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Sat 3 May, 2008 05:18 am
People in power get to construct reality
President Carter declared that the energy crisis is the "moral equivalent of war" in 1977. This declaration immediately imposed a network of entailments (to impose, involve, or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result). These entailments were such things as "enemy", "threat to national security", requiring "setting targets", "reorganizing priorities", organizing "strategies", accepting "sacrifice", "obeying the Commander in Chief", etc.
New metaphors, like old tried and true metaphors, can have the power to define reality; thus the conclusion that power can determine reality.
Metaphors create reality through a network of entailments that are coherent and commanding. Metaphors high light some things and push others under the rug. Our acceptance of a metaphor forces us to focus attention only on the aspects of our experience that it illuminates thereby by causing us to view its entailments as being true.
Concerns of truth do arise regarding new metaphors but of most importance are our perceptions and inferences following the metaphor and the actions sanctioned by it.
"In all aspects of life
we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphor. We draw inference, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor."
Can you give examples of how metaphors have directed action in your life?
Quotes from "Metaphors We Live By" by Lakoff and Johnson
This is a complex matter, but, stated (over)simply, it does seem that the powerful (individuals and classes) have the advantage--by means of control of the press and education--in shaping what passes for a society's construction of reality. At least this advantage applies to PUBLIC expressions of social values. Privately, however, oppressed peoples sometimes maintain an underground or counter-cultural version of the situation.
This kind of view of reality construction is typical of liberal post-modernism (in particular French) writing from the 1970s by writers such as Baudrillard and to a slightly lesser extent Foucault. While the ability of those in power to control the images and metaphors that are released into the field of discourse does have a large effect on how the world is perceived, the statement that these images actually *create* reality implies that reality is nothing more than that discourse. The question then becomes whether those in power have the ability to convince people that reality is other than it is or if they have the ability to create "reality" essentially out of thin air.
I totally agree. People in power control reality and technology is making then more powerful and the general public is getting stupider.
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
The powerful are the leaders. Leaders are not only powerful but they also frame the debates and set the agendas. However, leaders can not lead with out followers, the power of leaders to do all of that is directly determined by the followers willingness to follow. Leaders do have advantages in life, but everyone is complicit in granting then these privileges. The rest, the followers, have zero grounds for claiming victimization, they created the situation and they can end it.
That is true. But they can still be victims. Lies, propaganda, Coercion, oppression, suppression. Aren't these ways of victimizing?
Two sides of a single coin. But in this case one side is bigger than the other.
Re: People in power get to construct reality
coberst wrote:People in power get to construct reality
President Carter declared that the energy crisis is the "moral equivalent of war" in 1977. This declaration immediately imposed a network of entailments (to impose, involve, or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result). These entailments were such things as "enemy", "threat to national security", requiring "setting targets", "reorganizing priorities", organizing "strategies", accepting "sacrifice", "obeying the Commander in Chief", etc.
New metaphors, like old tried and true metaphors, can have the power to define reality; thus the conclusion that power can determine reality.
Metaphors create reality through a network of entailments that are coherent and commanding. Metaphors high light some things and push others under the rug. Our acceptance of a metaphor forces us to focus attention only on the aspects of our experience that it illuminates thereby by causing us to view its entailments as being true.
Concerns of truth do arise regarding new metaphors but of most importance are our perceptions and inferences following the metaphor and the actions sanctioned by it.
"In all aspects of life
we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphor. We draw inference, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor."
Can you give examples of how metaphors have directed action in your life?
Quotes from "Metaphors We Live By" by Lakoff and Johnson
ive been saying this all along !
some say god is all powerful, i say he is the MOST powerful.
Could a go dnot define reality?
It occurs to me that while the economically and politically powerful have more say than you and I regarding contemporary definitions, the worldview of Western Civilization is more the product of thinkers and creators going back many centuries. Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche, Kant, to mention only a few, have had more say in the development of our notions of reality than have the publishers of the New York Times or Fox Communications.
JLNobody wrote:It occurs to me that while the economically and politically powerful have more say than you and I regarding contemporary definitions, the worldview of Western Civilization is more the product of thinkers and creators going back many centuries. Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche, Kant, to mention only a few, have had more say in the development of our notions of reality than have the publishers of the New York Times or Fox Communications.
I don't know that there has ever been a shortage of thinkers and creators. However, most of them of considered cracked pots and are ignored. Almost always the ones that are not are the ones championed by the leaders. You need to no farther than the recent examples of mob action here at A2K against thinkers who produce views and arguments that are not considered to be socially acceptable. In almost all cases these views and arguments don't get an evaluation, they are rejected out of hand and made fun off, the the authors are personally villafied. A2K is a microcosm of the larger society, the dynamic is common. The leaders decide social acceptability, and decide who is given room to speak. The internet helps somewhat to depower the leaders' control over ideas, but only partly.
A2K is NOT, in my experience, "a microcosm of the larger society." Indeed, I consider A2K to contain many unusually enlightened (and politically liberal) individuals. How else could I have been tolerated for so many years?
hawkeye wrote:You need to no farther than the recent examples of mob action here at A2K against thinkers who produce views and arguments that are not considered to be socially acceptable. In almost all cases these views and arguments don't get an evaluation, they are rejected out of hand and made fun off, the the authors are personally villafied.
Are there not stories in history about people who've made remarkable discoveries only to be ridiculed and villified?
Their preservance and the strenght of their arguments still led their discoveries to change the world in different ways.
Cyracuz wrote:hawkeye wrote:You need to no farther than the recent examples of mob action here at A2K against thinkers who produce views and arguments that are not considered to be socially acceptable. In almost all cases these views and arguments don't get an evaluation, they are rejected out of hand and made fun off, the the authors are personally villafied.
Are there not stories in history about people who've made remarkable discoveries only to be ridiculed and villified?
Their preservance and the strenght of their arguments still led their discoveries to change the world in different ways.
So far as science and technology go your point is well taken, so far as anything else goes....no, it very rarely happens that way.
There's always Gandhi....
I don't think he was taken very seriously at first. Ridiculed perhaps. Villified certainly, going in and out of jail as he did.
But he made it all work to his advantage...
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