Dark Ages
John Jones
and almost to a man we comply, no less sure of not having a reason to do so
than of the faith we place in our institutions. But the church's whip has
worn thin and a new one has taken its place. A whip nevertheless:
We cannot merely say, as we would in any age, 'Isaac Newton was tired and
angry with everyone and his God for a few weeks'.
We need to INTERPRET. By an interpretation we feel knowledgeable, but we
merely adopt a stance. So we interpret and say 'Isaac Newton suffered a
breakdown'. Yet we don't know what we mean by this, but our interpretation
completely changes our perspective whilst being at best no more than a
pointless elaboration, a new social stance. Worse yet, we willingly give up
our thoughts on Newton the person and blindly follow a confused
stereotypical substitute in Newtons place, according to the example given
us by a particular school that implored us to interpret in a particular
manner.
All psychology definitions, and the phrases that the public commonly borrow
from psychology, could be jettisoned with immediate effect. A more honest
and flexible understanding would arise. The jargon that is created by
priests and professors is as much nonsense to them as it is to the general
public-, neither side recognises how they are fooled each by themselves and
by the other in the conspiracy to 'interpret'.
JJ
Sir Frederick
at least we have records of what is
going down.
During the "dark ages", even that was lost.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
*************************
Phrases of the week :
A clown may be first in the kingdom of Heaven,
if he has helped lessen the sadness of human life.
--Talmud
:-))))Snort!) AHOWR AHOWR!
*************************
Amira R.
can help us with that, we find other sources of "complete knowledge".
Labeling eachother...*sigh*
"John Jones" <scooby...@btopenworld.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:b3r9oc$rac$1...@venus.btinternet.com...
Immortalist
"John Jones" <scooby...@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:b3r9oc$rac$1...@venus.btinternet.com...
I do think you have it there. This feature - stereotype - can influence
institutional attitudes and influence individual people. They could push and
pull Newton this way and that and even loose sight of how he, in embryo,
began the unfolding of the calculus that was the Enlightenment.
But why would we jettison these deconstructionisms instead of tempering &
testing them. This would give the entire ecosystem you describe an
trajectory once the simple rules are in place for testing such
generalizations and thei capacity for pathological disruption.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An example from "The Social Animal"
Elliot Aronson http://tinyurl.com/6ag9
Stateways Can Change Folkways
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that separate but equal schools
were, by definition, unequal. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren,
when black children are separated from white children on the basis of race
alone, it "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the
community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to
be undone." Without our quite realizing it, this decision launched our
nation into one of the most exciting, large-scale social experiments ever
conducted.
In the aftermath of this historic decision, many people were opposed to
integrating the schools on "humanitarian" grounds. They predicted a
holocaust if the races were forced to mingle in schools. They argued that
laws cannot force people to get along with each other. This echoed the
sentiments of the distinguished sociologist William Graham Sumner, who,
years earlier, had stated, "Stateways don't change folkways." What Sumner
meant, of course, is that you can't legislate morality or tolerance. Many
people urged that desegregation be delayed until attitudes could be changed.
Social psychologists at that time, of course, believed that the way to
change behavior is to change attitudes. Thus, if you can get bigoted white
adults to become less prejudiced against blacks, then they will not hesitate
to allow their children to attend school with blacks. Although they should
have known better, many social scientists were relatively confident that
they could change bigoted attitudes by launching information campaigns. They
took a "sixteen-millimeter" approach to the reduction of prejudice: If
prejudiced people believe blacks are shiftless and lazy, then all you have
to do is show them a movie depicting that blacks are industrious, decent
people. The idea is that you can combat misinformation with information. If
Shakespeare believes Jews are conniving bloodsuckers because he has been
exposed to misinformation about Jews, expose him to a more accurate range of
information about Jews and his prejudice will fade away. If most white South
Africans believe blacks commit virtually all the crimes, show them the white
convicts and they'll change their beliefs. Unfortunately, it is not quite
that simple. Whether prejudice is largely a function of economic conflict,
conformity to social norms, or deeply rooted personality needs, it is not
easily changed by an information campaign. Over the years, most people
become deeply committed to their prejudicial behavior. To develop an open,
accepting attitude toward minorities when all of your friends and associates
are still prejudiced is no easy task. A mere movie cannot undo a way of
thinking and a way of behaving that has persisted over the years.
