GenY v. truth

[Jnyusa]

Faramond: The important truth is not the factual reality of the world, but the inner emotional reality.

This is very interesting. I have to think about it some more.

... and it's more tempting to join a team than ever before to make sense of things.

Because of the sheer volume of information? Or do you think that other cultural changes are contributing to this?


nel: We cross posted earlier and I decided to answer your post separately because there was so much in it, instead of adding an eta to my earlier post.

First, I acknowledge that "not care about the truth" can be perceived as incendiary, but I would not like to back down from opening my initial statements that way in the other thread because of the nature of the comments that preceded it. What concerned some posters in that discussion was clearly a question about the "truthfulness" of a text - truthfulness in a very broad sense, and I won't rehash all the issues that were raised. There were a lot of counter-comments of the style, 'get over yourself' and 'whatevah' which I took to be dismissal of not only facticity itself but of the posters who cared about it, a dismissal of their approach, their mindset. Now, that may be a matter of individual posting style, but it struck me with some force. Other than expressing insult, I have not yet heard from anyone who made statements of that nature that they did not mean to dismiss the very concern of other posters for "truthfulness" in addition to rejecting a need for facticity in fictional works and the publicity that surrounds them, etc.

I don’t know whether Faramond is interested in discussing the more existential aspects of this issue. His post seems to lean in that direction. But I think it might be a hard topic to talk about.

As to the meat of your text, you made two points which seem to me significant in their potential to explain a generational difference, if there is one:

Jn, I am not quite sure I would go as far as "young people think that the truth cannot be known." My view is that the truth can be known, but it is our task to decipher it as best we can.

<snip> the rest of this paragraph, closing with:

But I have no expectation that any individual source is true, and the only way I know to avoid the abyss of which you speak is to assume the burden of consulting a multiplicity of sources in the hope that that will come closer to "the truth" than any single type of source seems consistently to do.

This is very much the academic approach to investigation. It seems to me that this approach is needed towards nearly all information presented by the media these days. (And I include the internet in the media; I think I mentioned it earlier as a significant factor.)

This requires work. It requires more work than I had to do to sort out fact from fiction when I was your age. And it seems to me a lot to ask of a citizenry that all people approach information the way academicians do. Most people are not trained to approach information this way and do not do it naturally.

In summary, it is clear to me that assuming the truth of alleged "news" is naive and demanding it is futile.

My perception is different regarding the futility of this demand.

I do not mean by this that my perception is right and yours is wrong. On the contrary, I suspect that your perception has a much higher probability of being accurate. Much higher. But I find that I cannot surrender my conviction that my demand is legitimate, because my expectations were shaped during an era in which it was not futile to make such a demand. In other words, my perspective is generational.

• Newspapers were more diversely owned and they competed for fame via investigative reporting.

Certainly news was slanted, but if one wanted to read things that slanted in different directions and find one's own middle, it was EASY to do this. Even in the small city where I grew up, there was a bookstore that carried all the national and big regional papers. For one dollar and a 10-minute drive I could have ten genuinely different perspectives on every issue. And those perspectives would be rich in socioeconomic meaning as well - regional differences, business v. labor differences, gender differences depending on the reporter, political orientation depending on the owner of the paper.

Here's what I can get today at the largest bookstore in my area, and I live in a region with 4 million people, not 100,000 as I did then: The Philadelphia Inquirer (daily), USA Today (daily), the New York Times (once a week), The Wall Street Journal (once a week), plus three or four local papers that report on neighborhood events. Probably I could do better at a Center City bookstore, but that's an hour and a half drive for me, a $7 parking bill if I can't find a meter, and the papers themselves all cost a few dollars. My hometown has also changed: the bookstore I used to use is out of business, replaced by the same conglomerate Borders and B&N that I have here, offering the same fare.

It’s also not worth it to seek alternate news sources because the lack of competition is reflected in a lack of alternate perspective. Southern Ohio no longer offers the auto industry labor news perspective but the same Knight Ridder perspective that I can get here.

• The incidents we've heard recently of a Pulitzer Prize winner fabricating sources, a journalist for NYT fabricating sources, a journalist being used to channel government disinformation on a domestic issue, outing a CIA agent, etc. .... this kind of thing was unheard of when I was of the age to start reading newspapers.

I am flabbergasted to hear such stories. I was flabbergasted to watch Dan Rather's reports on the first Gulf War. My overwrought, hoity-toity attitude is that reporters who fabricate news or play out fictional drama on TV should be criminally prosecuted. It's an assault on the constitution.

