There are two thin paperbacks in my personal canon about changing minds. They are from the 1960s, one by E H Carr (What is History?) and one by Tom Bottomore (Elites and society). My thinking will have moved on since first I was captivated by them but they stand out in my mind for what they said (socialist sociology) and for how they said it (short and in plain language). The theme that I draw from them is, predictably, about the use of power in controlling how minds are moulded and maintained.
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Underlying any instance of power is a sense of what is of value and a linked point-of-view with an associated world-view.
In a given individual the world-view is constructed by interactions between their nature (neural hard wiring) their nurture (implanted by family, community, nation and tribe) and serendipity (chance). “Give me the child till he is five and I will give you the man.” But there is neural plasticity such that “it is never too late to change your mind”.
In a given socio-cultural setting ‘the’ tribal and national world-view is implanted in the parents and community by more or less elegant modes of coercive power. A subtle and often unnoticed hegemonic point-of-view can be unwittingly substantiated and transformed by social institutions such as the education, marketing and media systems. These give the impression of being founded on ‘the’ eternal verities and thus being something to die for. But, “the only constant thing is change”.
Particular socio-cultural world-views are, almost by definition, parochial, xenophobic and absolutist. But the real world is riven with cultural relativisms. There are boundaries between ‘them and us’. And the various power elites contend and send their foot soldiers to war having sold the cause as just and the enemy as the spawn of satan. “They” are deluded, idolatrous zealots while “we” are the enlightened, fair-minded, good-guys.
In Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ the crowd is chanting “We are all different” while the small guy at the back notes that “I’m not.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA
There is a pattern to them v us conflicts. It begins with rabble rousing by a particular group and this becomes formalised as official propaganda. Then, when the war is over and the dead have been counted and buried, there is a period of reconciliation whereby “they” come to be seen as normal human beings again.
Much pain and suffering could be avoided if most people, and especially those in leadership positions, were to heed the Diamond Sutra:
Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world;
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
And Thich Nhat Hahn, the contemporary Vietnamese peace activist, fleshes out the implications in his Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings – the first of which deals with “Openness”.
“Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist teachings as guiding means that help us develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for. We understand that fanaticism in its many forms is the result of perceiving things in a dualistic and discriminative manner. We will train ourselves to look at everything with openness and the insight of interbeing in order to transform dogmatism and violence in ourselves and in the world.”
The second training deals with “Non-attachment to Views” and the third with “Freedom of Thought”. The third includes the following:
“Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are determined not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever – such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination – to adopt our views. We are committed to respecting the right of others to be different, to choose what to believe and how to decide.”
Note that I have listed and commented on the Trainings on another website,
It is in the way of things that we are born with several years of enculturation to pass through as infant, child and adolescent. This is inevitable. Man is a social animal and needs a cultural environment to steer his flourishing. The ‘environment’ can be thought of as more or less healthy and desirable but it cannot be eradicated.
That much was almost realised by Carr and Bottomore in the 1960s. But not quite. They were enthusiastic for the politics of the left.
In the past fifty years in the West increasing attention has been given to mindfulness. It has a long history in the East. In essence it is a psychology of perception. It involves stillness of body and mind such that the ‘individual’ becomes aware of and awake to what goes on in the conscious and unconscious aspects of their mindbrain. Non-egoic states of no-self become more common and there is talk of enlightenment. But as Walter Truett Anderson (1996) notes “... we have not one Enlightenment project but three: a Western one based on rational thought, an Eastern one based on seeing through the illusion of the Self, and a Postmodern one based on the concept of socially constructed reality.”
And let us give the second last word to wise Walter - "Men are born free, and everywhere are in chains. And the strongest chains are symbolic ones, mind forged manacles."
And the last word is that “given neural plasticity, it is never too late to mould and maintain the mind of self or other.”
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What Is History? (1961) In this work, Carr argued that he was presenting a middle-of-the-road position between the empirical view of history and R. G. Collingwood's idealism. Carr rejected the empirical view of the historian's work being an accretion of "facts" that he or she has at their disposal as nonsense. Carr claimed: "The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate".
Carr maintained that there is such a vast quantity of information, at least about post-Dark Ages times, that the historian always chooses the "facts" he or she decides to make use of. In Carr's famous example, he claimed that millions had crossed the Rubicon, but only Julius Caesar's crossing in 49 BC is declared noteworthy by historians. Carr divided facts into two categories, "facts of the past", that is historical information that historians deem unimportant, and "historical facts", information that the historians have decided is important. Carr contended that historians quite arbitrarily determine which of the "facts of the past" to turn into "historical facts" according to their own biases and agendas.
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_H_Carr#What_Is_History.3F
Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982) was an English historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known ... for his book What Is History?, in which he laid out historiographical principles rejecting traditional historical methods and practices.
“He demolished for ever the illusion that the international jungle of power politics could be tamed by institutions, the rule of law or a higher morality on the part of world leaders, unless the policies adopted took account of the factor of power.”
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-canon-the-twenty-years-crisis-an-introduction-to-the-study-of-international-relations-by-e-h-carr/408270.article
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Elites and Society (1964 revised 1993) In this substantially revised and enlarged second edition of a classic text that has been used throughout the world in numerous translations, Tom Bottomore reconsiders élite theory in the light of more recent studies. He examines the role and significance of élites in relation to classes and class structure in both advanced industrial and developing countries, and expounds the criticism of élites and élitism that have been formulated by democratic and socialist thinkers and movements. In a new concluding chapter, Professor Bottomore considers the prospect, as humanity approaches the millenium, for a renewed advance towards more egalitarian forms of society, in which all citizens would be able to participate more fully and effectively in the shaping of their social world.
Thomas Burton Bottomore (1920-1992), was a British Marxist sociologist. He was Reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics from 1952 to 1964. He was head of the Department of Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver from 1965 to 1967, leaving after a dispute over academic freedom. He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex from 1968 to 1985.
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