Activists as Knowledge Workers5

8/6/2019 Activists as Knowledge Workers5

1/23

Activists as Knowledge Workersby

Donald E. Stahl

I: Types of Resistance

Nothing strikes the student of public opinion and democracy more forcefully than the

paucity of information most people possess about politics.John A. Ferejohn(Information and the Electoral Process, in John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski,(edd.),Information and Democratic Processes, (U. of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 3) mostpolitical information is too costly and of too little use for most of us to bother to try toacquire it. (p. 13). Political institutions are an expression of the division of labor: theypermit small numbers of officials to regulate and direct social processes without havingto consult regularly with the rest of us. In this sense, political institutions economize on

the distribution and processing of information. We elect officials to learn about things thatmight affect us and then to act on our behalf as we would if we had the sameinformation. (p. 6.)

The two simplest truths I know about the distribution of political information in modern

electorates are that the mean is low and the variance is high.Phillip E. Converse,Popular Representation and the Distribution of Information. (op. cit., p. 372).

In the Knowledge Society, it is imperative that we learn how to make sure that the right

information gets to the right people at the right time in the right form.Keith Devlin,Infosense: Turning Information into Knowledge, ( Freeman, 2001, p. 199).

After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmostskepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, andhave also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have cometo believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significantparts of the official story put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are

false.Bill Christison, former Director of CIA's Office of Regional and Political

Analysis, Dissident Voice, 14 August 2006.

As Converse says in the quote above, it is a truism of political science that not manypeople are interested in politics, but those who are tend to be very interested. That this

has been so for a long time is indicated by the fact that Pericles found it necessary toissue his famous warning about politics not ignoring you. The interested ones are whatConverse in a previous, seminal article called ideologues and near-ideologues. Now, as Ishall use the word activist in this article, not all ideologues and near-ideologues areactivists; i.e., not everyone who is very interested in politics is an activist. As the termideologue suggests, some people who are very interested in politics are less interested inpropagating that interest among the relatively uninterested than they are in seeing to itthat their fellow ideologues get things right. The former are what I shall here call


2/23

activists; the latter may be researchers or theorists or planners or organizers or politicalcorrectors or connectors. Insofar as one addresses oneself to the uninterested one is anactivist. Insofar as one addresses oneself to ones fellow ideologues, one isnt. In writingthis article, I am not engaging in activism, since I am addressing only fellow 9/11Truthers. This is a worthwhile thing to do, since we need to form an identifiable

community in order to do what needs to be done, and a community can only be formedthrough mutual discussion, but it is not what I am here calling activism.

9/11 Truth, whatever its details turn out to be, is perfectly suited to activism, because it isa surefire way to make the vast uninterested majority interested, if only they can bebrought believe it. Its one thing to say, Let George do it, I havent got time, underordinary circumstances, but its quite another thing to say Let George do it, when whathe might do is kill your family, even for the best and most far-sighted of reasons. This isinformation that is certainly nottoo costly and of too little use..We should not think we are going to change permanently the distribution of political

information in modern society. That is impossible, simply because of what Ferejohnabove describes as the division of labor with regard to information. That division of laborforces itself on our notice. Information overload necessitates information triage, and asactivists our job is to make sure our information makes the cut. I think everyone wouldagree that we should use all the tools we can in order to do this, and that includesscholarly knowledge about the human psyche, the mass audience, and recent discoveriesand theories about knowledge and its transmission in society.

Let us distinguish information avoidance, information rejection or disbelief, informationgathering, and information accessibility. The more accessible information is, the lesseffort is necessary to acquire it.

Information overload forces us to avoid information constantly. Everyone with an emailaccount knows this. We see who a message is from, or what its about, and we decideinstantly, I want to know more about this, or I dont want to know more about this.We try to ignore commercials on television. We look around the edges of ads innewspapers, trying to find a scrap of news. We block out information which we expect tobe useless, distracting and time-wasting. We carry appointment books so that we donthave to keep relatively trivial information salient in our minds. The average stay at awebsite is rumored to be three seconds.

I just recently learned that Dell invites its customers to return their used-up ink cartridgesto them for recycling, postage-free. I had been simply throwing them in the trash, becausewhen new cartridges arrived I had what I wanted, and didnt bother to look at the printedmatter that came with them, though it was in my hand. This was information of interest tome, and quite accessible, but until now unnoticed.

On the other hand, information which we need for our particular situation often must besought in many places and assembled with considerable effort. Even information whichwe know to be physically close may be inaccessible. A telephone directory which carried


3/23

all the entries of a conventional one but was not alphabetized would be useless, eventhough the listing you want is right there. Online, a search that returns a hundred ormore URLs is really only giving you as many as you have time for, starting at the top.

Each person wants something different from their telephone directory, but even if

everyone wants the same thing from a document it is still possible for that document tobury the information, by means of fine print, obscure language, and sheer prolixity. Sincethis is so, it is also possible to claim that a lengthy document contains all the informationrelevant to you when it does not. Sometimes, making such false claims possible is thepurpose of creating the lengthy document. As every rabbit knows, in the United Statesclimate, you have to dig your own rabbit hole.

In theory, information in a speaking humans brain should be more accessible than it is ina voice messaging system. Whether you go looking for information, or informationcomes at you in an unwelcome flow, sorting through it is the problem. A certainminimum contact is necessary. In order to avoid ads we must know that they are ads, in

order to avoid emails from a certain source we must know that they are from thatsourceor our email provider must know.

Devlins claim about getting the right information to the right people at the right time inthe right form is something that few people would explicitly disagree with, but whichthey habitually ignore, especially in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Our debates about what todo with our information are based on the assumption that one size fits all. In fact, twoquestions are crucial in delivering our message: how much time is going to be availablefor the reception of the message, and who is the intended recipient? We will return to thispoint shortly.

