Truth and consequences
Mistrust and suspicion are on the increase in our society; and confidence in our institutions is in decline. To understand why a “crisis of trust” is so serious, we must take account of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who placed honesty and trustworthiness at the heart of his theory of how we should live.
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/philosophy/kant-on-trust
Do please read the above link, it's very short. It's also 14 years old, and the crisis of trust has rather gotten deeper.
“there will seldom be a more serious misconduct allegation against a member of parliament or mayor than to lie repeatedly to the voting public on a national and international platform, in order to win your desired outcome”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/29/boris-johnson-appear-court-eu-referendum-misconduct-claims
There are consequences in law if one lies in business; one can be prosecuted under the trade descriptions act sued for breach of contract, or convicted of fraud. But for politicians, there seem to be no consequences, unless this private prosecution succeeds. It used to be that politicians had to resign when their decisions or their claims were shown to be wrong, but not now.
One of the features of a loss of trust in institutions is that there is an increase in trust of random emotionally satisfying absolutist conspiracy theorists. This is not a new phenomenon.
[quote= G K Chesterton]When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.[/quote]
There are particular threads to discuss particular cases, so I don't want to get lost in trying to decide them here. Rather, I wonder if there is any agreement that honesty in public life should be enforceable in principle in somewhat the same way that it is in business? If my new gizmo doesn't do what it says on the tin, I am entitled to my money back; perhaps I could sue if my taxes are misspent?
Comments (58)
Politics is strict on any president, he/she has to make crucial decisions in short time periods, we can't expect perfection.
Trumps collusion with Russia should be forgiven as beyond that his politics was good.
I blame the Americans for that. It’s primarily due to the corruption of politics by business. And then of course they exert so much influence through their media and computer systems and so forth, that it simply proliferates endlessly.
I think liberal democracies assume a level of honesty, and in fact rely on it. The principles behind liberal democracies are that citizens ought to enjoy freedom as untrammelled by external restraint as possible, but that this implicitly requires an adherence to an ethical code. When that goes, well, anything goes. Which was a hit song in the 1930’s.
Wikipedia: Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics and post-reality politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.
Just look at so many posts on this forum where feelings carry more weight than evidence and claims are made that everything is subjective.
One idealistic system that has clearly failed every instance of its implementation is Communism. As far as I can see Communism requires an ideal person who's transcended all the qualities, such as deception, greed, etc., that in fact make us human. The ideology failed because it didn't have within it's structure a means of preventing or correcting the many forms human folly can take. It allowed one party forever.
Democracy, at least as it's generally practiced, is more resilient to human flaws. A limited term in office prevents perpetuation of deception and authoritarianism. In other words democracy is a healthier robust form of government that can weather fraudulent politicians. One could say democracy preempts human weaknesses such as untrustworthy characters.
So, we shouldn't worry about the lack of trust between the electorate and the elected as the system will self-correct as is evidenced by your post, a reaction which with the right quorum will neutralize any misguided politician.
Please don't talk about Trump, and please don't talk about communism and capitalism in this thread. Please talk about TRUST, and the importance of telling the truth, and how these things can be sustained in a merely human and imperfect world.
Here's a question, is enforced honesty - pure honesty?
Before you answer, consider the following: is enforced freedom - pure freedom?
Quoting unenlightened
Not really. If you get scammed, you don't deserve a reprisal; but it's common practice - partly due to goodwill, partly due to sales tactics.
I don't think we can talk about the decline of trust in public without talking about the political use of fear and the political strategy of anti-politics. We know that we can't trust politicians now, but we need reasons to stay mostly complacent or afraid to act, and we need useless channels to funnel dissent down to maintain (undemocratic) stability.
The alienation of people from their government representatives mirrors the alienation of the political class from international vectors of power. One way to address this issue is to replace non-compliance with structurally conditioned indifference; the 'non-linear' part of Russian propagandist Surkov's non-linear warfare:
The key part of this management strategy is the creation of supported avenues for dissent which stymie the formation of effective popular movements.These are gatekeepers for political action, moving the goalposts or hiding them.
Selectively inefficient legislative apparatuses play a role here: the legal system covering criminal negligents in Grenfell in the UK is a good example, so was the lack of jail time for our criminally negligent speculators in 2008. Sometimes this can be interpreted in terms of regulatory capture, sometimes it's (also) a systemic blindspot (see inequality + overproduction and climate change). A diffuse and inefficient (or intentionally badly enforced in the case of our tax laws) gatekeeper-administrative apparatus has the dual purpose of blocking internal political intervention and discouraging grass roots activism by rendering it internationally collaborative by necessity. It has the perhaps intentional side effect of alienating honest citizens from politics by denying the efficacy or applicability of their votes and petitions.
The media management of outrage interacts with our modern day equation of politics=political discourse to play a role here, the contours of acceptable opinion are rarely perturbed, and the well known alliance between powerful corporations and media outlets (cough Murdoch and Koch cough) project the voice of the ruling class from the institutions which help shape the terms of debate in which popular opinion is formed. Politics on social media is typically sound and fury organising nothing except the convenience of our ruling class.
An emerging role for 'influencers' is taking place, acting as pseudo-servants of the ruling classes by embodying acceptable opinions which are near the contours of acceptable opinion. The communities which support influencers also necessarily become associated with a consumer identity through the algorithms which shape the medium they are in: these algorithms also watch their every move, and our governments have almost unrestricted access. Here we can see the role of ideological echo-chambers, discretising identity into a panopticon of conflicting units that in reality have far more shared political interest than their antipodal role in discourse suggests.
This promotes a second level of apathy and indifference, there are people who can 'see through' this shit, which includes many liberal commentators, but this is still within the narrows of acceptable opinion; it is fashionable to bemoan the degradation of discourse, and this too is organised over influencer communities.
Then, unfortunately, we have anti-politics; which is a populist political rhetorical strategy that demeans official political opponents as part of the ineffective system (which everyone recognises), and thereby they provide false hope of revolution in rhetoric but their policies are more of the same. We have luminaries here from the milquetoast left and right, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Nigel Farage and Trump.
The political situation surrounding anti-politics must be seen on the level of social structure which produces these effective demagogues rather than blamed on the examples. Their popularity only makes sense under the public acknowledgement of the degraded power of democracy in the West. Of course, Western democracies have rarely had this power, the interwoven threads of capital and government were created along with the working class and colonial expansion, exporting the hatred and indifference of the ruling class for their workers and citizens abroad, which was immediately re-internalised through the politics of fear-mongering racism.
The politics of fear in general also plays a privileged part here, as trust in our nation is better fuelled by xenophobia defining an empty, other-less Us through blind prejudice against the other; better fuel than a sincere commitment to a democracy of trusted institutions, which requires a lot of fire and sackings and arrests to achieve at this point. This politics of fear resonates with the anti-political and discursive elements of the non-linear war we face on all fronts; systematic trust is dead, we need to recreate it politically on our own terms.
For talk about the resurgence of right nationalism across Europe and America, the politics of fear, the anti-political element, and the reactionary disgust against feminism and post-colonial studies interact to make an actionable space of belief to propagandise. One way out of this trilemma of fear, undermined democracy and corporate power is fascism; which has the problems it always has, the other is to organise left; which requires us to repurpose the media which fail us every day.
You mean like, "I honestly believe I deserve that," or, "I honestly believe the ends justify the means," etc, etc. Yeah, we've really enforced such.
The problem with consensus is it is just that.
Politics is tricky around life and therefore can't be strictly moderated. Um.. His war stance with Iran, anti immigration policies, his control and enhancement of budget. I guess highlight me in the Trump thread if you want to talk.
Please take your fascinating discussion to the Trump thread.