As the reader of this book has learned, where important issues are involved,
information campaigns fail because people are inclined not to sit still and
take in information that is dissonant with their beliefs. Paul Lazarsfeld,
for example, described a series of radio broadcasts in the early 1940s
designed to reduce ethnic prejudice by presenting information about various
ethnic groups in a warm, sympathetic manner. One program was devoted to a
description of Polish-Americans, another to Italian-Americans, and so forth.
Who was listening? The major part of the audience for the program about
Polish-Americans consisted of Polish-Americans. And guess who made up most
of the audience for the program on Italian-Americans? Right. Moreover, as we
have seen, if people are compelled to listen to information uncongenial to
their deep-seated attitudes, they will reject it, distort it, or ignore
it—in much the same way Mr. X maintained his negative attitude against Jews
despite Mr. Y's information campaign and in much the same way the Dartmouth
and Princeton students distorted the film of the football game they watched.
For most people, prejudice is too deeply rooted in their own belief systems,
is too consistent with their day-to-day behavior, and receives too much
support and encouragement from the people around them to be reduced by a
book, a film, or a radio broadcast.
The Effects of Equal-Status Contact. Although changes in attitude might
induce changes in behavior, as we have seen, it is often difficult to change
attitudes through education. What social psychologists have long known, but
have only recently begun to understand, is that changes in behavior can
affect changes in attitudes. On the simplest level, it has been argued that,
if blacks and whites could be brought into direct contact, prejudiced
individuals would come into contact with the reality of their own
experience, not simply a stereotype; eventually, this would lead to greater
understanding. Of course, the contact must take place in a situation in
which blacks and whites have equal status; throughout history many whites
have always had a great deal of contact with blacks, but typically in
situations in which the blacks played such menial roles as slaves, porters,
dishwashers, shoe-shine boys, washroom attendants, and domestics. This kind
of contact only serves to increase stereotyping by whites and thus adds fuel
to their prejudice against blacks. It also serves to increase the resentment
and anger of blacks. Until recently, equal-status contact has been rare,
both because of educational and occupational inequities in our society and
because of residential segregation. The 1954 Supreme Court decision was the
beginning of a gradual change in the frequency of equal-status contact.
Occasionally, even before 1954, isolated instances of equal-status
integration had taken place. The effects tended to support the notion that
behavior change will produce attitude change. In a pioneering study, Morton
Deutsch and Mary Ellen Collins examined the attitudes of whites toward
blacks in public housing projects in 1951. Specifically, in one housing
project, black and white families were assigned to buildings in a segregated
manner; that is, they were assigned to separate buildings in the same
project. In another project, the assignment was integrated; black and white
families were assigned to the same building. Residents in the integrated
project reported a greater positive change in their attitudes toward blacks
after moving into the project than did residents of the segregated project.
From these findings, it would appear that stateways can change folkways,
that you can legislate morality—not directly, of course, but through the
medium of equal-status contact. If diverse racial groups can be brought
together under conditions of equal status, they stand a chance of getting to
know each other better. As Pettigrew has recently found, this can increase
understanding and decrease tension, all other things being equal. It should
be noted that the Deutsch and Collins study took place in public housing
projects rather than in private residential areas. This is a crucial factor
that will be discussed in a moment.
The Vicarious Effects of Desegregation. It wasn't until much later that
social psychologists began to entertain the notion that desegregation can
affect the values of people who do not even have the opportunity to have
direct contact with minority groups. This can occur through the mechanism
referred to in Chapter 5 as the psychology of inevitability. Specifically,
if I know that you and I will inevitably be in close contact, and I don't
like you, I will experience dissonance. In order to reduce dissonance, I
will try to convince myself that you are not as bad as I had previously
thought. I will set about looking for your positive characteristics and will
try to ignore, or minimize the importance of, your negative characteristics.
Accordingly, the mere fact that I know I must at some point be in close
contact with you will force me to change my prejudiced attitudes about you,
all other things being equal. As we saw earlier, laboratory experiments have
confirmed this prediction: For example, children who believed they must
inevitably eat a previously disliked vegetable began to convince themselves
that it wasn't as bad as they had previously thought. Similarly, college
women who knew they were going to spend several weeks working intimately
with a woman who had several positive and negative qualities developed a
great fondness for that woman before they even met her; this did not occur
when they were not led to anticipate working with her in the future.
