h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<...release it if it serves your ends, and cover it up if it doesn't.>

Release it if it serves your ends, and lie if it doesn't?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Looks like it... but then how many people, especially those in positions of power, could really be seen to be really, really interested in The Truth?

When it coincides with their world view.

<...interested in The Truth?>

The Truth is a subject which has occupied philosophers for centuries. They write whole books on the subject! Clearly, the meaning or nature of The Truth is not as obvious or intuitive as one might think. So perhaps propaganda - lying - is also more complex than it might appear?

No, I think perhaps it's only the details that get complicated. Propaganda is saying whatever suits your purposes, whether or not it's the truth. Perhaps 'spin' is slightly different, in that you try to take a view on the truth which most favours your own perspective. If you actually lie, I think you've gone beyond spin.

Just my

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

News is what someone, somewhere, is trying to keep quiet. Everything else is advertising.

-Lord Byron Northcliffe

Propaganda is most definitely not just lying. Lying is really quite difficult. Spinning the truth is also propaganda.

If you can colour people's perceptions about what you are telling them and still tell them the truth (albeit may be not all of it, not all at once), then you can be honest, say you are honest and other people will believe you are honest.

Doesn't make it any less palatable though.

Now that's perceptive.

"Spin" is just a new word for propaganda, in an attempt to shed the negative connotation.

I've made the argument here before that the terms agnosticism and atheism relate to each other in this same way.

Hi P-C .

I hate it when people start talking about 'The Truth'. It is such an exclusive model of philosophy. Perhaps we'd be better speaking about truth or truths (note lower case and no 'The').

Propaganda is just someone's truth dressed up in a dandy hat and paraded before the populace. It only takes one child to point out that it has no clothes and it all collapses in on itself.

Or is that the naked truth?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

The H2G2 moderating team just mailed me to tell me they removed a posting I made TWO YEARS AGO to one of these FFFF forums. I guess this speaks for itself.

If more people had that sceptical attitude to 'The Truth' maybe propaganda would be that much less effective. On the other hand, if everything is dismissed as propaganda, and no distinctions are made between true and false, we lapse into powerlessness. The critical faculties must strike a balance to be effective.

Noggin

I find a website like http://www.worldpressreview.com to be a good source. Rather than claiming that there is some unbiased version of the truth, namely their own, they present the propagandas from a variety of sources, allowing the discerning reader to view a number of available 'truths' and come to their own conclusion (like that they'd be better off tending their own garden than reading the news in the first place!).

www.libertythink.com is also a good place to get the other side of the story, though they tend towards a shade of libertarian extremism. I would highly recommend checking out the website of the company Haliburton. They take their orders from a fellow named Dick Cheney. They work in oil and construction and gas pipelines and that sort of thing... they're putting a pipeline through Afghanistan right now, in fact. They also bid months ago for the contract to rebuild a certain nation after a certain potential conflict was resolved, and they were awarded that bid last week.

<...as the French man of letters Paul Valery once wrote, "Politics is the art of making people indifferent to what should concern them.">

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

You have a nice way of expressing yourself, Matholwch, a sort of country and western plain speaking. Many of us adopt a more tricksy presentation, and clarity suffers, if not truth.

Nevertheless, I have to disagree with some of what you say: in many (most?) cases, propaganda *isn't* someone's truth, it's someone's (quite deliberate) *untruth*. It's usually accompanied by some kind of an "end justifies the means" justification.

For a nation mired in war, perhaps there's a good reason for propaganda and the lies that accompany it. I can think of no other situation where it might be justified.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

As regards different perspectives on global, er, matters, here is a site that provides translations of the (a?) Russian viewpoint: http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news077.htm This points to a particular report, now aging. Follow the "next report" links until you reach the present.

It's stuff like this that lead me to start this thread. It's a lot more difficult to lie to people when they have their own means of accessing other points of view. As well as Russians, I have you lot to keep me balanced, and on the straight and narrow! Thank you all!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"What luck for rulers that men do not think."

- A. Hitler

Hi P-C .

Ah but propaganda is true, for a given value of truth .

Seriously though most propaganda can be said to be true from someone's perspective. The most effective propaganda is that which uses the truth or facts as its basis and just adds a little bit of topspin to it.

A good example is the role of the 'embedded journalist' in the latest version of 'Carry On up the Euphrates'. They report only what they are allowed to witness, yet the footage and facts made available to them is so compelling that the fact that they are often so out of context goes almost unnoticed. Thus we begin to believe that we have been advancing successfully for days when in fact most troops have been doing no more topping up their tans.

I am tempted to believe in the concept of consensus reality, whereby if everyone believes it to be true, it is true. Look at the various celebrities questioned by police over child pornography. They were tried, convicted and ready to be sentenced in the minds of both the media and the public. The 'people' had decided on the truth, only problem being that the facts didn't support that truth. Never mind, they may well find it hard to get decent work again because consensus reality is very unforgiving.

Truth is a moveable feast, and relies heavily on context and perspective, which is why I oppose all attempts to declare 'The Truth'.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi Math!

I agree with most of what you say, particularly the pointlessness of dedication to The Truth. However, recent statements by a representative of a Great Power made statements that claimed backing from a *non-existent* 'report'. I s'pose they hoped no-one would check! I find it hard to believe that this representative - or his researchers/speech-writers - didn't know they were lying.

[my emphasis]



Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I have something significant to add.

I'm just keeping it to myself.