The Labyrinth
Propaganda is an ostensible appeal to reason and to action which is in fact essentially irrational.
We are all the more susceptible to its irrational appeal since we are subject to the same systematic irrationality in advertising.
There is such a thing as a labyrinth of information; the information is truly abundant and complex, and yet one does not really have a choice. Other vital information is withheld or unavailable. One enters the labyrinth of available facts, and there is no rational way out. On the contrary, every path eventually leads to the same center, an inescapable conclusion which may even be quite logical: but it has been predetermined by the selection of certain facts and the willful exclusion of others. “Thus rational propaganda gives birth to an irrational situation and remains before all else propaganda, that is to say an interior possession of the individual by a social power, which corresponds to his surrender of self possession.” —Jacques Ellul
The real violence exerted by propaganda is this: by means of apparent truth and apparent reason, it induces us to surrender our freedom and self-possession. It predetermines us to certain conclusions, and does so in such a way that we imagine that we are fully free in reaching them by our own judgment and our own thought. Propaganda makes up our mind for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds.
—excerpt Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
Food for thought as shilling for the Tax Reform Bill continues apace during the month of November. —Not that what you or I think makes a difference.
This pack of baying hounds–the blood freezing note rises. Its a self important noise fully aware the urgent and final responsibility, a terrible full-throated utterance of decision. —–“We must act!”
