Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
George Orwell - the British press - leaders or led?
George Orwell
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, is one of England’s most well known authors and journalists. He wrote many very well known novels, 1984, ‘Animal Farm’, and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ being his most famous.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Orwell discusses how the press is corrupted by the power it has to alter public opinion.
RLF: You once famously said that if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
GO: I did.
RLF: Do you still hold to that, or has your vision of the future changed?
GO: Considering what I know now, what I have seen, what I have read in the press, especially that, I have come to an entirely different point of view.
RLF: Does it still involve tyranny?
GO: Yes, it does. I think history has shown us, if it has shown us anything, that matters invariably get worse rather than better. Our world has deteriorated, and is continuing to do so.
RLF: So if your vision of the future does not include a boot stamping on a human face forever, what does it include?
GO: I think the forces that would coerce us are no less potent, but now, instead of crushing any resistance, we have been co-opted, it is our acceptance, our wishes that have been manipulated to deceive us and to subvert any resistance we might have once had.
In short, we have been bought off, sold short is nearer to the truth of things. It is our material well-being that has been placed first and foremost, our comfort.
RLF: But how can that be used against us, surely that is a good thing, that nobody goes hungry, or has to toil twelve or fourteen hours a day in a cotton mill or down a coal mine.
GO: On the face of it, that is true. But anything remotely resembling dissent has virtually no place in our..
RLF: In our society?
GO: I was going to say, in our minds. Our consent has been manufactured, so much that alternative points of view, once they are seen as unable to deliver the same standard of living, are dismissed, utterly, as being mad, or more kindly, out of step.
Our views have been hijacked, processed and fed back to us in – print, in our newspapers.
RLF: Which newspapers do you think do this?
GO: Those that appeal to the masses. We still have a quality press, but such as it is has been marginalized, until its only function is preaching to the converted – the middle classes, and upwards.
Our so called ‘gutter press’ has been well named, it feeds us mindless froth rather than anything substantial as to meaning or analysis of…well, of anything.
RLF: Do you think our press is instrumental in forming opinion, or do you think it is public opinion that feeds into what is fed back to us daily in our tabloids?
GO: Yes to both questions. Now I seem to be guilty of what I once called doublethink; the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
However, I will have to go further to convince you otherwise. I believe that mass circulation newspapers construct meaning that perpetuates what they stand for, and sells papers at the same time. You have to remember that the press represents some vested interest somewhere, some loci of power, invisible to the many, but existing, active and powerful nevertheless.
The balderdash that passes for news these days, is written, not by accident, by people who do not know how to write well. Quite the reverse, journalists belong to powerful amalgamations that protect their interests while at the same time maintaining a closed shop. Any journalist or writer whose work appears on the pages of our newspapers will be, almost by definition, well-educated, well-read, aware of world events and their causes and effects to a far greater extent than most of his readers.
RLF: Then why do they write this one-syllable gibberish?
GO: Because they are paid to.
RLF: So you do subscribe to the idea, the theory, that the press provides and the public laps it up?
GO: Let me go on, I haven’t got there yet. In providing ready made answers to complex questions – as good a definition of prejudice as I have ever heard, they feed their readers what they need to get by, to survive, to help them keep their sanity – what they possess, in this world of ours that is so fraught with seemingly contradictory information.
Paradoxically, someone called this age we live in the information age, shortened to the i-age, probably. In fact, in my opinion, it should be termed the ‘disinformation age’. So much of what we hear and see leads some to say what an old friend of mine used to say; ‘Let the World go away’, or ‘Make the World go away’, I know, it sounds like a Tony Bennett song title, but that’s what he used to say, and that is what people probably crave, a sort of managed ignorance.
People are so befuddled, confused, rattled and utterly apathised, to coin a new word again, that they need someone or something to do their thinking for them, hence the gobbledygook that passes for news.
Opinion is not only created, it is disfigured by ready to wear slogans that hit the spot, do the trick, give us what we cry out for!
RLF: What?
GO: Answers, something we can take to the pub and hear repeated by our fellow imbibers. It used to be said, didn’t it, that the two things you should never discuss in public were politics and religion. Look at what is happening today, listen to conversations, if you can call them that, between readers of this or that tabloid, crass prejudice, vulgarity and high glee, your average man in the street vacillates between a species of outrage, and mindless, stupid laffing – no mistake – if you’re not out for a laff, you’re a miserable c**t, is about the size of it.
The reason you were advised not to talk about politics and religion was that at one time, people had opinions that mattered, they 'gave a shit' in modern transatlantic, and would take affront. Now, because nobody seems to be bothered to examine an issue, they would rather repeat slogans from the rag they looked at in their tea break, or dismissing it as ‘all bollocks’; so, nobody is insulted, and if they do happen to be, they are dismissed as something derogatory, mad, marginal or both. That is just what happens on the front pages of the tabloids. We get headlines like:
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE
This headline illustrates the way some sections of the press will co-opt public opinion before they actually know what it is. Here, the use of ‘they’ assumes an entity ‘us’ – and in assuming ‘us’ assumes our opinion is one and the same. ‘Who do they think they are’ expresses an outrage before the story appears, it has not only assumed and created opinion by printing the headline, but it then follows up on the common ground of outrage at the behaviour of a certain group of people, who it has, in effect, demonized and branded.
There’s no room for a question mark, and in any case, it isn’t a question, just a banner to be banded about in pubs, at work, and in front of the telly.
RLF: So what you are saying is that the newspapers inform and form opinion, in language that can be easily assimilated.
GO: Assimilated, and reproduced verbally, that is of paramount importance; it’s short and to the point, cuts out criticism by sidelining it, leaving out anything that could be used against it.
I once said that if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought, and here is a prime example of both being corrupted.
To that extent, the press is a leader.
RLF: But if that is so, how can the press be said to be led?
GO: Once the readership is well versed in the gist of lines expressed in labels and slogans that can be shouted, the writers have no alternative but to continue with more of the same, the more banal and simplistic a headline is, the more it is accorded popularity, and the more copies are sold at newsstands. That’s the whole point.
RLF: But who benefits, apart from rich proprietors of newspapers, the press barons?
