Re: Time to Get Religion
On Dec 5, 2006, at 4:52 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
My point here is that all this throwing brains about over
“ideology” does not improve on the common sense view expressed by
Chomsky and for that matter Marx and Engels in the German Ideology.“Plato’s problem, then is to explain how we know so much, given
that evidence to us is so sparse. Orwell’s problem is to explain
why we know and understand so little, even though evidence
available to us is so rich. Like many other twentieth-century
intellectuals, Orwell was impress with the ability of totalitarian
systems to instill beliefs that are firmly held and widely accepted
although they are completely without foundation and often plainly
at variance with obvious facts about the world around us. The
problem is far broader, as the history of religious dogma suffices
to show. To solve Orwell’s problem we must discover the
institutional and other factors that block insight and
understanding in crucial areas of our lives and ask why they are
effective.”
I admire Chomsky enormously, but this points up one of his major
flaws - his lack of interest in the way political categories get
implanted inside our heads. Yes there are “institutional” factors,
but they get introjected, too. And despite this plea to investigate
the “institutional and other factors,” NC doesn’t really do much of
that, does he?
Doug