Admittedly, it's a far cry from a bowl of vegetables to relations between
blacks, Latinos, and whites. Few social psychologists are so naive as to
believe that deep-seated racial intolerance can be eliminated if people
reduce their dissonance simply by coming to terms with what they believe to
be inevitable events. I would suggest that, under ideal conditions, such
events can begin to unfreeze prejudiced attitudes and produce a diminution
of hostile feelings in most individuals. I will discuss what I mean by
"ideal conditions" in a moment; but first, let us put a little more meat on
those theoretical bones. How might the process of dissonance reduction take
place?
Turn the clock back to the late 1950s. Imagine a 45-year-old white male
whose 16-year-old daughter attends a segregated school. Let us assume he has
a negative attitude toward blacks, based in part on his belief that blacks
are shiftless and lazy and that all black males are oversexed and potential
rapists. Suddenly, the edict is handed down by the Justice Department: The
following autumn, his fair-haired young daughter must go to an integrated
school. State and local officials, while perhaps not liking the idea,
clearly convey the fact that nothing can be done to prevent it; it's the law
of the land, and it must be obeyed. The father might, of course, refuse to
allow his child to obtain an education or he could send her to an expensive
private school. But such measures are either terribly drastic or terribly
costly. So he decides he must send her to an integrated school. His
cognition that his fair-haired young daughter must inevitably attend the
same school with blacks is dissonant with his cognition that blacks are
shiftless rapists. What does he do? My guess is that he will begin to
reexamine his beliefs about blacks. Are they really all that shiftless? Do
they really go around raping people? He may take another look—this time,
with a strong inclination to look for the good qualities in blacks rather
than to concoct and exaggerate bad, unacceptable qualities. I would guess
that, by the time September rolls around, his attitude toward blacks would
have become unfrozen and would have shifted in a positive direction. If this
shift can be bolstered by positive events after desegregation—for example,
if his daughter has pleasant and peaceful interactions with her black
schoolmates—a major change in the father's attitudes is likely to result.
Again, this analysis is admittedly oversimplified. But the basic process
holds. And look at the advantages this process has over an information
campaign. A mechanism has been triggered that motivated the father to alter
his negative stereotype of blacks.
My analysis strongly suggests that a particular kind of public policy would
be potentially most beneficial to society—a policy exactly the opposite of
what has been generally recommended. As mentioned previously, following the
1954 Supreme Court decision, there was a general feeling that integration
must proceed slowly. Most public officials and many social scientists
believed that, in order to achieve harmonious racial relations, integration
should be delayed until people could be reeducated to become less
prejudiced. In short, the general belief in 1954 was that the behavior
(integration) must follow a cognitive change. My analysis suggests that the
best way to produce eventual interracial harmony would be to start with
behavioral change. Moreover, and most important, the sooner the individuals
realize integration is inevitable, the sooner their prejudiced attitudes
will begin to change. On the other hand, this process can be (and has been)
sabotaged by public officials by fostering the belief that integration can
be circumvented or delayed. This serves to create the illusion that the
event is not inevitable. In such circumstances, there will be no attitude
change; the result will be an increase in turmoil and disharmony. Let's go
back to our previous example: If the father of the fair-haired daughter is
led (by the statements and tactics of a governor, a mayor, a school-board
chairman, or a local sheriff) to believe there's a way out of integration,
he will feel no need to reexamine his negative beliefs about blacks. The
result is apt to be violent opposition to integration.
Consistent with this reasoning is the fact that, as desegregation has
spread, favorable attitudes toward desegregation have increased. In 1942,
only 30 percent of the whites in this country favored desegregated schools;
by 1956, the figure rose to 49 percent; in 1970, to 75 percent. Finally, in
1980, as it became increasingly clear that school desegregation was
inevitable, the figure appreached 90 percent.92 The change in the South
(taken by itself) is even more dramatic. In 1942, only 2 percent of the
whites in the South favored integrated schools; in 1956, while most
southerners still believed the ruling could be circumvented, only 14 percent
favored desegregation; but by 1970, as desegregation continued, just under
50 percent favored desegregation—and the figures continued to climb in the
1980s. Of course, such statistical data do not constitute absolute proof
that the reason people are changing their attitudes toward school
desegregation is that they are coming to terms with what is inevitable—but
the data are highly suggestive.
