I was wondering what you thought was the greatest threat to our freedom currently. By freedom, I mean institutional freedom, ie. the ability we have to govern ourselves deriving from representatives in government or deriving direct from the people (direct democracy). The question is answerable from many points of view, but I choose to adopt a purely intellectual one.
I think the greatest threat to our freedom is a lack of critical thinking skills. By and large, people are easy to sway. In fact, it has been often said and scientifically proven that while any one single person might be reasonably smart, they tend to be quite a bit dumber when in a group. The polarization of our political systems into many different groups (that is, political parties or activist groups) allows the psychology of group mentality to take over - thus we are probably at our dumbest when we participate in the democratic process, while that is the time where we should be the smartest.
By and large, that would not be a problem if politicians were always honest. Of course, the only people that lie more than politicians are dentists ("it won't hurt a bit!") I've been watching a lot of Glenn Beck recently and I've been wondering how such a shameless sophist can convince people of anything at all. He's fond of intellectual shortcuts and fallacies when he doesn't outright lie about the facts he is trying to discuss, and he even throws in some pathos when he seemingly has emotional breakdowns and starts randomly crying. I have honestly never seen something so pitiful. These are obviously crocodile tears and I've even read that Beck isn't above smearing Vaporub under his eyes to enhance the tear-fest. This man is a demagogue and a liar, yet he still is quite rich and has a huge following. The same (minus the crying) can be said for Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and people like Bill Maher, Dennis Kucinich and yes, Barack Obama on the liberal side of things aren't immune to sophistry either ; I don't think any politician is. The American Tea Party is almost entirely based on half-arguments and fallacies, and is proof positive how group mentality can be very dangerous. Some of these profess the most disgusting views, views that cannot be corroborated by anything resembling proof or common sense, yet people still gob it up like professional eaters do with Nathan's hot dogs.
My point is why does that happen?
My hypothesis has two prongs :
1) these people have followings that readily classes themselves in "the group" (see Limbaugh's dittoheads), which means that due to group dynamics, their intelligence is substantially reduced;
2) in reality, few people have sharp critical thinking skills, which allows them to be drawn into these groups in the first place, meaning that the group leader is then free to up the ante and feed them more and more bullshit.
Although polarization and the formation of groups based around an ideology are unavoidable, there is one thing that can remedy to the dreadful situation most of the world's politics are in, and there lies my answer.
The greatest threat to our freedom is that we are not taught to think anymore.
Personally, I did not receive the slightest instruction is something as simple as analyzing the reliability of a source until I was in college. However, this kind of knowledge is primordial for anyone holding any sort of power, and by our right to vote, we all do. I think the freedom of the mind is the most important of all freedoms we have - in fact, it is at the base of every other freedom. Blunted critical thinking skills are the greatest threat to our freedom, because without being able to think for oneself, one is open to any outside influence, any sufficiently charismatic commentator or political figure. It's impossible to forge one's own opinion if one has not learned how to discard the useless and safeguard what's important. Every time we adopt a position based on a fallacy, we are not thinking for ourselves but rather taking the speaker at his word, since an argument without a basis in logic or even reality should, in the best of worlds, be summarily rejected. Thus, the speaker is infiltrating our mind under false pretenses, injecting his ideology into it, robbing us of a parcel of intellectual discrimination. If one has not learned formal logic, one would be hard-pressed to identify what's useless and what's important in rhetoric. If people were trained to spot logical inconsistencies, fallacies and lies, then nobody could be dragged into a certain ideology by sophistry and charisma alone. However, if only the latter two suffice, can we really say that the person displays freedom of thinking? This analogy is pretty simple : the mind is a person, and sophist rhetoric are ropes. A person can be bound or not, to different degrees, from the slight inclination to believe to the brainwash. However, if that person has a knife (the thinking skills), he can free himself from that bondage and prevent ropes from tying him up again. He is free.
