Friday, March 23, 2012

Words of Wisdom

“A little more than 20 years ago, Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous thesis, The End of History, where he argued that we have seen the triumph of one ideology over competing ideologies,” says [Elaine] Glaser...“I believe we’ve gone beyond Fukuyama’s thesis: there’s actually no ideology. We have the rise of technocrats, pragmatic politics… even the activists who are occupying cities around the world. They don’t say what they mean any more. They don’t have manifestos either, [there is] a general reluctance to have a political project or to lay out a blueprint for change.”

...Her premise is simple: Because we no longer subscribe to clearly defined values about how best to live our lives, we have been nudged into a world of illusion, persuasion and coercion – one that conceals the truth. “A development I see as being particularly relevant to our times is the rise of the language and techniques of marketing,” she says. “The techniques of deception developed in the world of marketing are now being applied to all areas of our lives – from politics to our love lives, the things we buy, the things we consume.”

..."So while we feel that we are wise to spin and deception, in fact I see a lot of credulousness in our current era, about the ability of ordinary citizens to speak truth to power, to hold power to account,” she says...accountability is superficial...in the absence of an anchoring ideology, those who do not believe in something will believe anything...

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