To Cast a Critical Eye for Democracy
Cynical skepticism, prejudice, mistrust and other stuff that you need to account for for media literacy to have an impact.
As I argued in my last post, democracy—a process by which people, a. get together to decide how to share resources and socio-cultural space or elect representatives and create institutions to make those decisions; and b. use movement politics (that is, protests, marches, and activism) to include more and more people in that framework—is our best ticket to somewhat sustainable happiness for an ever increasing number of people.1
What is one of the necessities when you discuss how to share resources and socio-cultural space?
Knowledge.
Knowledge is not information but more than that. It is the understanding of how information fits together to both create and represent the reality that we live in and want to either make use of or change.2
Without a shared understanding of the world around us, we cannot discuss how to share resources. We cannot discuss what to conserve, and we cannot discuss what to let go. We cannot discuss how to make our lives better. Hence, widespread availability of and accessibility to knowledge is a condition for a functional democracy.
That is why an independent press, an important medium for gathering and disseminating knowledge, is called the fourth estate and a pillar of democracy.3 And while it is not considered as such, that is also why both easily accessible, comprehensive, and universal public education and public-funded and publicly available data gathering and research are important to a sustainable democracy.
That is why free speech, and the right to criticize the state and the powerful, is imperative for democracy.
And that is also why free cultural expression in the form of fiction, dance, music, or story telling, which are used to demonstrate and invoke truths otherwise difficult for people to understand, is also a must for democracy.
Let me tell you a story.
Once up on a time there lived in the forest a monkey. He was well known in the forest for being a skeptic. He would never trust anyone else’s word on anything. He would need to test the matter himself.
The other animals told him that he cannot be skeptical about everything. That he had to depend on information from others sometimes. He did not agree. He thought he cannot trust any truth that he had not experienced himself. Only his eyes and ears and skin and other sensory inputs can be trusted, you see.
One day, he came up on a fruit tree that stood on a wide meadow. It was full of ripe fruits that looked delectable. And as luck would have it, not a fruit looked touched or eaten by any other animal or bird.
A tree laden with fresh fruit all for him.
As he ran to the tree to climb it, a fox who was walking by called to him. “Do not eat that fruit. It is poisonous. It will kill you. I have heard it from the wise.”
The monkey shook his head. “How do I know what you tell is true? You might have heard a baseless rumour. Let me test it myself.”
The fox watched as the monkey picked a nice-looking fruit and bit into it. After a couple of bites, his throat closed up and he started choking.
“Now, do you believe me?” The fox asked.
The monkey barely managed to breathe out an answer. “I don’t. I have not yet died.”
Then, he died.
I have been told often enough that I learn things from books. That I lack ‘real experience’ and hence what I say, based on my readings (though not just that) as well as principles that I arrived at through analysis, should be disregarded.
Setting aside that question of my experience or lack thereof, consider the logic of that statement:
Is it possible for any one person to gain the minimum required understanding of the world through their own experience?
Unless, you want to end up like the monkey above, surely not.
We do have to rely on others’ experience, research, and investigations in the form of press reports and articles, works on history and sociology, papers on science, technology, mathematics, and commerce, to live our lives no matter however limited or expansive.
Does that mean that everything we hear or read or watch are true?
Most definitely not. People have been mistaken before. Be they scientists or historians. Reporters or story tellers. Mathematicians or economists. Artists or activists. There have been, and there continue to be, gaps in our understanding of the world that necessitates inquiry and exploration. And there have also been attempts to deliberately mislead or outright lie. That something is written, told, or shared doesn’t mean it is true or accurate.
What do we do then? We cannot depend on our own experience and discard everything else. Nor can we accept everything we are told with uncritical acceptance.
How do we draw a balance? How do we learn to read, listen, or watch critically? How do we separate truth from untruth and uncertainty from willful ignorance? How do we learn to live with uncertainty where the knowledge is just not yet there?
The answer often offered is media literacy: reading and deconstructing newspaper articles, training in historiography, film, art, and literary criticism.4 Or perhaps, more accurately, learning from others' experience by understanding where their experience and their understanding of the world, or the subject matter under discussions, comes from.
Learning to read/watch/listen critically is the process of learning to put yourself in the writers’/director’s/reporter’s/historian’s shoes to identify their quirks and their gaze, their point of view, and then, to separate from that gaze, to decipher what is underneath.