Boy, am I naive.

The idea of shrugging off the newspapers and the Six O'clock News is like a little death to me. They were THE source when I was growing up. I feel positively betrayed by the turn the communications industry has taken. There were problems, there were scandals, there were exposes, but they were not shrugged off as they are now, business as usual.

• No internet. If you wanted to research a topic in depth you had to go to books. Words printed on a page are not ephemeral. One can point to what an author wrote and discredit it. Citations are given. One can read them and decide if they were presented faithfully.

The standing of careful scholars and serious writers in the public voice was much, much greater (imo) than it is today, simply because of the volume of unverified modern noise available now to drown them out. And most of that noise comes from the internet, but some of it also comes from academia itself, from a proliferation of schools and programs and self-published journals where the peer review is specious. As Faramond observed, there is enormous pressure in many cases to draw biased conclusions, and data does get fudged. I'm not saying this never happened before, but it happens now with greater frequency.

Just by the way, my University recognized a need, back in 1997, to develop a policy about internet sourcing by students. To this day we don't have one. We haven’t figured out yet how to structure our requirements for verification where the internet is concerned.

But that resignation does not automatically equate to disinterest with the truth, nor a belief that the truth simply cannot be known.

I don't think that there is lack of interest across the board, or a general belief that no truth in any circumstance can ever be known. I am thinking of it more in terms of territory surrendered than in terms of a changed attitude toward the importance of truth in general.

Jn

edited for glitches

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Unlike some of my fellow Gen Yers in this conversation, I do not feel that there is much harm in discussing common perceptions among teenagers and twenty-somethings, while acknowledging that there are a significant number of exceptions.

I don't see any harm in discussing it either, which is why I started this topic in the first place. I find it interesting that you say there are a significant number of exceptions. That kind of stops making them exceptions, and they are part of the common perception (perhaps without realizing it). As often as I try to be an exception to general rules (because it's fun mostly), I find that I am still a part (not sure either large or small) of the common perception no matter how hard I try not to.

And perhaps it is our increasing level of resignation that means we are not outraged, or even perturbed, by a movie or a fictional work (or even a "thoroughly discredited" work still held out as fact - for the sake of argument, HBHG, although I don't know enough to say one way or the other) that might cause people to misperceive reality. Why worry about such misperceptions when others seem to happen continually due to inaccurate, biased, or insufficiently researched "news" - and flat-out false information presented on the Internet...?

It kind of becomes a matter of priority. With the relatively high number of slanted, misperceived, false, inaccurate, etc. 'truths' coming from a variety of sources there is only so much time one can devote to this while also having a job, social life, marriage, etc. Certain falsities have to be placed into your "Why wouldn't they lie?" bin. You can only be burned so many times before it stops hurting.

Let me throw off another wild idea: has anyone noticed or felt an attitude on the part of those who have continuous access to the media that ordinary people cannot be trusted with facts? In other words, a sort of contempt for the ability of the average person to make a good decision, and a decision to foist on them prepackaged opinions for that reason?

<snipped for questions>

So let me ask of our millennials in particular: do you feel expected to make decisions about politics, economics, science, etc.? Or is the message you are getting (from any and all quarters) that any decision you would try to make on your own would be meaningless or wrong?

Either the people really think that common people cannot be trusted to form an opinion with the facts, or people don't want to have to form opinions for themselves. We live in an instant world. I hear way too many fast-acting diet pill commercials on the radio, and so many magazines have articles about "## of ways to instantly gratify yourself." Perhaps people might think this way with regards to opinions on social, political or economic issues that face them. If someone packages an opinion for you, that's another instant gratification that you can check off on your way to dropping the kids off at day camp, or to get some Starbucks and relax.

I think at times the expectation is falsely expected. Some might say that you should make the decision for youself based on the facts, but they know they'd rather give you the decision/opinion because A) you will be in line with them and B) you live in an instant world. They might say your opinion would be wrong without them, but that usually just means that your opinion would not be theirs. It might not be wrong.

Teams are popular today with regards to politics. It's all about 'us' and 'them'. "They don't care about your issues, but we do." I don't think teams and politics mix very well.

* * * * * * * * *

Other than expressing insult, I have not yet heard from anyone who made statements of that nature that they did not mean to dismiss the very concern of other posters for "truthfulness" in addition to rejecting a need for facticity in fictional works and the publicity that surrounds them, etc.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am part of Gen Y, but I say the concern is misplaced and creating something from nothing (tempest in a teapot, mountain out of a mole hill, etc.). It goes back to what I said was a matter of priority. The republishing of a discredited work as history is concerning because people will read it thinking that it really is history, whereas the other is less important in the grand scheme of things.