GO: HMB – Her Majesty’s Businesses. The same people that enslave us by providing the creature comforts we have got used to, but that have derived us of a platform from which to speak, to object. We now have no need of politics, or at least that is what we are led to believe. What can you give the man who thinks he has everything?
RLF: Nothing.
GO: Exactly, man wants for nothing, his belly is full, his pint is ready and waiting for him on the bar top, everything is grand.
RLF: It sounds that way, it certainly does.
GO: And that, my friend is precisely the message that is put across in our press, and that if it isn’t alright, it is because some bastard is swinging the lead, as we used to say. There is as sort of collective moronification of our people. There, I’ve done it again – created a new word.
Robert L. Fielding
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, is one of England’s most well known authors and journalists. He wrote many very well known novels, 1984, ‘Animal Farm’, and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ being his most famous.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Orwell discusses how the press is corrupted by the power it has to alter public opinion.
RLF: You once famously said that if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.GO: I did.
RLF: Do you still hold to that, or has your vision of the future changed?
GO: Considering what I know now, what I have seen, what I have read in the press, especially that, I have come to an entirely different point of view.
RLF: Does it still involve tyranny?
GO: Yes, it does. I think history has shown us, if it has shown us anything, that matters invariably get worse rather than better. Our world has deteriorated, and is continuing to do so.
RLF: So if your vision of the future does not include a boot stamping on a human face forever, what does it include?
GO: I think the forces that would coerce us are no less potent, but now, instead of crushing any resistance, we have been co-opted, it is our acceptance, our wishes that have been manipulated to deceive us and to subvert any resistance we might have once had.
In short, we have been bought off, sold short is nearer to the truth of things. It is our material well-being that has been placed first and foremost, our comfort.
RLF: But how can that be used against us, surely that is a good thing, that nobody goes hungry, or has to toil twelve or fourteen hours a day in a cotton mill or down a coal mine.
GO: On the face of it, that is true. But anything remotely resembling dissent has virtually no place in our..
RLF: In our society?
GO: I was going to say, in our minds. Our consent has been manufactured, so much that alternative points of view, once they are seen as unable to deliver the same standard of living, are dismissed, utterly, as being mad, or more kindly, out of step.
Our views have been hijacked, processed and fed back to us in – print, in our newspapers.
RLF: Which newspapers do you think do this?
GO: Those that appeal to the masses. We still have a quality press, but such as it is has been marginalized, until its only function is preaching to the converted – the middle classes, and upwards.
Our so called ‘gutter press’ has been well named, it feeds us mindless froth rather than anything substantial as to meaning or analysis of…well, of anything.
RLF: Do you think our press is instrumental in forming opinion, or do you think it is public opinion that feeds into what is fed back to us daily in our tabloids?
GO: Yes to both questions. Now I seem to be guilty of what I once called doublethink; the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
However, I will have to go further to convince you otherwise. I believe that mass circulation newspapers construct meaning that perpetuates what they stand for, and sells papers at the same time. You have to remember that the press represents some vested interest somewhere, some loci of power, invisible to the many, but existing, active and powerful nevertheless.
The balderdash that passes for news these days, is written, not by accident, by people who do not know how to write well. Quite the reverse, journalists belong to powerful amalgamations that protect their interests while at the same time maintaining a closed shop. Any journalist or writer whose work appears on the pages of our newspapers will be, almost by definition, well-educated, well-read, aware of world events and their causes and effects to a far greater extent than most of his readers.
RLF: Then why do they write this one-syllable gibberish?
GO: Because they are paid to.
RLF: So you do subscribe to the idea, the theory, that the press provides and the public laps it up?
GO: Let me go on, I haven’t got there yet. In providing ready made answers to complex questions – as good a definition of prejudice as I have ever heard, they feed their readers what they need to get by, to survive, to help them keep their sanity – what they possess, in this world of ours that is so fraught with seemingly contradictory information.
Paradoxically, someone called this age we live in the information age, shortened to the i-age, probably. In fact, in my opinion, it should be termed the ‘disinformation age’. So much of what we hear and see leads some to say what an old friend of mine used to say; ‘Let the World go away’, or ‘Make the World go away’, I know, it sounds like a Tony Bennett song title, but that’s what he used to say, and that is what people probably crave, a sort of managed ignorance.
People are so befuddled, confused, rattled and utterly apathised, to coin a new word again, that they need someone or something to do their thinking for them, hence the gobbledygook that passes for news.
Opinion is not only created, it is disfigured by ready to wear slogans that hit the spot, do the trick, give us what we cry out for!
RLF: What?
GO: Answers, something we can take to the pub and hear repeated by our fellow imbibers. It used to be said, didn’t it, that the two things you should never discuss in public were politics and religion. Look at what is happening today, listen to conversations, if you can call them that, between readers of this or that tabloid, crass prejudice, vulgarity and high glee, your average man in the street vacillates between a species of outrage, and mindless, stupid laffing – no mistake – if you’re not out for a laff, you’re a miserable c**t, is about the size of it.
The reason you were advised not to talk about politics and religion was that at one time, people had opinions that mattered, they 'gave a shit' in modern transatlantic, and would take affront. Now, because nobody seems to be bothered to examine an issue, they would rather repeat slogans from the rag they looked at in their tea break, or dismissing it as ‘all bollocks’; so, nobody is insulted, and if they do happen to be, they are dismissed as something derogatory, mad, marginal or both. That is just what happens on the front pages of the tabloids. We get headlines like:
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE
This headline illustrates the way some sections of the press will co-opt public opinion before they actually know what it is. Here, the use of ‘they’ assumes an entity ‘us’ – and in assuming ‘us’ assumes our opinion is one and the same. ‘Who do they think they are’ expresses an outrage before the story appears, it has not only assumed and created opinion by printing the headline, but it then follows up on the common ground of outrage at the behaviour of a certain group of people, who it has, in effect, demonized and branded.
There’s no room for a question mark, and in any case, it isn’t a question, just a banner to be banded about in pubs, at work, and in front of the telly.
RLF: So what you are saying is that the newspapers inform and form opinion, in language that can be easily assimilated.
GO: Assimilated, and reproduced verbally, that is of paramount importance; it’s short and to the point, cuts out criticism by sidelining it, leaving out anything that could be used against it.
