Not to honor men of excellence will keep the people from contention; not to value goods that are hard to come by will keep the people from theft; not to display what is desirable will keep the people from being unsettled.
Hence in his rule, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their purpose but strengthens their bones.
He constantly keeps the people innocent of knowledge and free from desire, and causes the clever not to dare.
He simply takes no action and everything is in order.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
For some reason it bothers me that after all this time Coberst is just any other socialist. Up until now I was fairly confident that all his ideas were meant to be considered in a bubble that is removed from the real world.
But as to socialism, no I’m sorry but if you want to live like primitive man, be my guest. Personally I’d rather live in a time and place where the profit motive leads people to naturally try and come up with ways to reduce the number of stillbirths from ~27 per 1000 to ~5, or child mortality rates from ~63 to ~6. I’d rather live someplace where I have the luxury of plentiful food, massive public libraries, the internet, and all the other things that allow me to sit around and pontificate about how to make the world a better place.
Thomas Jefferson and Jesus were both fans of the individual farmer supporting himself, his family, and his community, but if you look at the statistics of the results of places that are like that, you’ll find that people who don’t live like that are happier and in general kinder and more well-learned.
FWIW, I partially agree. I reckon that some norms of “a capitalist economy” are learned & dictated, but others arise spontaneously from the behavior of self-interested individuals without custom & education to limit them & with a strong tendency to innovate self-interest.
That is, capitalism is sort of “state of nature” (really a deformed pseudo-nature as per the Libertarian Socialist critique that property requires law & authority) but not the historical state of primitive man. It appears due to the defiance or transcendence of traditional norms.
Like the Matador those corporate leaders who control our behaviour do not wish us to see them in action and thus we only see the red cape fluttering in the breeze. To go beyond seeing the cape we must learn how to be Critical Thinkers.
If you wish further detail you can turn to the book referenced.
One of the ways to manipulate uncritical thinking individuals is to convince them that capitalism or any other idelogy is just “doin what comes naturally”
Ah, you don’t realise that ‘Critical Thinking’ is part of the conspiracy. :eek:
By making you think only along predetermined lines, this method merely enhances your intellectual domination by the true rulers of the country.
Only by rejecting such wicked propaganda can we free ourselves from the boundaries that daily enforce our compliance.
Whenever I see phrases like “Corporate America” or “the corporate media” my brain immediately classifies the arguments being made as ignorant stereotypical twaddle. Although that is probably due to unconscious programming by They who do not want us to know the truth.
I can find dictionaries for sale all over the place. I can access them online. So how exactly are we being repressed, dictionary-wise?
Succinct! That’s what comes of having a good dictionary. By the way, is the plural of ignoramus ignoramuses or ignorami? I would look it up but am too lazy, besides…look, big-screen TVs on sale!
You’ve actually read this book, right? We have some bible-based threads in which proponents misquote the material they claim to be referencing, so I’d like to be sure. Name some specific corporations cited in the book so I can be more confident you understand the position you’re promoting.
You’ve cut and pasted your way on to this board in an attempt to spread the gospel of Karl Polanyi. While I’m sure this silver-spooned philosopher/economist was entertaining on the college circuit, that was a half century ago. Times have changed.
If you want to talk about social ignorance then you could just as easily discussed why he had to flee all those European countries he lived in to avoid having to become proficient in the German language. We don’t live in an economic bubble nor are we slaves to corporate influence. That should be evident by the ability of large corporations to self-destruct under the weight of individual consumer choice.
Congratulations on reading a book. Feel free to read a couple of more.
That’s their fiendish plan. Experiments have shown that people faced with too many choices don’t choose at all - putting 20 types of soda on a supermarket shelf reduces sales vs putting five types there. So, all the information on the net actually reduces what people get out of it.
Maybe more seriously, too much information means that people need filters. and when they choose ideological filters (like Fox News) they end up with less true knowledge than when they watch a network newscast or read a general circulation paper or magazine. Same thing as the case 100 years ago when cities had tons of papers with clear biases.
