From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2006 - 06:42:05 EST
Jerry, You wrote: >I am skeptical of this claim. Perhaps I should add that, through the media, we are also constantly faced with social phenomena that we have no personal experience of, making it more difficult to evaluate them objectively or rationally, other than "by analogy" with things that we do have experience of. But I think the argument I made is basically correct, at least, in my experience it is. A majority of Americans seem to have very little notion of the rest of the world. CNN reported in 2002 that whereas young Americans "may soon have to fight a war in Iraq", most of them "can't even find that country on a map". A National Geographic Society survey found, that only about one in seven - 13 percent - of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military recruits, could find Iraq on a map. The score was the same for Iran. Although the majority, 58 percent, of the young Americans surveyed knew that the Taliban and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find that country on a world map. http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/geography.quiz/index.html . The actual survey is at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/download/RoperSurvey.pdf . You wrote: >Is ideology rational? Hardly. Yet, ideological beliefs often affect the actions of classes and groups. Propaganda exists and -- in some contexts (societies) -- it can be very effective. Do I really need to give examples from the US (the social formation that this thread has focused on)? I suppose it depends on what you mean by ideology. Ideology would not be believed, if it did not at least have a surface plausibility, if it wasn't "reasonable" and "made sense" of experience in some way. And it cannot have that status if it doesn't have some kind of "internal logic" permitting ideological inferences. I wouldn't deny that propaganda can be highly effective, but the point is that propagandistic claims which are outright lies typically do not last very long in the credibility stakes. In other words, ideology typically builds on a combination of false and true claims, i.e. both on facts, and on the interpretation of the significance of those facts, both on rationality and irrational belief. Regards Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Mar 28 2006 - 00:00:06 EST