I once said that if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought, and here is a prime example of both being corrupted.
To that extent, the press is a leader.
RLF: But if that is so, how can the press be said to be led?
GO: Once the readership is well versed in the gist of lines expressed in labels and slogans that can be shouted, the writers have no alternative but to continue with more of the same, the more banal and simplistic a headline is, the more it is accorded popularity, and the more copies are sold at newsstands. That’s the whole point.
RLF: But who benefits, apart from rich proprietors of newspapers, the press barons?
GO: HMB – Her Majesty’s Businesses. The same people that enslave us by providing the creature comforts we have got used to, but that have derived us of a platform from which to speak, to object. We now have no need of politics, or at least that is what we are led to believe. What can you give the man who thinks he has everything?
RLF: Nothing.
GO: Exactly, man wants for nothing, his belly is full, his pint is ready and waiting for him on the bar top, everything is grand.
RLF: It sounds that way, it certainly does.
GO: And that, my friend is precisely the message that is put across in our press, and that if it isn’t alright, it is because some bastard is swinging the lead, as we used to say. There is as sort of collective moronification of our people. There, I’ve done it again – created a new word.
Robert L. Fielding
Maslow - a hierarchy of needs
Abraham Maslow
Best remembered for his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, Maslow was an American psychologist who is now revered as ‘the father of humanist psychology.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Maslow speaks about the needs of individuals and why they should be met.
Best remembered for his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, Maslow was an American psychologist who is now revered as ‘the father of humanist psychology.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Maslow speaks about the needs of individuals and why they should be met.
RLF: In arriving at your hypothesis that man is apt to fulfill his needs in an hierarchical, pyramidal nature, you studied only people of some aptitude, Eleanor Roosevelt and the like, did you not?
AM: I did, leaving the studying of people of lesser achievement.
RLF: Why did you do that? Did you think people of lesser educational attainment of lesser worth?
AM: Not at all. I chose to study those people because in them, I could observe the tip of my pyramid, so to speak, observing how such people behaved, what they did, how they used their time, what their goals in life were after they had satisfied all their lower order needs.
RLF: You did not think everybody gets to behave as you predicted, at the tip of the pyramid. Why is that?
AM: I suppose for the simple reason that most people do not feel their lower order needs are sufficiently fulfilled to go searching to self-actualize.
RLF: But don’t your critics charge you with constructing, or at least proposing something that cannot b e observed?
AM: They do.
RLF: And what is your reply?
AM: Why, that self-actualization is as much a state of mind as a form of outward, observable behaviour. A man may ponder on something quietly and without betraying any sign of thinking, and yet still be concentrating upon a single matter, may he not?
Lower order needs are more easily observed when being attended to by whoever feels the lack of them, the tired fall asleep, the hungry eat, the thirsty drink.
While higher order needs manifest themselves in ways that are not always apparent; a person who is friendly, we can hypothesize, is acting so because of an inner need to feel valued by others, possibly, though admittedly, this is harder to predict than merely observing that the hungry eat to fulfill their appetite for food. We all have appetites that are not as obvious, particularly if we attempt to define the need by observing behaviour; human activity is rarely that simple, unfortunately for sociologists desiring that each day repeats patterns of behaviour to feed into some theory or other.
RLF: Quite so. Returning to your subjects, do you not feel that only observing the motivated, the educated, I may almost say, the noble, that your results were indeed skewed as your critics maintain.
AM: Again, I repeat, observing such people made it possible to view motives near or at the uppermost section of my construct, the pyramid of hierarchical needs.
There are many, I am certain, who rarely come close to feeling the need to self-actualize, finding the sating of lower order needs more than compensates for a lack of anything higher in their thoughts.
RLF: Is not hedonism akin to this, dealing with pleasure and pain; the accumulation of the former and the removal of the latter?
AM: That is quite right. If one observed the purely Hedonistic, supposing there to be such people – poor people they indeed would be, would they not – one would surely not find behaviour from the tip of the pyramid.
That there are such people speaks volumes for our educational systems, or its faults.
RLF: Do you not think some portion of blame must accrue to those influences that bear upon us after our formal education is completed.
AM: You are referring to the media, I take it, as well as general consensual attitudes that inform some of what it is of which the good life consists, while deterring behaviour that does nothing, seemingly, and according to general opinion, to contribute to that earthly utopia, I may say, cornucopia, in which the only thing that is plentiful is plenty itself.
Many are there who leave paths they may have once considered following because of rash censure by their peers. Of the odious influences known to us, this must be one of the foremost in its deleterious effects upon the human psyche, denying most any opportunity to get anywhere near self-actualization.
Ignorance is certainly bliss where that topmost part of my pyramid is concerned. Pearls before swine, is the expression that most springs to mind when thinking of those that are so utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling qualities such as creativity, altruism and grace.
RLF: Perhaps if a person feels unable to indulge in those higher orders, principally because of such peer group pressure, then it is no small wonder that we have folk suffering from all sorts of phobias or mental derangement, is it?
AM: I am sure you are right. My point is that it is only when man goes beyond meeting his lower order needs that he comes to feel himself more fulfilled, more holistically sane and fit than he would otherwise do by merely feeding the inner man and those needs that sit by the side of hunger and thirst.
Robert L. Fielding
AM: I did, leaving the studying of people of lesser achievement.
RLF: Why did you do that? Did you think people of lesser educational attainment of lesser worth?
AM: Not at all. I chose to study those people because in them, I could observe the tip of my pyramid, so to speak, observing how such people behaved, what they did, how they used their time, what their goals in life were after they had satisfied all their lower order needs.
RLF: You did not think everybody gets to behave as you predicted, at the tip of the pyramid. Why is that?
AM: I suppose for the simple reason that most people do not feel their lower order needs are sufficiently fulfilled to go searching to self-actualize.
RLF: But don’t your critics charge you with constructing, or at least proposing something that cannot b e observed?
AM: They do.
RLF: And what is your reply?
AM: Why, that self-actualization is as much a state of mind as a form of outward, observable behaviour. A man may ponder on something quietly and without betraying any sign of thinking, and yet still be concentrating upon a single matter, may he not?