Chomsky and other left gatekeepers allege that no one has the time to become expert inall the fields pertaining to 9/11 Truth, and consequently 9/11 Truth is a waste of effort anda diversion from the supremely important task of opposing the forces of darkness.Ruppert says that its a mistake to concentrate on physical evidence because it always canand always will be opposed by as many experts as the other side can afford to pay, and noone has deeper pockets than the government. Whatever the personal psychology behindChomskys stance, objectively it faces directly backward. No other tool couldconceivably be as effective as 9/11 Truth in restructuring the world. Rupperts hard-earned disgust with expertise and technology ignores the facts that today no expert willchallenge DNA evidence, the tobacco companies experts lost their war long ago, and.currently hired climatologists are in the process of wasting their employers money.

But handing someone a copy of Crossing the Rubicon and saying, Here. Read this,doesnt work, because they just wont do it. Sometimes, I know from experience, theywont look at videos either.

It is not that the relevant information is buried in Rupperts book. All of that volume isrelevant to 9/11 Truth, and the picture it paints is essential to understanding, but itpresupposes a commitment of time which simply is not going to be agreed to by very


4/23


5/23

professionals have long known that mass audiences do not sit still long enough for verymuch information to be brought into play; and we have long known that individuals donot have much patience for what they do not want to hear.

Resistance to 9/11 Truth comes in different degrees, and it would seem to be measurable

by how little time someone is willing to give it.

Those who are willing to accept free DVDs will probably look at them (and those whobuy them certainly will), but those who are only asked to look at something, whether abook or an internet site, may or may not do it. Without a physical object as a reminder, a promise is quickly forgotten, just as a statement of fact, without some visiblecorroboration, is quickly discounted.

However, there are opponents of 9/11 Truth who are almost as much motivated as we are.They nit-pick, name-call and publish wherever they can, even counter-demonstrate andmake videos. They are familiar with many of the facts of 9/11, but deny their

significance. For these individuals, it is not how little time they spend on 9/11 Truth thatmeasures the strength of their resistance, but how much.

And even knowing how much resistance there is doesnt tell you where that resistance iscoming from. Knowing a little bit about types and sources of resistance can be helpful inavoiding premature generalizations and the unnecessary discouragement they can bring. Ishall now describe five different sources of such resistance, some of them far moreimportant than others. These facts help us identify different audiences, and frame ourmessagesor seek different audiencesaccordingly.

The first, least important source, I shall briefly describe like this: no matter how good amagician you are, if you show a card trick to your dog, he will not be surprised. That isneither your fault nor his. If he is not a member of your audience, he is still a valuablemember of your family.

The second and third sources of resistance are the most prominent. I shall introduce themvia some quotations having to do with the psychological process of defense, either ingeneral or in some specific form. Cardinal Caraffa said to his uncle, Pope Paul IV, Populus vult decipi. Decipiatur. The people wish to be deceived. Let them bedeceived. As Truthers, we say instead, Let them be undeceived. To do anything elsewould be to join those whom Dr. M. Scott Peck has called, the people of the lie.

The process of defense nearly always utilizes two tendencies analogous to flight and theerection of barricades. It is important to remember that all defenses operateautomatically and outside of awareness. Defenses are motivated, but they are notexecuted voluntarily. The average person does not know what defenses he is using, norcan he voluntarily stop using a defense if its presence is pointed out to him. The basicempirical evidence of repression is an inappropriate under-reaction to a relevant situationand indirect evidence that the repressed tendencies are actually present.


6/23

I think most people have by now heard that there are some who maintain that the USGwas complicit in 9/11. Some of them wonder about why those individuals maintain that,but dont know much about why they would have gotten the idea, i.e., they know onlywhat they have been told by the media. People like this, who have minimal informationabout 9/11 Truth, may be so either because they simply havent been exposed to anything

more, or because they have exerted some small degree of effort, like Chomsky, not to beexposed to it.

Those who are innocent of 9/11 Knowledge and intend to remain that way are very likelyto be what Bob Altemeyer has forever named Right-Wing Authoritarians. George Lakoffexplains (in Moral Politics) how RWAs have come to have the political power they nowhave, and John Dean (in Conservatives without Conscience) explains that Lakoff in hisbook is talking about Altemeyers work.

By Right-Wing Authoritarianism Altemeyer means:

the covariation of three attitudinal clusters in a person:

1. Authoritarian submissiona high degree of submission to the authoritieswho are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in whichone lives.2. Authoritarian aggressiona general aggressiveness, directed againstvarious persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by establishedauthorities.3. Conventionalisma high degree of adherence to the social conventionsthat are perceived to be endorsed by society and its establishedauthorities.

When Hayek denied that he was a conservative he probably meant, avant la lettre, that hewas not a Right-Wing Authoritarian. The Youth Culture today may (or may not; I am nolonger a member) have identified this group and named them haters. If they have, thename will not be appreciated.

RWAs are found everywhere, but some professions attract them more than others. Theytend to be fairly common among policemen (Ive found). Altemeyer says:

Compared with others, authoritarians have not spent much timeexamining evidence, thinking critically, reaching independent conclusions,and seeing whether their conclusions mesh with the other things theybelieve. Instead, they have largely accepted what they were told by theauthorities in their lives, which leaves them time for other things, butwhich also leaves them unpracticed in thinking for themselves. Therewas virtually nothing about themselves Highs [high-scoring RWAs] wereunwilling to face and deal with, according to them. Yet when we told some


7/23

High RWAs they were low in self-esteem, and that this had seriousimplications for their future, a lot of authoritarians fled from the news, noteven checking to see if it was correct. And many Highs told us, pointblank, that if it turned out they were more prejudiced than average, theydid not want to be told.

