Posted on 02/22/2003 5:53:52 PM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl
Not sure i agree with the columnist, but thx...
Protesting in a mass movement like many complex behaviors is over-determined and has many "causes." One such cause, seldom appreciated, is to lose oneself in a cause greater than oneself. To renounce your own identity and to identify with the cause (and sometimes with charismatic leadership) is greatly fullfilling. This is especially true if you feel empty, unfocused and lacking in a purpose for living.
Contrary to popular opinion early members of mass movements are middle aged women and adolescent females who have not been oppressed or wronged in any fashion. What they find in the mass movement is a transcendental experience. Further, personally advocating their position (usually not well thought out)reinforces their conviction of the justice and importance of their movement.
I don't suppose anyone reads him any more, but Eric Hoffer wrote a whole book on this called The True Believer. He was writing about the right at the time, but his observations including the finding of middle aged women as important, early members of mass movements is universal and not dependent upon a particular political schema.
Leftists also seem attach themselves to strange occult mysticism. (They are what I call the "Religious Left.")
This is partly done through the promotion of: third world primitive cultures on "public radio," in other places, and in academia; the paganisms of ecofascism; promotion of psychics and astrologers (astrology is a pagan idolatry); the "gay rights" arguments for homosexual monogamy as a form of marriage based on the Adam and Eve model; the use of art, music and drama as a form of religious conditioning; as well as the other subtle applications in public discourse, which compose a list of such great length, it is too much to include here.
Plato's Euthyphro and Apology are a great illustration.
Socrates advances the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible.
Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin. If a person believes in a God, it is the conviction of the Holy Ghost by which they are guided and not by the idolatrous vanities of morals constructed by others.
Plato's Apology is a drama that portrays the current Left wing frustration with talk radio in America. The people of Athens (the Left) is demanding that Socrates (Rush) be silent. Socrates refuses and the elite of Athens demand the execution of Socrates. The modern Left wants a figurative execution of Rush Limbaugh and others like him (although 'figurative' would be quickly made actual if the Left ever had the unchecked power they desire).
Radio is the focus of only one of the five senses. A listener has to really tune in to the subject matter and focus on the content of the ideas.
Television is a combination of sensory focus and it is far easier to distract and misdirect viewer attention from essential topics presented.
Considering that 90% of people tend to be more influenced by the visual, television has become a new religion. It is analagous to Plato's cave allegory. Television as a propaganda tool helps create visual phantasms (or as Thomas Hobbes called them, 'phantastical images') of the brain.
There are three ways people are influenced according to the school of behavioral psychology - - visual (sight), auditory (sound), kinesthetic (emotion). The kinesthetic or 'feeling' is also based on olfactory and tactile sense, much like Pavlov's salivating dogs. Visual images and sound portrayed can be used to anchor emotional and/or conditioned responses desired by those that present them, which in the case of television, is the Leftist television media, actors who create phantastical images in film, and Leftist politicians who pander to symbolism over substance (like Rush always says about them).
The visual aspect of that phenomenon is also used by the print media to a degree. Interactve talk radio requires thought, television does not and relies on this as a means to influence viewers...
They worship for gods 'those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream...'
Like the necromancy of the Wellstone funerally, the use of Martin Luther King Day, or constantly invoking the "spirit of the '60's," they attempt to raise spirits of the dead as a totem for worship.
Marxism and their forms of Cultural Marxism are a religion, a collection of cults. In many cases they worship a dead Karl Marx like some (and I stress some) Christians worship a dead Jesus, and not a living God. This is no more apparent than in the practice of enshrinement and regular grooming of Lenin's corpse in the former Soviet Union.
It is the religious fervor associated with the pro-abortion advocacy. The societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice to pagan idols. It has a similitude to the Teutonic paganism of Adolph Hitler, whose idolatry was the idea of a "master race." In effect, this genocide was a mass human sacrifice to those pagan idols.
The Left is properly identified with a 'confederacy of decievers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by obscure and erroneous doctrines.'
The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination (Phantasien), but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization…Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York : Penguin, 1989.
See also:
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
It is called idolatry. See my post, #13...
Only partially dupes. They are more like idolators. See post #13...
Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, and Kierkegaard pegged them years ago. See #13...
'those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream...'
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
See # 13...
Fascinating observation. Most of them haven't a clue what they're doing or why, yet they are following their baser instincts - willingly led. Thank you, Sir Francis.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.