Scott Adams on Censorship and Voting

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert and host of daily video blog Coffee With Scott Adams on YouTube and Locals) posted this tweet with a provocative thesis.

Censorship determines the narrative. The narrative determines public opinion. Public opinion determines the vote. The vote determines who runs the country.

We have replaced voting with battles over who gets censored.

In response I posted this:

Behind the censorship is the postmodern idea that those who have the most power can decide and determine what is true.

Although I agree with Adams, I think he doesn’t go back far enough to the source of the censorship. The censorship Adams talks about doesn’t spring out of nothing like the Big Bang. We need to identify the beliefs that people use to justify imposing censorship that prevents certain ideas from being expressed or facts from being uncovered.

I believe postmodernism plays a role in many issues. I summarize postmodernism as the belief that there is no objective truth. Therefore, “truth” is determined by those who have the most power over the tools of communication such as social media, news media and over our language which includes the meanings of words and what is considered acceptable uses of these words. (There are some who claim that even silence can be oppressive because if you don’t vocally repudiate something that means you secretly support the “offensive” idea.)

Therefore, I now use the term “partial news” when referring to the news media. (I know, it's not as catchy as Trump's "fake news." I’m also thinking of using “skewed news.”) Here the word “partial” has two meanings. The first meaning refers only part of the story being told so that leads us to the conclusion they want us to reach. The second meaning refers to our news outlets as being partial rather than being impartial (i.e., objective). Postmodernism lies behind this because postmodernists believe there is no objective truth. When the truth and facts no longer serve as a yardstick, your political agenda takes over. News stories can then be crafted to steer us to a predetermined conclusion rather than presenting other sides of the story. 

Persuasion Mode, Demonization Mode - Arnold Kling - Medium

Persuasion Mode, Demonization Mode - Arnold Kling - Medium

In the linked article Arnold Kling distinguishes between two modes of political discourse: persuasion mode versus demonization mode.

In persuasion mode, we treat people on the other side with respect, we listen to their logical and factual presentations, and we respond with logical and factual presentations of our own. In demonization mode, we tell anyone who will listen that people on the other side are awful human beings.

Later in the article Kling poses the following reasons why we tend to demonize people who disagree with us politically.

As individuals, we seek to minimize cognitive dissonance. It troubles me to believe that there are good reasons for people to disagree with my views. The dissonance goes away if I can dismiss those who disagree as driven solely by bad motives.

As social creatures, we are motivated to demonstrate loyalty to our tribe. Demonizing people of other tribes is a way of doing this.

Why have we devolved into demonization as our default mode of discussion? (How about that for alliteration?) Kling thinks its tied to how the mainstream news media.

As best I recall, fifty years ago, more of the commentary in newspapers, magazines, television, and radio was in persuasion mode, and less of it was in demonization mode. But in recent decades Rush Limbaugh discovered that demonization could appeal to a mass audience and Paul Krugman discovered that demonization could appeal to the readers of the New York Times.

While I agree with Kling that despite our ability to reason objectively we still harbor deep-seated tribal instincts that can challenge or at times over-ride our objectivity. I would argue that the influence of postmodern philosophy makes it even harder for some people to maintain their objectivity or makes it easier for them to succumb to primitive, tribal forces.

What is postmodernism? For a detailed explanation and analysis please refer to Stephen Hicks Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Based on his study of postmodern writing he extracts the following summary. Warning: the quoted paragraph is long and uses philosophical terms but I think it’s worth plowing through it to get to Hicks’ main points.

Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. Postmodernism substitutes instead a social-linguistic, constructionist account of reality. Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality. Having substituted social-linguistic constructs for that reality, postmodernism emphasizes the subjectivity, conventionality, and incommensurability of those constructions. Postmodern accounts of human nature are consistently collectivist, holding that individuals’ identities are constructed largely by the social-linguistic groups that they are a part of, those groups varying radically across the dimensions of sex, race, ethnicity, and wealth. Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, post-modern accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force, whether masked or naked; the use of force in turn leads to relations of dominance, submission, and oppression. Finally, postmodern themes in ethics and politics are characterized by an identification with and sympathy for the groups perceived to be oppressed in the conflicts, and a willingness to enter the fray on their behalf.

Let’s see if I can digest Hick’s ideas a bit further. Before doing that I need to touch on his description of modernism, the philosophical outlook that preceded postmodernism. Modernism reflects the Enlightenment in which thinkers agreed that there is an objective reality and that we have the ability to reason from the facts to sound, objective conclusions that we can defend and explain.

Postmodernism then fundamentally disagrees with the modernist, Enlightenment worldview. If, as postmodernists claim, that we can’t forge objective conclusions about the world then “truth” belongs to the winner of the inevitable resulting power struggle. And unfortunately that means we’re free to treat people who disagree with us as sub-human demons because they threaten our grasp on the reins of power and they’re considered agents of oppression so it’s OK to ignore or even silence those who disagree.

The Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men: Postmodern villains vs. modern heroes

Two of my favorite movies over the last year are The Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men. On the surface these movies are very different. The Dark Knight is set in a fictitious city, Gotham, with a cartoon-based hero. Meanwhile, No Country is set in West Texas in 1980. Dark Knight showcases spectacular special effects and stunts with an implausible plot while No County the feel of an Alfred Hitchcock movie with a deliberate pace and realistic action.

While all of this is true I also believe these two films share two things in common: a postmodern villain and a hero who represents a perplexed moral center. I plan to post more on postmodern relativism but in essence it is the belief that there is no objective truth because our inherent prejudices and conceptual shortcomings prevent us from establishing hard and fast principles. Someone who buys consistently buys into postmodern relativism believes they can do anything they want regardless of consequences. A person who believes this will act as if he is an end in themselves while treating others as means to their ends.

Hence you have someone like the Joker in the Dark Knight who sets up situations in which his victims are mere toys for his entertainment. The Joker wants to show that under the right conditions everyone will devolve to his level and kill each other without second thought. Similarly, Anton Chigurh routinely dispatches anyone who gets in his way and at times uses a coin flip, the ultimate in random decision making, to decide if someone will live or die. (A coin flip is also used in Dark Knight but by Harvey Dent, the hero who does succumb to the Joker’s arguments.)

To be fair, there does appear to be one key difference between the Joker and Chigurh: the Joker doesn’t show much interest in committing crimes in order to obtain money while Chigurh does pursue the $2,000,000 of drug money. If anything, the Joker represents a more “advanced” stage of devolution than Chigurh who still has the ultimate goal of getting the drug money.

Both movies also feature a hero who fights the evil of the villain without fully gasping why his nemesis acts the way he does. They represent the “modern” worldview (i.e., reflecting the Enlightenment) which holds there is objective truth and sound principles including respect for others. As a result they cannot truly grasp what motivates the Joker or Chigurh. Their confusion and dismay is more clearly expressed by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in a couple of conversations where he decries the increasing violence and the deteriorating moral condition of the world. Both films share a similar apprehension over the evolution of villains from the petty criminal who steals or robs for personal gain but still plays within some “rules” to the postmodern villain who merely wants to destroy value for amusement or treats humans as mere nuisances in the way of their goals.

So why do I enjoy these movies given their dark center? Because I think they capture (even if inadvertently) the sign of the times without giving up hope that truth and justice are worth upholding.