A Quote by Noam Chomsky
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
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The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.
People seem very arrogant when they say 'I'm right and you're wrong', but in practice we all believe we're right. We have a staggering arrogance in our own belief. That can be tempered by not being 100% certain; by being provisional. No matter what the debate is, very few people have the modesty to suspend judgement on a whole range of things; most intelligent people have an opinion and are expected to have an opinion by other people - but it always requires making a personal judgement that goes way-beyond your expertise. We do it all the time.
The Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to - meaning a place where nothing is decided without a good dose of deliberation and debate, as well as input from both the majority and minority parties - it arrives at a result that is acceptable to people all along the political spectrum.
We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionists. We are pro-private sector or pro-government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us hold these extreme views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion.
The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class.
The views of religious-Zionist rabbis are of course worthy of being heard, yet they represent a very defined and very narrow camp within the Israeli spectrum. This is not the way to shape the perception of future division and brigade commanders.
There is a lot of flesh to be put on the bones - but there is at least an opening for a more pragmatic, less ideological debate about how to build economies that work for people, within the limits of our planet.
Autism's a very big spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, Einstein would probably be labeled autistic, Steve Jobs, half of Silicon Valley, you know, Van Gogh. And at the other end of the spectrum, you got much more severe handicaps where they never learn to speak.
I don't want to be one of those people who claim to hate labels, but it's true. I even feel that we've got it all wrong with the whole gay/straight thing. There is a spectrum. Everybody is completely different. Some people are way over on this side of the spectrum, some are on the other side, and some are crossed in certain ways.
...the debate among the scientists if over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who've looked at the science...Well, I guess in some quarters, there's still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.
I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged. At the very least, we should debate. We should debate whether or not we are going to relinquish our rights, or whether or not we are going to have a full and able debate over whether or not we can live within the Constitution, or whether or not we have to go around the Constitution.
I think we have a very critical role to play, within the spectrum of international law and human rights.
A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing - a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit.
At the moment I am occupied by an investigation with Kirchoff which does not allow us to sleep. Kirchoff has made a totally unexpected discovery, inasmuch as he has found out the cause for the dark lines in the solar spectrum and can produce these lines artificially intensified both in the solar spectrum and in the continuous spectrum of a flame, their position being identical with that of Fraunhofer's lines. Hence the path is opened for the determination of the chemical composition of the Sun and the fixed stars.
When your Islamic discourse with someone becomes a debate, that's when you know that you have to stop. The psychology of a debate is like a sports competition, and no one likes to lose. So even if you make a good point, the other person isn't going to congratulate you. They are thinking about revenge.
If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return. So we will have time for a proper, reasoned debate. At the end of that debate you, the British people, will decide.
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