RWAs are good at ignoring what they dont want to know, although this probably doesnot indicate anything about Chomsky. If you find youre dealing with someone who justdoesnt want to know anything about 9/11 Truth, suspect an RWA. RWAs dont need tolearn anything about 9/11 Truth, because they know everything already. At least thisappears to be the case at this stage of Truths disclosure. When it is more widelydisseminated and deeply accepted, that may change. What will not change is their attitudeto learning about themselves.

The sheer hatred shown by the counter demonstrators and video makers who oppose the

NY 9/11 Truth group indicates that these individuals are RWAs who have acquired asmall degree of Truth knowledge. Right-Wing Authoritarianisms third componentprobably explains the opposition of such organizations as CSICOP to 9/11 Truth.

Remember that a great proportion of Truthers started out by trying to refute the evidencethey were exposed to, and that Bill Christison spent the better part of the last five yearsopposing 9/11 Truth before he decided to find out what he was opposing. If and whenRWAs come to believe their authorities have betrayed them, those authorities have nogreater enemies. The field of salesmanship is full of rules-of-thumb. One of them is: ittakes eight contacts to make a sale. Another is: when prospects avoid you it is out of fear,because they know you can sell them.

In general, but perhaps not invariably, RWAs flee or avoid 9/11 Truth information, thosein denial repress or disbelieve it.

All day long we unconsciouslyselectively perceive the world about us. Man can preventunpleasant perceptions by varying his attention and by wishful perceiving or thinking.Unconscious distortion of perception of external stimuli that arouse unpleasant emotionsis called denial.The American people know what they saw with their own eyes on September 11, 2001,says Defense Secretary Gates. And both to Peter Jennings and to Dan Rather, it was soclear that the World Trade Center was being demolished by explosives that they blurtedout that thought at the time.

In the 1950s a psychology professor, Solomon Asch, did some experiments on collegestudents. He told them that he wanted to test visual perception, but that was a lie. He hadthem sit in a classroom with other students and showed them all some lines, asking whichlines looked like they were the same length, but only one student was being tested at atime. The others were conspirators along with Professor Asch, and they deliberately gave


8/23

wrong answers. The student being tested was always asked last, after having heard all theothers say that it looked to them as though the wrong lines were the same length. Theexperiment was really to find out how many people, percentagewise, could be made tosay that they saw what they didnt see, just to go along with the crowd. The answer was:about one third. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

A college classroom is a relatively benign environment, at least compared to the situationthat Winston Smith, the protagonist of1984, found himself in. Do you remember, hewent on, writing in your diary, Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makefour? Yes, said Winston. OBrien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston,with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. How many fingers am I holdingup, Winston? Four. And if the Party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?

How much the students believed what they said is probably unknowable, but thewillingness to deny what is in front of your face is certainly something worthy of being

noted. Mr. Lev Grossman says, Granted, the Pentagon crash site looks odd inphotographs, but the fact hardly slows him down. Loose Change [sic] appeals to theviewers common sense: it tells you to forget the official explanations and the experttestimony, and trust your eyes and your brain instead. It implies that the world can begrasped by laymen without any help or interference from the talking heads. Or the otherstudents, or the Partys officials and experts, functioning as designated authorities.

This sort of resistance may be the most deep-seated of all. When someone brags, I sawLoose Change. Didnt convince me, or goes through all the material you give them andonly comments, Interesting, and then changes the subject, you are dealing withsomething other than a psychological trait like Right-Wing Authoritarianism. You aredealing with a common human failing which cuts across familiar political divides, andwhich is just as likely to be found among progressives as among others. There really arepeople who, as Jack Nicholson said, just cant handle the truth. If this is seen asdiscouraging, it shouldnt be. It shows that the ability to call a spade a spade is not aprogressive monopoly.

In the Q & A session after his videotaped lecture, 9/11: The Myth and the Reality, DavidRay Griffin says that he has a theological friend who finds the evidence for 9/11 Truthconvincing, but nevertheless refuses to believe it. The word demonstration has rootsin the idea of making something visible, quite literally, to the eyes. If you are dealingwith a sighted person who simply refuses to admit what is in front of their face, perhapssometimes the appropriate response is simply a gentle, Shame on you.

In Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions, JaakkoHintikka discusses, among other things, Moores famous problem of saying anddisbelieving: Why is the sentence p but I do not believe that p absurd to utter?Following Moore, he points out that the sentence is not inconsistent with itself. He speakson page 23 of being inconsistent for you. His response is to add the notion ofindefensibility to that of inconsistency. The general characteristic of indefensible


9/23

statements is, therefore, that they depend for their truth on somebodys failure (past,present, or future) to follow the implications of what he knows far enough. (p. 32). Atthe time when Moore and Hintikka addressed such matters it could reasonably bedoubted whether the phenomenon of indefensible statements like p but I do not believethat p was common enough to merit really serious investigation. September 11, 2001

changed that.

Unconscious distortion of perception may manifest as failure to follow theimplications of what one knows. Whatever proposition p may be,p certainly impliesp,but it seems that the psychological phenomenon of denial can prevent following eventhat implication.

About Griffins theological friend, one wonders what his theological opinion is ofSartres conception ofbad faith.

I think it is likely to be a waste of time to discuss 9/11 with Mr. Grossman, or with

anyone else who is so desperately frightened by the facts, or by the possibility of beingin a minority, that he cannot admit what is in front of his face.

Talking with people in denial, whether they are followers of Alexander Cockburn or ofRush Limbaugh, should be done with sensitivity to the individual. It is a cruel thing totake away someones blankie. Parental discretion is advised.

An interesting phenomenon is the cooperation of RWAs and those in denial. At this stageof the game, some RWAs need some small justification for ignoring 9/11 Truth, and thosein denial can provide that by dealing with the evidence for them and pronouncing it notcredible. A fine example is represented by the BBCs anti-Truth video, made by Mr. GuySmith. Listening to Mr. Smith speaking with Alex Jones about 9/11 Truth, it is clear thatMr. Smith is in denial, and that he would not have undertaken the project withoutencouragement from someone else. The video can now serve, along with other projectssuch as the NIST Report and the 9/11 Commission Report itself, as additional justification for avoidance. RWAs are unlikely to spend time on NIST or theCommission, and the time it takes to see a video should satisfy their consciences that theynow know all they need to know.

