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