A rejoinder to my previous post is that a totalising conception of corporate power is not instrumentally useful in resisting its deleterious effects on public trust, so more than ever we need careful sociology and political analysis to track the limit points, fault-lines and interfaces between the ruled public, the ruling classes, and our glorified HR-for-capital governments.
That's how a representational democracy govt. works. You choose someone to handle the budget. If you don't like how they handled the budget, vote for someone else next election.
How about we eliminate political parties all together to try and limit some of the polarization this country is going through, and have the media stop putting microphones in front of politicians faces just so that they can lie and spin, spin and lie. I don't give a damn what a politician says because I know it will fall well short of the truth. I pay attention to their actions and how they vote in Congress.
I'd like to try, anyway. I gave a link in the op to the Open Learning site. It is a source I trust, both academically and politically. I trust them, not to be perfect, but to be careful; to be concerned to be accurate and unbiased in their material. Likewise, I generally trust the ingredients list on food packaging to be accurate. And as Wallows points out, money is entirely made of trust - well trust and rather thin paper. It's not a matter of left or right particularly - social life, economic life, law and order, governance, academia, science, every good thing depends on trust.
I had thought that would be obvious enough not to need saying. So when a scientist fiddles his results, it's a big scandal, he loses his job and so on. When a policeman takes bribes, it is a scandal and he loses his job, his pension, and goes to prison. When a firm lies about the meat in its pies, it is a scandal, the product is taken off the shelves and they are prosecuted under the trade descriptions act.
So we see how it is when people do not trust the media and do not trust politicians. It's not a different kind of case; things stop working. The difference is that there is no enforcement of any standard. In the UK it used to be managed by peer pressure...
Quoting Harry Hindu
Why does it only work that way? No one would consider that an adequate way to regulate surgeons. 'You don't like how they handled your operation, use a different one next time.' It's ridiculous, and with the government, many many more lives are at stake. To demand at least honesty does not seem too much. To expect that failed politicians resign or be sacked is no odder than to expect surgeons that fail to resign or be sacked.
One man's "failed" politician is another man's "successful" politician. That is politics. So maybe we should eliminate politicians and representation and just let all citizens use the internet to vote for any bill or budget that is proposed. What a hoot that would be!
As everybody knows, when anything goes, then it's like the song by Leonard Cohen in the 1980's, so unlikely to be a hit:
[i]Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah, give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah, when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows[/i]
So, yeah, hold the politicians (and the press and the guilty individuals within corporations) legally accountable for lying to and deceiving the public; I think it's a great idea, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. To realize a genuine state of trust we need a massive paradigm shift; a radical alteration of consciousness itself. People need to really want it, and be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices and changes to their habits.
Even assuming the analogy apt (i.e. that it is as much fraud for a gizmo seller to sell an ineffective gizmo to you as it is for a politician to obtain your vote under false promises), I'd still disagree with the proposition that both should be afforded the same remedies in court because I do not see the purpose of law as seeking logical consistency. That different classes of people are treated differently in order to advance particular state interests seems reasonable to me. If we choose, for example, to give emergency room physicians greater protection against negligence suits than we do other physicians (as some states do) seems reasonable if the purpose is to reduce emergency room costs and assure the public there will be plenty of emergency care when needed. Logically, though, an ER doctor is just another gizmo maker.
The question then is why can't we sue every politician who secures votes saying he will not vote for X the minute he votes for X if he is just another gizmo producer? My response would be the same as above, which is that the societal effect would be more damaging than allowing the current state of affairs to continue forward. What would happen is that the passage of legislation would cease taking place in the legislative building, but it would move to the courthouse, where every empowered citizen would file endless lawsuits trying to advance their interests before judges and juries.
As an aside, I also am not particularly troubled by the current state of distrust in government and the lying that now occurs except to the extent the acts of politicians amount to actual violations of law. That is, I don't see us at a nadir where we now need to reconsider our limited remedies of impeachment, recall elections (available in certain cases), and just waiting to election time to vote for the other guy. The world has been through far worse times than now.