Just as the ability to face, or admit, unpalatable facts cuts across left/right dichotomies,the fourth category of resistance is orthogonal to the first three, since it is an occupationalcategory rather than a psychological one. The vast majority of Washington politicians arekeenly aware that they could never make as much money doing anything else, and theyare quite interested in hanging onto, or even upgrading, their six-figure sinecures. Its notthat they are averse to doing whats right, its that they are inclined to do whats right forthem. Their real opinions are probably unknowable, and even if they could be known,would be of no practical importance. If their salaries were set at $30,000 a year, theywould have an opportunity to demonstrate that they really are as civic-minded as they saythey are. We must make it possible for them, and help them, to do the right thing.


10/23

Politicians are a subset of those whose opinions are influenced by the way they maketheir living. There are plenty of government, defense contractor, and other employees,who get no direct benefit from 9/11, but who pay the familiar price of telling consciouslies simply in order to keep their jobs. Of course, there is a sliding scale of persuasion:job, freedom, life. Something for everyone.

The segment of the public we should concentrate on trying to reach is neither in denialnor fleeing from 9/11 Truth nor primarily interested in which way the wind is blowing.Rather than saying, like the authoritarian, I dont need to learn about that stuff. I knoweverything already, it simply says, Hey, just let me live my life. OK? The resistance ofthe RWA and the person in denial is directed against 9/11 Truth specifically, because of itsunpleasantness. The great mass of resistance we face is simply that of the great mass ofthe peoplewhat Ferejohn calls most of uswho are used to having others handle thedisagreeable business of politics for them. Most of them are what used to be called wageslaves. They are the prize were after. Joe Six-pack may say, Its not my business now,but when he finds out about 9/11 Truth, he will make it his business.


11/23

II: Types of Knowledge

Just as knowing about sources of resistance can be helpful, so can knowing about

different types of knowledge, and the sorts of messages which are appropriate whentrying to create them. The principal distinction we are concerned with is the distinctionbetween the knowledge that individuals have and the knowledge that groups, as groups,have.

Since we are knowledge workers, it behooves us to know something about how peoplecome to believe what they do believe. Beginning with the study of individual knowledge,an excellent place to start learning about that is Keith Devlins book, quoted above.

Devlin, nothing if not helpful, summarizes his book thus: if I had to distill from ourinvestigations a single slogan that, if followed, would have the greatest positive impact

on information management

personal or in business

I would have no difficulty. Itsthis: Context matters. (p. 199).The first part of Devlins book may strike you as rather abstract and remote from ourconcerns, but the second part will show you why the effort was worth it. As he says, there is nothing as practical as a good theory. (p. 206).

a conversation between two individuals may be regarded as a processwhereby they cooperate to add information to a common pool. Thename linguists give to the common information pool for a conversationis the common ground for the conversation. (p. 86).

Three

key contextsthe background situations, the common ground, and the

focal situationare regions of what we might call information space. The purpose of a meeting [or a contact] can be regarded as the movementof items in the different background situations into the common ground.Such movement is caused by the participants jointly visiting that item ininformation space. A participant may take information within her ownbackground and, by making a successful contribution to the conversation,put it into the common ground. (Making a statement that the others accept

is an example of such a contribution.} Or she may use her wordsto getanother participant to take information from his background and put it intothe common ground. (Successfully asking a question is an example.}(pp.207f).The concepts of background and common ground are analystsinventions. In fact, it is misleading to think of the background andcommon-ground situations as cleanly delineated regions separated by aclear border. (p. 90).


12/23

going from a two-person conversation to a conversation involvingthree or more people is so significant it is probably misleading to continueto use the same word conversation. (p. 113).

Devlin provides diagrams of conversations involving both two and three persons, andshows that for three people, Already the diagram is too complex to understand easily,and yet I have left off the focal situation. Though activists as such certainly engage intwo-person conversations, their main efforts are directed to much larger audiences. If thecase ofN = 3 is barely manageable, what can be made of the case where N =~300,000,000?

Clearly, thoughts of a diagram are out of place here, and yet the ideas of background andcommon ground are still reasonably distinct and may be usable. Social scientists,especially political scientists, are used to dealing with such conversations, and theirmethods and approaches may be a propos. the common ground consists of common

knowledge

In his fine essay, The Truth About 9-11, which introduces people to the subject, JohnBerkowitz says, if you accept that there are truths left unspoken by a government withan agenda, it should be a short leap to the hidden truths of 9/11. And there is a wholeunderground community to help you take that leap, called simply the 9/11 TruthMovement. But what about the Movement is underground? So far from beingunderground, it has forced the corporate media to recognize its existence. If you wear a T-shirt saying Controlled Demolition now, no one will think you are that companysemployee.

He goes on to say, Already as many as one third of Americans polled say they believeour government was involved in the 9/11 attacks, but this number must grow to amajority. Yes, I agree, but even that will not be enough.

The worst danger the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that of becoming an accepted, inertpart of the public consciousness, allowed to exist in its own niche in public discourse inan encapsulated way, just as other minority opinions are tolerated so long as they threatenno conceivable imminent change. This is how the truth of the JFK assassination wascontained. Even antiestablishment majority opinions can safely be tolerated as opensecrets.