Lower order needs are more easily observed when being attended to by whoever feels the lack of them, the tired fall asleep, the hungry eat, the thirsty drink.
While higher order needs manifest themselves in ways that are not always apparent; a person who is friendly, we can hypothesize, is acting so because of an inner need to feel valued by others, possibly, though admittedly, this is harder to predict than merely observing that the hungry eat to fulfill their appetite for food. We all have appetites that are not as obvious, particularly if we attempt to define the need by observing behaviour; human activity is rarely that simple, unfortunately for sociologists desiring that each day repeats patterns of behaviour to feed into some theory or other.
RLF: Quite so. Returning to your subjects, do you not feel that only observing the motivated, the educated, I may almost say, the noble, that your results were indeed skewed as your critics maintain.
AM: Again, I repeat, observing such people made it possible to view motives near or at the uppermost section of my construct, the pyramid of hierarchical needs.
There are many, I am certain, who rarely come close to feeling the need to self-actualize, finding the sating of lower order needs more than compensates for a lack of anything higher in their thoughts.
RLF: Is not hedonism akin to this, dealing with pleasure and pain; the accumulation of the former and the removal of the latter?
AM: That is quite right. If one observed the purely Hedonistic, supposing there to be such people – poor people they indeed would be, would they not – one would surely not find behaviour from the tip of the pyramid.
That there are such people speaks volumes for our educational systems, or its faults.
RLF: Do you not think some portion of blame must accrue to those influences that bear upon us after our formal education is completed.
AM: You are referring to the media, I take it, as well as general consensual attitudes that inform some of what it is of which the good life consists, while deterring behaviour that does nothing, seemingly, and according to general opinion, to contribute to that earthly utopia, I may say, cornucopia, in which the only thing that is plentiful is plenty itself.
Many are there who leave paths they may have once considered following because of rash censure by their peers. Of the odious influences known to us, this must be one of the foremost in its deleterious effects upon the human psyche, denying most any opportunity to get anywhere near self-actualization.
Ignorance is certainly bliss where that topmost part of my pyramid is concerned. Pearls before swine, is the expression that most springs to mind when thinking of those that are so utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling qualities such as creativity, altruism and grace.
RLF: Perhaps if a person feels unable to indulge in those higher orders, principally because of such peer group pressure, then it is no small wonder that we have folk suffering from all sorts of phobias or mental derangement, is it?
AM: I am sure you are right. My point is that it is only when man goes beyond meeting his lower order needs that he comes to feel himself more fulfilled, more holistically sane and fit than he would otherwise do by merely feeding the inner man and those needs that sit by the side of hunger and thirst.
Robert L. Fielding
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
John Stuart Mill - pleasured and pain, altruism and selfishness
John Stuart Mill
Born in 1806, Mill was a Member of Parliament, a political economist and civil servant. He was a precocious child and read widely throughout his life. On Liberty, which extols classical liberalism his most remembered and influential work.
Is pleasure the highest good?
RLF: You say that cultural, intellectual and spiritual pleasures are of greater value than physical pleasure?
JSM: Indeed. Others hold that nothing can be graded higher than pleasure, lower than pain, but their arguments are fraught with contradictions, exceptions, provisions and conditions.
RLF Why do you believe this – that those values that are more ethical than merely physical in nature are of more value?
JSM: Let me answer you by getting you to think of your own goals in life. This may encourage you to be egotistical, selfish, but we can deal with that later. Let me ask you a question; what would make you happiest? Would it be great wealth, long life, achievement of some kind, or would it be something that gives you momentary bliss?
RLF: That question is too pointed. I am bound to say that those qualities you mentioned first, to wit, great wealth, long life and some achievement of which I could be proud, would give me most happiness.
JSM: Why would that be?
RLF: Because momentary pleasure, a sweet taste in the mouth, is just that, of the moment, whereas those other things are longer lasting and seem of more intrinsic worth.
JSM: If you were to be provided one or more of those momentary pleasures you alluded to by talking about a sweet taste in the mouth, but in everlasting, continual quantities, would you then be happy?
RLF: By a continually sweet taste in the mouth – how horrible.
JSM: Why horrible?
RLF: For the simple reason that nothing could ever be contrasted as being sweet any more. We say something tastes sweet, gives us pleasure, because we know the experience of tasting something that is not so, and while it is true that our memories save us from remembering certain unpleasant experiences – we are incapable of recalling the feeling of toothache, for example, we understand that something tastes sweet without having to immediately contrast it with something sour tasting.
JSM: That is well said; I will go further and say that something that lingers after the original stimulus, like the feeling of being hot after one has stepped back from a blazing inglenook, magnifies the pleasure given by its opposite.
A sharp blast of cold air as a door is opened is felt the more refreshing if one has felt too warm.
RLF: Whereas that same cold blast would feel uncomfortable were it to blow into a room that was not particularly warm.
JSM: There you have it. The trouble with pleasures of a physical nature is that they are momentary, and that they can be heightened in intensity by their opposites.
RLF: I only think that holds for heat and cold – direct, physical opposites. But what about actual physical pain – what is that’s opposite?
JSM: Point taken. One feeling pain, physical pain, can only be relieved by the absence of that pain, its removal, rather than providing pleasurable sensations contemporaneously.
RLF I agree. The excruciating feeling experienced after banging one’s thumb with a hammer can hardly be softened by being given something sweet to taste. Pain has no antidote except its removal. Tincture of myrrh alleviates the pain from a rotting molar. Nothing else will do but the removal of the pain. Biting on the bullet while having one removed without something to dull the pain merely serves to divert one's attention from the excruciating pain of the operation, it seems.
JSM: Yes, more of that later, now, returning to your stated goals.
RLF: Yes, I think I would be made happiest by something more enduring than merely feelings of physical pleasure.
JSM: Yet many are driven by pleasures of the here and now, nor want to be denied those feelings even though they are short in term and lost immediately beyond recall after the sensation. Why is that?
RLF: I can but surmise that such are but creatures of impulse, not given to thinking about anything beyond their next experience of physical pleasure – beyond their next sweet taste in the mouth.
JSM: I am sure you are right, and it is a pity that you are right, that there are such unfortunates alive, and out looking for something only as transient as physical pleasure.
