Just a quick thought, prompted by my response to "TV as Teacher". We can blame the corporate media for pumping our kids full of distorted values and promoting gross stupidity, but the thing is, they're doing the same to the kids' parents - to you and to me. How are some people able to resist this toxic waste yet others welcome it either consciously or blindly? What is our mental vaccine that repels this ubiquitous barrage on our senses?

Is it our scientific training? Maybe, more importantly, our training in critical thinking, a quality we can port to every aspect of our life? Half of the population has an IQ below the average - yes, this is stating the statistically obvious but is pertinent later. Within one standard deviation from the mean we have 68% of people, so that 84% of the whole population fall at or below "average". There are, of course, other human qualities but we are here discussing the processing of information and what resources we have to counter-act the influence of the mass media. People who control the media are not dumb and they have financial resources. The battle for information distribution is thus very skewed in favour of mass media versus intellectuals who want to promote the truth and empower others.

"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." is one of many famous Chomsky quotes, however, the article continues,"This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious." The context is how some intellectuals choose to side with authority and thereby use their position to spread knowingly false propaganda rather than the truth. In this discussion it means that the general population is presented with paragons of intellectual detachment telling them lies and they somehow don't have the machinery to recognise the lies. The "truth from authority" trumps personal critical thinking.

This is also a deficit in personal meta-cognition. I recall some research of how dumb people don't know that they're dumb. Even the researchers were so shocked with the results that they did the experiment again. After performing a number of tasks the subjects who were the least competent would place themselves as being above average - this even after they were told their raw score (without obviously revealing the group averages). Those who were the most competent rated themselves very slightly lower than their real scores, knowing the difference between being good at something and being expert at it. The really worrying thing for society is that the dumbest people were the most confident about their inabilities abilities. This isn't just blissful ignorance, but ignorance topped with a double helping of pride and ego. And who do people turn to in times of trouble? Very disturbing, I think.

Is there anything that can be done to reverse this? Propaganda works, and alarmingly so. Does that mean we should learn from it and couch our ideas in the same propagandist manner - a kind of noise reduction through wave interference with a similar though opposite message? I don't think many people here would subscribe to this kind of evangelization. So we are somehow left with stating our truth on the internet and letting those ripples spread. We never know who will read our words or when. We very often never get to know who we have affected and who has changed their minds. Market research has shown that people are more apt to complain than to praise, as if "being satisfied" is the expected condition. Comments are good when they clarify our thoughts - being self-critical is also part of critical thinking. In the end, we just keep making ripples in an ocean.

Many year ago I worked briefly for a market research and PR firm. I remember that there were two categories of the population that advertisers never bothered with: dossers and intellectuals. Made me smile. So that the reactions of many here towards the mass media makes sense - it isn't there for you! But, we are not coenobites and live in a diverse society. It isn't aimed at us but it does affect us. Does that make our rants mere collateral damage and irrelevant in the battle for hearts and minds? I hope not, but combining some of the thoughts above it is going to take a lot of very hard work to change people's attitudes to the media and how it really affects them. The one bright spark to come out of the "incompetence experiment" cited above is that those who performed badly were put on a course and greatly improved their abilities to reflect on themselves and their true capabilities. The first step in learning is thus to firstly recognise our ignorance.

I just had to end on an optimistic note! (even if in a minor key)