Surveys conducted by Louis Harris and Associates in 1967, 1975 and 1981 showed thatabout two-thirds of the people in the United States thought that the assassination ofPresident Kennedy was part of a conspiracy, and in 2003 Fox News had OpinionDynamics Corporation conduct a poll of 900 registered voters nationwide. With a marginof error of 3 percentage points, 66% believed the assassination was the act of aconspiracy. This is a big enough majority to override a presidential veto. Despite amajority believing there was a cover-up, there is widespread agreement that no additionalinquiries should be done 74 percent say the government should not conduct another


13/23

investigation into the assassination, compared to 20 percent who think it should.http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,102511,00.html

Everyone knows that O.J. Simpson is a murderer. And everyone knows that everyoneknows it. Chuck Barris claims to have been a paid murderer for the CIA. The CIA did

not vet his book, nor did he ask them to, as far as I am aware, nor did he suffer anyunwanted consequences of his confession. In fact he may, like other murderers, havemade more money from the confession than he did from the murders. Why? Simplybecause, although the information is as public as anyone could want, no one, (that is tosay, not enough people) believes it, believes it enough, or realizes that (enough) otherpeople believe it or will admit to believing it.

What exactly is an open secret?

The change we seek cannot be brought about by any one person. It must be accomplishedby collective action. We seek to convey information not just to individuals, but to a large

enough group. We seek to instill not just individual knowledge, but common knowledge.

One naturally assumes that if a person knows something, they know that they know it.One is tempted analogously, but falsely, to assume that if a group knows something, thegroup knows that it knows it. In fact, each one of the group may falsely believe that theyare the only ones in the group holding the opinion.

In 1924 Floyd H. Allport broached the idea of pluralistic ignorance. Because the earlydate makes his observations so instructive, I shall quote him at length.

Psychologically speaking, the public means to an individual animagined crowd in which (as he believes) certain opinions, feelings, andovert reactions are universal. What these responses are imagined to be isdetermined by the press, by rumor, and by social projection. Impressed bysome bit of public propaganda, the individual assumes that the impressioncreated is universal and therefore of vital consequence. Thus theimpression of universality is exploited and commercialized both on therostrum and in the daily press. Newspaper columns abound in suchstatements as it is the consensus of opinion here, telegrams [ofremonstrance or petition] are pouring in from all sides, widespreadamazement was felt, and the like.During a recent visit of General Pershing to Boston there appeared anewspaper article inspired, perhaps, by a discontented faction of WorldWar veterans. The following quotation will show the attempt of its authorto magnify the personal grievance to one of civic interest. (Italics are bythe present writer.)

The controversy which has been ragingsince the refusal of certain YD

leaders to attend the mayors banquet at the this evening [30 outof 300 invited refused to come] has accentuated interest in thegenerals coming, and Boston is perhaps more concerned over the


14/23

character of the reception accorded him than in whatever he may do or

say while here.

The reader who is not on his guard is likely to be seriously misled byjournalism of this character. The allusion to the concern of large numbersproduces an unthinking belief in the importance of the statements made.The artifice, however, seems obvious enough when we pause to inquirehow the reporter could possibly have known what Boston as a whole wasconcerned over.The same deception lurks in flaring headlines. Our eye is caught by thesescare-heads, and we say to ourselves unconsciously: This is big news: itis printed large to attract universal attention. Hence everyone else islooking at it as I am doing. That which everybody is interested in must beof great importance. And we proceed, ready to be duly impressed withwhat follows. Newspapers which capitalize the illusion of universality inthis way unfortunately have little to say that is fit to read. But theunscrupulous and sensation-hunting journalist has scored in securing

attention and in controlling a portion of public opinion through socialprojection and the illusion of universality.

Allports student Robert Louis Schanck informs us,

Dr. Allport has called situations where individuals are unaware of theattitudes of others, situations of pluralistic ignorance. An individual may project an attitude into other group members fromobservation of their reactions to speeches, conversations, etc. As a result ofa feeling that this projected attitude is universal among the groupmembers, the individual may then desire to conform to the group standard

and adopt the projected attitude himself. In this way an entire group maymaintain a public position in contradistinction to the private attitudes ofthe majority or over. In such a situation a dissolution of pluralisticignorance is likely to result in the group members abandoning their publicposition and adopting their private attitude in public situations also.

Robert K. Merton speaks of

one form of what Floyd H. Allport described as pluralistic ignorance,that is, the pattern in which individual members of a group assume thatthey are virtually alone in holding the social attitudes and expectations

they do, all unknowing that others privately share them. This is afrequently observed condition of a group which is so organized thatmutual observability among its members is slight. This basic notion ofpluralistic ignorance can, however, be usefully enlarged to take account ofa formally similar but substantively different condition. This is thecondition now under review, in which the members of a role-set do notknow that their expectations of the behavior appropriate for the occupantsof a particular status are differentfrom those held by other members of the


15/23

role-set. .In some instances, the replacing of pluralistic ignorance bycommon knowledge serves to make for a re-definition of what canproperly be expected of the status-occupant.

Whether or not this is a generalization of Allport is of relatively little consequence. The

expression is now standard for a groups ignorance of what that groups opinion really is.

No polls have ever been taken to determine what the public believes about what mostpeople believe about the Kennedy assassination.

Though pluralistic ignorance was first introduced via the thought of a newspapers

readership, it has tended to be studied in relatively small groupsneighbors, for

examplewhere its existence tends to be surprising. If one thinks instead of really large

publicscities, or nationsits existence is not so surprising, because no individual can belinked to or connected with a majority of such a large group except through somemedium; hence, the term mass media. If the private owners of such media wish to

shade things to convey a false impression, nothing prevents them. They are not underoath, and apart from that there is no law against lying. They take pains to create theimpression that they are subject to some sort of official sanction for dishonesty, and liketo tell us how trusted they are, and how careful of their "reputation," but they never hintthat perhaps they will be sanctioned for telling the truth. They operate on a for-profitbasis. If most of the time they wish to convey the impression that, say, the opinion thatthere was a Kennedy conspiracy is the opinion of a disreputable minority, they certainlycan. (And they certainly do.) As this example illustrates, pluralistic ignorance is fairlyeasy for the media to create, and it is a very valuable tool.

