photo by Jonas Petersson (UU) - Creative Commons
Walker, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more. Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking. Walking you make the road, and turning to look behind you see the path you never again will step upon. Walker, there is no road, only foam trails on the sea.
Poem: Antonio Machado, trans. Willis Barnstone from Antonio Machado, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press, 2004
It’s only been a couple of days since I published Borderlands: Generative Dialogue - part 2, but the absence of any comments (or heart shaped likes) has me feeling that I may be writing into a bit of a void here. It may be that folks aren’t commenting because they’re really not following my line of reasoning. I don’t know. Or maybe folks don’t think there is any possibility of re-imagining and re-inventing politics in our time? I can’t know unless there are comments—, criticisms, praise, questions, etc. Please do let me know if you’re reading with interest, or finding this all just too tedious….
Okay, some random notes, I suppose, just to keep the ball rolling. It’s for you to see if you can assemble these notes into a pattern of meaning.
Walter Lippmann — “Lippmann was an early and influential commentator on mass culture, notable not for criticizing or rejecting mass culture entirely but discussing how it could be worked with by a government licensed ‘propaganda machine’ to keep democracy functioning. In his first book on the subject, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann said that mass man functioned as a ‘bewildered herd’ who must be governed by "a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." The elite class of intellectuals and experts were to be a machinery of knowledge to circumvent the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the ‘omnicompetent citizen’. 1
Noam Chomsky paraphrasing Walter Lippmann’s ideas about democracy:
“Now there are two ‘functions’ in a democracy: The specialized class, the responsible men, carry out the executive function, which means they do the thinking and planning and understand the common interests. Then, there is the bewildered herd, and they have a function in democracy too. Their function in a democracy, [Lippmann] said, is to be ‘spectators,’ not participants in action. But they have more of a function than that, because it’s a democracy. Occasionally they are allowed to lend their weight to one or another member of the specialized class. In other words, they’re allowed to say, ‘We want you to be our leader’. That’s because it’s a democracy and not a totalitarian state. That’s called an election. But once they’ve lent their weight to one or another member of the specialized class they’re supposed to sink back and become spectators of action, but not participants. That’s in a properly functioning democracy.
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
”People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They’re not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That’s really threatening.”2
“technology imperiously commandeers our most important terminology. It redefines “freedom,” “truth,” “intelligence,” “fact,” “wisdom,” “memory,” “history”—all the words we live by. And it does not pause to tell us. And we do not pause to ask.”
―Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
“In order to avoid misunderstanding it may be useful to mention again what I mean by “Technique” – often wrongly called “Technology” (cf. La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle [1954], Le Système technicien [1977]). What is called Technique can be assimilated neither to the machine nor to a collection of machines, methods and products. No longer a secondary factor integrated into a nontechnical society and civilisation, Technique has become the dominant factor in the Western world, so that the best name for our society is the “technicist society”. It is on technique that all other factors depend. Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. The latter is totally dominated and utilized (in Western society). Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. Technique is the complex and complete milieu in which human beings must live, and in relation to which they must define themselves. It is a universal mediator, producing a generalised mediation, totalizing and aspiring to totality.” — Jacques Ellul, from The Search for Ethics in a Technicist Society
Below the remarks are my own.
There are myriad “uses” for generative dialogue, but the one I’m highlighting here and now is one intended to awaken us to how popular conceptual schemas, ideologies, narratives, framings, etc., restrict our social imaginary, preventing us from enacting politics of a sort which could potentially be liberating. Many of the schematic elements for “thinking” about politics which are pervasive in our world now are, in my view, the very kind of propaganda Walter Lippmann was advocating for. Their propagandistic purpose is to limit our thoughts and perceptions to those which are convenient to a ruling “elite”. What is “generative” in such dialogues is our ability to see and understand anew, in a fresh new light and air. If you want to control and direct (and mis-direct) “the masses,” provide them with a very narrow and tight social imaginary of the political domain of life.
Ellul’s concept of technique is important to my project, regards politics … and the need for generative dialogue as a means to liberate the practice of politics from its capture by the mode of “technique” which may most aptly be called The Megamachine, as described by Fabian Scheidler in The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization.3
Aformal generative dialogue appears to me to be fundamentally necessary to the task we have ahead of ourselves if we are to reject Walter Lippmann’s pseudo-democratic propaganda state.4 This is so because generative dialogue is probably the most potent means of embodying and enacting the spirit of democracy within what I call “communities of care.” By “communities of care” I mean human scaled local communities which embed and embody kindness, compassion, mutuality, sharing, cooperating (and the like) as the key virtues of their local communities. These are components of an ethos which is also a form of politics.
Aformal generative dialogue recognizes that we’re more knowledgeable as groups than we are as individuals, and therefore can learn from and with one another. It recognizes that we’re more creative in collaborative groups than we are in isolation. It recognizes that we need one another in our process of liberation from The Megamachine and its propaganda state.
But there are skills of dialogue to learn — and teach — together within small communities. We don’t all have these skills, but we can learn and develop them together with time and effort. We learn through practice—in the doing.
I emphasized small, local communities … and (implicitly) face-to-face gatherings for such practice above, but I’d not like to discourage the practices of aformal generative dialogue in other settings and contexts, including in print, cyber-text, telephone, zoom, etc.
Because it is aformal, aformal generative dialogue doesn’t exclude debate, but, in the version I’d favor, it would minimize the role of debate and emphasize a cooperative, collaborative style of verbal sharing, one in which we’re intending to lift one another up, help one another in our desire to learn, gain insight, and expand our knowledge and knowing.
We learn this practice by doing it together. It isn’t a known, fixed “thing” — but a process in relation.
I would argue that Walter Lippmann’s role for “mass men” (ordinary people) has come to pass. Not that Lippmann was in any sense alone in advocating for this kind of pseudo-democratic society in which self-declaring “elites” manage the rest of us like farm animals.
Okay. Now your meaning is clear, and I agree. The previous post I read about half of was, in your words, James, all just too tedious for a tired old mind to follow. Even so, I trusted that you had a good point and in a way I couldn't follow, was using language accurately. Thanks for the clarification.
Hi James,
How about a little well intentioned criticism ?
I think you have spent the last three posts trying to stir up a freewheeling discussion about energy descent, voluntary or not and how we deal with it. You know - How do people who have busy lives trying to make ends meet engage in this idea ? It's not something you will read about in the paper or see on network news or hear about on that bastion of free thinking, NPR.
Economic, corporate and government powers that be have no interest in anyone thinking about energy descent. It blows up the economy, crashes the capitalist system and makes it impossible to get reelected.
On the other hand, people know that something is wrong. They can't make ends meet yet some people (and the people they see on TV) are living fabulous, luxurious lives. When I was a kid we were on the edge of USDA Zone 3, now we are in Zone 5. People can't imagine a lower energy world but have a sneaking suspicion it is coming. They are at a complete loss for what to do.
So, how do we talk about this to try to get something better than absolute collapse and chaos ? No ? If not count be among the confused. If so, just come out and say it.
Greg