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Consensus building doesn't work without centralized mass media. People just have to get used to have different groups with different values inside the same coun

Consensus building doesn't work without centralized mass media. People just have to get used to have different groups with different values inside the same country and be ok with that. Decentralized chains of trust will grow, which was the norm before mass media appeared. Either that, or centralization will reassert itself brutally and force a new consensus.

noduerme 5y ago
I don't think democracy can survive if people in a nation can't form a consensus on basic features of shared, objective reality. This type of consensus did exist, and could be reached, in the 1770s, long before centralized mass media. The creation of competing "chains of trust", which see an election as legitimate or illegitimate, a virus as dangerous or fabricated, is actually only possible by the manipulation of mass media. And social media very much is mass media. It's just a version in which propaganda is funneled through the mouths of its target audience.
- hrh 5y ago
  We can with a shift towards the Switzerland model, but practically, that's very difficult to do.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Well people are already sorting themselves by moving between states based on political affiliation. If we strengthen States' rights and limit Federal government power in line with the original intent of the Constitution then I think we can all mostly get along. Americans get all worked up about who wins the Presidential election because the executive branch has gained so much power over every aspect of our lives but it doesn't have to be that way. We don't need to have all the same laws in Massachusetts and Montana.
  - haswell 5y ago
    Will you expand on this? Switzerland's model of what?
    - hrh 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy
- tomjen3 5y ago
  It couldn't be reached then either. Think about how many different versions of Christianity there was then. There was no mass media to speak of then, and yet these versions of the Christian faith disagreed on some extremely fundamental points, including how to, and through whom, you could be saved.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  Please read up on the election of 1800.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Did it exist? In the early 1770s, there was a pretty big war on the subject of who's in charge; the late 1770s were subject to the Articles of Confederation, famous for their complete failure to establish political legitimacy for the federal government. Even in the constitutional era, there were constant questions with foundational implications. Is slavery moral? Should Native Americans be forced to move wherever the government finds convenient? Can states secede if they don't like the election results? These were all active disputes at the time, with competing "chains of trust" on both sides.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- helloworld11 5y ago
  You might want to analyze that idea of consensus in the late 1770s. At the onset of the American Revolution, at least a third of the fledgling country was monarchist to one degree or another and bloody, deadly fights between independence sympathizers and monarchists were common among the civilian population (I'm not even speaking here of military hostilities). People were often lynched or tarred and feathered in the streets for saying the wrong thing. Tarring and feathering are not nearly the funny things their description might bring t mind by the way.
hrh 5y ago
See Fareed Zakaria's work on the importance of responsible elites. Or Plato, if you're feeling frisky.
tomjen3 5y ago
Before mass media you had media delivered via Mass through the Catholic church, which was substantially the same in not just the entire country, but in all countries. Getting out of this was a century of real and cultural warfare that ultimately resulted in some of the first rights of countries, because forcing the centralization at the point of a gun was just not worth it. Mass media is a much more recent, much more short term and much less powerful (there never was a newspaper czar and Walter Duranty could at most destroy your career, not burn you at the stake for telling the truth). My point is that humans have had different groups with different values living inside the same countries for a long time before they considered themselves to be members of that nation, this is going back to what was normal, not reverting to something that is new. Of course living with these separate groups wasn't exactly peaceful or without discrimination.

noduerme 5y ago

I don't think democracy can survive if people in a nation can't form a consensus on basic features of shared, objective reality. This type of consensus did exist, and could be reached, in the 1770s, long before centralized mass media. The creation of competing "chains of trust", which see an election as legitimate or illegitimate, a virus as dangerous or fabricated, is actually only possible by the manipulation of mass media. And social media very much is mass media. It's just a version in which propaganda is funneled through the mouths of its target audience.

hrh 5y ago
We can with a shift towards the Switzerland model, but practically, that's very difficult to do.
- nradov 5y ago
  Well people are already sorting themselves by moving between states based on political affiliation. If we strengthen States' rights and limit Federal government power in line with the original intent of the Constitution then I think we can all mostly get along. Americans get all worked up about who wins the Presidential election because the executive branch has gained so much power over every aspect of our lives but it doesn't have to be that way. We don't need to have all the same laws in Massachusetts and Montana.
- haswell 5y ago
  Will you expand on this? Switzerland's model of what?
  - hrh 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy
tomjen3 5y ago
It couldn't be reached then either. Think about how many different versions of Christianity there was then. There was no mass media to speak of then, and yet these versions of the Christian faith disagreed on some extremely fundamental points, including how to, and through whom, you could be saved.
hprotagonist 5y ago
Please read up on the election of 1800.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Did it exist? In the early 1770s, there was a pretty big war on the subject of who's in charge; the late 1770s were subject to the Articles of Confederation, famous for their complete failure to establish political legitimacy for the federal government. Even in the constitutional era, there were constant questions with foundational implications. Is slavery moral? Should Native Americans be forced to move wherever the government finds convenient? Can states secede if they don't like the election results? These were all active disputes at the time, with competing "chains of trust" on both sides.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
helloworld11 5y ago
You might want to analyze that idea of consensus in the late 1770s. At the onset of the American Revolution, at least a third of the fledgling country was monarchist to one degree or another and bloody, deadly fights between independence sympathizers and monarchists were common among the civilian population (I'm not even speaking here of military hostilities). People were often lynched or tarred and feathered in the streets for saying the wrong thing. Tarring and feathering are not nearly the funny things their description might bring t mind by the way.

hrh 5y ago

See Fareed Zakaria's work on the importance of responsible elites. Or Plato, if you're feeling frisky.

tomjen3 5y ago

Before mass media you had media delivered via Mass through the Catholic church, which was substantially the same in not just the entire country, but in all countries. Getting out of this was a century of real and cultural warfare that ultimately resulted in some of the first rights of countries, because forcing the centralization at the point of a gun was just not worth it. Mass media is a much more recent, much more short term and much less powerful (there never was a newspaper czar and Walter Duranty could at most destroy your career, not burn you at the stake for telling the truth). My point is that humans have had different groups with different values living inside the same countries for a long time before they considered themselves to be members of that nation, this is going back to what was normal, not reverting to something that is new. Of course living with these separate groups wasn't exactly peaceful or without discrimination.