It is valuable because of what Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann dubbed the spiral of silence

in her 1984 book of that name. The spiral of silence describes how the perception ofpublic opinion influences the willingness of individuals to express their own opinions,when they believe those opinions are a minority view. According to her, people have asort of sense of what majority opinion is, and fear being isolated. The perception ofpublic opinion thus acts as a sort of control on the expression of opinion. Whether such asense explains anything not explicable through the existence of the mass media isdebatable, but because the effect is real whatever causes it, control over perception ofwhat the majority opinion is, is obviously a powerful weapon in the information war. Hadthe public been aware that most people were with them in thinking as they did, wouldthey have been so willing to let the Kennedy murderers get away with it?

http://www.12manage.com/methods_noelle-neumann_spiral_of_silence.html

What all this tells us is that it is not enough to contact and convince people. We mustinterest the politically uninterested, if only briefly, we must do it without the mass media,at least initially, and we must let everyone know that everyone else knows.

All through the Vietnam War, the mass media told us that although those grisly imagesmight seem discouraging, there was light at the end of the tunnel, and the U.S. waswinning. However, there are limits even to spin, and when the U.S. withdrew the media


16/23

could not hide that fact. It will be interesting to see how they spin their own complicity indeception when the worms finally turn.

The opposite of pluralistic ignorance is the idiomatically-misnamed notion of commonknowledge (it is sometimes, and better, called mutual knowledge, but common

knowledge has become entrenched). If something is common knowledge in the relevantsense, then not only does everyone know it, but everyone knows that everyone knows it,and everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows it, etc. Thischaracterization leaves many important questions unsettled. Must the individuals actuallyrealize that they know that they know an infinite number of times, or is it enough toknow something which entails that they know that they know; or that they know thatthey know something which entails that they know that they know? Must the knowingall take place at the same time? Evidence suggests that knowledge of other peoplesknowledge takes longer to form than knowledge. Must each individual know each otherindividual, or can you know that everyone knows without knowing everyone? Whatabout almost everyone? What if we substitute belief for knowledge? Answering all

these questions is not necessary for our purpose here; i.e., we need not define commonknowledge as precisely as would be appropriate on a different occasion. We may take ithere to be simply the absence of pluralistic ignorance.

In his article on Common Knowledge in the online Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy, Peter Vanderschraaf says, The analysis and applications ofmulti-agentknowledge concepts has become a lively field of research,

http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query+Common+Knowledge

Under the name common knowledge, the subject is usually given a more or lessmathematical treatment, and appears in more or less mathematical contexts, but it hasbroad literary roots in R.D. Laing and David Cooper, Pirandello, and even, according toLaing and Russell Jacoby, in Feuerbach.

A notion of common knowledge is common to the study both of multi-agent knowledgeand of individual knowledge. If A knows that B knows that A knowsthat p, that isindividual knowledge that A has. It is also individual knowledge that B has. It just sohappens that the content of this individual knowledge entails that more than oneindividual has it.

It seems appropriate to think of common knowledge as a dimension, or a direction inwhich one can travel. Some notion of common knowledge might serve as anexplication of Dr. John McMurtrys conception (in 9/11 and American Empire, Vol. I: Intellectuals Speak Out) of a group-mind. The group-minds self-awareness willconsist of common knowledge among the minds that compose it. The Marxian notion ofclass consciousness suggests itself here.Observe the difference between between simply disseminating knowledge as widely aspossible, and making it common knowledge.
http://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire-Intellectuals-Speak/dp/1566566592/sr=8-1/qid=1162779795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6211714-5958430?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire-Intellectuals-Speak/dp/1566566592/sr=8-1/qid=1162779795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6211714-5958430?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire-Intellectuals-Speak/dp/1566566592/sr=8-1/qid=1162779795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6211714-5958430?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire-Intellectuals-Speak/dp/1566566592/sr=8-1/qid=1162779795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6211714-5958430?ie=UTF8&s=books


17/23

Elections are recently over. By far most political signs I saw simply had a candidatesname on them, or such a message as Vote for Joe. What reasons did they give me tovote for Joe? None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. They made no risky claims for Joe which his rivalscould conceivably show to be false, because they didnt say anything at all about him. Infact, I cant remember any that did. Isnt this sort of advertising nonsensical? Its not

disseminating anything about Joe beyond the bare fact that hes running, and that hisname is Joe. Or is it? How many such signs I see gives me an idea of how much moneyhis campaign has. That may persuade others to think that if he has so very much money,there must be a lot of people supporting him. It is at least not ludicrous, not out-of-the-question, for Joe to hold the office. He is a credible candidate. When money talks, whatdoes it say? Very little, in fact, but what little it does say becomes, and is intended tobecome, common knowledge.

Contrast this situation with a reasoned presentation of the case for Joes being a betterholder of the office than the other candidates. The more reasons presented, the more thecase can be disputed by denying the factuality of those reasons. The more reasons

presented, the more voluminous, specific and detailed the information becomes; and themore voluminous, specific and detailed the information becomes the less likely it is all tobecome common knowledge. Instead, if the various claims are disputed, what becomescommon knowledge is the putative fact that Joes qualifications are controversial, i.e.,subject to being controverted.

We must distinguish between simply spreading knowledge and making somethingcommon knowledge, simply because of the tension, the trade-off, between them. MichaelSuk-Young Chwe marks the distinction by means of the terminology of content vs.publicity.

There is a limit to how much content can become common knowledge, first, becausethere is a limit on individual knowledge. One cant be a doctorand a lawyer and amathematician, and a philosopher, and a physicist, and a mechanical engineer, and atheologian, anda pilot, andhave, as Alex Jones puts it, a Masters in 9/11.

