Name:
Flat Earth News
Author:
Nick Davies
Publishers:
Chatto & Windus, 2008,
London
Reviewed by:
Restoring the Mind
The human mind is – potentially – the
most powerful force in the world. It is, at
the same time, the most suppressed and
misunderstood and unexploited force in the
world. What drives the mind and the brain is
its potential, its ability to adapt and
change. This potential is there before us,
waiting for us. We do not exploit it,
however, and this is largely because we do
not understand much at all about the brain.
And we have no clue what the mind is. Our
greatest strength is this potential, the
potential to achieve anything and
everything. Our failure to look to this
potential can also be traced to something
else – we are nasty and cunning and indeed
dangerous predators. We seek to conquer and
dominate everything, even the mind. Once we
dominate, we suppress competition, and in so
doing we even suppress the human brain.
So, what does this mean for human
society? We know that those with power, the
elite, will deploy all the power at their
disposal to suppress the masses and prevent
them from achieving their full potential.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was surely right
when he coined the phrase “knowledge is
power.” Those with power have a vested
interest in maintaining the status quo and
making sure that the masses remain ignorant
and that the full potential of their brain
power is never unleashed. How is this
actually achieved? Propaganda and deception
are relentlessly deployed by those with
power. The powerless – the masses – are fed
useless and often inaccurate and deceptive
information. Naïve and gullible minds accept
this, of course. The result is that masses
are conned. And this is what we have today
in the media. Those with power in our
society spend much time and energy and
resources on putting out “bullshit.” The
bullshit has become a big business. In fact
it is THE biggest business in the world.
When it comes to propaganda, deception
and “bullshit”, there is not much difference
between East and West, dictatorships and
democracies. Nick Davies, an investigative
journalist for the Guardian newspaper, in
his book, Flat Earth News (Chatto & Windus,
2008, London) argues that:
Davies illustrates in detail how the
corporate news media is involved in
deception, propaganda and the spreading of
false information. Davies’s research
highlights the egregious examples, but we
must admit there is a lot more. Volumes
could be written on this effort to
propagandize. Nevertheless, the book makes
an important contribution by identifying and
analysing the rarely mentioned issue of
“propaganda and deception” in the news
business. I cannot say if Davies’s strategy
of publishing the names of journalists who
put out propaganda and bullshit will bring
the desired results. What is more likely to
bring change is competition, and this
competition will be introduced by the
internet. Propaganda and deception are
nevertheless a huge part of life. We may
even say, as my colleague Thomas Pochari has
done for many years, that this is one of the
biggest forces of the brain and mind –
deception and detection of deception. It
just might be true that deception and
detection of deception DEFINE the human
brain and its power.
If deception and detection of deception
define the human brain power, then we will
have to consider how skilled we are at
detecting deception and bullshit. I would
argue that the mind is very capable at
detecting deception. We do get the feeling
that something is not right. “Most people
are rather confident of their ability to
recognise bullshit,” argues Harry G.
Frankfurt in his book, On Bullshit
(Princeton University Press, 2005). We sense
that we are being misled, but we often fail
to scrutinize the situation. There is a good
reason for this: we often lack the necessary
knowledge and skills to see and locate the
truth. In effect, we lack the resources to
do the job.
As neuroscience and technology advance in
sophistication, propaganda and propaganda
techniques have become much more
sophisticated. Henry T. Conserva in his book
Propaganda Techniques (1st Books Library,
2003) has listed 89 actual techniques that
are used by propagandists. In sum, they
appear quite scary and powerful. He does
warn, however, that new and even more
sophisticated techniques are being developed
all the time. The book is overall quite
impressive. It is written in a simple and
readable style. I admire Conserva’s approach
to the topic: there is no bullshit and he is
very direct. I communicated with him and
emailed three basic questions to him. I
publish below this Q&A.
What is the ultimate function of
bullshit? Bullshit suppresses the potential
of the human mind. The action of deception
and detecting deception takes up a lot of
time and energy. This is why we see so much
deception and bullshit in the mainstream
media. It confuses us, it diverts us from
the right path. We fail to attain knowledge
and therefore fail to take the right
decisions. If we are to reach our potential,
we require useful and factual information.
I believe the “bullshit industry” will
soon decline. Much of the printed media is
already facing financial difficulties. This
is because readers are turning away from the
lies and propaganda. The internet is clearly
the cause of this revolution. We want the
truth, and in fact this is precisely why RTM
is growing in influence. In the coming years
and decades we will see less and less
deception and propaganda. The future is the
power of the human mind, and the future is
realizing its full potential. This, I
believe, is our destiny.
So, the revolution will be far-reaching
in our society. Our leaders are stupid
because they fail to recognize that the
greatest source of energy is the human
brain. It is the potential of the human mind
that we need to unleash. A single brain is
more powerful than the most powerful
computer, so you can just imagine the power
of over six billion brains. We will deploy
human brain power to solve all the problems
facing the world. I publish a few paragraphs
from Henry Conserva’s Propaganda Techniques:
