Information and Meaning in a Social Context

Marcuse (1964) argued that in society - even back then - there was an emerging pattern of one-dimensional thought.  This pattern of thought reduces ideas which transcend the established universe of discourse and action to terms of the established universe, or it repels them. He suggests the trend to one dimensional thought may be related to developments in scientific method which are evident as operationalism in the physical sciences and behaviouralism in the social sciences.  The common feature of both these is a total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; the meaning of concepts is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behaviour. 

Marcuse provides a variety of examples on this idea. One is the use of acronyms such as NATO and UN.  He suggests that such abbreviations may help to repress desired questions:

“NATO does not suggest what North Atlantic Treaty Organisation says, namely a treaty among the nations on the North-Atlantic – in which case one may ask questions about the membership of Greece and Turkey […] UN dispenses with undue emphasis on ‘united’ […] and the AEC is just one administrative agency among many others. The abbreviations denote that and only that which is institutionalised in such a way that the transcending connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, ‘sanctioned’ by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact.” (pg 84)

Marcuse (1964) nows links this to his earlier idea that terms are defined by operations and behaviour:

“This style is of an overwhelming concreteness. The ‘thing identified with its function’ is more real than the thing distinguished from its function and this [….] creates a basic vocabulary and syntax which stand in the way of differentiation, separation and distinction. This language, which constantly imposes images, militates against the development and expression of concepts. In its immediacy and directness, it impedes conceptual thinking; thus it impedes thinking. For the concept does not identify the thing and its function […] the functionalised, abridged and unified language is the language of one-dimensional thought.” (pg 84-85)

The effects described by Marcuse above are subtle and difficult to appreciate at first glance (at least they were for me!).  The following perhaps helps understand what he is aiming at, as it relates well to contemporary marketing language:

“[…] familiarity is established through personalised language, which plays a considerable role in advanced communication. It is ‘your’ congressman, ‘your’ highway, ‘your’ favourite drugstore, ‘your’ newspaper; it is brought ‘to you,’ it invites ‘you’ etc. In this manner, superimposed, standardised, and general things and functions are presented as ‘especially for you.’ It makes little difference whether or not the individuals thus addressed believe it. Its success indicates that it promotes the self-identification of the individuals with the functions which they and the others perform.” (pg 82)

In this sense we can easily relate the above to: “MySpace”, “MyKi”, “MySchool”, “YouTube” etc so prevalent, particularly in the digital world. You might well ask of what significance this is, Marcuse (1964) argues that: “such unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioural rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.” (pg 86).

Marcuse (1964) continues to explain that such: “‘closed’ language does not demonstrate and explain – it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes “separation of good from evil”[1]; it establishes unquestionable rights and wrongs, and one value as a justification of another value. It moves in tautologies, but the tautologies are terribly effective ‘sentences’”. (pg 89).

In short, he argues that this, and other features he describes, make such language rather similar in effect to Orwellian Newspeak. Marcuse quotes the equation: Reason = Truth = Reality, which he claims “joins the subjective and the objective into one antagonistic entity.” (pg 105). Apart from its topic of the use of information and meaning, this theme is poignantly relevant to this unit in the sense that Marcuse relates this manipulation of language with the technical apparatus of production, distribution and automation; arguing that such systems cannot be isolated from their social and political effects (see pg 13). In this sense, we can view the above as a claim of one single social effect (there are no doubt many others) linked to the use of technology in society.  Marcuse (1964) in fact identifies a number of social effects which he identifies as outcomes of our development as a technological society. These include ‘free’ institutions and ‘democratic liberties’ that are actually used to restrict freedom, repress individuality, disguise exploitation and limit human experience. Interestingly, a very similar claim has been recently made, and clearly articulated in Monbiot (2011): 

“Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. […] By this means they have turned “freedom” into an instrument of oppression.”

Marcuse (1964) also laments the effects of positivism which he believes encompasses the following concepts: “(1) the validation of cognitive thought by experience of facts; (2) the orientation of cognitive thought to the physical sciences as a model of certainty and exactness; (3) belief that progress in knowledge depends on this orientation. Consequently, positivism is a struggle against all metaphysics, transcendentalisms, and idealisms as obscurantist and regressive modes of thought.” (pg 140).

He continues to say:

“Much of that which is still outside the instrumental world – unconquered blind nature – now appears within the reaches of scientific and technical progress. The metaphysical dimension, formerly a genuine field of rational thought, becomes irrational and unscientific.” (pg 141)

Thus it appears that like Schumacher (1977) – whom we looked at in the first lesson – Marcuse (1964) is lamenting the loss of metaphysics and connects it to an impoverished humanity suggesting that this keeps man from “orienting himself in the given environment” (pg 141). Summing up as follows:

“when Hume debunked substances, he fought a powerful ideology, while his successors today provide an intellectual justification for that which society has long since accomplished – namely the defamation of alternative modes of thought which contradict the established universe of discourse”. (pg 141).  