But the limitations on common knowledge are much more severe than on individualsknowledge simply because the more recently acquired or specific a piece of knowledgeis, the more doubtful it becomes that it is common knowledge, or ever can becomecommon knowledge. Common knowledge exists in the social structures of primates andin the hunting parties of carnivores, and needless to say, whatis common knowledge inthese cases isnt, by human standards, terribly complex.

we can assume that because of the division of labor role-specific knowledge willgrow at a faster rate than generally relevant and accessible knowledge.

Even in a society composed of people each of whom had all the above qualifications,there would be plenty of room for individuals doubts about other individualsknowledge. But having more content more widely disseminated results insomewhatmorespecific common knowledge. A more-highly-educated population will have more-specific


18/23

common knowledge.

Does anyone think that the purpose of having a 9/11 Truther interviewed by somebroadcasting Brownshirt is the dissemination of content? Of course not. The idea is ratherto spread the simple impression that its open season on such heretics and that they are

publicly-designated targets.

There is no question of content being better than publicity, orvice versa. In differentsituations and for different audiences, one is more appropriate, the other less so. Differentstrokes for different folks. Rather than the Movement as a whole leaning toward onedirection or the other; we should think full-spectrum dominance. There is room foreveryones contribution. That said, I think we would agree that up to now more has beendone on content, on technical research, than on publicity, perhaps under Blakes naiveassumption that truth is bound to make itself known.

The Truth Movement is unlike the Peace Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay

Rights Movement, the Evironmental Movement, the Feminist Movement, and every otherMovement I can think of in that it is much more content-based than publicity-based.Everyone knows that war is bad, but some people feel it is now necessary. The PeaceMovement has nothing new to actually tell them, other than, WE feel its NOTnecessary. Other Movements all carry with them some relatively new information, butthe 9/11 Truth Movement consists almost entirely of new information, information thatwill change peoples behavior when they acquire it, and this fact tends to make usconcentrate on developing content, sometimes at the expense of publicity.

Something will happen when enough of us know, concludes that masterpiece video,911 Mysteries: Part One. This is almost right. Of course, one can always take it to be trueby definition: if nothing happens, thats not enough of us. But what is important is notonly that enough of us know, but that we are aware that we know, and that we are awarethat there are enough of us; that we are, in a way, on the same page, or together.

It seems that RWAs will be more affected by individual knowledge; those in denial,whether on the Left or Right, will be more affected by common knowledge. If it seemsyou are dealing with someone amenable to reason, use content; the specific knowledgethat constitutes our background knowledge as Truthers. If you are dealing with someonein denial, only an increase in societys knowledge of 9/11 Truth will move them towardmore comfort in admitting the obvious. Do not address them as individuals. They arereachable not through content, but through publicity.

Assuming therefore that we are addressing people not in denial, we must reckon with theproblem of time. We must present something, a piece of content, that is graspable quicklyenough to capture someones interest, to convince them, not of 9/11 Truth, but that thesubject of 9/11 Truth is worth looking into. We must present the most concentrated andhard-to-argue-with smoking gun (or guns) possible.

Continuing in terms of Devlins information space, if we think of multi-agent


19/23

common knowledge as corresponding to the familiar four-dimensional world of dailylife, individual knowledge- or belief-concepts correspond to the extra hidden orcompactified dimensions of twenty-first century physics. Which is more important orreal depends on your interests. The common pool of information created in a two-person conversation is through common knowledge located in both heads; in a many-

person conversation, or interaction, the group-mind created is located in each of them.

The background knowledge of the 9/11 Truth Movement is simply what we know thatthe public doesnt. It is what we are trying to put into the common ground. If we think ofthe public as our conversational partner, what is that partner putting into the commonground out of its background? Who are, or what is, the public? Who should we take asbeing the public?

It makes a big difference whether we think of that partner as speaking to us through themass media or not, and it makes a big difference whether we think of the commonground as simply the content of those mass media, as there is a tendency to do. That

tendency should be resisted.

Beside verbally putting facts into the common ground, Devlin discloses that you can alsophysically put artifacts into it.

One common and potentially effective strategy is to make regular noteson a whiteboard or a display pad as the meeting proceeds. An analystwould say that the whiteboard is an example of a common artifact.Common artifacts provide information in such a way that it readilybecomes common knowledge to everybody having simultaneous access toit. The whiteboard provides common knowledge because it is a publicdisplay, and thus everyone in the room can see one another looking at theboard.The use of a whiteboard is quite different from everyone in the roomtaking their own notes. You and I may see each other taking notes, but asthe meeting proceeds, I cannot be sure what notes you have taken and youwont know what I have written. So, even though we may have taken thesame notes, the information in our notes is not automatically common

knowledgethat is, writing information in our individual notebooks doesnot make it common knowledge, as happens when that information iswritten on a whiteboard. This is the key distinction between a commonartifact and a private source of information.

As far as concerns our search for the most concentrated and hard-to-argue-with smokinggun possible, this is good news. What sort of artifact would be especially relevant to 9/11Truth? To answer that question let us look at another book, this one by Fred I. Dretske,viz.,Knowledge and the Flow of Information, (Cambridge, MA, 1982). He says:


20/23

consider the difference between a picture and a statement. Suppose acup has coffee in it, and we want to communicate this piece ofinformation. If I simply tellyou, The cup has coffee in it, this (acoustic)signal carries the information that the cup has coffee in it in digital form.No more specific information is supplied about the cup (or the coffee) than

that there is some coffee in the cup. You are not told how much coffeethere is in the cup, how large the cup is, how darkthe coffee is, what theshape and orientation of the cup are, and so on. If, on the other hand, Iphotograph the scene and show you the picture, the information that thecup has coffee in it is conveyed in analog form. The picture tells you thatthere is some coffee in the cup by telling you, roughly, how much coffee isin the cup, the shape, size, and color of the cup, and so on.I can say that A and B are of different size without saying how much theydiffer in size or which is larger, but I cannot picture A and B as being ofdifferent size without picturing one of them as larger and indicating,roughly, how much larger it is.

