Once we grasp this, we move from a liberal complaint about the press’s sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how journalists and editors maintain the dominant paradigm with much craft and often with the utmost sincerity—having internalized the notions and images of the prevailing orthodoxy. We might recall Upton Sinclair’s remark: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
4 OBJECTIVITY AND THE DOMINANT PARADIGM
The important legitimating symbols of our culture are mediated through a social structure that is largely controlled by centralized, moneyed organizations. This is especially true of our information universe whose mass market is pretty much monopolized by corporate- owned media.
The reporters and news editors who work for these giant multibillion- dollar media conglomerates believe they are objective in their treatment of the news. They say they are professionals who stick to the facts with no ideological ax to grind. Fox News, a network that proffers a harsh right-wing perspective and specializes in reactionary commentary, claims to be “the only network that is fair and balanced,” as its announcers sometimes say when signing off. So, too, with the many other conservative pundits and columnists who overpopulate the corporate-owned media; most seem to believe that their enunciations represent the unadorned truth. And if they do voice a personal opinion, they feel it is anchored in the facts. In short, they believe in their own objectivity.
The usual criticism of objectivity is that it does not exist. The minute one sits down to write the opening line of a story, one is making judgment calls, selecting and omitting things. The very nature of perception makes it a predominantly subjective experience. We are not just passive receptors sponging up a flow of images and information. Perception involves organizing stimuli and data into comprehensible units. In a word, perception is itself an act of selective editing.
It was recently reported that some people had their eyesight restored through new surgical procedures, after a lifetime of being blind. One of the unexpected results was that, even though the physiological mechanisms of sight were reconstructed, the patients could only divine vague shapes and shades. They could not distinguish specific objects and images, for these had never registered in their minds before. Researchers concluded that we see not just with our eyes but with our brains, and the brains of these sightless persons had never had a chance to develop the capacity to organize visual perception.
Also working against the facile professions of objectivity is the understanding that we all have our own way of looking at things. We all resemble each other in some basic ways but each of us is also a unique creation. No two persons are exactly alike. So some portion of our perceptual experience is formed idiosyncratically, situated exclusively in ourselves.
But perception is not entirely or even mostly idiosyncratic. The mental selectors and filters we use to organize our informational intake are usually not of our own creation. Most of our seemingly personal perceptions are shaped by a variety of things outside ourselves, such as the prevailing culture, the dominant ideology, ethical beliefs, social values and biases, available information, one’s position in the social structure, and one’s material interests.
Back in 1921 Walter Lippmann pointed out that much of human perception is culturally prefigured: “For the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”19 The notions that fit the prevailing climate of opinion are more likely to be accepted as objective, while those that clash with it are usually seen as lacking in credibility. More often than we realize, we accept or decline an idea, depending on its acceptability within the dominant culture.
In a fashion similar to Lippmann, Alvin Gouldner wrote about the “background assumptions” of the wider culture that are the salient factors in our perceptions. Our readiness to accept something as true, or reject it as false, rests less on its argument and evidence and more on how it aligns with the preconceived notions embedded in the dominant culture, assumptions we have internalized due to repeated exposure.20 In our culture, among mainstream opinion makers, this unanimity of implicit bias is treated as “objectivity.”
Today we rarely refer to Gouldner’s background assumptions, but a current equivalent term might be the “dominant paradigm.” Some people even sport bumper stickers on their vehicles that urge us to “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” A paradigm is a basic philosophical or scientific theoretical framework from which key hypotheses can be derived and tested.21 In popular parlance, the dominant paradigm refers to the ongoing ideological orthodoxy that predetermines which concepts and labels have credibility and which do not. It is the educated person’s orthodoxy.
If what passes for objectivity is little more than a culturally defined self-confirming symbolic environment, and if real objectivity—whatever that might be—is unattainable, then it would seem that we are left in the grip of a subjectivism in which one paradigm is about as reliable (or unreliable) as another. And we are faced with the unhappy conclusion that the search for social truth involves little more than choosing from a variety of illusory symbolic configurations. As David Hume argued over two centuries ago, the problem of what constitutes reality in our images can never be resolved since our images can only be compared with other images and never with reality itself.
If so, can we ever think that one imperfect, subjective opinion is better than another? Yes, as a rough rule of thumb, those dissident opinions that are less reliant on the dominant paradigm are likely to be more vigorously challenged and better tested. People generally are receptive to a standard and familiar view, made all the more familiar through a process of repetition. They unthinkingly internalize the mainstream pronouncement and then repeat it as their own opinion, as indeed it has become.