Along the same lines Jensen and Draffan (2004) quote modern philosopher Stanley Aronowitz as follows:

“For some scientists, everything outside the box – defined by the rules of scientific discourse – must be ignored. And they often get very agitated when you call them on the game they are playing [which is] Religion. Teleology. Control. The desire for prediction, and ultimately the desire to control the natural world, has become the foundation of their methodology of knowing truth”. (pg 40)

Aronowitz also states:

“ [...] if you can convince people that science has a monopoly on truth, you may be able to get them to believe also that the knowledge generated through science is independent of politics, history, social influences, cultural bias, and so on.” (pg 25) Jensen concludes: “And in the bargain you get them to doubt their own experience”.

This accusation of having created a system that excludes certain ways of thinking and communicating is not limited to Marcuse and Aronowitz.  Whereas Marcuse (1964) associates the manipulation of language with “neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism” (pg 89), Kozy (2012) makes a similar argument that the models used by neo-classical economists manipulate our understanding. Kozy (2012) argues that the models used by economists are abstractions. This is probably true of nearly all models of any complex system, however, his claim extends further to an accusation of deliberate simplification of complex real-world scenarios in which complexities are purposefully omitted – along the lines of the simplifications of thought identified by Marcuse, but more brazen – to favour of a desired conclusion which is given with a degree of certainty beyond what is possible in a complex changing environment. Thus Kozy (2012) claims that the use of externalities and of specific circumstances (which are not taken into account in economists’ general theories) are in fact a process of deliberate subtraction of factors which could influence the model and the conclusions based on it:  

“Economists build models by what they call ‘abstraction.’ But it's really subtraction. They look at a real world situation and subtract from it the characteristics they deem unessential. The result is a bare bones description consisting of what economists deem economically essential. Everything that is discarded (not taken into consideration in the model) is called an "externality." So the models only work when the externalities that were in effect before the models are implemented do not change afterward.”

This idea of simplification appears yet again in an argument by Jensen and Draffan (2004). Again the accusation echoes the criticisms of Marcuse (1964) who accuses our society of a flawed concept of rationality; Jensen and Draffan (2004)’s view can be captured with the following quote:

“there does happen to be one definition under which our culture is as rational as it pretends to be, which is that rationalisation is the deliberate elimination of information unnecessary to achieving the immediate task […] to make this slightly more specific: If your goal is to maximise profits for a major corporation, all you need do is ignore all considerations other than that.  If your goal is to maximise gross national product (that is, the rate at which the world is converted into products), then all you need do is ignore everything that might stand in the way of production. As we see.” (pg 91)

 This is a very similar argument to Kozy (2012)’s:

“employment alone is not a sufficient condition for prosperity; full employment can exist in an enslaved society along side abject poverty, and an increasing GNP does not mean that an economy is getting better.”

This is particularly interesting in relation to modern corporations which collect and process enormous amounts of data from their customers (for one example see here).  Such data collection and monitoring will also give a very narrow picture of the impacts of the organisation, particularly if this is the focus of the organisation’s efforts to determine its effects on the people and society around it (see the activity in relation to this).

We certainly have more means of collecting and processing data than ever before in human history.    The most useful purpose (beyond automatically tagging people in Facebook photos) seems to be to assist police in tracking and finding criminals (based on the list in Moses, 2012).  In the recent newspaper article (Moses, 2012)  it was touted that the latest facial recognition software could identify 11 out 12 “persons of interest” out of “4000 passengers from all over the world.” Professor Brian Lovell from the University of Queensland is quoted as saying:

“What we specialise in is non-cooperative surveillance, that means the person doesn't have to be aware that they are being photographed to be recognised.”

Jensen and Draffan (2004) are particularly concerned about this type of surveillance. They quote Oscar Gandy’s  1990’s description of the “panoptic sort” as follows:

“the complex technology that involves the collection, processing, and sharing of information about individuals and groups that is generated through their daily lives as citizens, employees and consumers and is used to coordinate and control their access to the goods and services that define life in the modern capitalistic economy” (pg 112)

Winner (1992) presents a number of suggestions in relation to the problems created by technology.  The most pertinent of which appears to be the following:

“.. I could suggest a supremely important step – that we return to the original understanding of technology as a means that, like all other means available to us, must only be employed with a fully informed sense of what is appropriate. Here, the ancients knew, was the meeting point at which politics, ethics and technics came together.  If one lacks a clear and knowledgeable sense of which means are appropriate to the circumstances at hand, one’s choice of means can easily lead to excess and danger” (pg 327).   

Strangely this is an almost identical recommendation to that given independently by Schumacher and Illich in the 1970’s, as discussed in an earlier post.

References:

Jensen, D & Draffan, G 2004, Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance and the Culture of Control, Chelsea Green Publishing.

Kozy, J 2012, ‘Abstractions Versus the "Real World": Economic Models and the Apologetics of Greed’, Global Research, 13 Feb (available here).

Marcuse, H 1964 One Dimensional Man, Sphere Books. (abridged version available here).

Monbiot, G 2011 How Freedom Became Tyranny. 19 Dec. <http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/>

Moses, A 2012 ‘Facial recognition: the case for and against 'total surveillance'’, The Age, 22 Nov.

 

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[1] Noam Chomsky argues that official definitions of terror were revoked in the US as they could not be constructed such that they excluded US military action. See: Chomsky, N 2003, Hegemony or Survival, Allen and Unwin.