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1. Okay, before I start here I want to say that @CynicalPublius (CP) is probably my favorite X feed. Even when I disagree with him, he gives me a lot to ponder. If you’re not following him, you really ought to. If nothing else, read his tweet before reading my response.
2. Now, CP is right to be afraid. For a number of reasons. For hundreds of reason. For far too many reasons. But I'm going to focus on one. Disinformation. Or propaganda.
To first understand why ubiquitous smartphones are so good at spreading lies and misinformation, so good at making people believe absurdities that even a few years ago were seen as fringe if not totally insane, we must first blow up a myth. This myth is the intuitive notion that more information makes one less likely to be brainwashed.
The very opposite is true.
From Jacques Ellul’s seminal work Propaganda, Page 87, which I have called Ellul’s 6th Maxim:
Excessive data do not enlighten the reader of listener; they drown him. He cannot remember them all, or coordinate them, or understand them; if he does not want to risk losing his mind, he will merely draw a general picture from them. And the more facts supplied, the more simplistic the image. If a man is given one item of information, he will retain it; if he is given a hundred data in one field, on one question, he will have only a general idea of that question. But if he is given a hundred items of information on all the political and economic aspects of a nation, he will arrive at a summary judgment--”The Russians are terrific!” And so on.
Or the Russians are everywhere. Including me. I get that at least twice a week despite using my real name and having an internet and literary history that goes back decades.
What Ellul is saying here is frightening because it runs counter to what we think. We can't inform ourselves out of propaganda. More information doesn’t make us less likely to fall victim to misinformation, but more likely. We are used to thinking that low-info types are stupid and we are not. But the truth is that low-info voters, although they may indeed be stupid, often have a clearer picture of reality than, say, intellectuals, who, though they strive to be hyper-informed, are in reality only hyper-deceived.
3. What this means is that contrary to widely held notion that it is better to “keep informed,” you are instead sabotaging your own mental independence by subjecting yourself to almost any news source or opinion personality. This is as true for CNN as it is Fox News. It is as true for Jordan Peterson as it is Rachel Maddow. It is as true of a Joe Rogan joke as it is a Keith Olbermann rant.
You have to get it out of your head that you are the anointed one who never gets misinformed or falls under the sway of morons or the malicious. No one is that anointed one. It’s not even that these entities or personalities are corrupt, although often they very much are, sometimes accidentally and other times quite intentionally. It’s that you can’t keep all the info in your head. Like a surfer, you can’t be thinking about the last wave when the new one is upon you. You'll wipe out. The only way to digest the last wave is to stop surfing.
Over and over again I am stunned by how quickly things fall out of the news now. How is it possible that Joe Biden droned to death ten innocent aid workers and children--and no one even mentions it anymore? They hardly mentioned it when it happened. They’ll talk about him tripping on stairs more. Or what ice cream he's eating. Or whatever nonsense he last incoherently mumbled.
This is also why the indictments against Trump, surely political in nature and in other times would have been the end of the man, have failed so spectacularly to destroy him. One after another after another. One can hardly digest the first indictment before they’re piling up another. The point here, by the deceivers in the Democrat party (the GOP aren't any better, just more incompetent), is not to convince you of a crime, but to place upon you an impression. No one can keep up with all the mud thrown at the guy, and so you just fall into one of two camps. Ultimately most end where they started. Either he did it all, or he did none of it. As Ellul said, "a summary judgment." Rare is the person who can step out of that. And rare people don't decide elections.
This could only happen in an age of too much news. And it could only happen in an age where the news is with us all the time, ever-present, which brings us back to the smartphones. In the novel 1984, Big Brother was in every building, his face on a screen. But in 2023, we carry Big Brother so he is with us even when we’re hiking in the woods on a camping trip, when we’re eating dinner at a restaurant, when we’re visiting a sick mother in the hospital, when we're meeting a lover in a motel. It is with us more than our best friends, our co-workers, our spouses. And if you’re irreligious and have no God, it’s your only constant companion.
More information and more. And with every article read in haste, every interview half-digested, every book a weak slog of seedy and obviously hyperbolic allegations by former associates of the main players, we are made stupider and less and less ourselves. Even Orwell would be shocked at the level of our agreed upon slavery.
I could go into deeper detail than this, and tell you what the cure is for this problem (and no, it’s not merely canceling your internet and cable connections—although that would do it), but I have other work to do. Let me know if you want more. If I ever get over 1000 followers, I’ll think about adding to this.
#propaganda #smartphones #BidenDronedKids
Cynical Publius@CynicalPublius
Has anybody else but me noticed that we are all walking around with the collective knowledge of all mankind in a little brick in our pockets? I believe that throughout human history every person who ever lived to adulthood stopped and thought occasionally that things were spinning out of control, but the ubiquity of handheld devices, the knowledge they bring, the disinformation they can bring, and the non-stop connectiveness they provide collectively represent as dramatic a paradigm shift as any technology ever, except at warp speed. This is something different than mankind has ever before encountered. It scares me. Where will this land? Is the Tower of Babel in the past or is it a warning for tomorrow?
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