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Indeed. There's a Chomsky quote that fits here: The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but
by Karunamon 6y ago
Indeed. There's a Chomsky quote that fits here:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
- blackbear_ 6y agoThis quote comes from Chomsky's book "Understanding power" [1], which I highly recommend reading.. more than once [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Power
- arethuza 6y agoThat reminds me of the Overton Window: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window In fact, that quote is on the Wikipedia page!
- ardy42 6y ago> Indeed. There's a Chomsky quote that fits here: >> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. That sounds bad, but I wonder how Chomsky would feel if that wasn't the case and the "spectrum of acceptable opinion" included stuff like literal Nazism.
- Aeolun 6y agoDepends on how you enforce your acceptable opinion I think. You need to find a way that makes it socially unacceptable without literally locking people up for whatever they say.