To say that a picture is worth a thousand words is merely to acknowledgethat, for most pictures at least, the sentence needed to express all theinformation contained in the picture would have to be very complexindeed. Most pictures have a wealth of detail, and a degree of specificity,that makes it all but impossible to provide even an approximate linguisticrendition of the information the picture carries in digital form.

How many time-wasting arguments about what happened to the Towers would beobviated if they were conducted with constant reference to a picture? Why do you thinkthe media avoid pictures so assiduously? We need to put as many pictures before thepublics eyes as possible, accompanied by a small amount of text to lead the viewer asquickly as possible to the relevant features. In that way we address both the right and lefthemispheres.

We also need to take account of Lakoffs thinking on reframing. A tiny word can make amassive difference. Do not accept the description of the Towers as falling down. TheyFELL APART (according to the Administration). We dont have theories. Someindividuals in the Movement have theories. What we have are pictures.

The fact that there are people, and more than a few of them, who are willing to deny thatthey see what they do see has been used to frame discussion of 9/11 Truth ascontroversial, when in fact it is no such thing. Lakoff points out that it is a mistake for progressives to concede to their opponents such framing as the phrase tax relief. I believe it is just as much a mistake for Truthers to concede that 9/11 Truth iscontroversial. The fact that someone denies that 2+2=4 does not make arithmetic acontroversial subject, but the reputation of being controversial is used to deter peoplefrom looking into 9/11 Truth, by making them think, as Chomsky thinks, that the resultwill not be worth the effort.

We need to address rational others in something like the following terms:


21/23

When something falls, it falls in one direction. When something explodes, it explodes inall directions. Which did the Towers do? When something falls, it falls down, not up andnot sideways. [Look at these pictures.] When an object collapses, it breaks into two or afew pieces. It does not break everywhere. The Towers were not made of sand, they were

made of steel and concrete, and yet in a matter of seconds they dissolved from the topdown like sand castles. Nothing collapses to dust. Steel doesnt break, it bends; but itcan be cut by oxyacetylene torches and the cutting charges used in controlleddemolitions. Since innumerable sections of steel columns in the Towers were found inclean-edged pieces, were they instantly cut by oxyacetylene torches or by explosives?What sent them flying in all directions? Does a building that is simply falling downnormally produce shrapnel? When a building falls on a human body, that body is crushedwhere it is. It is not turned to fragments of bone, which are then found on the roofs ofother buildings. All these things are not controversial; theyre obvious. How do youknock down three buildings with two airplanes? What mental contortion will you notattempt, and what intellectual crucifixion will you not submit to, in order to have your

dinner undisturbed?

Now lets proceed to multi-agent information, and in particular to common knowledge.What Devlins book is to individual information, Michael Chwes book, Rational Ritual:Culture, Coordination and Common Knowledge, (Princeton, 2001) is to multi-agentinformation (that is to say, indispensable). Its bibliography alone is worth the price of thebook. Chwes book can be described thus: game theory finds culture. (p. 99). Thoughapparently a strictly academic work, it is full of practical information for activists.

Chwe says: The best common knowledge generator in the United States is the SuperBowl I dont think there ever will be a 9/11 Truth advertisement displayed during thatevent, so lets see what else hes got. He notes that in the French Revolution much usewas made of festivals,and even planting liberty trees and wearing revolutionarycolors. As pictures are powerful tools in spreading individual knowledge, or content,gear and ritual (i.e., spectacle) are powerful in propagating common knowledge, orpublicity. The Revolutionary tricolour echoes in the recent Color Revolutions of Centraland Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. We should try to be the media by usingunmistakable logos wherever possible, and, in general, being as visible as possible. InEvgeny Zamiatins We, the inspiration for Orwells 1984, the revolutionaries recruitedand struggled simply by making their name, the Mephi, as widely seen as possible. Weshould emphasize our common opposition to the lie, not our individually incompatibleversions of the truth.
http://wiki/Central_Europehttp://wiki/Eastern_Europehttp://wiki/Central_Asiahttp://wiki/Central_Europehttp://wiki/Eastern_Europehttp://wiki/Central_Asia


22/23

Appendix: On Knowledge by Consensus

You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the actof submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Onlythe disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective,

external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. Whenyou delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees thesame thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the humanmind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any casesoon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Partyholds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes ofthe Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction,an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.Do you remember, he went on, writing in your diary, Freedom is the freedom to say

that two plus two make four?Yes, said Winston.OBrien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the

four fingers extended.How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?Four.And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?Four.The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The

sweat had sprung out all over Winstons body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deepgroans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. OBrien watched him, the four fingersstill extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

How many fingers, Winston?Four.The needle went up to sixty.How many fingers, Winston?Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and thefour fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry,and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

How many fingers, Winston?Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!How many fingers, Winston?Five! Five! Five!No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many

fingers, please?Four! Five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!

Abruptly he was sitting up with OBriens arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lostconsciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt

very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down

his cheeks. For a moment he clung to OBrien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy armround his shoulders. He had the feeling that OBrien was his protector, that the pain wassomething that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was OBrien who wouldsave him from it.

You are a slow learner, Winston, said OBrien gently.How can I help it? he blubbered. How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes?

Two and two are four.Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes

they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.


23/23

October 17, 2004Megalomania in the White HousePosted by Adam Young at October 17, 2004 02:53 PMRon Suskind on a meeting with a Bush aide in 2002:In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White Housedidn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meetingwith a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then hetold me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believegets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,''which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious studyof discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principlesand empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,''he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.

And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again,

creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort

out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/006267.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position=

Activists as Knowledge Workers5

Documents

Transcript of Activists as Knowledge Workers5