29 Oct 2009, 6:24 pm
29 Oct 2009, 6:42 pm
techstepgenr8tion
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29 Oct 2009, 8:21 pm
29 Oct 2009, 8:24 pm
Averick
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29 Oct 2009, 11:21 pm
iamnotaparakeet
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30 Oct 2009, 1:00 am
30 Oct 2009, 3:51 am
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTbalScIpR0&feature=related[/YouTube]
How dangerous can an idea be that the monk in charge of a great library poisons the pages of the book it is written in to make sure that anyone who reads it without authorisation, ( and therefore without gloves ), will die within hours?
I loved the film "The Name of the Rose" when it came out, for lots of reasons, including Sean Connery, 
the amazing french/italian alps settings, the extraordinary faces, and the gothic horror, aswell as the philosophical ponderings!
Maybe it is rather romantic/naive of me to believe that ideas have this kind of power. Biology/evolutionary psychology and economics and climatology suggest that everything is in the genes, the laws inherent in money systems, and the weather.
But Umberto Eco's 1995 essay might explain why "ideas" are currently so unfashionable, seem so "negligible", insignificant ... and that is if western ( and similarly developed ) society is heading for fascism, which fears and despises intellectual cultural activity.
Slightly edited for length:
I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
In the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic.
Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
2. The rejection of modernism.
3. The cult of action for action's sake.
Action must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds."
4. The critical [ thinking ] spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. [ But ] since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises.
Umberto Eco (c) 1995
[Note to Mods: ***This thread is NOT a resurrection!; it is a wide-ranging look at the subject of the power of ideas in general, and a discussion of the way in which society treats dangerous ones, etc etc etc, ( provoked by events surrounding recent thread topics, but not intended to revive any specific subjects ), *** ]
If Jonathan Swift were to attempt to publish now his "Modest Proposal", in which he suggested that a solution to the irish famine, caused by english landlord predations, abuses, exploitation, oppression, etc, was ( for those who could afford it ) to eat irish babies, I suspect that he would be put in prison. His deeply satirical proposal, by being scandalous, extreme, horrific, very effectively brought to people's attention the shocking abuse of power of which english landlords and govt were guilty.
Do ideas have power in and of themselves, ie. not just as blueprints for some solid object/action, ( eg. the radio )?
Swift did not intend anyone to actually start eating babies, however logical the idea might have been, seeing how large the average/traditional irish catholic family was! But his idea was such a logical extension of the kind of thinking behind english abuse/oppression/exploitation/predations, so precisely along the same path, that it was illuminating. By taking the english attitude towards the irish ( "let's use them" ) to its logical extreme he exposed it. Have other radical/revolutionary/dangerous ideas done the same thing? Exposed corruption/injustice by taking the perfectly "acceptable"/"normal" version of some abuse to it's logical conclusion, so that it becomes visible.
I am sure I read something somewhere about the power of an idea, simply as an idea, without any active concrete expression of it, being enough to topple a regime. Simply the idea.
Anyway, so far most posters seem to believe that ideas are powerful.
Anyone want to argue that they aren't, and that the only reason that govts/powers get upset about them is because they are afraid that people will carry them out? Eat babies for instance.
Or that is just what current govts/corrupt powers want us to believe, that the only danger in ideas is that they might cause certain actions, ( today's western govts would have put Swift in prison for inciting people to eat babies for instance ), like video games supposedly cause violence? ( heaven forbid that they should appear to be afraid of what an idea might make people think, because they wouldn't want us to realise that ideas/thoughts are important/powerful in their own right )
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30 Oct 2009, 5:18 am
The people who are most likely to be horrified, shocked, and scandalised by an idea like Swift's, ( solve the irish famine by eating irish babies ), are those who haven't understood, "seen", the profound/underlying logic in the accepted/"normal" version of abuse/exploitation prevailing in the society, or who have not measured the extent to which it effects people, to whom the suggestion of "eating babies" will seem completely off the wall, exaggerated, totally disconnected from the usual business of making a living, running a country, etc.
It will seem more shocking the less that someone has felt, experienced, and already clearly perceived the fundamental logic in action, in the case of english exploitation of the irish people, of "using the irish" like a natural resource to be mined to its limits.
Whereas to someone irish, or in a similar position of being "mined"/exploited, the idea will have more easily been seen as a sardonic, ironic, darkly comic comment on the already existing state of affairs. Swift's idea will have had the most impact on the privileged, who in order to enjoy their privileged position without too many qualms, had to suppress all awareness of the underlying logic at work.
What other ideas have functioned in the same way?
***Note to members: please do not make references to a recently removed thread subject when answering this question; it will just get this thread locked; instead I would love to hear about other such forms of subversive intellectual creativity, which expose the logic underlying abuse in this way! 
***
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Last edited by ouinon on 30 Oct 2009, 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
30 Oct 2009, 8:23 am
30 Oct 2009, 10:39 am
30 Oct 2009, 10:55 am
30 Oct 2009, 2:14 pm
31 Oct 2009, 11:35 am