RLF: And not only looking for that kind, but willfully ignoring any other experience that does not appear to yield a physical sensation of pleasure.
JSM: Happily, there are many such as we who do not ignore those experiences that do not provide immediate gratification.
RLF: But what makes us appreciate something that does not necessarily bring us pleasure of that physical kind?
JSM: Because we are human, not bovine, and being human, have taken it upon ourselves to learn what experiences there are that, although only rarely leading to physical pleasure, lead us to pleasures of a higher order.
RLF: That is what we refer to as education, is it not?
JSM: It is. Some hold that only education and the product thereof separates us from the birds and beasts of the field.
RLF: Worse for being but dumb animals, driven by an instinct they cannot rationalize, doubt or step away from, they are blameless in the kill; only killing that they may eat. Even the hyena, upon finding the corpse of a soldier lying under a scrape of dirt hurriedly prepared by hard pressed men under fire, even that hyena only goes so far as to defile the dead man’s body, his soul having fled. It does nought to the dead man’s name; that is left to his kind.
JSM: Precisely, our powers of deduction, our intelligence, if you will, being exercised, guides us along paths that provide pleasures of a higher, more lasting order, while if it is under-utilised, becomes moribund, extinct almost, and leads its poor owner to be beguiled into courses that, while seeming at first to provide a modicum of pleasure, ultimately and usually very quickly lead to less than pleasurable states.
RLF: The imbibing, taking, I know not what to call the activity, the taking of what are euphemistically referred to as ‘recreational drugs’ leads apace to a species of Hell upon Earth for the taker, while they are quickly and easily persuaded otherwise at the point of the offer to imbibe.
JSM: Those that prioritize physical pleasure at the expense of anything remotely more cerebral are as children to those who provide such demonic substances. The irony here is that it is the provider who comes closer to achieving anything more substantial than physical pleasure, in the shape only of financial reward!
RLF: While the user of the substance, having paid for the privilege, suffers untold agonies before dropping the yearning so induced by the substance that at first is promised to provide such great pleasure.
JSM: Enough of that. Let us deal with less exceptional cases and properties, qualities man is said to be capable of experiencing and possessing.
RLF: Such as what?
JSM: Such as altruism. Of what pleasure is that the provider?
Robert L. Fielding
Born in 1806, Mill was a Member of Parliament, a political economist and civil servant. He was a precocious child and read widely throughout his life. On Liberty, which extols classical liberalism his most remembered and influential work.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Mill discusses the meaning of real pleasure - that in which man finds his true potential as a human being, and contrasts it with Hedonism.
Is pleasure the highest good?
RLF: You say that cultural, intellectual and spiritual pleasures are of greater value than physical pleasure?
JSM: Indeed. Others hold that nothing can be graded higher than pleasure, lower than pain, but their arguments are fraught with contradictions, exceptions, provisions and conditions.
RLF Why do you believe this – that those values that are more ethical than merely physical in nature are of more value?
JSM: Let me answer you by getting you to think of your own goals in life. This may encourage you to be egotistical, selfish, but we can deal with that later. Let me ask you a question; what would make you happiest? Would it be great wealth, long life, achievement of some kind, or would it be something that gives you momentary bliss?
RLF: That question is too pointed. I am bound to say that those qualities you mentioned first, to wit, great wealth, long life and some achievement of which I could be proud, would give me most happiness.
JSM: Why would that be?
RLF: Because momentary pleasure, a sweet taste in the mouth, is just that, of the moment, whereas those other things are longer lasting and seem of more intrinsic worth.
JSM: If you were to be provided one or more of those momentary pleasures you alluded to by talking about a sweet taste in the mouth, but in everlasting, continual quantities, would you then be happy?
RLF: By a continually sweet taste in the mouth – how horrible.
JSM: Why horrible?
RLF: For the simple reason that nothing could ever be contrasted as being sweet any more. We say something tastes sweet, gives us pleasure, because we know the experience of tasting something that is not so, and while it is true that our memories save us from remembering certain unpleasant experiences – we are incapable of recalling the feeling of toothache, for example, we understand that something tastes sweet without having to immediately contrast it with something sour tasting.
JSM: That is well said; I will go further and say that something that lingers after the original stimulus, like the feeling of being hot after one has stepped back from a blazing inglenook, magnifies the pleasure given by its opposite.
A sharp blast of cold air as a door is opened is felt the more refreshing if one has felt too warm.
RLF: Whereas that same cold blast would feel uncomfortable were it to blow into a room that was not particularly warm.
JSM: There you have it. The trouble with pleasures of a physical nature is that they are momentary, and that they can be heightened in intensity by their opposites.
RLF: I only think that holds for heat and cold – direct, physical opposites. But what about actual physical pain – what is that’s opposite?
JSM: Point taken. One feeling pain, physical pain, can only be relieved by the absence of that pain, its removal, rather than providing pleasurable sensations contemporaneously.
RLF I agree. The excruciating feeling experienced after banging one’s thumb with a hammer can hardly be softened by being given something sweet to taste. Pain has no antidote except its removal. Tincture of myrrh alleviates the pain from a rotting molar. Nothing else will do but the removal of the pain. Biting on the bullet while having one removed without something to dull the pain merely serves to divert one's attention from the excruciating pain of the operation, it seems.
JSM: Yes, more of that later, now, returning to your stated goals.
RLF: Yes, I think I would be made happiest by something more enduring than merely feelings of physical pleasure.
JSM: Yet many are driven by pleasures of the here and now, nor want to be denied those feelings even though they are short in term and lost immediately beyond recall after the sensation. Why is that?
RLF: I can but surmise that such are but creatures of impulse, not given to thinking about anything beyond their next experience of physical pleasure – beyond their next sweet taste in the mouth.
JSM: I am sure you are right, and it is a pity that you are right, that there are such unfortunates alive, and out looking for something only as transient as physical pleasure.
RLF: And not only looking for that kind, but willfully ignoring any other experience that does not appear to yield a physical sensation of pleasure.
JSM: Happily, there are many such as we who do not ignore those experiences that do not provide immediate gratification.
RLF: But what makes us appreciate something that does not necessarily bring us pleasure of that physical kind?
