 This
year, the CBC, which usually features illustrious and thought-provoking
speakers in its Ideas series and the related Massey Lectures, disgraced
itself by inviting an Australian ethicist, Margaret Somerville, to
present a diatribe of right-wing political propaganda disguised as
intellectual discourse. The thesis of the week-long series of talks was
essentially that everything that the Catholic Church and other
so-called right-to-life groups espouse regarding 'family values' is
moral and ethical and should be encouraged, and everything they oppose
in this regard (notably abortion and homosexuality) is immoral and
unethical and should be made illegal.
There is a reason why
intellectual debates usually shun such issues. They are matters of
personal morality, and no amount of rationalization is likely to inform
a debate on such a subject, or change anyone's mind. So it was not
surprising that Somerville wasted CBC listeners' time stating her
personal morality, over and over and over ad nauseam. I am sure that opponents of abortion and homosexuality were astonished and perhaps
delighted, and that proponents of abortion and homosexually were as
appalled as I was. She did not support her position with any
information that one would not hear from a papal sermon, because it is impossible to bring information to bear that justifies any particular moral or religious view. There is a reason we call it 'faith'. So we were presented with a week-long orthodox religious sermon, devoid of information, and devoid of ideas.
Somerville has been controversial before,
and the muddle-headed people at the CBC defended their decision to
allow the people's money to be used for her religious tirade on the
basis that 'opposing views' and free speech need to be respected. So I
suppose we can look forward to future Ideas and Massey Lectures
expressing opposing liberal
personal moral and religious convictions, and likewise adding heat and
no light to moral issues that have been around as long as civilization.
It is not Somerville's arch-conservatism that is at issue here –
listeners would and should have been equally outraged to hear a
left-wing moral harangue disguised as intellectual discourse. Both
Somerville's sermons and their liberal mirror image views, when
misrepresented as new information and ideas, are simply propaganda.
It
is alarming to realize that seemingly intelligent people no longer seem
able to distinguish between knowledge and propaganda. Perhaps we can
blame the trashy tenor of most tabloid newspapers, talk radio and blogs
for confusing us. For those who need a refresher, propaganda is "the
systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause, or of information
reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine
or cause", primarily through appeal to the emotions. Anyone who reads
the tabloid press, listens to talk radio, reads blogs or editorials or
attends sermons at the church of their choice knows
what to expect. Much of the content in all these media is propaganda.
It is designed to produce, as Calvin said in the cartoon in my post
yesterday, "the sense of solidarity and identity that comes from having
our interests narrowed and exploited by like-minded" people. The
content of such media is carefully selected to include only information
(and misinformation), often with emotionally-tinged word selection,
that supports the author's (and the echo-chamber audience's) opinion.
We
are all entitled to our opinion. There are many places for us to
express it. But there is also a need for a forum for the exchange of
information and ideas, what most of us call 'knowledge'. Knowledge is
information that enables us to do something more effectively than we
could before we had it. And although there are contrarians who argue
that everything is opinion,
that there is no 'objective' knowledge, I think most of us can tell the
difference between knowledge and opinion, whether the opinion is one we
agree with or not. There are cases when we get both in a single package
(e.g. most documentaries, lectures, textbooks and educational media of
all kinds). We have, it is hoped, acquired enough critical thinking
skill through a lifetime of experience to be able to separate the
knowledge from the opinion, though sometimes we need to 'park' what
appears to be one or the other until we can, through personal research
or conversation, categorize it correctly.
We can tell when
Exxon or Shell or Monsanto or Big Nuclear or Big Agribusiness or Big
Pharma tells us what they're doing is unequivocally good for us, that
such whitewashing and greenwashing is pure propaganda. We can tell when
mysterious 'citizens coalitions' launch expensive political ads to
slander their opponents, that we are being had. When an esteemed public
broadcaster seems unable to distinguish unvarnished personal opinion
from knowledge, however, I think this is cause for alarm.
The
last time I was dismayed by such confusion was when the US military
'embedded' mainstream media in Iraq and used them as public mouthpieces
for government propaganda. The US government and the military
establishment certainly knew what they were doing (using the mainstream
media for propaganda is well-established procedure, especially in
wartime). But astonishingly, the mainstream media apparently didn't
realize they were being used. Some normally intelligent moderates were
outraged at being accused of parroting propaganda. We now know (and
more and more of the media are now admitting) that they were simply
mouthpieces, made even more dangerous by the air of objectivity they
portrayed. The consequences, for the US and the world, have been
tragic. We keep thinking we won't get fooled again, and then they fool
us again.
The only defence against propaganda is good critical
thinking skills. We cannot depend on laws or 'rights' or, alas, the
media (of any stripe) to protect us against it. We cannot expect people
to avoid using propaganda on moral grounds. And we can't depend on the
education system to teach us these critical thinking skills. So how do
we acquire them?
There are courses you can take, but you know me – I prefer a self-managed approach. This is how I think I learned to be a reasonably competent critical thinker:
- Learn something new every day. The best way to get better at any kind of thinking is to do more of it. Practice.
- Think
about how you think. Specifically, when you are making decisions, stop
and think about how you are making them. What's influencing you that
shouldn't? What's missing that would help you decide better? What are
you assuming that you know, that you believe, and that you don't know?
Do those assumptions bear scrutiny?
- Let-Self-Change. Or, more precisely, allow yourself to be open to change. Err on the side of skepticism and tentativeness.
Image:
Kurt Vonnegut, a brilliant critical thinker who knew the difference
between knowledge and propaganda, and was pretty good at both. He died
yesterday.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
