Hi all,

Gregg, that article is a chilling reminder of the right wing demagoguery. To see that wave continually galvanized is frightening.  

Meanwhile, your explanation of dissonance seems spot on, especially the description of the aversive nature of dissonance at the level of felt, experiential consciousness.  

Mark, I did not perceive Gregg as believing others are thinking about the situation in analytical terms, as recognizing cognitive dissonance in one’s self often requires attention, motivation, and education regarding the phenomenon.  Some people “lean into” the dissonance and add nuance to their model of others and the world.  Others avoid or attack information that challenges one’s justification systems in order to maintain traditionally held views and ways of being.  I think there are both cynical and non conscious actors in this.

The technological changes you articulate do seem exaggerate and exploit these psychological processes, and thereby accelerate change in the multiple directions.

-Chance 












Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 24, 2018, at 10:43 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Gregg:
> 
> "Dissonance" -- what is that (i.e. it's certainly not describing something in "intellectual" terms) . . . ??
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Cognitive-5Fdissonance&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=xbom-Wt4ODaqdZh1obfoABBz6LTAftRkMwqHAWtSsOs&s=ERTQ0n2OuKmD8yRwxkgwgvYxiiLBBA5Fa4fhzqlo9ig&e=
> 
> There is a tendency among smart/analytical people (like you) to want to think that others are also (at least potentially) smart/analytical - but they mostly aren't and, indeed, have no need to be.  Ignorance is actually "bliss" (just as it should be.)
> 
> "Veracity" and "validity" are terms that apply to "thinking" -- but that's not what drives our lives.  "Beliefs" are also squishy in that regard and, as Socrates (actually just Plato) showed us, our beliefs are typically contradictory and ill-founded -- if not outright stupid.  All of which you know.
> 
> Humans have the capacity to "think" (i.e. faculties of the soul that no other lifeform does) but the "intellect" is rarely all that important in people's actual lives.  This is why "formation" occurs much earlier in our development than "wisdom," which takes many decades to develop (if at all.)  In terms of developmental psychology, as Jeff likes to put it, "by 12/13 years-old the cake is baked and already cooling on the counter" . . . <g>
> 
> Children cannot be wise.  Yet, it is as children that our psychology is "locked-in" by the communications technologies we habitually use.  The effects of TELEVISION or DIGITAL as *paradigms* largely occur long before anything like wisdom is even possible in our lives.
> 
> Wisdom is needed -- from the old -- to construct a culture that can then nurture proper "formation" among the young.  That formation needs to include the *effects* --in formal causal terms -- of technologies on us all.  Or else we get the mess we now have to live with.
> 
> As best we can tell, McLuhan is *literally* the only place to go to get that wisdom.  I've been flipping over rocks for 50+ years looking for an "alternative" but there don't seem to be any.  McLuhan's isn't just a "perspective"; it is the only detailed attempt to unravel this mystery in existence.  Ever.
> 
> Until the adults understand this, the kids will continue to be "educated" by technologies without any cultural comprehension of what is going on -- just like what happened to us . . . !!
> 
> Mark
> 
> P.S. Life today is so "messed-up" because we were (mostly) all formed by a technology that can only produce that sort of an outcome.  We (mostly) have no clue how this happened and (mostly) don't even want to know.  Very few people have the make-up to even want to sort all this out.  Yes -- after 1000+ conversations, I can state that with a high degree of confidence.
> 
> A population that thinks of itself as "post-literate" is also "post-wisdom." Unless a technology comes along and it takes over our lives in a way that supports literacy, wisdom cannot occur.  It is our view that "Secondary Literacy" is produced by DIGITAL, just as "Secondary Orality" was produced by ELECTRICITY.  Minus that shift, we are well-and-truly F.U.B.A.R'ed.
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.urbandictionary.com_define.php-3Fterm-3Dfubar&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=xbom-Wt4ODaqdZh1obfoABBz6LTAftRkMwqHAWtSsOs&s=Jn9T0SCD31TFAzgTWMo9lDmLeF06tRuhsa0I98ozW68&e=
> 
> 
> Quoting JA Martineau <[log in to unmask]>:
> 
>> Gregg,
>> 
>> Recall that in De Anima (On the Soul) Aristotle tells us that “by nature”
>> humans want to know the what/why of things, or the Grammar and foundations
>> of things. The particulars of what we try to know are “by the City” or in
>> McLuhan terms, the medium/ground gives us certain sensibilities and
>> attitudes, and these are different based on the “lives and times” of the
>> place/people. You may also recall that Aristotle says we can only come to
>> “know” if we understand the Causes of the thing/place/people.
>> 
>> One can argue that the “conflict” we now see in the West is because we are
>> developing a quite different set of questions about what it means to be
>> human, the Grammar, which is in conflict with the Dialectical we have lived
>> through in our lifetimes, which focused on the figure or superficial.
>> 
>> Aristotle wrote a great deal about Memory and Imagination and
>> Recall/Retrieval of what we once learned, and how these are “formed” in our
>> Souls/psyche. For Aristotle, what living things/humans actually are, the
>> Grammar, was fundamental to building a Social Science, as opposed to the
>> Dialectic, which “imagines” what humans might become. Television created
>> the modern attitudes of the West, and thus are being thrown under the bus
>> as Digital forms us quite differently, and we “retrive” different answers
>> to our questions.