In contrast, they approach the heterodox viewpoint and disruptive information with skepticism, assuming they ever get a chance to hear it. Having been conditioned to the conventional opinion, they are less inclined to automatically internalize unfamiliar data and analysis. Contrary notions that do not fit what they think they already know are usually not welcomed. They will sometimes even self-censor by tuning out, not listening to what is being presented once they detect an alien viewpoint. If given the choice to consider a new perspective or mobilize old arguments against it, it is remarkable how quickly they start reaching for the old arguments. All this makes dissent that much more difficult but that much more urgent.
People who never complain of the orthodoxy of their main-stream political education are the first to complain about the dogmatic “political correctness” of any challenge to it. Far from seeking a diversity of views, they defend themselves from exposure to such diversity, preferring to leave their unexamined background assumptions and conventional political opinions unruffled.
I once taught a class on the mass media at Cornell University. Midway through the course some students began to complain that they were getting only one side, one perspective. I pointed out that in fact the class discussions engaged a variety of perspectives and some of the readings were of the more standard fare. But the truth was, yes, the predominant thrust of the class and assigned readings was substantially critical of the mainstream media and corporate power in general. Then I asked them, “How many of you have been exposed to this perspective in your other social science courses?” Of the forty students—mostly seniors and juniors who had taken many other courses in political science, economics, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and mass communications—not one hand went up (a measure of the level of ideological diversity at Cornell). Then I asked the students, “How many of you complained to your other instructors that you were getting only one side?” Again not a hand was raised, causing me to say: “So your protest is not really that you’re getting only on
e side but that for the first time in this class, you’re departing from that one side and are being exposed to another view and you don’t like it.” Their quest was not to investigate heterodoxy but to insulate themselves from it.
Devoid of the supportive background assumptions of the dominant belief system, the deviant view sounds just too improbable and too controversial to be treated as reliable information. Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as “the nature of things.” The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.
A heterodox view provides occasion to test the prevailing orthodoxy. It opens us to arguments and information that the keepers of the dominant paradigm have misrepresented or ignored outright. The dissident view is not just another opinion among many. Its task is to contest the ruling ideology and broaden the boundaries of debate. The function of established opinion is just the opposite, to keep the parameters of debate as narrow as possible.
It is not true, however, that people are totally and rigidly unyielding when challenged in their heartfelt convictions. Confronted with incontrovertible facts that do not fit with what they believe, they sometimes concede the immediate point, but in a way that blunts its impact and keeps the orthodox view intact. I was telling someone that the 2004 presidential election was stolen, a notion that he found hard to accept because such things do not happen in our great democracy, and wasn’t I succumbing to conspiracy theories? When I hastily laid out some of the evidence22 which he could not readily refute, he conceded that such things might have happened, then added that of course there are always mishaps of one sort or another, for no election is ever perfect. So by conceding ground, he retained his basic belief, albeit slightly modified, that while there may have been irregularities here and there that might be worth looking into and correcting, that doesn’t mean the election was stolen.
After all is said and done, we are not doomed to an aimless relativism. Even if the problem of perception remains epistemologically unresolved, common sense and everyday life oblige us to make judgments and act as if some images and information are more reliable than others. We may not always know what is true, but we can develop some proficiency at detecting what is false. At least for some purposes, rational mechanisms have their use in the detection of error, so that even if “naked reality” constantly eludes us, we hopefully can arrive at a closer approximation of the truth.23
Sometimes the orthodox view is so entrenched that evidence becomes irrelevant. But there are limits to the manipulative efficacy of propaganda. Sometimes misrepresentations can be exposed by a process of feedback, as when subsequent events fail to fulfill the original image. In such instances officialdom has difficulty finessing reality. For example, (a) in 2003–05, official propaganda promised us a quick and easy “liberation” of Iraq, but reality brought undeniably different results that challenged the official line. White House propaganda told us that U.S. troops were “gratefully received by the Iraqi people,” but actually a costly and protracted war of resistance ensued. (b) White House propaganda said war was necessary to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. But the subsequent invasion revealed that such weapons did not exist, which might explain why Saddam failed to use them when invaded. (c) Propaganda in late 2003 told us that “a fanatical handful of terrorists and Baathist holdouts” were causing most of the trouble, but how could a “handful” pin down two Marine divisions and the 82nd Airborne and inflict thousands of casualties?
As with Iraq, so with Vietnam. For years, the press transmitted the official view of the Vietnam War, but while it could gloss over what was happening in Indochina, it could not totally ignore the awful actuality of the war itself. Still the dominant paradigm prevailed. For the debate on the war was limited between those who said we could win and those who said we could not. Those of us who said we should not be there no matter what the results, that we had no right to intervene and that the intervention served neither the Indochinese nor the American people, never got a platform in the mainstream media because we were deemed “ideological” and “not objective.”
