I think Mencken, on education as propaganda, was probably referring to academia, the academies, whose aim has always been to produce predictable conformity in pupils. Think of the conformity produced by the police academies, for example, and you get the idea. This is not the same outcome that many universities desire. “The aim of a liberal education is to “liberate” the mind from prejudice and provincialism.” That was Mortimer Adler. Educators like Adler considered the capacity for independent thought to be a strength of citizenship, not a weakness, and as a component of liberty it was to be nurtured.
Certainly Edward Bernays appears anywhere near discussions of utopias and distopias. His idea of a utopia was a ruling intelligentcia of corporate elites holding sway over the great herd of ordinary people. This smart set could influence women to smoke cigarettes and trim people to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast for the good of the pork producers, by employing various paternalistic marketing strategies. In the end, this utopian system would be stable, because the most intelligent people would naturally rise to the top in the corporate meritocracy. I know some will say, “yes, that is true; it is what we have now.” It is not true, and there is an interesting proof.
During the Second World War, for the first time hundreds of thousands of people were given IQ tests upon entry to public service. It was soon learned there was no correlation at all between occupation and high IQ. High IQ individuals were as likely to be ordinary assembly-line workers or laborers as any other group. Likewise, corporate executives were not indicated to be necessarily of higher than average intelligence. Thus Bernays’ utopia breaks down in that corporate elites attain their positions by a variety of means other than intelligence, for example by being “yes men” or by nepotism, and thus they are as likely to be motivated by passions as by intellect. It follows that such an oligarchic system can not be stable, so we will dispense with it immediately (crumple).
rhs jr
June 22, 2017 2:55 pm
Dumming down the mass media and the education levels in government schools has helped the Cultural Communist achieve their goals.
Miles Long
June 22, 2017 8:54 pm
What’s old is new. Look dear, look. The Russian boogie man. Again.
Rise Up
June 23, 2017 7:43 am
There are plenty of modern-day Edward Bernays out there…like the heads of MSNBC, CNN, Eric Schmidt of Google/Alphabet, Mark Fuckerberg of Fakebook, etc.
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I think Mencken, on education as propaganda, was probably referring to academia, the academies, whose aim has always been to produce predictable conformity in pupils. Think of the conformity produced by the police academies, for example, and you get the idea. This is not the same outcome that many universities desire. “The aim of a liberal education is to “liberate” the mind from prejudice and provincialism.” That was Mortimer Adler. Educators like Adler considered the capacity for independent thought to be a strength of citizenship, not a weakness, and as a component of liberty it was to be nurtured.
Certainly Edward Bernays appears anywhere near discussions of utopias and distopias. His idea of a utopia was a ruling intelligentcia of corporate elites holding sway over the great herd of ordinary people. This smart set could influence women to smoke cigarettes and trim people to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast for the good of the pork producers, by employing various paternalistic marketing strategies. In the end, this utopian system would be stable, because the most intelligent people would naturally rise to the top in the corporate meritocracy. I know some will say, “yes, that is true; it is what we have now.” It is not true, and there is an interesting proof.
During the Second World War, for the first time hundreds of thousands of people were given IQ tests upon entry to public service. It was soon learned there was no correlation at all between occupation and high IQ. High IQ individuals were as likely to be ordinary assembly-line workers or laborers as any other group. Likewise, corporate executives were not indicated to be necessarily of higher than average intelligence. Thus Bernays’ utopia breaks down in that corporate elites attain their positions by a variety of means other than intelligence, for example by being “yes men” or by nepotism, and thus they are as likely to be motivated by passions as by intellect. It follows that such an oligarchic system can not be stable, so we will dispense with it immediately (crumple).
Dumming down the mass media and the education levels in government schools has helped the Cultural Communist achieve their goals.
What’s old is new. Look dear, look. The Russian boogie man. Again.
There are plenty of modern-day Edward Bernays out there…like the heads of MSNBC, CNN, Eric Schmidt of Google/Alphabet, Mark Fuckerberg of Fakebook, etc.