"Resist much, obey little;
Once unquestioning obedience,
once fully enslaved; Once fully enslaved,
no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty."
This were the words of caution which the great poet
Walt Whitman offered to his fellow Americans.
For Whitman recognised that crucial to a free and
flourishing society are men and women
who are willing to question and even resist authority
when necessary. But today, very few of us
live by the ideal espoused by Whitman--
rather blind obedience is the norm. We have
become populations of sheep--easily to be
herded into the chains of tyranny.
But what has led those of us in the West to largely
shun the advice of Whitman? In this video we will examine two institutions that have played
an integral role of the breeding of a passive citizenry--
the compulsory state-run education system,
which in North America is called The Public School System,
and the mainstream media. Public schooling
is viewed as one of the shining lights of the modern Western world.
Who could question the value of an institution that provides
free and compulsory education for all?
But, as with many institutions of our day, the textbook
picture of who the institutions should work
greatly diverges from the reality of how it does work.
If public schools taught individuals how to think, if they promoted intellectual curiosity
and produced citizens healthy in body and mind,
then few would question their value. But beneath
the veneer, presented by the bureaucrats
that run this institution, a darker reality emerges.
Whereas John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher turned one of public
schoolings greatest critics, writes
Noam Chomsky echoed
this sentiment, writing in his book 'Understanding Power'
To some this may sound like heresy, but a study
of history reveals that this was the intention from the
the very start. The state-run school systems
in the West were modelled off the factory style of education
first introduced in Prussia in the early 1700s
Albert Einstein, an individual
who reached heights of genius rarely seen, did
not credit his compulsory schooling
with his intellectual development. Reflecting
back on his school years, Einstein noted that
after completing his final examinations
his interest in the field he would go on to revolutionise
was all but dead.
Einstein believed that
one of the major flaws of compulsory state-run
education systems is their forced
style of teaching.
After well over a decade of indoctrination
in the school system, few emerge with a great thirst for knowledge
and a curiosity toward the many mysteries of the
world. Instead, as Bruce Levine writes in his
book, 'Resisting Illegitimate Authority', by the time a student graduates
But if our schooling cannot be relied upon to generate
the critical and curious minds needed to protect a society
from the actions of corrupted authorities,
can the mainstream media play this role? While
there has been an increasing skepticism toward this
institution in recent years,
distaste and distrust toward the mainstream media
has a long history.
Nietzsche, one of the most intellectually free and curious minds
of history, was also no fan of the mainstream media.
Richard Weaver,
a professor at the University of Chicago in the first half of
the twentieth century, found it ironic that while we
have freed ourselves from the earth-centric view of the cosmos--
we have all the while dove head-long
into an illusory view of the world created by the mainstream
media. And while Weaver focuses on newspapers
in the following passage, as they were the dominant
medium of his day, his words are even more applicable
today; where modern technologies offer far
better tools for the manipulation of the masses
But why does the mainstream media so often choose
deception over truth? Noam Chomsky in his book
'Media Control', suggests that
like many politicians, the mainstream media
is dominated by individuals who adhere to
an elitist ideology. The twentieth century
journalist Walter Lippmann epitomized this view,
calling the masses the "bewildered herd" in suggesting
that one of the main functions of the media is to
put this herd in its proper place as passive spectators
not active participants, in the organization
of a society.
For as Chomsky explains, this elitest
ideology is built on the notion...
For those of us who are not among the self-annointed elite
the question arises as to whether the controlling of the bewildered herd
is done in order to promote a prosperous and
flourishing society or merely to maintain certain
institutional structures, which favour the elites
to the detriment of society at large. This
open question only reinforces the need for a
more skeptical attitude toward the authority figures
of our day. We need, in other words, more
anti-authoritarians. It must be stressed
that an anti-authoritarian is not someone
who in place of a passive acceptance of authority
adopts a passive rejection of all authority.
Many institutions and authority figures serve
a beneficial purpose, and therefore should be accepted.
But anti-authoritarians recognize that consensus
does not mean truth, that power corrupts, that people lie
and that some institutions, in the words of Chomsky,
Recognizing these undeniable facts,
the anti-authoritarian is willing to look at all authority
figures with a healthy dose of skepticisim
and potentially even resist their commands, if such
authority proves corrupt and harmful to the wellbeing
of a society. Whereas Henry David Thoreau wrote...
But should we fear a world with more
anti-authoritarians? The obedience bred into us
in school and the blind deference to authority promoted by
the talking heads of the mainstream media
may lead some to view anti-authoritarians
as a threat to the stability of a society, but nothing could
be farther from the truth.
Anti-authoritarians are the crucial protectors of a flourishing
society, for as the author CP Snow
noted...
Malevolent authority combined with a passive citizenry
is the recipe for tyranny and so
anti-authoritarians should not be feared or
ostracized, they should be welcomed.
They are the individuals who raise the alarm and awaken the slumbering
masses to the existence of corrupt authority.
A society without a healthy number of anti-authoritarians
where a society in which anti-authoritarians
are shunned and silenced is a
society that has chosen the comfort of illusions
over the desire for truth and is, therefore, a society
paving the way for its own destruction.
Whereas, the 18th century French philosopher, Voltaire, cautioned...