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How can a [assumingly benevolent] state survive without using propaganda, censorship, and surveillance today, when all the other states, as well as malicious pa

How can a [assumingly benevolent] state survive without using propaganda, censorship, and surveillance today, when all the other states, as well as malicious parties within itself would inevitably deploy propaganda, censorship, and surveillance against it? This is a genuine question. I would love propaganda, censorship, and surveillance to be non-existent but I can't really see a viable alternative. That would be cool if we could make the people immune to propaganda by means of education but I'm sure there will always be plenty of people who would remain easy to manipulate.

frankish 6y ago
I think setting an example and keeping to your principles is the right approach. Naivety won't go away, but things will continue to improve in the long run.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I'd suggest that this is a separate though related question. My essay concerns the fact that propaganda (and other activities, often but not at all exclusively the domain of state actors) rely on and exploit monopoly structures. One fairly obvious corollary is that "if you build it", where "it" os a communications or information network exhibiting monopoly control points, "they will come", they being propagandists, censors, and surveillors. Which is pretty much what Shoshana Zuboff was writing in the 1980s, see her eponymous laws. That states and other large organisations (see: Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the IBM songbook, etc.) rely on propaganda, censorship, and surveillance (James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State), means that yes, they effectively operate in a competitive and selective landscaape in which if they don't develop such capabilities, or countermeasures against them, their adversaries will. This will happen through the most monopolistic communications structures available, whhich is my point.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Having recently read a translation of the Rule of Benedict, I'll note that when Benedict disparages people coming together with like-minded others to form faith communities (Sarabaites, Ch. 1), he says "They live ... without a shepherd, in their own sheepfolds and not in the Lord’s," which I believe may be interpreted as a complaint about the lack of propaganda, censorship, and surveillance in their living arrangements. Samples, by no means exhaustive: propaganda https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-38-nl-on-the-weekly-reader https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c... censorship https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-54-nl-whether-a-monk-should-receive-letters-or-anything-else https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c... surveillance https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-22-nl-how-the-monks-are-to-sleep https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c...
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks! And of course the origin of propaganda is the church....
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      On the bubblegum side, there's also Propaganda, a russian girl group: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yWYzWYBJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yWYzWYBJA

frankish 6y ago

I think setting an example and keeping to your principles is the right approach. Naivety won't go away, but things will continue to improve in the long run.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I'd suggest that this is a separate though related question. My essay concerns the fact that propaganda (and other activities, often but not at all exclusively the domain of state actors) rely on and exploit monopoly structures. One fairly obvious corollary is that "if you build it", where "it" os a communications or information network exhibiting monopoly control points, "they will come", they being propagandists, censors, and surveillors. Which is pretty much what Shoshana Zuboff was writing in the 1980s, see her eponymous laws. That states and other large organisations (see: Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the IBM songbook, etc.) rely on propaganda, censorship, and surveillance (James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State), means that yes, they effectively operate in a competitive and selective landscaape in which if they don't develop such capabilities, or countermeasures against them, their adversaries will. This will happen through the most monopolistic communications structures available, whhich is my point.

082349872349872 6y ago
Having recently read a translation of the Rule of Benedict, I'll note that when Benedict disparages people coming together with like-minded others to form faith communities (Sarabaites, Ch. 1), he says "They live ... without a shepherd, in their own sheepfolds and not in the Lord’s," which I believe may be interpreted as a complaint about the lack of propaganda, censorship, and surveillance in their living arrangements. Samples, by no means exhaustive: propaganda https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-38-nl-on-the-weekly-reader https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c... censorship https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-54-nl-whether-a-monk-should-receive-letters-or-anything-else https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c... surveillance https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#chapter-22-nl-how-the-monks-are-to-sleep https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c...
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks! And of course the origin of propaganda is the church....
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    On the bubblegum side, there's also Propaganda, a russian girl group: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yWYzWYBJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yWYzWYBJA