The Hammock Papers: Researches.

06 March 2022

Researches.

Kurt recently pointed to a timely quote from Hannah Arendt's nearly 50 year-old book, The Origins of Totalitarianism ...

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

Nothing's changed ...

Media degradation can take the form of a decline in any of these dimensions. In contemporary America, that decline has taken the form of a degradation in the capacities of professional journalism and a degradation of standards in online media, particularly the insular media ecosystem that has emerged on the far right. Social media, rather than encouraging productive debate, have amplified sensationalism, conspiracy theories, and polarization. In a degraded media environment, many people don’t know what to believe, a condition ripe for political exploitation. In early 2018, Steve Bannon, publisher of Breitbart News and Donald Trump’s former strategist, gave a concise explanation of how to exploit confusion and distrust: the way to deal with the media, he said, is “to flood the zone with shit.” That not only sums up the logic of Trump’s use of lies and distraction; it also describes the logic of disinformation efforts aimed at sowing doubts about science and democracy, as in industry-driven controversies over global warming and in Russian uses of social media to influence elections in western Europe as well as the United States. “Flooding” the media with government propaganda to distract from unfavorable information is also one of the primary techniques the Chinese regime currently uses to manage discontent.

CONNECT

From the Online Etymology Dictionary ...

skeptic (n.)
also sceptic, 1580s, "member of an ancient Greek school that doubted the possibility of real knowledge," from French sceptique and directly from Latin scepticus "the sect of the Skeptics," from Greek skeptikos (plural Skeptikoi "the Skeptics, followers of Pyrrho"), noun use of adjective meaning "inquiring, reflective" (the name taken by the disciples of the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, who lived c. 360-c. 270 B.C.E.), related to skeptesthai "to reflect, look, view" (from PIE root *spek- "to observe").

Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found. [Miguel de Unamuno, "Essays and Soliloquies," 1924]

There is one word of caution, however, to be given to those who renounce inquiry; it is that they cannot retain the right to condemn inquirers. [Benjamin Jowett, "On the Interpretation of Scripture," in "Essays and Reviews," 1860]

We've gotten lazy and our leaders ... no, our elected officials, have noticed and taken advantage of our complacency. As Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Both sides are guilty. Be your own hero. Be a skeptic.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL