached me for the purpose of interviewing me about the Iraq War, simply because I was reading Chomsky. She was hoping to get an anti-war quote from an angry young Brit, but was surprised that I was American. An interesting selection bias on the part of the reporter.
adrianwaj 17y ago
At some point, a journalist switches from using reality to create perception and instead uses perception to create reality.
kunley 17y ago
On the contrary, the freedom is something very new and fragile in our civilization, and always people had to fight it quite hard. It's our ignorance that we take freedom for granted in western societies, and staying in this comfort zone may unfortunately lead us to loosing it.

It's odd that certain societies don't value discovering or reporting the truth, but instead attempt to create it.

MikeCapone 17y ago

Don't confuse a whole society with the people who hold power (and thus control the guys with the weapons).

ahk 17y ago
Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism. One could argue it's because of the education/brain-washing but the facts remain.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Much as opposition to it by people in the US is viewed through the prism of nationalism.
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Because the rest of the world doesn't like free speech? Americans may throw the term around more often, but I wouldn't equate holding it important to nationalism. If anything, American nationalism has forced free speech on America, not the other way around (and yes, I'm aware of the many failures. Not saying it's perfect).
    - grandalf 17y ago
      In America there is not any particular issue that is so contentious that free speech is actually curtailed. But there is tremendous social pressure for people to voluntarily curtail certain forms of speech. If the US had a less stable society, chances are certain kinds of speech would be considered more dangerous, and we'd progress from certain forms being considered socially inappropriate to being banned outright. This has happened in our past... and the usual framing of it is that we've progressed past such mistakes. In reality the pressures that force such things have abated. China still faces these pressures...
      - Groxx 17y ago
        If the US had a less stable society... I'd be interested to see what happened with free speech during the civil war days... I really don't know, no class has covered it and k-12 grade school has made me sick of US-history (flat-out fabrications and ridiculous exaggerations in tons of cases, and super super super dry info with few connections for the remaining). It'd be a good measuring point for this, though, as that's about as unstable as you can get. Yeah, slave-free-speech was blocked, but that's arguably mostly because they weren't really viewed as people, thus didn't have that right in the first place. Anyone know?
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
        plinkplonk 17y ago
        "I'd be interested to see what happened with free speech during the civil war days." Lincoln greatly expanded the power of the Presidency in the name of War time expediency, but there were people within the Union who fiercely criticized Lincoln and his government and its policies till the very end of the war. Very different from the situation in China. (Just try criticizing the Party 60+ years after the Revolution!). Besides, any flirtations with restrciting Freedom Of Speech lasted hardly 4 years, not half a century as in China. But then the USA had a very strong tradition of Freedom OF Speech wheras such a concept was alien to China. That said, Hong Kong seems to be relatively politically vibrant, in spite of being ruled by the MAinland. I suspect once people get used to thinking for themselves and having the freedom to express their thoughts for a generation or two, it is hard to eradicate completely. Coming back to the point of freedoms during the US Civil War, see http://www.etymonline.com/cw/habeas.htm http://www.etymonline.com/cw/habeas.htm Excerpt "the full question of whether the Constitution gave the president a special power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during wartime never got to the Court. In large part that's because the administration made sure it didn't. It had a valid fear that the Court would rule against there being such a power under the Constitution, and such a ruling would undermine the war effort. On the other hand, by keeping the matter away from the Court, the administration could largely accomplish its policy. Opposition, especially in the press, clamored for a test case to settle whether the arbitrary arrests were legal. Secretary of War Stanton thought it would be wise to do so, too, but Attorney General Bates talked him out of it. In a letter of Jan. 31, 1863, Bates wrote to Stanton that a Supreme Court decision against the habeas corpus policy "would inflict upon the Administration a serious injury," and would do more good to the rebels "than the worst defeat our armies have yet sustained." Bates said he would support a test case if he thought it had a chance of success. "I confess to you frankly, that, knowing as we do, the antecedents and present proclivities of the majority of that Court (and I speak of them with entire respect) I can anticipate no such results." This was after Lincoln had appointed three justices to the bench. Bates had intimate contact with the justices, and his judgment of their likely verdicts was well informed. "Many loyal men deny this power to the President," he wrote to the Secretary of War, "and, however confident we may be that he possesses it, it is no imputation on the loyalty of the majority of the Court to presume that on this point they agree with their political school."
- raquo 17y ago
  > Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government I also think so, but this statement is as popular as is its opposite. Does anyone know of some real studies on this matter?
  - est 17y ago
    Here is the bottom line: If it's beneficial to everyone, like Tibet, the Chinese would support the government If it's government's monopolistic interest, everyone condemn the government.
- elai 17y ago
  It's also a bit of a survival tactic. Saying you don't support the government can be bad for you.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  > Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism. How do you know that? Without free elections and trustable surveys, it's hard to know.
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Because I, at least, pretty frequently hear from person X about their friend Y in China who supports their government and what's being done. Yes, it's effectively impossible to actually measure it, but I get that feeling too from my browsing history.
  - metamemetics 17y ago
    From talking to people born in China that live\study in the U.S. One would predict they wouldn't support the PRC as highly on virtue of having left it and perhaps being better educated. But everyone I've met seems to.
- hyperbovine 17y ago
  Says who? The government-sponsored opinion poll? Or perhaps the independent one where everybody was too scared to answer truthfully.
- albertsun 17y ago
  It's entirely possible to support one's government overall while disagreeing with many of the things it does. I support the US government as a whole, but I think many of it's policies concerning Iraq, Guantanamo, the "War on Drugs," immigration, etc. are despicable. I think the same holds true for most of China's citizens. Most certainly realize that the government does bad things but this is far outweighed by the good things that it has done for the country in terms of economics development and stability. Remember that a majority of China's population remembers a time when starvation was a very real risk and most were resigned to a future as subsistence farmer's living in a commune. Then realize that for someone who has lived through that to where China is now in terms of economic opportunity, free speech is just not that big of an issue. Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that there's a necessary trade-off between economic development and free speech. My point is that most of China's population is too busy celebrating the miracle of development to care about free speech. Instead of taking for granted that economic development happened, they still remember the very real prospect that it might not have happened and still see improvement's that can be had there.
- papersmith 17y ago
  My impression is that the "nationalists" (as in blind patriotism, the word has a different meaning in Chinese) are a vocal minority among the priviledged urban youths who grew up during the economic boom. The older generations who lived through Mao's days, the less priviedged middle-class kids, and the rural population tend to have very mixed opinions. Also, Chinese opinions tend to be very mixed to begin with, which can give off the wrong impression to someone from a society that is used to partisanism. This artwork portrays "opinions" among German and Chinese very well: http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/2783/1.jpg http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/2783/1.jpg
  - Perceval 17y ago
    Here's a good article on young nationalists in China: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_... It's not clear that nationalism in China equates with blind support for the Party.
yters 17y ago
Why don't all their high speed hackers turn against the gov, then? They have a lot of the gov's power, plus anonymity afforded by the medium of attack.

