Whoever determines what alternatives shall be made known to man controls what that man should choose from. He is deprived of freedom in proportion as he is denied access to any ideas, or is confined to any range of ideas short of the totality of relevant possibilities. Ralph Barton Perry
A notion I’ve held onto for years concerns the undermining of powerful insights. It’s a notion which is far too long on specifics, which in any event vary from person to person, but it goes something like this.
Buried within an unknown number of books which have already been written lies a sound and almost complete set of insights into the human condition. Sometimes nonfiction books, sometimes fiction, but it is almost all there. The most valuable insights are scattered across many books and now web pages, but for convenience I’ll stick with books.
One problem is that insights overlap and people differ in those they select plus the value they put on them. Another problem is that elites and higher social classes suppress or undermine powerful insights to maintain their own status. Their status could be damaged by many insights into hierarchies and human behaviour because elites are as completely enmeshed in the human condition as anyone else.
Sometimes elites suppress damaging insights by force as in the death of Socrates or the banning of Spinoza’s works. Sometimes by castigating or simply ignoring damaging insights. Sometimes by promoting misleading, sentimental or spuriously virtuous alternatives. But the insights are out there and becoming less easy to suppress.
Example – nonfiction within fiction.
For the first time it occurred to her that science was honesty, and that honesty was a great liberator. It cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense, but it left clean wounds which would heal quickly without scars, leaving life whole and sane and cured. It could make people less miserable because it dealt with hard realities, instead of the unwholesome putrescence of dead moralities, and the high sentimental purities which had ruined so many lives. Louis Bromfield – Twenty-Four Hours. Of course science must be honest and in being honest it does cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense. Which is why some sciences have been undermined.
Example – nonfiction within fiction
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble. Charles Dickens - Bleak House. It isn’t only law. Professions do make business for themselves, especially those in a position to extend their professional reach via a closed shop or at taxpayer expense.
Example – social observation.
But vain men are fools as well as ignorant of themselves, and make this plain to all the world; for, not doubting their worth, they undertake honourable offices, and presently stand convicted of incapacity: they dress in fine clothes and put on fine airs and so on; they wish everybody to know of their good fortune; they talk about themselves, as if that were the way to honour.
Aristotle – The Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s observation is much more widely known now as “The Emperor’s New Clothes” a folk tale by Hans Christian Andersen. A powerful insight, but somehow it is not as powerful as it should be because now it is a story for children. Aristotle’s insight has been undermined by treating it as a throwaway remark – “oh that’s the Emperor’s New Clothes” we say.
The number of possible examples is colossal. They do not coalesce into a clear viewpoint, but they do coalesce into an attitude, a disposition, or in B.F. Skinner’s sense, a repertoire of responses. This too is an insight – we respond via our existing repertoire of responses and are able to extend it.
The skillful speaker learns to tease out weak behavior and to manipulate variables which will generate and strengthen new responses in his repertoire. Such behavior is commonly observed in the verbal practices of literature as well as of science and logic. B.F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior
This is what is manipulated by elites. Not ideas, beliefs, values or principles but our repertoire of responses. We must build it from what is available and to a great extent what is socially approved. Elites manipulate what is generally available and what is generally approved. Many things flow from this.
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