Strawpolitician, you have there. Anyone is entitled nay obligated to change their plans as circumstances change. Think matters of fact. As per my previous example of a UK politician claiming that leaving the EU will save money that it cannot possibly save. Or incompetence on this sort of scale.
Quoting Hanover
Well all I am suggesting is that politicians be subject to the same kind of legal restrictions as every other citizen in every other kind of job.
And how do you subject politicians to legal restrictions when it is the politicians that define the legal restrictions?
Which is what I said earlier:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting unenlightened
Good luck. One man's revolutionary is another man's terrorist.
I think it's relevant to distinguish socially necessary trust, which is in some sense inviolable for the current functioning of things, and personal trust, which is based on an individual's relationship with whatever is trusted to some degree. People could stop trusting in money personally, and when that happens there are economic effects, but people can't stop treating it as a social necessity so long as the present order of things, or something close to it, holds.
Personal trust, moreover, is quite tied to socially necessary trust. One amazing revelation, though it is actually quite old really, which the success of anti-politics confronts us with acutely is that the powers which keep things running are not vouchsafed by personal trust in the aggregate; we know most government institutions cannot be trusted in all the senses we'd need to trust them to say we trust them, but nevertheless society keeps moving along since the relevant powers reproducing socially necessary trusts are doing so.
Socially necessary trust can perhaps be called an operative belief seen in our actions, even if the emotional valences of trust are not there.
It is always relevant to ask 'who do we trust?' 'for whom do we trust?' 'on what basis do we trust?' and 'does our trust matter?' - things are currently organised where personal trust in the system in the aggregate matters little for its ongoing function. I don't want to 'psychologise' trust here for the same reason that I don't want to 'psychologise' logic in other places; trust is always a worldly social relation with material consequences and grounding, mediated by the conditions of social-economic-political-cultural life which are situationally relevant to the target of the emotional valences of personal trust.
We trust our direct sensory perception - at first - because we have no choice in the matter. Ducks, dogs, and dinosaurs have never been able to doubt whether or not their physiological nervous system is dependable/trustworthy.
Trust is akin to a load bearing structure of the written/spoken word. That is particularly obvious when we think about direct proportional effects/affects. When trust is high in a speaker, one takes them at their word. One thinks/believes that the person is speaking sincerely.
"Truth telling" can lead to a bit of confusion if it is conflated with sincerity/honesty. One can speak sincerely, one can speak clearly, one can be perfectly honest, and...
One could be stating a falsehood. While being honest is admirable, it does not require omniscience. One is lying when one deliberately misrepresents their own thought/belief. Lying is what insincere speakers are doing.
Making promises to the electorate is what politicians do. When one sincerely promises to do 'X', then it is his/her obligation, which they voluntarily entered into, to make the world match their words. That is the difference between a promise made by an insincere speaker, and one made by a sincere one. The insincere speaker knows that, knows the power of that, and uses it as a means to garner/gain trust.
When enough promises are broken, the individual speaker is no longer needed and/or wanted as someone to depend upon. When the government consists of long lists of just such people, the citizens will lose their trust. When the citizen no longer believes that their vote matters, voter turnout will falter. If within a fifty year timeframe, a government passes legislation that offers financial incentive for citizen business owners to move all the operations to another country, that government has turned it's back on it's own people. Not a fatal mistake. It can be corrected, and ought.
Governments create the socioeconomic landscape. There is no reason for to not use that power as a means to help foster and/or cultivate more opportunity and options for all citizens being governed.
The trust between people is a critical point of reference in the working world. That is not necessarily aligned with law that gives one redress for crimes committed.
On top of not telling lies and screwing other people, the imperative to not treat other people as means to an end is really difficult when doing just that is your job description.
Trust is earned, it cannot be enforced. When it is lost, we suffer the consequences. But trust will not be regained through enforcement. That ship has sailed. This thread is depressing.
It's probably rooted in what we are biologically. It's interesting to think of a large scale society as a manifestation of our make-up the way a bee-hive is for bees.
