A Critical Perspective of the Media: Reading between the lines

Johan Galtung says that it’s not so much what is being said, but what is not being said. Today my class will be reflecting on the use of language and stories in the media.

Discussion questions:

• how do stories in the media impact our understanding of the world?
• how can we learn to “read between the lines”?
• how can awareness of narrative help us be more critical of media and politics?
• what is the story’s raison detre? ie why was a story told, what is the narrator is getting at?

Julia Bacha – One Story, One Film, Many Changes.

Chomsky – Manufacturing Consent (students to watch at home…)

Reading between the lines

Checklist for careful thinking:

1. What is the source?
2. What is the basic message?
3. What is presented in support of the view?
4. How is the message being conveyed?
5. Who stands to gain? p. 28

Shaky foundations:

1. Bold assertions
2. Untrustworthy authorities
3. Reasoning with the wrong facts
4. Rationalisation
5. Downright lying
6. Faulty premise for an argument
7. Hasty generalization
8. Mistaking the cause
9. False analogy
10. Ignoring the question
11. Begging the question
12. Attacking the person not the argument
13. Pointing to an enemy
14. Misusing statistics
15. Meshing fact with opinion
16. Misusing terms whose meanings have changed p. 32-35

Formula for Propaganda: Scapegoat term = Groundless accusation in future + glittering generality. Eg Terrorists/Socialists threaten/plan to attack the political system/supermarket/middle class p. 58

Monitoring the media: prominence/space; use of photographs; sources; angle of the story; information provided; viewpoint of the reporter; reoccurring words p. 59

Propaganda techniques:

1. Twisting and distortion; depicting black and white
2. Selective omission
3. Incomplete quotation
4. Persuasive devices eg doctored/clipped photos , testimonials, generalities eg “He has American support because Americans always choose the wrong side”; name calling; innuendo eg. he had been promised a good job; baseless speculation

Between The Lines – Eleanor MacLean, 1981, Black Rose Books, Quebec

For further reading see my blog entry on Critical Discourse Analysis – click here

Nov 23, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Social Construction of the “Self”

Alan Watts’

‘Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of sin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East – in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.’ Preface to The Book : On the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are (1966).

Nov 18, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | 1 Comment »

Education, Work and the Social Distribution of Knowledge

How do you know anything? What is the role of society in that knowledge?

‘Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging of the good that they go wrong.’ Rousseau.

‘If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.’ Henry Ford

‘Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.’ Mark Twain

‘Our separate fictions add up to joint reality.’ Stanislaw Lec

‘A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man’s comfort and inspiration is another’s jest and scorn.’ Justice Jackson.

‘The education of moral sensibility with regard to the question of how we should treat others is only part of the story. The other part of the story is the quality of an individual’s own life as he experiences it. Here too the narrative arts have an enormous amount to offer. The idea of making one’s life worthwhile by choosing goals and striving towards them, sometimes deferring present satisfactions in the hope of greater rewards later, demands the imposition of a narrative structure upon it, as if one were the author of one’s own story.’ (Grayling 2003:14)

‘Only by being aware of a rich array of possible narratives and goals to choose from can one’s choices and actions be truly informed and maximally free… exposure to stories – which in part represent possible lives – is a vital ingredient in the ethical construction of an individual’s personal future history.’ (Grayling 2003:14)

‘Liberal education is disappearing in the English-speaking West, as expectations decline and schooling narrows into training focused mainly on participation in the life of the economy. It is worth iterating what a loss this is; for the aim of liberal education is to help people continue learning all their lives long, and to think, and to question. New and challenging moral dilemmas are always likely to arise, so we need to try to make ourselves the kind of people who can respond thoughtfully.’ (Grayling 2003:9-10)

Sir Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms:

Some career advice from Alan Watts:

“What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?”

People answer poets, writers, ride horses … but you can’ t money that way…

Alan Watts advises to “forget the money”. “Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time: you will do things you don’t like in order to go on living that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is stupid!”

“Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing, than a long life that spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like doing what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is,  you can eventually … become a master of it … and then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is … somebody is interested in everything. Anything can be interested you can find others who are… So it’s an important question: what do I desire?”

To finish, little quote from one of my favourites: ‘Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophical thought has done its best, the wonder remains.’ Alfred North Whitehead

Nov 18, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Social Construction of Wealth and Happiness

Wealth isn’t only socially constructed. Neither is poverty. Are wealth and poverty only about stuff? How about being wealthy or poor in time? Or in spirit? Pleasure? Love? Friendship? Does the pursuit of wealth in purely monetary terms cause us more problems than the benefits it brings?

George Carlin on Stuff to start it off:

There are many ways to view the world, each built up by a one’s social environment and upbringing. The social construction of childhood:

‘The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain, small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status.’ [2]

What do you think of this statement? Is poverty only relational, or are there some absolutes in an availability of resources sense?

The intro to The Gods Must Be Crazy demonstrates colossally different worldviews:

‘We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don’t have anything; perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free.’[4]

Sidelining the danger of falling into “Noble Savage” idealizations/criticisms (ie recognizing that hunger & gatherer lifestyles have their problems too, and moving on), let us talk briefly about the contrast between common Western lifestyles (40-hour work weeks, sitting on computers) and a couple of alternative lifeways.

‘Hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society.’[4]

So… what is affluence/wealth?

According to Sahlins, an  ‘affluent society is one in which all the people’s material wants are easily satisfied.’

It is interesting to contrast our “Galbraithean” way of life (‘wants are great’ + ‘means are limited’) with the “Zen road to affluence” whereby people can enjoy an ‘unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living.’ [1]

Today’s growth/market/consumer-based economy is based on a ‘perpetual disparity’ with ‘unlimited wants’ and ‘insufficient means’. No matter how much “stuff” we accumulate, we always want more. Do you think even the most “wealthy” people in our world today are affluent? How many hours do they work? Are they happy?

Social construction of wealth and happiness: does wealth make us happy?

This order of happiness ‘is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realized through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it.’ [5] More on happiness: http://www.julietbennett.com/2011/11/06/life-is-a-game-alan-watts-happiness/

I guess there are many different ways to be in the world, and different paths to wealth, health, love and happiness… kinda like there are many ways of interpreting the dots below…

[6]

[6] Hiebert, Paul G. (2008). Transforming Worldviews : An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic.

Nov 18, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Social Constructions of Beauty

“Anata wa chisai atama!” You have a small head! — a compliment in Japan. So much to the extent that some Japanese wear a five-pound Small-Face-Make-Belt around the head while sleeping. Apparently it helps your head shrink over time. A good example of the role of society in constructing one’s idea of beauty.

Behind “beauty”:

Ok, so beauty isn’t only an idea constructed by society. It’s hard to dispute that Victoria’s Secret models are beautiful.

But… would they have been beautiful in the 50s?

A (very) brief, limited and generalized history of beauty:

• 16th Century – flat chest, 13-inch waist
• 17th Century – large bust and hips, white complexion
• 19th century – tiny waist, full hips and bust
• 1920s – slender legs and hips, small bust
• 1940s & 50s – hourglass shape
• 1960s – lean, youthful body with long hair
• 1970s – thin, tan
• 1980s – slim but muscular, toned
• 1990s – heroin chic
• 2000s – thin bodies with large breasts

What are some of the differences between a Marilyn Monroe & a Kate Moss?

Following that song, it is interesting to consider how society constructs our ideas about wealth? And love, which I will post on soon…

How do our stories about beauty, wealth and love impact our experience of happiness?

Nov 18, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Poking Fun at Society’s Stories

Today I’m looking at the Social Construction of Reality

How does society construct our reality?

Comedians do a good job at pointing it out…

George Carlin: The American Dream

Chris Rock: Can White People Say Nigger?