In a careful analysis of the process and effects of school desegregation,
Thomas Pettigrew raised the question of why, in the early years of
desegregation, violence occurred in some communities, such as Little Rock,
Arkansas, and not in others, such as Norfolk and Winston-Salem, North
Carolina. His conclusion, which lends further support to my reasoning, was
that "violence has generally resulted in localities where at least some of
the authorities give prior hints that they would gladly return to
segregation if disturbances occurred; peaceful integration has generally
followed firm and forceful leadership." In other words, if people were not
given the opportunity to reduce dissonance, there was violence. As early as
1953, Kenneth B. Clark observed the same phenomenon during desegregation in
some of the border states. He discovered that immediate desegregation was
far more effective than gradual desegregation. Moreover, violence occurred
in those places where ambiguous or inconsistent policies were employed or
where community leaders tended to vacillate. The same kind of thing happened
when military units began to desegregate during World War II: Trouble was
greatest where policies were ambiguous.
But All Other Things Are Not Always Equal. In the preceding section, I
presented an admittedly oversimplified view of a very complex phenomenon. I
did this intentionally as a way of indicating how things can proceed
theoretically under ideal conditions. But conditions are seldom ideal. There
are almost always some complicating circumstances. Let us now look at some
of the complications and then proceed to discuss how they might be
eliminated or reduced.
When I stated that prejudice was reduced in an integrated housing project, I
made special note of the fact that it was a public housing project. Some
complications are introduced if integration involves privately owned houses.
Primarily, there is a strong belief among whites that, when blacks move into
a neighborhood, real estate values decrease. This belief introduces economic
conflict and competition, which militate against the reduction of prejudiced
attitudes. Indeed, systematic investigations in integrated private housing
show an increase in prejudiced attitudes among the white residents.
Moreover, as I mentioned, the experiments on the psychology of inevitability
were done in the laboratory, where the dislikes involved in the studies were
almost certainly not as intense or deep-seated as racial prejudice is in the
real world. Although it is encouraging to note that these findings were
paralleled by the data from actual desegregation efforts, it would be naive
and misleading to conclude that the road to desegregation will always be
smooth as long as individuals are given the opportunity to come to terms
with inevitability. Frequently, trouble begins once desegregation starts.
This is often due, in part, to the fact that the contact between white and
minority-group children (especially if it is not begun until high school) is
usually not equal-status contact. Picture the scene: A lOth-grade boy from a
poor black or Latino family, after being subjected to a second-rate
education, is suddenly dropped into a learning situation in a predominantly
white, middle-class school taught by white, middle-class teachers, where he
finds he must compete with white, middle-class students who have been reared
to hold white, middle-class values. In effect, he is thrust into a highly
competitive situation for which he is unprepared, a situation in which the
rules are not his rules and payoffs are made for abilities he has not yet
developed. He is competing in a situation that, psychologically, is far
removed from his home turf. Ironically enough, these factors tend to produce
a diminution of his self-esteem—the very factor that influenced the Supreme
Court decision in the first place. In his careful analysis of the research
on desegregation, Walter Stephan found no studies indicating significant
increases in self-esteem among black children, while 25 percent of the
studies he researched showed a significant drop in their self-esteem
following desegregation. In addition, prejudice was not substantially
reduced. Stephan found that it increased in almost as many cases as it
decreased.
With these data in mind, it is not surprising to learn that a newly
integrated high school is typically a tense place. It is natural for
minority-group students to attempt to raise their self-esteem. One way of
raising self-esteem is to stick together, lash out at whites, assert their
individuality, reject white values and white leadership, and so on.
Let me sum up the discussion thus far: (1) Equal-status contact under the
ideal conditions of no economic conflict can and does produce increased
understanding and a diminution of prejudice. (2) The psychology of
inevitability can and does set up pressures to reduce prejudiced attitudes
and can set the stage for smooth, nonviolent school desegregation under
ideal conditions. (3) Where economic conflict is present (as in integrated
neighborhoods of private domiciles), there is often an increase in
prejudiced attitudes. (4) Where school desegregation results in a
competitive situation, especially if there are serious inequities for the
minority groups, there is often an increase in hostility of blacks or
Latinos toward whites that is at least partially due to an attempt to regain
some lost self-esteem.
================================
Here is an longer analysis of this phenomenon.
Stateways Change Folkways Change Stateways.
http://www.mankind.org/Man25.mgi
================================
A PROPOSED and tested solution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is how it works: The students in a history class, for example, are
divided into small groups of five or six students each. Suppose their task
is to learn about World War II. In one jigsaw group, Sara is responsible for
researching Hitler's rise to power in pre-war Germany. Another member of the
group, Steven, is assigned to cover concentration camps; Pedro is assigned
Britain's role in the war; Melody is to research the contribution of the
Soviet Union; Tyrone will handle Japan's entry into the war; Clara will read
about the development of the atom bomb.
