In my last post I described how a person can knowingly and unknowingly express an aspect of a narrative. For the utterly confused, here’s a link to a list of definitions and what I mean by “aspect” and “narrative.”
When it comes to whether someone is expressing an aspect, we have very few cues that can be used to determine whether it is done knowingly or unknowingly. If someone were to say, “I believe slavery is wrong because I was raised in a society in which it is wrong,” that person is expressing an aspect (that slavery is wrong) knowingly. On the other hand, were someone to say, “I believe slavery is wrong,” but nothing else, that person is not expressing the aspect knowingly. Whether that person can concede he or she has such a feeling concerning slavery because of his or her upbringing is unknown to us. We can postulate that the person saying “I believe slavery is wrong” is doing so because of being raised in a society that shuns the practice, but we cannot truly comment with exactitude on the psychological disposition of the speaker–of whether he or she genuinely believes slavery is wrong because of being raised in a society that shuns it or for other reasons.
So, there is a difference in “Liberty is the greatest thing in the world because I was raised to believe that” and “Liberty is the greatest thing in the world.” In the former, we know that the speaker is falling back on acultural upbringing to describe why he or she thinks liberty is the greatest thing because of the cue “because I was raised to believe that.” In the latter, the audience is left assuming for lack of cues; we can attribute whatever reason we want to as to why the speaker believes in liberty so ardently, but we’re only speculating.
Unfortunately, we are rarely so lucky to know, from relayed cues, whether someone is saying something only because it is consistent with their cultural upbringing. So, when politician X says, “Capitalism is the greatest thing in the world,” it’s hard for us to tell whether he’s saying that because he was raised believing it, or if he invested time comparing different economic theories, scaling the one with the other, and determining that capitalism, truly, is the greatest thing in the world.
Fortunately, what we can analyze is whether the media are presenting a message consistent with a cultural narrative. This cultural narrative is associated with the individual’s cultural upbringing. Similarly, we can analyze a political party, a group of politicians, or a politician him or herself. When politician X from the previous example says, “Apple pie and capitalism are the greatest things in the world,” and we live in a society that values those things, we can say, “This guy’s perpetuating these values/ideas/aspects.” Some of these aspects also have a reaction context to them; that is, when we hear a certain word or idea, we have a certain reaction to it that is consistent with the greater narrative. If a certain society values apple pie, when we hear that magical combination of “apple” and “pie” we think of positives, +’s, or “yay’s”. For the philosophers reading (out of my total audience of zero) this is similar to emotivism, in which we associate a “boo” or “yay” content to certain moral words or statements instead of a truth-functional association. However, due to our cultural narrative, certain words (instead of only ethical or moral ones) may have a positive or negative connotation. For example:
We are raised believing that apple pie is good and cherry pie bad (so, not so different from reality, as apple pie is better than cherry pie). Consequently, “apple pie” will have a positive connotation whereas “cherry pie” will have a negative one. For some people who hear these words, it is enough to make a judgment concerning what, or who, is associated with these two pies. If I learn James is eating an apple pie, I may feel a predisposition toward liking James; if a cherry pie, then screw James.
Naturally, this isn’t necessarily true. There’ll be some who like cherry pie regardless of what others say, and still others who don’t care what James is, only that he’s a cool dude.
Let’s take a look at something immediately relevant beyond pie (but, you cry, what is more relevant than pie?) and see how certain words are used. The Occupy Movement is a worthy candidate.
Here is a link describing the movement as apple pie (I lied about moving beyond pie). Specifically, the blog post contains a quote from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who says, “And so, demonstrating like this is as American as apple pie. We have been marching up and down and demonstrating throughout our history…”
If it’s like apple pie, whatever can be wrong with it?
Here is a column appearing in JDNews.com, which begins with, “Slackers among us have found their own movement,” referring to the the Occupy Movement.
Few in America think of slackers with any great love, nor is the author really trying to engender any lasting affection for the nascent movement.
today's media 