JSM: Because we are human, not bovine, and being human, have taken it upon ourselves to learn what experiences there are that, although only rarely leading to physical pleasure, lead us to pleasures of a higher order.
RLF: That is what we refer to as education, is it not?
JSM: It is. Some hold that only education and the product thereof separates us from the birds and beasts of the field.
RLF: Worse for being but dumb animals, driven by an instinct they cannot rationalize, doubt or step away from, they are blameless in the kill; only killing that they may eat. Even the hyena, upon finding the corpse of a soldier lying under a scrape of dirt hurriedly prepared by hard pressed men under fire, even that hyena only goes so far as to defile the dead man’s body, his soul having fled. It does nought to the dead man’s name; that is left to his kind.
JSM: Precisely, our powers of deduction, our intelligence, if you will, being exercised, guides us along paths that provide pleasures of a higher, more lasting order, while if it is under-utilised, becomes moribund, extinct almost, and leads its poor owner to be beguiled into courses that, while seeming at first to provide a modicum of pleasure, ultimately and usually very quickly lead to less than pleasurable states.
RLF: The imbibing, taking, I know not what to call the activity, the taking of what are euphemistically referred to as ‘recreational drugs’ leads apace to a species of Hell upon Earth for the taker, while they are quickly and easily persuaded otherwise at the point of the offer to imbibe.
JSM: Those that prioritize physical pleasure at the expense of anything remotely more cerebral are as children to those who provide such demonic substances. The irony here is that it is the provider who comes closer to achieving anything more substantial than physical pleasure, in the shape only of financial reward!
RLF: While the user of the substance, having paid for the privilege, suffers untold agonies before dropping the yearning so induced by the substance that at first is promised to provide such great pleasure.
JSM: Enough of that. Let us deal with less exceptional cases and properties, qualities man is said to be capable of experiencing and possessing.
RLF: Such as what?
JSM: Such as altruism. Of what pleasure is that the provider?
Robert L. Fielding
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Jeremy Bentham - The Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham
Well known for his work on Utilitarianism and less well known for his invention, the Panopticon, used as a system of surveillance in penal institutions, Bentham was born in 1748 and was a radical reformer and keen political theorist.
In 'Talking to Pharaos', Bentham discusses the power of surveillance to change individual behaviour.
The advantages of visibility
RLF: You designed the panopticon to be used in prisons, didn’t you?
JB: Yes, to be used primarily for surveillance purposes to ensure good order was kept in penal institutions.
With a central tower looking out onto areas that were entirely visible to anyone in that tower, the behaviour of those in their cells was brought more into line with what is acceptable in those situations.
But then we found that behaviour of inmates was changed even when there was nobody manning the central tower. That the very idea, the thought that they were being watched was enough to make them moderate their conduct, as I have said.
RLF: And do you still think that would work in society at large, outside prison walls?
JB: Does it not work well enough, admittedly in a greatly altered form already? Do the majority of people not act as if they were being permanently being observed?
RLF: But it is not the watcher that causes us to behave ourselves, but rather, it is the social constructs and ideologies that do the watching, if we may call it that.
JB: It is watching, but by another name. It is as if we have kept the tower unmanned and now folk do not need a tower – they conduct themselves just as well as if they were being observed. It is an ideal that works to prevent most misconduct.
The so called Protestant work ethic is such a construct – that just rewards will be thy lot in the hereafter if one only works diligently towards it. You might say it is a myth – or at least a man made ideal rather than anything handed down to us from the Divine, though it is dressed up in that clothing, I grant you.
RLF: And it is what we call being civilized too, is it not? Living our lives decently, despite the fact that we are not constantly being watched.
J B: Some would hold that we are.
RLF: By whom, by whom do you imagine we are being watched?
JB: By the Lord Almighty.
RLF: That is true for those with faith, but for those with no faith to speak of and be guided by, what then?
JB: Even those would still do well to behave in a civilized manner.
RLF: But if we cannot count on their faith to enforce self-observation, to what can we resort?
JB: To more practical, pragmatic means. If appeals to faith do nothing to rouse persons to behave in a civilized way, then we must appeal to what does motivate them.
RLF: And what motivates such as these who have no faith, and appear also to have no ethical base from which to climb?
JB: Self-interest, my friend. Anything they do is instrumental, is it not? They tell lies so that they may gain, so they think, by it. They do wrong because that is how they think personal progress is achieved, and because they cannot help themselves.
Those who are habitually used to acting in ways that deny others their rights but accrue something – usually materially gainful in nature, come to be instructed by their own mind and by the examples set by other miscreants.
RLF: Yes, but miscreants invariably get their comeuppance, do they not?
JB: Indeed, but that punishment is not necessarily visible to others, is it? What we need is ideals that work for those who appear to have none and not to be moved by them. They need to be shown that it is indeed in their own interests to behave well and not abuse or misuse others.
RLF: But what is there that could achieve that, if not faith, or force?
JB: To be shown that in acting in ways that we deem reprehensible, immoral, wrong, we are in fact endangering ourselves, even as we err. For if we all did that – misused and abused, did as we pleased, took what was not ours to take, told ourselves and others untruths to cover our wrongdoings, then what would our world be like? How could we live our lives if trust did not exist? It is that which would convince those elements of the right of the argument, and the value of doing good over doing bad.
RLF: That is all fine and large, but how will you convince those who habitually commit crime, for instance, that they are in fact working against their own interests. Crime doesn’t pay, but enough still think it does to continue breaking the law.
JB: The rehabilitation programmes in prisons must be tailored along lines that adhere to psychological processes than merely attempting to give as prisoner a skill by which he can earn his living and not have to turn to crime.
RLF: But those schemes are still important enough not to be ditched at the expense of your suggested psycho-games.
JB: What I am proposing is not instead of those schemes to give people skills, but a programme designed to enhance life through self-development, leading to the realization that there is another, better way than crime.
RLF: Do you think such a programme will have any effect on those who go against social mores?
JB: We will never know until we try. What is going on at present is clearly having little effect – offenders re-offend and prisoners released soon return.