When I hear politicians from both sides of the aisle use logical shortcuts, it makes me instantly think less of them and it casts doubt on every position they have espoused. I am then free to explore these positions, demand proof, and check out if it fits. I am bound to no one's rhetoric. When I see Glenn Beck start bawling, I actually feel physical revulsion. My mind just cannot believe this works. However, when Glenn Beck fires an "argument" then starts crying, some people can see it as a very heartfelt argument, adding to the argument's weight, because it sounds like he believes it so much. However, all it does is substitute proof for emotion, which is a very poor replacement in a debate. This is an extreme example, but think about it : a lot of people are swayed based on lies, false premises, and "arguments" that would not stand under any intellectual scrutiny. In fact, our whole political system is based on this. Our modern-day rhetoricians are so good that they can convince people to adopt positions that are entirely against their own interests : we all know about the white trailer trash welfare recipient who is, astonishingly, a die-hard Republican. Obviously, this is a grave threat, because if people had all the facts and the intellectual discrimination needed to thoroughly analyze them, of course they'd realize that they've been taken for a ride.
Once a person has been convinced by sophistry and is a member of the group, it is generally very hard to convince them back. Their mob mentality is fully on, and they view the group as an important piece of themselves, which makes them vulnerable to further bullshitting and insulated against people not part of the clique that may bring logical arguments as to why this group's ideology is bullshit. What few critical thinking skills they had are put in the back burner. Mob leaders know this very well and exploit it, especially in events where group members are all together and isolated from the "outside world", like in political rallies. This allows for further manipulation, often inducing ideas that outsiders may as well view as ridiculous.
It is a great failure of our education system. It is focused on learning facts and using rote memory. People say that it isn't creative enough, but I'd rather use another term : it isn't intellectually demanding enough. The information we are presented is taken for granted, then regurgitated. It's easy for anyone keen to shape young minds to mold them into the shape that they desire, not because we're dumb, but because we are not taught how to think (and believe me, this is something that needs to be taught). The Ancients knew this and this is why in Western education in Antiquity, rhetoric was a primordial subject to learn. Read Aristotle and you will realize that we have not invented much when it comes to sophistry. The Greeks knew that philosophy was paramount in allowing people to be what they want to be because it allows them to distinguish self-interest from the interests of others, but sadly we have lost this principle. Ever complained about having to learn algebra, not understanding why you need to when you're in high school and aspiring to be a journalist? Ever heard the answer "well, it's to help you learn how to think, it's just an intellectual exercise"? Philosophy and rhetoric and formal logic in particular are THE best intellectual exercises. This is how we're supposed to learn to think : by understanding how an argument is constructed and learning to identify flaws in them, and by learning how to speak and convince, not by reducing equations.
Right now, our demagogues know very well how to convince, but we don't. Basically, they have secret weapons on us, they have guns while we have wooden clubs. If we can be convinced of almost anything by these people, we may very well be convinced to support something that is against our interest as a whole, and to the benefit of just a tiny group of people. If we cannot act in our own interest because we lack the defensive weapons to protect ourselves against rhetorical assault, then we are not free, because true, ultimate freedom is the ability to act in our own interest, whatever that interest might be. Ergo, if we are not free in our minds, it being the originator of all other rights and freedoms we have, they will all slowly erode away.
To fix that, I would do two things :
1) a "law for dummies" class in the last year of high school, focusing on our rights and freedoms and our political system. People need to be able to read the law both to understand what they are held to and which rights they have, and to be able to work the content of the second idea I have into a system that is paramount to our freedom, namely, the rule of law;
2) mandatory philosophy classes every year of high school, focusing on critical thinking skills, rhetoric, formal logic and philosophical debates. This will allow people to learn to think for themselves and thus guard their most precious freedom by avoiding the pitfalls set up for them. Being trained in philosophy makes it significantly harder (but not impossible) for somebody to be swayed by an argument without a solid basis in truth and/or logic, because the person can verify the truth given themselves, and spot non-arguments, giving them what they deserve : no consideration. Thus, they will need to be convinced only by good logic and irrefutable proof : only by the truth.
What do you guys think?
