Lies with Long Legs. Prodosh Aich
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transport facilities for accumulated knowledge. These facilities become useless when science withers, wastes away, decays and nothing-worthwhile remains to be transported. Who will gain if mere trivia is being transported hence and forth? The shooting of “grouse” on computers would then become more entertaining.
It is important to realise that mediated communication is never a substitute for face-to-face encounters. And the rapid growth of “media institutions” and “media transport”, which we have characterised as an uncontrollable “flood”, makes it impossible for us to understand, evaluate, and check the contents because there just isn’t enough time. We also miss people with whom we could discuss directly on the mediated deliveries. We cannot get rid of the impression that there is a continuous hammering to get things into our head, that the “media” themselves are the major message and not the contents they transport. The printing press, the transistor radio, the television, the Internet, the mobile phones are the messages, not “democratisation”, for example, and not the achievement of “democratic” order. We all know that this development is not a “godsend”, and by using them many people earn a lot of money, and establish their power base. How? Mainly undercover, in secrecy. Ownership is camouflaged. Profits are hidden. Can that be good? Can this be accepted?
Be it as it may, it seems to be taken for granted. Why should an individual in a democratic society become concerned about how a rich person has come to his riches? Isn’t the fiscal secret one of the most important achievements of personal freedom in a “democratic” society and protected like a sacred item? Isn’t one of the most commonly used blanket phrases: “It’s my personal business?” Doesn’t this prevent us from becoming a nation of ugly “social enviers”? Stop us from alarming the bosses and drive them out of the country to some tax paradise? Who will benefit, if they have to desert?
We, however, want to take “our rule” (Democracy) seriously and demand from our rich compatriots a precise account of their wealth. What had been the “price” for that and who paid the price ultimately? And we are not ready to accept that – day in and day out – we are brain-washed with “information” that is not checkable, not verifiable. But how can we achieve that goal? What do we have to do?
We do not know everything that could be done in order to escape the dangers of brainwashing. However, we can tell what we have undertaken and what we have learnt in this process. Only this much is given away in advance: We are becoming increasingly comfortable with this stratagem. We only took small steps in the beginning: reading. For a long time many established and scholarly scientists have convinced us through their books that the contexts are extremely complicated in a democracy – no sorry – in a “representative parliamentary democracy”, in industrialised and “modern” societies. The matters are supposed to be so complicated that we as common people cannot look through the interdependencies and are thus unable to comprehend what is happening. Does it make any sense spending our limited life span trying to understand what is happening around us and with us? Why shouldn’t we as common people just learn to trust those “super-brains”, the elite, who have been trained with great effort? This elite has developed exceptional intelligence and excellent training. It has gained total understanding and an overall view of our society, thanks to our financial aid. Amongst them there are “critical scientists” with their “critical books”. Don’t they take care of the grievances in society, and don’t they evaluate the grievances and tell us exactly what is to be done? Is it not better to trust them than trying to control them? Doesn’t it make us carefree and happy learning to trust?
The “scientists” have not convinced us. Our initial enthusiasm about the description of grievances has vanished. We are familiar with these grievances as well, and to our surprise, we know a lot more details from our own practical experiences than the “scientists” do. Why do the scholars of all colours keep themselves busy on general levels? Why are they shy of plain and straight language? And there is this wretched practice of quotations. It has not only strained our nerves, it has also made us suspicious that many scholars deal with problems, circumstances, social interdependencies about which they have not learnt from their personal encounters and experiences at all. While reading them we feel that they are rather fed with written assessments and possible experiences of scholars of past generations. We are surprised to note that those writing “scholars” were and still are more credulous than we are. They do not question their predecessors about the how and where. All they want is to make us believe that they are knowledgeable and are experts. We cannot refrain from concluding that “social scientists” have always felt comfortable with their ability of blind trust in the printed words. Their motto, if the printed word did not carry truth, it wouldn’t have been printed at all.
We cannot get rid of the impression either that many publications in “social sciences” are not based on precise observations and on their description, but on prior publications on the topic. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And how much is “a lot”? How can we estimate this? We have not come across any critical reviews of citations yet. We are confronted with quotations, only as parts of former publications supporting the “writing scholar”. Without any critical distance from the sources. Is it necessary? What would be the price? Does it not require time? Isn’t time also money? If someone like us should have doubts, why not let him check? Is there not enough “bibliographic information”? Is the “bibliography” not up to the mark? Well, we have doubts. The “bibliography” only indicates books which have eventually been consulted. A complete bibliography on the topic is never supplied! And why are certain publications excluded? How can we know? Would it be too much to ask “modern scholars” to give us exactly all this „information“? And why don’t they check the quoted texts? Is it not possible that mistakes be made while copying? Is it not possible for the quoted excerpt to be out of proper context? And, after all, anyone who approaches celebrated scholars with so much scepticism has to learn to believe. The alternative to believing is time consuming and tiring: Go to the library, search the catalogue, borrow the book, find the quotation, careful proof reading, word by word. The book might not be available; it might have to be borrowed from some other library far away.
So, in practice, we don’t know precisely, how systematically the selection of books is made. The only systematic thing in the selection is that recent publications are mostly included. Obviously in the conviction, or rather in the belief that the latest publication must have consolidated the relevant prior publications.
After this excursion into the working methods of the so-called scientists we should now turn to their books. The books are supposed to have been written for readers like us. We have not understood everything in them. But we have got the essential message. We should let them make us believe that it is more convenient to leave the thinking to “scholars” and the doing to learned “professionals”. This is confusing. If books, even the intelligent ones, are written for us, shouldn’t we then be able to understand them?. And if we understood them, why aren’t we as good as the writing elite in that field? Why should we leave the thinking to them, if we can comprehend what they write? Do they keep something back? Are there errors in our reasoning?
Then the language of many critical scholars has also strained us immensely. It is complicated, encoded, uncommon, and foreign. It is shallow with a narrow range of topics. Anyway, the message has reached us, though it has missed its goal. It has failed to make us believe that without their aid we won’t ever comprehend the complicated circumstantial contexts of a “modern liberal democratic society”. No, not because they do not have answers to our questions. No! They have simply failed to explain, how rich people become rich, how already wealthy people become wealthier and the needy majority increasingly poor. And there is so much of secrecy. On one hand almost all written documents are kept beyond our reach, documents which display the activities of our “Deputies” (Representatives) in the parliament and in the government, and on the other hand the flood of information and (hi)stories whose authenticity is doubtful. So, we have to ask questions. Always new questions. The following ones for example.
How does the elite become an elite? Are they elite by birth, or do they become elite by training? If by training, how do they get access to the centres of training? By social heritage or by acquired intelligence? How do they find topics for their diploma and doctoral thesis? How are candidates being selected for a doctoral