Eventually each student will come back to her or his jigsaw group and will
try to present a well-organized report to the group. The situation is
specifically structured so that the only access any member has to the other
five assignments is by listening closely to the report of the person
reciting. Thus, if Tyrone doesn't like Pedro, or if he thinks Sara is a nerd
and tunes her out or makes fun of her, he cannot possibly do well on the
test that follows.
To increase the chances that each report will be accurate, the students
doing the research do not immediately take it back to their jigsaw group.
Instead, they meet firstwith students who have the identical assignment (one
from each jigsaw group). For example, students assigned to the atom bomb
topic meet as a team of specialists, gathering information, becoming experts
on their topic, and rehearsing their presentations. We call this the
"expert" group. It is particularly useful for students who might have
initial difficulty learning or organizing their part of the assignment, for
it allows them to hear and rehearse with other "experts."
MORE:
http://www.jigsaw.org/about.htm
>
>
John Jones
> testing them
Try them out you mean. But ideas of testing theories on the basis of what?
'behaviour? - what are we testing? A sequence of stereotypes. Now do we
want a stereotype in place of the living person themselves?
>This would give the entire ecosystem you describe an
> trajectory once the simple rules are in place for testing such
> generalizations and thei capacity for pathological disruption.
A trajectory? Isn't the trajectory talked about here an implentation of
stereotypes? And flash in the pans, snapshots of understanding, are rules
to tell us how to do it, not why.
JJ
Immortalist <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:v64rlmp...@corp.supernews.com...
> it-in much the same way Mr. X maintained his negative attitude against
> that you can legislate morality-not directly, of course, but through the
> they really go around raping people? He may take another look-this time,
> with a strong inclination to look for the good qualities in blacks rather
> than to concoct and exaggerate bad, unacceptable qualities. I would guess
> that, by the time September rolls around, his attitude toward blacks
would
> have become unfrozen and would have shifted in a positive direction. If
this
> shift can be bolstered by positive events after desegregation-for
example,
> if his daughter has pleasant and peaceful interactions with her black
> schoolmates-a major change in the father's attitudes is likely to result.
> Again, this analysis is admittedly oversimplified. But the basic process
> holds. And look at the advantages this process has over an information
> campaign. A mechanism has been triggered that motivated the father to
alter
> his negative stereotype of blacks.
>
> My analysis strongly suggests that a particular kind of public policy
would
> be potentially most beneficial to society-a policy exactly the opposite
> 50 percent favored desegregation-and the figures continued to climb in
the
> 1980s. Of course, such statistical data do not constitute absolute proof
> that the reason people are changing their attitudes toward school
> desegregation is that they are coming to terms with what is
inevitable-but
> a diminution of his self-esteem-the very factor that influenced the
Immortalist
> > But why would we jettison these deconstructionisms instead of tempering
&
> > testing them
>
> Try them out you mean. But ideas of testing theories on the basis of what?
> 'behaviour? - what are we testing? A sequence of stereotypes. Now do we
> want a stereotype in place of the living person themselves?
>
Try them out over and over again through recursion arising from the need for
using them over and over again. If you describe any object you are
stereotyping it unles your description takes into account all actions and or
atoms/forces what the description describes consists of. Therefore like Mike
D might say it's an language problem of descriptive detail and language
capacity and human meatware.
We have no choice but to work with summarries synopsis etc... If Newton is
dead we need some way to communicate about him which will be some
reductionism to scale between what our brains can deal with and the acual
events consisting of Newton's life. If we could resurrect him we would have
the ultimate stereotype/emulation.
> >This would give the entire ecosystem you describe an
> > trajectory once the simple rules are in place for testing such
> > generalizations and thei capacity for pathological disruption.
>
> A trajectory? Isn't the trajectory talked about here an implentation of
> stereotypes? And flash in the pans, snapshots of understanding, are rules
> to tell us how to do it, not why.
>
> JJ
The trajectory I described would be similar to how in an game of Basketball
the idea is to get the ball to the other end and try making an basket. The
basketball has an very circuitous and convoluted path but there would be
trends in clumps of this path that show an movement towards the other end. I
think of the meander of an river but the general trajectory of the rivers
course ziggzagging out an straight course. My favorite example is the sheep
dog confusing the herd by nipping a few and remembering which floating
nipping areas cause the herd to move that way. jumble of
movements/trajectory contents/context.