Would you be ok calling that potential a fundamentally biological thing? Or is there something extra-biological about it?
Eh, we've evolved as social animals; our biology and development are radically social, so're all the (probably) unique higher order mental functions we have. I'm happy saying it's rooted our body, so long as our body is understood to already be a social organism.
No. Trust cannot be earned. You may have turned down 40 pieces of silver to betray me, but what about 60? One has never quite earned it. But to enforce a standard is not to create trust at all, it is to declare whatought to be trustworthy. It's like having a law against shop-lifting; it doesn't make every customer trustworthy, but sets out what being a trustworthy customer consists of.
In the US, it could be accomplished by the judiciary because there's a federal statute about defrauding the US. A prosecutor would have to show that the lie was intentional.
Well in a way, if we can persuade ourselves that this is important to our lives, that we can trust politicians and officials the way we have to (even if we cannot absolutely) trust drivers to stop at red lights, then most of the work is done. I don't think everyone is convinced yet though. There is a contingent of 'freedom of speech is freedom to lie and cheat and undermine the fabric of society.' Once we've crossed that bridge, I think I can trust the lawyers to get a robust and balanced system in place, especially if we hold them accountable if they don't.
One of the things that happened in the UK that constituted the degeneration of politics in large part was the Bairite move from conviction politics to focus group politics. Rather than try to convince the electorate to support what they believed to be the right policies, the Blair New Labour method was to find out from focus groups what was popular, and make that the policy. From amorality comes immorality.
How would you prove that lying politicians undermine the fabric of society? If society is a manifestation of our biology, its fabric would have to be pretty sturdy. Or is it a certain kind of society that you're really favoring?
The American Civil War, which opened the door to great moral good, was triggered by the lies of a few politicians. Apparently this kind of lying ran to extremes and absurdity in those days. Society survived it and ultimately benefited from it.
No ,it is possible to be unsocial, like pandas are, but if there are social relations, they depend on trust, in the same way that language depends on truth - if no one tells the truth, language becomes useless and nobody would bother with it. That's it - social, or solitary - there isn't another option.
But even if true, it wouldn't follow that the lies of politicians undermine social stability or integrity.
So your argument is a rationalist one that doesn't ultimately convict anyone of damaging society. It only warns against mass inter-citizen fraud.
I think all we have is that fraud is a crime that we prefer to have less of.
I don't understand this attitude. Are you saying that if I was close to you for years, a good friend for many years, and I never did anything to incline you to distrust me, I would never earn your trust? Are you paranoid or what?
Quoting unenlightened
OK, I see that such a standard is set to demonstrate what being trustworthy consists of. We might model ourselves to the standard to become trustworthy people, or judge people in reference to the standard in order to determine whether or not they are trustworthy. Where is the need for enforcement? It appears to me like enforcement would have a negative affect. It would force the untrustworthy to behave according to the standard against their will, making them appear to be trustworthy, so that we might judge them as trustworthy, when they really are not. Then they would take advantage of us in other ways where the enforcement didn't reach. Dishonest people may obey the laws, but find the loopholes.
Quoting unenlightened
It is not the rule which establishes what ought to be, we determine what we believe ought to be, and then we make the rule to represent this. So it was determined that legal tender ought to be trustworthy and then the rule, that you cannot print your own, was produced to support this. The rule follows what we believe ought to be, not vise versa.
Either it is the case, or it is not the case that there ought not be forgers, shoplifters, or dishonest politicians, but making laws to represent one's opinion concerning this, will not change the truth concerning it. Neither will enforcing the laws change whether there ought or ought not be forgers shoplifters, or dishonest politicians.
What I think you are talking about is changing people's opinions about what ought to be. You want people to believe that politicians ought to be trustworthy for example. To do this, I think you need to get people to look at facts, not to make laws for enforcement.
Then we could work to make politicians great again.