[Jnyusa]

It kind of becomes a matter of priority.

<snip>

If someone packages an opinion for you, that's another instant gratification that you can check off on your way to dropping the kids off at day camp, or to get some Starbucks and relax.

This is exactly what I was hoping to get at, TED!

Would you be willing to elaborate on the areas to which you give priority? And those areas, if any, where the convenience of pre-packaged opinion outweighs its disadvantages? (I know this is sort of asking you to analyze your whole life ... )

As often as I try to be an exception to general rules ... I find that I am still a part ... of the common perception no matter how hard I try not to.

LOL, my whole generation was characterized by its rebellion against conformity, but then someone would come along and point out that we all wore the same bellbottom jeans, all cut our hair (or didn't cut our hair) the same way, all listened to the same music, held convergent political opinions, etc.

In a way, we caused the uniformity of the mass market to be what it is today because there were just so damn many of us. For anyone who could exploit our tastes and attitudes, dinner was on the house.

Thing is, I think that U.S. culture in particular promises an individualism that is impossible to achieve in any place or time. People are social creatures and will always adhere to and reflect social grouping to a large extent. We all have this dream of being seen and treated as individuals, but at the same time we are very uncomfortable if we really are forced to form goals and opinions in isolation from others.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am part of Gen Y, but I say the concern is misplaced ... and the paragraph that follows, closing with: ... in the grand scheme of things.

Thank you very much for answering this question, TED.

Jn

[tinwë]

People are social creatures and will always adhere to and reflect social grouping to a large extent.

Jn

I would assume that one of the factors at work here is that we have, to some extent, replaced “society” with “media”. While this is not, in my opinion, a purely generational phenomenon, it may be more true for the younger generations than the older.

[Jnyusa]

I think you're right, tinwë. Though I would suggest that the generational component of this is pretty strong, but might break in a different place, like at GenX.

I'll tell what I think is the primary cause of this.

The one thing that none of us can avoid doing is shopping.

Today our shopping takes place at a mall (or on the web).
The Mall = private property = no political or otherwise public activity.

For the WWII generation, shopping took place on Main Street.
Main Street = public property = flourishing political and other public activities.

During my generation (and yours) The Mall was just coming into being and it co-existed with Main Street. It was kind of at the end of my college career (mid-70s) that Main Street started to be closed to 'loiterers' and blocks of former small businesses started to be gentrified and turned into 'downtown malls.' The sidewalk literally disappeared, except for getting from the parking garage into the shopping areas.

Today, unless a city designates a 'commons' - and lots of cities do, of course - there are no naturally occurring commons. But more important, the designated commons is now separated from all the other routine economic activities that take place, like shopping. If one wants to put one's finger on the pulse of one's community, one must make a special effort to do that - to go someplace where one does not go in the course of daily routine; whereas before this public face was fully integrated with other routine activities and one could not avoid confronting it.

There's a great book written about this:

Kunstler, James H., The Geography of Nowhere(NY: Touchstone Books, 1994)

And there was also a three part PBS special about the progress of this phenomenon in NYC. I've been dying to buy a copy for my students to watch but the the PBS store wants, like $150 for it, and I'm never willing to shell out that kind of money for teaching materials.

So the citizenry was tossed back onto the next best thing for public information - the media. I think that anyone born from the late 60s on probably has a different perception of the nature of public activity (i.e. GenX), because they are the ones for whom the commons had disappeared by the time they were old enough to use it.

Just btw, with a small wink, Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" article is so famous ... I wish that someone would write an equally compelling dynamic for the Tragedy of the Loss of the Commons.

Jn

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

LOL, my whole generation was characterized by its rebellion against conformity, but then someone would come along and point out that we all wore the same bellbottom jeans, all cut our hair (or didn't cut our hair) the same way, all listened to the same music, held convergent political opinions, etc.

Thing is, I think that U.S. culture in particular promises an individualism that is impossible to achieve in any place or time. People are social creatures and will always adhere to and reflect social grouping to a large extent. We all have this dream of being seen and treated as individuals, but at the same time we are very uncomfortable if we really are forced to form goals and opinions in isolation from others.

That's Gen Y as well, but without bellbottoms (some tight fitting jean pants, I don't know). Many of the bands who Gen Yers listen to (screamo, emo, pop-punk, indie for example) talk about how everyone should be an individual and non-conformist, but all the kids are wearing Atticus t-shirts or cutting their hair the same. A character in the punk movie SLC Punk pointed out to the main character that he tries to buck conformity, but he dresses like everyone else essentially creating a uniform against conformity (a wonderful oxymoron). Same problems, different age groups.

Thank you very much for answering this question, TED.

You're welcoem. Anytime you want a specific answer or explanation from me, you need only ask. I don't mind.

As to your first question in the post I am responding to, I'll need some time to flesh out a longer response, but my priorities kind of fall into a few different categories: issues that directly affect me come first (lack of decent paying jobs, the MTA [string of expletives], certain intrusions of fundie christians into social or political policy are some examples), whereas issues that directly affect my family and friends generally come second (intrusions on women's rights, treatment of gays, foreign policy are some examples), and lastly (for now), I place issues that are merely in my peripherary (controversial entertainment, celebrities, students boycotting a cell phone ban in schools are some examples). The number of categories is subject to change as this is a skeleton response for the moment.

I try to steer clear of pre-packaged opinions except with regards to arts and entertainment reviews. I use those as a guideline to movies I may or may not want to see, or books I may or may not want to read, etc. I don't think pre-packaged opinions are generally advantageous because you have a certain intellectual disconnect to the issue at hand. If you are only repeating what some pundit tells you, then you aren't really informing yourself, just memorizing. Maybe I have a dislike of rote memorization due to the early days of school, and my difficulty with my own recall.

Anyway, I hope this has given you enough to respond back with. I'll answer more indepth after I've had some time to think more deeply about the question.

[Jnyusa]

... my priorities kind of fall into a few different categories: issues that directly affect me come first (lack of decent paying jobs, the MTA [string of expletives], certain intrusions of fundie christians into social or political policy are some examples), whereas issues that directly affect my family and friends generally come second (intrusions on women's rights, treatment of gays, foreign policy are some examples), and lastly (for now), I place issues that are merely in my peripherary (controversial entertainment, celebrities, students boycotting a cell phone ban in schools are some examples). The number of categories is subject to change as this is a skeleton response for the moment.

Thanks, TED. There's no rush to come up with an exhaustive list, of course. I am curious whether the other millennials would prioritize along similar lines.

I'm pretty sure that I also prioritize those issues that affect me directly, though I sometimes get sucked into tangential things. I wouldn't put the same stuff as you do in each category but that's because our jobs and life responsibilities are different. I would put my daughters in category one, for example, but one's responsibility toward children is different from one's responsibility toward parents, siblings, etc.

Jn

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

I wouldn't put the same stuff as you do in each category but that's because our jobs and life responsibilities are different. I would put my daughters in category one, for example, but one's responsibility toward children is different from one's responsibility toward parents, siblings, etc.

Without a doubt. I do put my brother and parents into my first category if either of them are in need. Neither of them are usually in much need, though. The list of priorities is sure to change from person to person and from situation to situation if warranted.

[nerdanel]

First, I acknowledge that "not care about the truth" can be perceived as incendiary, but I would not like to back down from opening my initial statements that way in the other thread because of the nature of the comments that preceded it.

Gotcha. I admit that I wasn't following the thread closely at that point, due to RL busyness, and I think that, when doing a quick skim, I missed some of the...nuance in people's responses to each other. No matter.

Now, that may be a matter of individual posting style, but it struck me with some force. Other than expressing insult, I have not yet heard from anyone who made statements of that nature that they did not mean to dismiss the very concern of other posters for "truthfulness" in addition to rejecting a need for facticity in fictional works and the publicity that surrounds them, etc.

I'm not going to reread that thread at this point to understand where those posters were coming from. On-topic for this thread, though: perhaps part of the intergenerational split we are discussing is that it seems rather odd, from my perspective, to maintain such solicitude for facticity in fictional works and their publicity, because their lack of "truth" is or should be patently obvious. I'll come back to this later.

On a related note:

Cerin asked me in that thread, and I haven't responded until now, something like: what I would view as an appropriate response from the gay community, if anti-gay factions were to make a popular fictional movie that communicated the message that homosexuality was a choice. To respond to that, I have to resist the temptation to discuss my view that same-sex attraction is not entirely devoid of choice elements for all segments of the GLB community, and assume for the sake of argument that the correct stance for the queer community is that same-sex attraction is utterly not a choice in any way for all people in all times. (Certainly that is the best stance for legal argument, in any case.)

First, I would view a boycott as entirely unproductive, somewhat annoying, and unlikely to succeed in communicating the hypothetically desired message of the community, namely: homosexuality is not a choice. I think that it would make the gay community look hysterical, not just to the right-wing, but to the people who are "undecided" on homosexuality, the middle-of-the-road Americans, and in that sense, a boycott could do great harm. I think that those Americans would be more likely to ask, "What are the ideas that the gay community would prefer are never aired? What do they have to hide? Let me go see this movie and try to figure it out."

Second, and more on topic for this thread, I'd propose dividing America broadly into four categories (not generational):
- The Extreme Left. People who are so ideologically committed to left-wing thought that they are unlikely to consider seriously arguments or evidence that would undermine their position, instead dismissing such things out of hand.
- The Extreme Right. Ditto for the right.
- The Brainless. People who believe what they hear. Easily swayed to any idea presented to them, especially those that "look" credible or "feel" emotionally right.
- The Thinking Continuum. A vast group of Americans, spanning the gamut from very conservative to very liberal, but genuinely willing to consider arguments and evidence for opposing points of view, and be swayed from time to time, given sufficiently compelling evidence. Likely to privilege rational thought over unyielding faith in principles (whether Right or Left principles)

Whether we're talking about Cerin's hypothetical gay movie, DVC, or something else - the Extreme Right and Extreme Left are going to seize onto it or reject it utterly, based on whether the thing in question seems to support their position. To them, the work is likely to seem utterly Fair and Balanced, or utterly Unfair and Unbalanced, depending on the conclusions that it presents. The Brainless may believe or disbelieve it based on how the work "feels" to them - that is, a right-leaning Brainless person may seize onto the "homosexuality is a choice" movie, and a left-leaning, secular Brainless person may seize onto any anti-Christian fictitious elements of DVC.

For these three categories, generational differences in perception of truth are less important. This thread's topic is primarily relevant to the individuals belong to the Thinking Continuum. Doubtless most of us would place ourselves in this category, which contains its own generational divides. There was a lot of debate in the other thread over the relative sizes of what I'm calling the Brainless and the Thinking Continuum. To me, this seems to be a moot inquiry. No matter what their sizes, my first three groups have no serious, thoughtful interest in discerning the truth from without. The Extremes believe they possess the truth internally, and will likely be affected only by the media that tends to support their pre-formed conclusions. The Brainless may consult external media, but do not consider it seriously and thoughtfully before reaching conclusions. Now, if you believe that the Brainless being swayed to one POV over the other has consequences for their eternal life, you probably care a bit more than I do. Even if you do care, however, I see no alternative to preserve their souls, short of censoring others who might influence them (and that's where I cover my ears and start singing the Free Speech Anthem). Certainly, it is unlikely that a boycott will be sufficient.

In any case, members of the Thinking Continuum are, if you will, the swing voters. That is, the people who might see either DVC or the gay choice movie and think critically about what weight to assign it - or make an informed choice not to see either movie.

So, for me, the question of this thread is where and how Generation Y members of the Thinking Continuum expect to find "the truth", if anywhere. I'm pretty certain that we as a group don't expect to find it in a blockbuster movie. The greater includes the lesser - if we can't even find truth in fact-based works, the traditional media, "documentary" films, and Internet "news", then who on earth would expect to find it in a fictional movie based on a fantastic work of fiction, (we might think). It may be a lot to ask of a citizenry that people approach information as though they were in academia. The likely effect? The Thinking Continuum will shrink, and the other three categories will grow. If not being Brainless takes too much work, then more Americans are likely to become Brainless. This is a very real concern. You are correct that the sort of analysis that I described is not intuitive to many people. For many of us, it seems to be learned during advanced undergraduate or graduate studies. Normatively, one should not be required to have a doctoral degree - or be capable of advanced academic analysis - simply to discern the truth from the news consistently. Again, though, I ask - what choice do we have? You wrote, "I suspect that your perception has a much higher probability of being accurate. Much higher." While it's usually pleasant to be likely to be right , not in this case. I'd prefer your perception was accurate.

As you state, your generation knows what it is to receive fact and fiction, sorted out, without turning to an academic aggregation of sources. I'm not entirely sure my generation has ever had that luxury. Viewed thusly, to return to the beginning of my post, it makes plain sense that members of my generation might be dismissive of members of yours, who complain that they cannot trust the accuracy or authenticity of a fictional movie/book holding itself out as having fact elements. "When has it ever been different?" we might ask. The answer, all too unfortunately, seems to be, "Before you were born."

I'm not sure if this conceptual framework adds anything to the discussion, but I wanted to throw it out there and see. I think it's easy to get sidetracked, when discussing Gen. Y, into discussing the massive indifference of today's youth (the Brainless Ys), so, FWIW, I thought I'd try to separate them out. Hopefully I haven't veered back into DVC thread territory too much in doing so.

I couldn't agree more strongly with this:

The standing of careful scholars and serious writers in the public voice was much, much greater (imo) than it is today, simply because of the volume of unverified modern noise available now to drown them out. And most of that noise comes from the internet, but some of it also comes from academia itself, from a proliferation of schools and programs and self-published journals where the peer review is specious.

As an aside: one of my favorite examples of non-existent peer review is that of academic law journals. The law reviews and journals, even to the most prestigious, are entirely run by second and third-year law students - people who aren't even qualified to practice law in any jurisdiction - who select, edit, and publish the articles submitted to them by practitioners and professors. At many schools, any student can create a journal and - given only minimal procedural safeguards - begin to publish articles in a new journal bearing the school's name. As far as I'm concerned, this complete and utter travesty is just one example of "academic noise" - although this isn't even the "unverified modern noise" which you describe. This is even before we get to the proliferation of schools and programs you're describing.

I don't think that there is lack of interest across the board, or a general belief that no truth in any circumstance can ever be known. I am thinking of it more in terms of territory surrendered than in terms of a changed attitude toward the importance of truth in general.

Then I agree. I don't know that my generation is more willing to surrender territory - I think that we grew up during a time when the adults in our lives were already in the process of ceding it. IMO, we've never known that it was like to possess that territory - to be able to rely fully, or mostly, on the types of information you're describing. But I am 5+ years younger than most of the Gen Yers in this conversation, so maybe my perspective is even more pronounced than theirs.

[Faramond]

Jn: I don’t know whether Faramond is interested in discussing the more existential aspects of this issue. His post seems to lean in that direction. But I think it might be a hard topic to talk about.

Yes, but I'm not sure it would fit in with this thread, and I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind. But the word "existential" has me interested.

************************

Shopping takes place now in the indoor mall or strip mall or the internet mall. Shopping has been isolated from other activities. This is the modern trend, to organize life into separate compartments. From here is follows that truth is separated into separate compartments. A parcel of entertainment such as "The DaVinci Code" will be completely separate from anything else. It is merely entertainment. This was, in fact, a common statement by millenials in that thread, though not exclusively made by them! It is in a separate compartment from history, so why should it matter if the publishers have constructed a media aura around the book that distorts history? These truths are not related.

A myriad of media led by internet and cable TV bring the entire world to us. The world is too much to digest. So, with the glut, we get no true piece of the world. The entire world must be filtered and sorted into categories to be managed.

A man who lives his whole life a century past in the small town with its Main street has almost none of the world in front of him, but the little bit he sees is his, and he really is a part of it. There is no reason to separate his life into compartments. The dark side is that he is not challenged, and his horizons never change, in fact they do not exist, because he never ventures into them. I will not romanticize the past; I do want to know what we may have lost that should be rediscovered.

**************************

The creation and nurturing of ideology is a way of isolating the truth from external factors. The secret of "spin" media is that the spin is spun more by teaching us how to think than by overtly telling us what to think. The ideological spectrum of conservative and liberal is a feature of the media teaching us how to think. To put it broadly, we are taught to think about an issue by identifying it as conservative or liberal and then reacting to the label. There is an unintentional conspiracy between the opposing cartels in Washington DC.

[Jnyusa]

Earlier today I was visiting at the Outer Banks and Wilko has posted this article (it appears to be a draft article) by Harry Frankfurt at Princeton, entitled "On Bullshit."

http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/Health ... n%20BS.doc

It's a bit of a tedious read in the beginning but try to read carefully the explanation he offers for Wittgenstein's remarks to Fania Pascal about her tonsillectomy, as it says a very great deal about the nature of "lack of concern for the truth."

Also, Frankfurt manages to put much better than I did this question about the change in the status of the truth from my generation to my children's generation. It has to do with the way one's environment presents the knowability of reality; and Frankfurt also feels that the environment has has changed and that this has affected people's confidence and, by extension, their concern with obtaining accuracy. Allow me to quote a couple paragraphs near the end of the article, summarizing into bullet points his last two remarks regarding the reasons for this change.

Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.

Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great. <snip>
-- Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. <snip>
--The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. <snip>

It's a good read, and more than amusing in places, but takes a bit of time to get through it.

Jn

[vison]

Very interesting and very apt.

On Manwë there is a hot thread about the upcoming "docudrama" on ABC about 9/11.

I think everyone should be required to read the article quoted by Jnyusa before seeing this thing.

[MithLuin]

From back in May...

So, for me, the question of this thread is where and how Generation Y members of the Thinking Continuum expect to find "the truth", if anywhere. I'm pretty certain that we as a group don't expect to find it in a blockbuster movie. The greater includes the lesser - if we can't even find truth in fact-based works, the traditional media, "documentary" films, and Internet "news", then who on earth would expect to find it in a fictional movie based on a fantastic work of fiction, (we might think).

While I would agree that (in general), we don't seek out truth in movies, I would have to point to the phenomena that was 'The Matrix'...people weren't just interested in the fight scenes. There was a lot of interest in the question 'what is real?' (and, therefore, 'what is true?') I am sure lots of teens discussed philosophy after that first movie came out. Disappointment with the sequels was not due to lack of cool special effects or disappointing fight scenes...it had to do with where they took the story. Well, that...and it was very hard to top the twist of the original. But anyway, the first movie raised the questions, and then the later movies tried to answer them...which means that people were expecting real answers, on some level.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is still meaningful as to how people come to see truth. The more of it you see, the less you are satisfied with the pale reflections and immitations. I think nel's point about the Thinking Continuum (why do I feel like Q from Star Trek should be in that?) reaching across the entire spectrum of ideas (from left to right) is insightful. Someone who is dynamically evaluating their views, and eagerly searching for the truth, may be hard-core liberal or conservative. The danger is not in the extremes (perse), but in thinking becoming calcified. I think (I may be wrong) that there is a common suspicion that anyone who holds radical views is likely to go blow stuff up...or that they cannot be reasoned with. While that is certainly possible.....some middle-of-the-road people are brainless, too.



I am a bit more sensitive to "generational" divides than I should be. I am (I think) somewhere on the boundary of X and Y, if I recall correctly. But my high school boyfriend (who was 2 1/2 years older than me) was fond of telling me that he was from a different generation .

While this thread has focused on the..increased skepticism? cynicism? of the younger generations, I have also heard people discuss the increased hopefulness or positive thinking of the younger generations . So, it really does depend on what you are talking about.

[Jnyusa]

I would have to point to the phenomena that was 'The Matrix'...people weren't just interested in the fight scenes ...

I agree with those observations, Mith. People do look to the entertainment media for two things that are not properly characterized as fictional, imo.

One is to get a sense of what's out there, what ideas are available for consumption - not just how to kill two hours, you know, but what kinds of stories are being told by our society/culture. I think that many or most of us sample the fare in entertainment form first and then pursue the things that particularly interest us in more serious form.

Two is to get a sense of what ideas/issues are the most important to the society at any moment in time. Alfred Kahn, the futurist, has created a whole business out of this ... in a way his idea is rooted in Chomsky ... the media tends to glom on to a particular idea/concept/theme and become saturated with it for short periods of time, so what is 'important' to the society at any moment can be assessed from the fact that many television programs, movies, news articles, etc., addressing that topic will all appear at the same time. According to Kahn, the growth of a theme in the media follows a particular pattern and he claims to be able to predict what themes will be significant about a year in advance by studying these patterns. He markets this info to marketers and politicans.

While this thread has focused on the..increased skepticism? cynicism? of the younger generations, I have also heard people discuss the increased hopefulness or positive thinking of the younger generations . So, it really does depend on what you are talking about.

Yes, hopefulness and optimism is what the younger generation is supposed to bring to the table! It is natural to become more cynical as one grows older. This is not cause for rejoicing but I think it's inevitable when you see how long it actually takes good things to grow and bad things to change. Our sense of what can be accomplished in one lifetime narrows as we grow older. And young people often feel, I think, that the relative cynicism of older people is a form of dismissal, but actually I look at my children's generation and think, "Thank goodness they have so much optimism and idealism because my well is starting to run dry."

Nevertheless I know I sometimes respond with 'the wet blanket,' but it's not because I consider idealism misplaced. Rather, I'm just no longer able to share that level of enthusiasm for 'changing the world.' But it is a great relief to me, and makes life seem whole and right, that there are always people of an age who are able to generate that enthusiasm.