Robert L. Fielding
Charles Darwin - the beaks of Galapagos finches
Charles Darwin
An English naturalist, later to become famous for his work on natural selection, Charles Darwin’s scientific discoveries are the foundation of modern day biology, though his seminal work, ‘On the Origin of Species’ remains a highly controversial and disputed work.
In 'Talking to Pharaos', Darwin
discusses the act of noticing the significance in the seemingly insignificant.
Observations and interpretations
RLF: In observing the miniscule changes in the beaks of Galapagos finches, you were brought nearer to your theory of natural selection, were you not?
CD: Indeed, differences in size and shape, in configurations of upper and lower parts were indicative of whether this bird or that survived the harsh winters there, when the only source of sustenance was provided the birds in the shape of hard berries.
RLF: Would you say that your theories were in opposition to former paradigms, as science is said to progress?
CD: Prior to my own findings and the theories that sprung from them, little had been done to challenge the various beliefs, and myths surrounding our origins on this good Earth.
RLF: So your work was pre-paradigmatic?
CD: How could it be? As I have said, the myths and beliefs regarding our origins coalesced into some form of unity, a coherence that my theories have, without the necessary rigour that must accompany scientific theory. Gaps in knowledge, going unexplained in belief systems, are of necessity worked on to open up possibilities in more scientific fields.
That, I suppose, is the chief difference between a science and a belief system, which you may call a religion if it is believed by sufficient numbers and merely a belief it is only held by few. Whereas, as I have said, science proceeds by falsifying prior assumptions about the way our planet is organized, working from one paradigm, as Thomas Khun says, to another one that yields more information that can be assimilated with other findings and the assumptions that stem from them. We rarely prove something new, as I did, but work away at our subject in order to refine it to a more accurate version of reality.
RLF: But what of systems of belief, how do they proceed?
CD: By coming to a halt at some point, that has been hitherto explained by recourse to faith in that which cannot be rationally explained. Faith is a vital component of any system of belief that holds Man in its tenets. Science has no such hold on man. On the contrary, men of science make it their life’s work to disprove things that were formerly held to be true. Nothing is revered, sacred in the world of science; if it is, someone is sure to come along and disprove it.
In the world of faith, items and beliefs are held to be sacred, which is to say that they have stood the test of time in being so revered, as illustrations of the strength of a faith and its disciples and followers.
RLF: Are faith and science in opposition then, would you say?
CD: It matters but little to the scientist what stands in his way; the intricacies of a microscopic organism, unseen by the naked eye, present glorious challenges to men of science. Things that would baffle and bemuse men with no interest or aptitude for scientific exploration, merely serve to encourage the scientist. Opacity is his stock-in-trade; he delves into a world of mystery, explaining and understanding, not by recourse to magic, though it may seem so to the unpracticed eye, but to the rigour in which he has been so trained and is so used to, it is second nature to him.
Intelligent thought to the scientist is merely the ability to formulate more questions, the deeper with which to probe until a more fuller understanding of the process is yielded.
In faith, even the smallest degree of reservation is intolerable; what is required is an acceptance of tenets that would not necessarily stand up to scientific rigour, especially then. That is not to say that all should be thought of as untrue or only half true; a belief in systems that are coherent very often will not countenance hard scientific factual data, but rather deal in those qualities of man that are vital to his wellbeing, and his propensity to live in harmony with his fellow man. Such are like as not those qualities whose properties and sources have been the source of philosophical discourse since time immemorial.
RLF: You mean that were Plato to talk to a more recent professor of philosophy today, they would understand each other’s precepts?
CD: Precisely so, yes, very likely they would, whereas if Copernicus came from his cathedral in Frauenberg, with his unpublished manuscript, ‘Commentariolus’ to discourse with Galileo only an hundred years later, the former would be amazed at the extent to which knowledge of the movements of the planets had moved on until Galileo was able to publish his ‘Dialogue concerning the two world systems’, a work that ostensibly upheld Copernican theory at the expense of the earlier ‘Ptolomeic system’ and marked a turning point in scientific and philosophical thought.
What passes for progress in scientific knowledge, far outstrips that of knowledge in the domain of questions about man’s spiritual existence and his raison d’ etre on Earth. And it is precisely because scientists are rather more iconoclastic in their work that this is so.
RLF: But surely it has as much to do with the density of respective subject matter as it has to do with man’s ability to get to the bottom of something.
CD: I will certainly allow that to be the case; in the first science that required scientists to postulate processes they could not see, chemistry, such processes were much more amenable to being unwound and thereby explained more fully than any question relating to the human condition could ever be, and, I may say, can ever be. We are but little further on that we were in Plato’s day.
RLF: Also for the very good reason that the material under scrutiny in the two fields varies so much in terms of reliable consistency; an element, say copper, behaves in England as it would in China or the East Indies. One cannot say that of man.
CD: Indeed one cannot, but if man is subjected to scrutiny in terms of his physical properties, our knowledge of his workings is so far in advance of what it was even one hundred years ago, that a doctor from that age would be baffled were he to observe an operation on the human brain and its disorders in this one.
RLF: He might understand the disorder, the symptoms at any rate, but would be confounded by its subsequent treatment.
CD: That goes some way to understanding the different worlds inhabited by scholars of humanities, and those of the physical sciences, I think.
RLF: As you say, the differences lie in the application of logic to problems that yield results, versus states that are not questioned, a tenet of the faith being that they remain unquestioned.
CD: Perhaps the main difference is in the fact that whereas one is couched in terms that are quantifiable and can be measured, the equivalent in terms of beliefs cannot, or at least not in any notations that can be repeated and stand for fixed values and quantities.
I also think much of the difference lies in the practitioners and those authorities of each. Were you to come across a gathering of scientists, informally discussing this or that phenomenon, you would find that they were chiefly concerned with their lack of knowledge, and directed by what it was they would have to uncover and clarify, or prove to proceed.
A similar informal gathering of priests, on the other hand, would most probably be indulging in discourse which had as its theme how much each knew and how well their doctrines were written and spoken of. Where uncertainty and doubt are paramount, akin to curiosity, a species of complacency would characterize the other, last gathering mentioned.
RLF: So it comes down to this, doesn’t it, that science is governed by questions, while faith has answers to questions?