Well I simply recount anecdotally that the zeitgeist round here has changed in that direction. But there have always been and still are politicians that I or others trust, even when we disagree. one can be honest or not on left and right equally, so I don't really see the necessity...?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. I'm saying that trust cannot be earned. I trust you already. It's not something you are entitled to because you are righteous.
I assume then, that "trust" is an attitude which you have toward me, and others as well. Would you say that you are born to be trusting, so it is instinctual that you tend to trust people, and you might learn at a young age that if a person failed your trust, you might revoke it? If so, do you think it is possible that someone else, someone like me might have been born with the instinct to be untrusting, and with that attitude I would learn at a young age that people would have to pass my tests of trustworthiness before I would trust them?
What if it's not an instinct at all, but something we learn at a very young age? Do you think it is possible that the experiences we gain at an extremely young age would shape our attitudes of trust? Suppose we're born with a sort of blank slate in respect to trust, and our young experiences form an attitude which makes us either naturally trust people, or naturally mistrust people. But these would be the extremes, the attitude to trust everyone, like yours, and the attitude to distrust everyone, like mine. In reality, I think most of us would actually fall in between somewhere.
So when we meet someone, on first impression one might either trust or not trust that person, due to the combination of some features of the person having been noticed, and the early age conditioning. In this case, we would not tend to naturally trust everyone, nor naturally distrust everyone, there would be features about the person which would trigger a natural trust or distrust toward the person, depending on the early age experiences.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm really having difficulty understanding this attitude. Are you saying that all people are entitled to your trust whether or not they are righteous? Are you saying that you place no conditions on your trust? I can see how trust itself might be construed as being unconditional, like love is sometimes supposed to be, but I cannot see how you could just naturally give anyone you meet unconditional trust. So you could give some people unconditional trust, like you could give some people unconditional love, if this is what trust is meant to be, without conditions, but how could you give this to anyone, or everyone you meet?
No, the opposite; no one is entitled to anyone's trust.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, in so far as one trusts, which may be as far as one can throw or some other extent, there can be no conditions. If I set a condition: - 'I'll trust you to respond thoughtfully, but if you don't, I'll kill you', then I don't trust you to respond thoughtfully, do I?
So a law against lying would institutionalize mistrust? Does an oath of office also do that?
I don't understand. Do you think institutions are the kind of thing that is capable of trusting or distrusting? I say it is the reverse, that people trust institutions or not, and they trust them the way they trust bridges - if they are well made they are trustworthy, and otherwise probably not. So a well made institution institutes relations of trustworthiness by having strong measures for weeding out incompetents and malevolants. I trust the surgeon because not anyone can just set up as a surgeon - the institution regulates to promote trust.
I am saying we need to trust each other, so we need robust institutions that facilitate our trust. Is that something strange?
It's not strange. :up:
I still don't understand. You are willing to trust anyone, yet no one is entitled to that trust. On what basis do you give your trust? If trust is some thing that you just randomly give to anyone at anytime, for no apparent reason, how is it of any value?
Quoting unenlightened
Isn't this exactly what enforcement says? It says that I do not trust that others will be trustworthy, so I want to enact measure to ensure that they will be. Isn't the desire for enforcement, and institutions to create trust just a manifestation of distrust?
Well I don't know how it is for you, but if I am a bit lost, I will ask a total stranger the way to the station, or whatever and totally trust that they will send me the right way if they can. But on the other hand, if I don't like the cut of his jib, I will not trust him and not ask. Totally my privilege, and nothing earned or unearned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, exactly what enforcement says. Except that enforcement does not speak, and enforcement does trust or mistrust. Institutions enforce -- so that -- we can trust. The way to the station is one thing, but I do not ask a random stranger to operate on my hernia, or govern the country. the weirdness of your difficulty is becoming unsettling...
Thank you for the interesting analysis of some totalitarian aspects of our societies. I just want to add a few points. I think that it will be beneficial to reconsider the concept of alienation that you applied. To better explain it, I like to bring one of the Zizek' assertions in the debate with Peterson. He said (based on his own personal experience - he was born and grew up in totalitarian Eastern Europe) that people could be happy while living in a totalitarian society. Further, to strengthen his argument, Zizek a few times pointed out at China. And, his great concern was that a kind of totalitarianism can become our own future. So, Zizek assumes the essential compatibility of "happiness" with various totalitarian regimes: being self-identified with an external transcendental unity, people experience not alienation, but happiness. The concept of alienation (as opposing to totality) implies a set of classical liberal political premises of the existence of the rational subject, the agent of rights, choices, and interests. However, there is no rational subject outside of the media megamachine, the role of which is not just that "of ideological echo-chambers, discretizing
identity into a panopticon of conflicting units." And, it is much more politically effective, than just "Politics on social media is typically sound and fury organizing nothing except the convenience of our ruling class." Each mass media platform produces, organizes, and reproduces not just the frame of essential public opinions and discourses, but also the chain of social and cultural codes, inseparable from corresponding values, positions, perspectives, views, etc.
Even when mass media looks like reporting the essential local news, first of all, they reproduce their own self-referential communicative machinic reality. "Real" facts and narratives in themselves have nothing substantial (= "identical") about them, but merely have to be identified in the context of being reviewed, selected, and retained for purposes of reference, of recursive use, and only for that purpose. Consequently, the media localizes and structures socio-psychological patterns, created by its mass action that just later may appear as "real" socially independent autonomic groups. It is most likely that Surkov's simulation of politics in Russia could be possible only through an intensive utilization of mass media processes and developments. Yet, in our societies, without an apparent external organizer, are they able to generate autonomously their totalitarian effects? I do not deny the well
known effects of alienation from politics, I just think that there are much more ways of political engagement than it is usually considered.
Are you starting to see why you shouldn't have been so quick to trust me? And I've been subjected to many institutions of enforcement.
Quoting unenlightened
I just don't see how years of training at medical school makes a person trustworthy. I really don't think you are even talking about trust here. You are judging whether a particular person is fit for a specific job (has the adequate training), not whether the person is trustworthy. The problem is that the person you judge to be fit for the job might still be untrustworthy. Judging whether a person has been subjected to the appropriate institutions of enforcement required to learn how to carry out a specific job is not the same judgement as judging whether the person is trustworthy, because those institutions are incapable of enforcing trustworthiness. The dishonest are capable of hiding their dishonesty, and that's how they deceive us.
No, not at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well I am talking about something, that I am calling trust. Here's the thing; I know that I am not competent, and do not anyway have the time or access to make a judgement of the competence of my surgeon. So I have to trust (or not) that the institutions of the hospital and the medical authorities are competent and that they exercise their judgement on my behalf and in my best interests.
Sure, and we only know that we have been deceived when we are undeceived. Nevertheless, we must trust each other or live alone. And we understand that the third party is often the most trustworthy, so if you need a builder, ask the neighbours for a recommendation.
It seems weird to me that any educated person could imagine that a society built on lies could long survive.
Wikipedia Shows How to Handle Political Polarization.
This is rather interesting. Wikipedia is, I would say, a radically socialist, (as in communal, non-profit) institution that values truth. And it has developed a bureaucracy and system of self-governance that seems to work to harness conflict and polarisation, and a topic neutral ethos that supports good behaviour and discourages and reduces the influence of vitriol and bullying. I'm going to look a bit further at this, and I think @Banno has some experience that might be useful.
I just have this vague idea that there is something potentially useful to be learned for the way we conduct politics and even possibly for the way we organise this very site.
Societies aren't built on (the work of) politicians.
A lot of politicians seem to do little that has practical impact, actually. That's one of the problems with politics as it's practiced now.
No, the real tragedy is that truth is now created by repetition. Gone are the days when truth was based on verifiable facts. Now you just stick to your beliefs no matter what, and repeat them until they become true. Bush and Blair brought this attitude to the fore, but it had been coming for a long time. Lies have become expected. That's a tragedy too.