Thing is ... I notice this particularly in my students ... in some ways my daughters' generation is more cynical than I am. And that saddens me, and worries me, because if you can't be idealistic, shoot-the-moon, off-to-change-the-world when you're in your twenties, when will you ever know the joy of ignorantly blissful enthusiasm?

Unfettered optimism seems to me the only real upside of being young, considering that the big downside is having to carve a space for yourself in the world without having much information or experience to go on.

Jn

[Aravar]

One is to get a sense of what's out there, what ideas are available for consumption - not just how to kill two hours, you know, but what kinds of stories are being told by our society/culture. I think that many or most of us sample the fare in entertainment form first and then pursue the things that particularly interest us in more serious form.

Two is to get a sense of what ideas/issues are the most important to the society at any moment in time.

Not wishing to derail this into another PJ thread... but I wonder whether that isn't part of the PvR divide with PJ's adaptations. It's clear, from the commentaries, that PJ and co felt that the stories as written were not saying the things that would appeal to the contemporary audience: so, for example, Aragorn must be a reluctant king. We have Sam's speech about the War on Terror. The War of the Ring seems to become a war of annihilation, rather than a war for dominance.

This has come through in other debates on TORC: the beating of Gollum springs to mind. Those who have justified it seem to be coming from a 'Well they're men under the stress of war' a 'meme' that has currency in both contemporary discourse and in fiction: the ticking bomb scenario in, say, 24.

I wonder whether purists are those who see JRRT's approach as still entirely valid, but those who are on the other side want an updating of the myth, much as the Arthur cycle has been updated, to deal with the concerns of the moment. [Old and new Battlestar Galactica is now springing to mind, but I'll stop here]

[Faramond]

I read the article about bullshit.

In th article there is a story about a woman comparing her pain to the pain a dog feels after it has been run over. Wittgenstein objects to this comparison. The basis for an objection that I understood from reading the article is that this comparison ignores the dog's reality. ( Which dog? Any dog that has been run over, I guess. ) In an attempt to express a truth about herself, the woman has trampled on the truth of the dog. She can't possibly know the truth about how a dog feels, but she pretends she knows how it feels, and she invites us all to do the same.

A serious objection to the dog comparison seems silly, except as an instructive exercise in describing bullshit. However, there are many other statements like it that should be challenged.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I wonder whether purists are those who see JRRT's approach as still entirely valid, but those who are on the other side want an updating of the myth, much as the Arthur cycle has been updated, to deal with the concerns of the moment.

I won't speak for anyone else, but that is most emphatically not the case for me.

[Primula Baggins]

Or me. I can't think of anything more destructive to LotR than trying to use it to address "the concerns of the moment," and I'm sure that's why Tolkien himself vigorously resisted attempts to make LotR be "about" WWII or the Bomb or anything else in the modern world. Its relevance depends on its timelessness—the temptations of power, the value of individual action against evil, questions that are relevant today because they are always relevant.

[MithLuin]

While I avoided the Movies Forum on TORc while the purist/revisionist wars were waged, I think that one thing that suprised me was that the purists were not necessarily the people who knew the book the best, and the revisionists weren't always the people who were only casually acquainted with the story. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had expected those who are in a constant state of reading LotR and know all the trivia and details to be most vigorously opposed to any changes. But it simply didn't pan out that way.

Purism/Revisionism seemed to be more about how people perceived the story. What is "essential" - what makes LotR, well, LotR? And people answered that question in different ways. For some people, it's more the details, and for others, it's more the "big picture" or themes. Thus, some people are more concerned by an issue such as plate armor, while others are more disturbed by the beheading of the Mouth of Sauron. Some people are interested in figuring out what Tolkien did, and see if you can do the same thing in a different way (create a new scene that captures something that was important to the story - ie, most of the Aragorn/Arwen/Elrond scenes). Others think that it is disrespectful to Tolkien to assume that we can 'do better' than he did with his story.

The changes PJ made (that you highlight) were done for marketing considerations, yes - to appeal to people, to make it more recognizable. As entertainment, it is good to tell people stuff they already agree with. But the reason people will still watch the movies once "war on terror" is no longer a catch phrase is that they deal with themes like love and death, friendship and hope. Defending the changes is definately an "after the fact" thing - people would not say that Gollum must be beaten, but, since he was, you can explain this (or defend this) by....

[axordil]

For me the distinction was between those who view LOTR (or any published work of fiction) as a cultural artifact and those who view it as something else. There are subgroups within those broad swaths, but that was the P/R split for me in a nutshell.

Is there a generational split or two that aligns with that? I'm not qualified to say.