How the sectors of society influence each other.
Let’s spin on Andrew Breitbart’s statement that “Politics is downstream from culture”.
In a nice society, ideas flow in the direction of the thick black arrows. Media and schools should be based on culture. Family and factory need to be based on whatever conditions they are provided by the political establishment.
In modern societies there are at least eight ways in which this can malfunction, as indicated by the red lines and arrows. It can turn counter-clockwise:
- People can use the political institutions to provide their children with a family while denying others the opportunity to marry. A corporation can bribe politicians into tabling decisions which favour it over its competitors.
- Political parties can have public schools teach their own ideology as scientific fact while convincing pupils that the ideas of the opposition are dangerous, racist, oppressive or whatever. And they can, in most Western European sh… countries send tax money straight to their own media houses so that an ordinary citizen who would like to read oppositional, or just balanced, articles cannot afford to pay for them.
- Media and schools can, and do, but really really shouldn’t, desinform people about what various cultures are about. This is particularly true for philosophies of life. But even schools teaching languages is questionable since languages should be defined by their users. The result has become standard languages defined by governments and senseless standard religions also defined by the government.
- The world of culture is full of coteries, sects and factions that try to convince women of fertile age to not choose a partner from any rivaling coterie, sect or faction. TV does this, but it is also a huge problem within churches.
… and it can short-cut through the evil centre:
- A good product sells itself. Some corporations need to advertise a lot since their products are bad. In addition they create scandals to get even more exposure, and so do families in reality TV-shows.
- Media often cross the other way, featuring the family matters of celebrities. When share-owners of large corporations rely on information from media in order to make decisions for the company, because they are far removed from the corporation’s activities, that is the dark flip-side of globalization and capitalism.
- A musician who produces a heartbreaking story about the consequences of current policy and suggest a simplistic solution to it may seem fine, but is really far removed from responsibility and has neither incentives or ability to suggest a good solution. When leaders or spokesmen of cultural organizations express opinions on political matters in the name of that organization and its members, that is obviously filthy, and we should expect that the members have all sorts of more reasoned and constructive stances in opposition to their spokesperson.
- Now, should political parties decide what philosophies of life are okay or not? Should tax money be spent on approved cultural projects? Should politicians settle the text of the Bible, the Hadiths, and the Vedas? Should they translate these texts, change some details as they see unfit, and sell it as an authorized version? And should we buy it? What if they rewrite history? Again and again? A so called “living history” — you never know what it will say tomorrow.