>> 
>> “Knowledge” has a very particular meaning for Aristotle and it is not what
>> we have been taught what it means to be a “knower.”
>> 
>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 06:34 Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thanks, Mark.
>>> 
>>> I agree that we are in the midst of a massive technological transformation
>>> and that is crucial to understand and that McLuhan offers a very important
>>> perspective.
>>> 
>>> I like the quote from McLuhan you shared, although I would qualify it.
>>> 
>>> There is a deep seated repugnance in the human breast against deep
>>> dissonance. That is, once humans develop core beliefs about the way things
>>> are and should be (i.e., the core justification systems which form as a
>>> function of investment, social influence, and the ideas one is exposed to
>>> in development, usually solidifying in young adulthood), then those core,
>>> organizing beliefs become frozen and anything that threatens their veracity
>>> or validity becomes profoundly aversive.
>>> 
>>> The point here is that the repugnance toward understanding is not an
>>> inevitable feature of how humans are built. Rather, it is a feature of what
>>> they understand and have come to hold as true and good relative to what
>>> others are trying to convince them to be the truth, and the implications
>>> this has both for the veracity of their current justification systems and
>>> for their values, interests, and social influence going forward.
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> G
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]>
>>> On Behalf Of Mark Stahlman
>>> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2018 7:56 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: The conspiracy against Trump
>>> 
>>> Gregg:
>>> 
>>> Thanks - as always, the problem is whether what is actually going on is
>>> what people "think" is going on (and then justify themselves on that
>>> account) . . . <g>
>>> 
>>> As we all seem to agree hereabouts (at least none seem to dissent), we
>>> have already entered a period of transition from one technologically driven
>>> *paradigm* to another. That is the "ground" of all these developments,
>>> regardless of how people might, more superficially, justify their behaviors
>>> and attitudes under these circumstances.
>>> 
>>> In fact, if the psychology of the 20th-century has taught us anything, it
>>> would appear to be that the "unconscious" drives our lives -- typically
>>> without our "conscious" awareness of what is happening to us.  But that's
>>> not enough; it's far more consequential than that . .
>>> . !!
>>> 
>>> We actively *refuse* to understand what is going on out of our need for
>>> "self-preservation."  Reality -- particularly the reality of the
>>> psychological *ground* of our lives being upended and even radically
>>> contradicted -- is far too threatening for most people to deal with.
>>> Indeed, lacking responsibility for that reality, why should they want to
>>> directly deal with it at all?
>>> 
>>> Many have proposed ideas about how this operates and, for my Center,
>>> McLuhan's explanations ring the most true.  In particular, in a letter to
>>> Jacques Maritain in 1969, he said --
>>> 
>>> "There is a deep-seated repugnance in the human breast against
>>> understanding the processes in which we are involved.  Such understanding
>>> implies far too great responsibility for our actions."
>>> 
>>> Trump is an epiphenomenon of the current *paradigm* shift -- from
>>> TELEVISION to DIGITAL (which is why I could "predict" this would happen in
>>> 2013 at the Pentagon.)  So are the parallel developments in the UK, France,
>>> Germany, Italy, Sweden &c.  His status as "a combination of rock star and
>>> folk hero" is a superficial description of how people feel "unconsciously"
>>> about this shift.  The whole idea of an "American Dream" is, as the phrase
>>> implies, not something that happens in "waking" realty.  Like all "dreams"
>>> it is a product of our "unconscious," which, in turn, is a product of the
>>> technologies we habitually use and that "shape our sensibilities."
>>> 
>>> When turned into something that can be discussed "consciously," it
>>> inevitably becomes something like "the government conspiracy of the
>>> century" -- another statement of the famous 1967 Buffalo Springfield lyric,
>>> "There's something happening here; what it is ain't exactly clear . . . "
>>> 
>>> This AM Kai-Fu Lee started his book-tour for "Ai Superpowers: China,
>>> Silicon Valley and the New World Order."  There is no "American Dream"
>>> anymore.  The robots *are* going to take our jobs.  And, Trump cannot stop
>>> (or perhaps even understand) any of this.
>>> 
>>> The author of this opinion piece apparently has no clue that any of this
>>> is going on, other than appearances and "figures."  Arguably neither does
>>> Trump.  The question, however, for this group is do we .
>>> . . ??
>>> 
>>> Mark
>>> 
>>> Quoting "Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx" <[log in to unmask]>:
>>> 
>>> > Hi List,
>>> >
>>> >   Saw this Op Ed this morning and thought I would share.
>>> >
>>> > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.reviewjournal
>>> > .com_opinion_opinion-2Dcolumns_wayne-2Dallyn-2Droot_the-2Dconspiracy-2
>>> > Dagainst-2Dpresident-2Dtrump_&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RS
>>> > jOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=zwFvmQr
>>> > wETl_tvYpcbJIk-8ZYdLKjGnRxhwSIIy7KXQ&s=4a7vuMhPtRTMYA19RimTRnjZsNly376
>>> > PtfAJTBQEexU&e=
>>> >
>>> > There clearly are lots of "justification narratives" operating in our
>>> > country at this juncture.
>>> >
>>> > Best,
>>> > Gregg
>>> >
>>> > ############################
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>> --
>> Jeffrey A. Martineau
>> Vice President for Development
>> Center for the Study of Digital Life
>> www.digitallife.center
>> 202.413.4542
>> 
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