Eddie Izzard: Do you have a flag?

Nov 16, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Philosophy and Poetics: Aristotle

‘All human beings by nature desire knowledge.’ Opening sentence of his book Metaphysics. For Aristotle, it is the desire for knowledge at root of what it is to be human. Aristotle wrote on Ethics, Politics, Poetics, Physics and Metaphysics. This gives you a funny introduction, but by no means gives a good overview of his work.

In the study of narrative, which is one of the key topics of my research, it is Aristotle who, the deconstruction and analysis of the components of narrative is often credited. These are my notes from Poetics[1]. It’s only a short book, so it may be better to read it for yourself… but to give you a taster, here are some of the terms and ideas about which Aristotle writes…

Tekne = craft, skill or art. Aristotle defines tekne as a ‘productive capacity informed by an understanding of its intrinsic rationale.’ ‘For Aristotle, the evolution of human culture is in large part the evolution of tekhne.’ Tekne includes:

1. necessities
2. recreational arts – improve quality of human life
3. philosophy – sense of wonder

Poets must project themselves into the emotions of others. It requires nature talent or even a touch of insanity. Metaphor – require the ability to perceive similarities – something natural gift that can’t be taught. Aristotle analyses tragedy, and in particular the Homeric poems.

Some key terms and ideas:

• Plot – ordered sequence of events;  the ‘imitation of the action’; Stories have a beginning, middle and end; an ordered structure with ‘connected series of events: one thing follows on another as a necessary consequence’; a self-contained series of events ie closure ‘at both ends, and connected in between.’
• Actions – performed by agents
• Agents – with necessary ‘moral and intellectual characteristics’, ‘expressed in what they do and say’
• From this we deduce character and reasoningare constituent parts
  • Character is ‘that in respect of which we say that the agent is of a certain kind’
  • Reasoning is ‘the speech which the agents use to argue a case or put forward an opinion’

• Reasoning comes from two factors: whether I am honest, and how I interpret the situation.
• Rhythm – diction and lyric poetry ‘Rhythmical language is tragedy’s medium; it is a means to tragedy’s end, that end being the imitation of an action.’
• Spectacle – everything visible on stage
• ‘Language is there to help realize the plot’s potential, and in that sense is subordinate and secondary.’
• Praxis – ‘suffering (pathos) is “an action [praxis] that involves destruction or pain” (52b11f)

Furthermore:

• ‘imitation of action- action is an imitation of agents – reasoning – ability to ‘say what is implicit in a situation and appropriate to it
• character – ‘is the kind of thing which discloses the nature of a choice’: goodness; appropriateness; likeness; consistency. ‘since tragedy is an imitation of people better than we are, one should imitate good portrait-painters. In rendering the individual form, they paint people as they are, but make them better-looking.’ Eg ‘Homer portrayed Achilles as both a good man and a paradigm of obstinacy.’
• ‘reasoning refers to the means by which people argue that something is or is not the case, or put forward some universal proposition’
• ‘diction’ = ‘verbal expression’ song and spectacle
• ‘Well-being and ill-being reside in action, and the goal of life is an activity, not a quality.’
• Hamartia ‘includes errors made in ignorance or through misjudgement; but it will also include moral errors of a kind which do not imply wickedness’

Success/failure of stories:

• Astonishment – ability to evoke fear or pity
• ‘purification’ or katharsis
• correct magnitude. Eg ‘it is not enough to juxtapose prosperity and misery; the change from one to another must be the result of a sequence of necessarily connected events.’
• Completeness: ‘a whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is that which itself does not follow necessarily form anything else, but some second thing naturally exists or occurs after it. Conversely, an end is that which does itself naturally follow from something else, ether necessarily or in general, but there is nothing else after it. A middle is that which itself comes after something else, and some other thing comes after it.’
• Magnitude ‘they should have a certain length, and this should be such as can readily be held in memory’
• Unity
• Determinate structure – ‘the plot, as the imitation of an action, should imitate a single, unified action – and also one that is a whole.’ ‘if the presence or absence of something has no discernible effect, it is not a part of the whole.
• Universality – ‘poetry tends to express universals, and history particulars’
• visualising the action
• complication and resolution