The dominant paradigm often can suppress and ignore the entire actuality, as with the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam era, a mass slaughter that the White House kept from the public and from the Congress for quite some time. But total suppression is not always possible, not even in a totalitarian state, as Hitler’s minister of propaganda Dr. Joseph Goebbels discovered toward the end of World War II. Goebbels unsuccessfully tried to convince the German public that Nazi armies were winning victory after victory. But after awhile the people could not help noticing that their armies were in retreat, for the “victorious” battles were taking place in regions that kept getting increasingly closer to Germany’s borders, finally penetrating the country itself.
Along with the limits of reality we have our powers of critical deduction. I believe it was the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen who once said that thought is the morality of action, and logic is the morality of thought. One component of logic is consistency. Without doing any empirical investigation of our own, we can look at the internal evidence to find that, like any liar, the press and the officialdom it serves are filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Seldom held accountable by the news media for what they say, policymakers can blithely produce information and opinions that inadvertently reveal the falsity of previous statements, without a word of explanation. We can point to the absence of supporting evidence and the failure to amplify. We can ask why assertions that appear again and again in the news are not measured against observable actualities. And why are certain important events and information summarily ignored? We already know the answer: it has to do with how they fit into the dominant paradigm.
There remains one hopeful thought: socialization into the conventional culture does not operate with perfect effect. If this were not so, if we were all thoroughly immersed in the dominant paradigm, then I could not have been able to record these critical thoughts and you could not have been able to understand them.
Just about all societies of any size and complexity have their dissenters and critics, or at least their quiet skeptics and nonbelievers. No society, not even the “primitive,” is as neatly packaged as some outside observers would have us believe. Even among the Trobrianders, the Zuni, the Kwakiutl, and other peoples, there always were hearty skeptics who thought the myths of their culture were just that—myths, fabricated and unconvincing stories. Culture works its effects upon us imperfectly, and often that is for the best.
In our own society, reality is more a problem for the ruling class than for the rest of us. It has to be constantly finessed and misrepresented to cloak a reactionary agenda. Those at the top understand that the corporate political culture is not a mystically self-sustaining system. They know they must work tirelessly to propagate the ruling orthodoxy, to use democratic appearances to cloak plutocratic policies.24
So there is an element of struggle and indeterminacy in all our social realm. And sometimes there is a limit to how many misrepresentations people will swallow. In the face of monopolistic ideological manipulation, many individuals develop a skepticism or outright disaffection based on the growing disparity between social actuality and official ideology. Hence, along with institutional stability we have popular ferment. Along with elite manipulation we have widespread skepticism. Along with ruling-class coercion we have mass resistance—albeit not as much as some of us might wish.
Years ago, William James observed how custom can operate as a sedative while novelty (inc
luding dissidence) is rejected as an irritant.25 Yet I would argue that sedatives can become suffocatingafter a time and irritants can enliven. People sometimes hunger for the discomforting critical perspective that gives them a more meaningful explanation of things. By being aware of this, we have a better chance of moving against the tide. It is not a matter of becoming the faithful instrument of any particular persuasion but of resisting the misrepresentations of a subtle but thoroughly ideological corporate-dominated culture. In the socio-political struggles of this world, perception and belief are key ingredients. The ideological gatekeepers know this—and so should we.
5 REPRESSION IN ACADEMIA
For some time we have been asked to believe that the quality of higher education is being devalued by the “politically correct” ideological tyranny of feminists, African-American and Latino militants, homosexuals, and Marxists. The truth may be elsewhere. The average university or college is a corporation, controlled by self-selected, self-perpetuating boards of trustees, drawn mostly from the corporate business world. Though endowed with little if any academic expertise, trustees have legal control of the property and policies of the institution. They are answerable to no one but themselves, exercising final authority over all matters of capital funding, budget, tuition, and the hiring, firing, and promotion of faculty and administrators. They even wield ultimate dominion over curriculum, mandating course offerings they like while canceling ones that might earn their disfavor. They also have final say regarding course requirements, cross-disciplinary programs, and the existence of entire departments and schools within the university.
On the nation’s campuses there also can be found faculty members who do “risk analysis” to help private corporations make safe investments abroad. Other faculty work on consumer responses, marketing techniques, and labor unrest. Still others devise methods for controlling rebellious peoples at home and abroad, be they Latin American villagers, inner-city residents, or factory workers. Funded by corporations, conservative foundations, the Pentagon, and other branches of government, the researchers develop new technologies of destruction, surveillance, control, and counterinsurgency. (Napalm was invented at Harvard.) They develop new ways of monopolizing agricultural production and natural resources. With their bright and often ruthless ideas they help make the world safe for those who own it. In sum, the average institution of higher learning owes more to Sparta than to Athens.
Contrary Notions Page 4