robak 17y ago

oh yes Mr "Mission Accomplished" and "Weapns of Mass Destruction"... you're talking about Americnans, right? Or all this propaganda now about the Economy. At first there wasn't any crisis and now it's already over. Get real!

jbooth 17y ago

Most people don't want the truth, they just want something that feels good to repeat to themselves. "It's the American's fault!", "It's the Arabs' fault!", "It's the neocon's fault", "Drill baby drill", "Keep the government away from my medicare"...

aero142 17y ago
That is a nice list of things you don't like.
- jbooth 17y ago
  Actually a bunch of them contradict each other, so it's almost impossible for me to dislike or like all of them.
caffeine 17y ago
Indeed .. most people (see roback's dead comment below) have no clue what their mantras even mean.

stcredzero 17y ago

Go to your public library and check out _Manufacturing Consent_. It's about how the US and its allies create it.

drunkpotato 17y ago
I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, but I did try to read Hegemony or Survival. It was an exercise in frustration and ultimately I didn't finish. Chomsky, on the rare occasions when he does back up his assertions with references, almost invariably references only himself. Combine that with a bombastic style that yet still manages to be obtuse, boring, and repetitive, and it's a recipe for a disastrous book that can convince only those who are already convinced and angry and looking for an argument from authority. It sounds like Manufacturing Consent has an interesting thesis. I would like to read more about it but preferably from someone more readable, more scholarly, and less prone to hyperbole and unsupported claims.
- Perceval 17y ago
  While I'm neither a Marxist nor a Chomskyite-anarcho-syndicalist, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I'd say it's a pretty straight-forward application of Gramsci's theory of hegemony to the United States. Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, wrote his theory while in jail, outlining two forms of domination: direct coercion, and rule through civil society. Hegemony is the latter—the production of seemingly spontaneous consent for the policies of the (capitalist-controlled) state. The capitalist ruling class accomplishes this through the production of an intellectual class and related institution that support and justify the current order. The public absorbs these ideas and narratives and thus consents to the exploitative capitalist order. Chomsky just applied that idea to the United States during the Cold War (although I'm sure he would say it's still applicable). The capitalists control the corporate media, they set up foundations that fund think tanks, they lobby the government. All reporting is dependent on advertising from corporations that won't brook deviations from the current order. So an overall discourse is created in the U.S. by corporate control which makes sure the debate stays within certain bounds of dissent, but never goes so far as to be dangerous to the capitalist system. If you don't buy Gramscianism and don't see capitalists as capable of running society's discourse in a coordinated and conspiratorial manner, you probably won't buy Manufacturing Consent's argument. On a side note, I was reading it in a Starbucks in London in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq War. A Canadian reporter approached me for the purpose of interviewing me about the Iraq War, simply because I was reading Chomsky. She was hoping to get an anti-war quote from an angry young Brit, but was surprised that I was American. An interesting selection bias on the part of the reporter.

adrianwaj 17y ago

At some point, a journalist switches from using reality to create perception and instead uses perception to create reality.

kunley 17y ago

On the contrary, the freedom is something very new and fragile in our civilization, and always people had to fight it quite hard. It's our ignorance that we take freedom for granted in western societies, and staying in this comfort zone may unfortunately lead us to loosing it.