Robert L. Fielding
An English naturalist, later to become famous for his work on natural selection, Charles Darwin’s scientific discoveries are the foundation of modern day biology, though his seminal work, ‘On the Origin of Species’ remains a highly controversial and disputed work.
In 'Talking to Pharaos', Darwin
discusses the act of noticing the significance in the seemingly insignificant.Observations and interpretations
RLF: In observing the miniscule changes in the beaks of Galapagos finches, you were brought nearer to your theory of natural selection, were you not?
CD: Indeed, differences in size and shape, in configurations of upper and lower parts were indicative of whether this bird or that survived the harsh winters there, when the only source of sustenance was provided the birds in the shape of hard berries.
RLF: Would you say that your theories were in opposition to former paradigms, as science is said to progress?
CD: Prior to my own findings and the theories that sprung from them, little had been done to challenge the various beliefs, and myths surrounding our origins on this good Earth.
RLF: So your work was pre-paradigmatic?
CD: How could it be? As I have said, the myths and beliefs regarding our origins coalesced into some form of unity, a coherence that my theories have, without the necessary rigour that must accompany scientific theory. Gaps in knowledge, going unexplained in belief systems, are of necessity worked on to open up possibilities in more scientific fields.
That, I suppose, is the chief difference between a science and a belief system, which you may call a religion if it is believed by sufficient numbers and merely a belief it is only held by few. Whereas, as I have said, science proceeds by falsifying prior assumptions about the way our planet is organized, working from one paradigm, as Thomas Khun says, to another one that yields more information that can be assimilated with other findings and the assumptions that stem from them. We rarely prove something new, as I did, but work away at our subject in order to refine it to a more accurate version of reality.
RLF: But what of systems of belief, how do they proceed?
CD: By coming to a halt at some point, that has been hitherto explained by recourse to faith in that which cannot be rationally explained. Faith is a vital component of any system of belief that holds Man in its tenets. Science has no such hold on man. On the contrary, men of science make it their life’s work to disprove things that were formerly held to be true. Nothing is revered, sacred in the world of science; if it is, someone is sure to come along and disprove it.
In the world of faith, items and beliefs are held to be sacred, which is to say that they have stood the test of time in being so revered, as illustrations of the strength of a faith and its disciples and followers.
RLF: Are faith and science in opposition then, would you say?
CD: It matters but little to the scientist what stands in his way; the intricacies of a microscopic organism, unseen by the naked eye, present glorious challenges to men of science. Things that would baffle and bemuse men with no interest or aptitude for scientific exploration, merely serve to encourage the scientist. Opacity is his stock-in-trade; he delves into a world of mystery, explaining and understanding, not by recourse to magic, though it may seem so to the unpracticed eye, but to the rigour in which he has been so trained and is so used to, it is second nature to him.
Intelligent thought to the scientist is merely the ability to formulate more questions, the deeper with which to probe until a more fuller understanding of the process is yielded.
In faith, even the smallest degree of reservation is intolerable; what is required is an acceptance of tenets that would not necessarily stand up to scientific rigour, especially then. That is not to say that all should be thought of as untrue or only half true; a belief in systems that are coherent very often will not countenance hard scientific factual data, but rather deal in those qualities of man that are vital to his wellbeing, and his propensity to live in harmony with his fellow man. Such are like as not those qualities whose properties and sources have been the source of philosophical discourse since time immemorial.
RLF: You mean that were Plato to talk to a more recent professor of philosophy today, they would understand each other’s precepts?
CD: Precisely so, yes, very likely they would, whereas if Copernicus came from his cathedral in Frauenberg, with his unpublished manuscript, ‘Commentariolus’ to discourse with Galileo only an hundred years later, the former would be amazed at the extent to which knowledge of the movements of the planets had moved on until Galileo was able to publish his ‘Dialogue concerning the two world systems’, a work that ostensibly upheld Copernican theory at the expense of the earlier ‘Ptolomeic system’ and marked a turning point in scientific and philosophical thought.
What passes for progress in scientific knowledge, far outstrips that of knowledge in the domain of questions about man’s spiritual existence and his raison d’ etre on Earth. And it is precisely because scientists are rather more iconoclastic in their work that this is so.
RLF: But surely it has as much to do with the density of respective subject matter as it has to do with man’s ability to get to the bottom of something.
CD: I will certainly allow that to be the case; in the first science that required scientists to postulate processes they could not see, chemistry, such processes were much more amenable to being unwound and thereby explained more fully than any question relating to the human condition could ever be, and, I may say, can ever be. We are but little further on that we were in Plato’s day.
RLF: Also for the very good reason that the material under scrutiny in the two fields varies so much in terms of reliable consistency; an element, say copper, behaves in England as it would in China or the East Indies. One cannot say that of man.
CD: Indeed one cannot, but if man is subjected to scrutiny in terms of his physical properties, our knowledge of his workings is so far in advance of what it was even one hundred years ago, that a doctor from that age would be baffled were he to observe an operation on the human brain and its disorders in this one.
RLF: He might understand the disorder, the symptoms at any rate, but would be confounded by its subsequent treatment.
CD: That goes some way to understanding the different worlds inhabited by scholars of humanities, and those of the physical sciences, I think.
RLF: As you say, the differences lie in the application of logic to problems that yield results, versus states that are not questioned, a tenet of the faith being that they remain unquestioned.
CD: Perhaps the main difference is in the fact that whereas one is couched in terms that are quantifiable and can be measured, the equivalent in terms of beliefs cannot, or at least not in any notations that can be repeated and stand for fixed values and quantities.
I also think much of the difference lies in the practitioners and those authorities of each. Were you to come across a gathering of scientists, informally discussing this or that phenomenon, you would find that they were chiefly concerned with their lack of knowledge, and directed by what it was they would have to uncover and clarify, or prove to proceed.
A similar informal gathering of priests, on the other hand, would most probably be indulging in discourse which had as its theme how much each knew and how well their doctrines were written and spoken of. Where uncertainty and doubt are paramount, akin to curiosity, a species of complacency would characterize the other, last gathering mentioned.
RLF: So it comes down to this, doesn’t it, that science is governed by questions, while faith has answers to questions?
Robert L. Fielding
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