There are simple plots and complex plots – the later which has a reversal or recognition

• Recognition (anagnorisis) is ‘a change from ignorance to knowledge’ (52a29-31)
• Reversal (peripeteia) is an  ‘overturn of expectation’ – ‘change to the opposite in the actions being performed’ (52a22f) – not just a change in fortune, but involves an astonishing inversion of the expected outcome of some action – but not at the cost of a necessary or probably connection’
• the best kinds of recognition arise out of a reversal
• Both ‘reveal that the situation in which character has been acting was misinterpreted’ pxxx

The best kinds of tragic plot have two variables in the change:

• the direction of the change;
• the moral status of the person (who is ideally someone in between being exceptionally virtuous and exceptionally wicked.)

Anthropology and history of poetry

• Origins: ‘imitation comes naturally to human beings from childhood… this is the reason why people take delight in seeing images; what happens is that as they view them they come to understand and work out what each thing is (e.g. ‘This is so-an-so’).48b4
• Homer – composed well and made his imitations dramatic = Iliad and Odyssey
• Comedy – ‘the laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction.’
• Epic – ‘differ in length, since tragedy tries so far as possible to keep within a single day… whereas epic is unrestricted in time.’

Best kinds:

• First introduction
• First deduction ‘pity has to do with the undeserving sufferer, fear with the person like us’
• Second introduction ‘sufferings arise within close relationships, e.g. brother kills brother… or is on the verge of killing…’ ‘people acting in full knowledge and awareness’ / or ‘terrible deed in ignorance and only then to recognize the close connection’ as in Sophocles’ Oedipus
• Performing action ‘performing the action is second; but it is better if the action is performed in ignorance and followed by a recognition’ p23
• Second deduction

Why the disappearance of epics and tragedy?

In the Introduction to Aristotle’s Poetics, Malcolm Heath says that  ‘once the optimum form of anything has been achieved, further development of it is by definition is impossible thereafter, there can only be (at best) a proliferation of different instances of that optimum form… [recognising that] social and institutional factors, as well as individual incompetence, may inhibit the continued realization of the optimum form’ (51b35-52a1, 53a33-5) pxvi.

In other words once something is perfected (be it a movie/story genre, an art form, a business, a relationship, maybe even an state or empire) there is no where to go, and hence the “optimum form” changes and new genres/empires rise.

[1] Aristotle and Malcolm Heath, Poetics (London ; New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1996).

Nov 15, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Life is a Game: Alan Watts & Happiness

I have noticed that in times I’m feeling down, reading or listening to Alan Watts makes me happy again. Why? His deep bellowing laugh and sense of humour? Maybe that’s part of it. But really it’s his philosophy, it just “clicks” with me. It makes me feel good. Life is a game, says Watts.  When I hear his words the dramas of my ego disappear into the cosmic drama I’m a playing. I remember that everything I know and think, is just a question of how I am looking at it.

In his book The Meaning of Happiness, Watts recaps the two most common types of books on happiness:

1. those that tell us how to become happy by changing our circumstances
2. those that tell us how to become happy by changing ourselves

His book falls into neither of these two categories:  ‘it is possible in a certain sense to become happy without doing anything about it.’ [1] Watts explains that he sees happiness as ‘not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realized through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it.’ [2]

Happiness, says Watts, starts with total acceptance: a ‘yes-saying to everything that we experience, the unreserved acceptance of what we are, of what we feel and know at this and every moment.’ [3]

It is only when you seek it that you lose it... Like your shadow, the more you chase it, the more it runs away. [4]

Nov 06, 2011 | Categories: Philosophy | Leave A Comment »