Is that all the answer though?
Remember the tree laden with the poisoned fruit? A man came up on it as he walked from his city to another. He was hungry and was new to the area. He did not know the fruit was poisonous. A city man born and bred, he did not know the signs to watch out for to identify poisonous fruits either. So, he ate the fruit, and was knocked unconscious.5
An hour or so later, a priest walked by. He saw the man lying on the path and stopped, fearful.
Is he a conman pretending to be ill so that he could take all my money? The priest wondered.
Why else would this man be lying here?
The priest had quite a lot of money with him, having made collections at the village he was travelling from after his visit. He gave the man a wide berth and walked on.
Some time later, a habitual drunk came by.
Oh, wonderful! It is not even evening, and this guy is already in his cups. The drunk thought. If only I can do that too. Deciding that he should get home as soon as possible and start early on his stash of alcohol, he hastened his steps.
And hours after the man fell unconscious, a villager who was familiar with the woodlands of the region and its flora and fauna walked that way. He saw the man unconscious, noted that he looked unfamiliar and thus was a stranger, and deduced that he might have eaten the poisonous fruit.
Without much ado, the villager arranged for the man to be transported to the nearest physician. And his life was saved but with some lasting damage to his body.
Our experience and our context—what we have, where we lived, what we prefer to eat and drink, who we grew up with, and who we have been—need not always guide us true. It might, as in the case of the people above, prejudice us to the experience of others.
If we cannot be aware of our prejudices and set aside our self to the extent possible, if we cannot be open to the idea that other people might have different experiences, and those different experiences might offer value, no amount of media literacy or exposure to data or information would help us see the world clearly enough to actually engage in productive discussions about resource sharing and culture. And without those discussions, we will never be able to make the world the best place for (all of) us to live.
So far, we have media (and scientific) literacy and an acknowledgement and accounting for our own prejudice. What else do we need to be able to critically consume various sources of information?
You might have heard the story of the four blind men and the elephant.6
These blind men had never met an elephant before and decided to seek one out. They wanted to determine for themselves the nature of this fascinating animal that so many stories spoke of.
Each of them found a different part of the elephant. And based on their examination, each formed a different idea about what it was. One that touched its legs thought it was a pillar. Another that came up on its trunk thought the elephant was a huge snake. A third a wall, and the fourth decided that it was like a spear based on how the elephant’s tusks felt.
The truth is uncertain, fragmented, and multi-faceted. And humans limited in their ability to fully comprehend it.
Whatever you read, watch, or listen to is unlikely to tell you the whole story. It is not possible but true that the collective humanity do not have the whole story. It is possible that at many crossroads, we will not know which path to take. And there is no doubt that we—may we be readers, journalists, authors, or contributors, voters or politicians, activists or onlookers—will make mistakes. We are still a work in progress, after all.
What then?
Do we retreat to the certainty of what we believe, or have experienced, to what makes us feel better, to what serves our group identity or immediate concern, and refuse to move beyond? Do we attack or denounce those who, based on their own understanding, deduce differently?
If so, we risk the poisonous fruit.
And democracy will be a failed affair.
To sum:
We need knowledge for a functional democracy. Media literacy can help with identifying and gathering that knowledge.
Cynical skepticism regarding the art and media we are exposed to, prejudice that comes from treating our experience as the sum-total of all knowledge, and fear of the gaps in our knowledge and resulting uncertainty that lead us to retreat to the familiar stand in the way of that. They are the death knells of democracy.
We need to work on that cynicism and prejudice and fear as readers and writers, journalists, and artists, voters and activists, with media literacy. Only then will we be able to have a functional democracy that can work for all.
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If you aren’t convinced and would rather prefer autocracy or dictatorship, monarchy or castiest feudalism, fascism or majoritarianism, please feel free to read my post again. :-)
Learning designers! Do not argue about Gagne, please. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/knowledge. As per this dictionary, knowledge means everything (not just explain and describe). And I am using it in that sense. The OED version is ahem more complicated: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/104170? but it does include skill and expertise. So, you know, may be Oxford never heard of Gagne. ;-)
The language refers to pre-revolutionary (and revolutionary) France where there used to be three estates that served some limited function of governance when constituted (or called): clergy, nobility, and the third estate of everybody else (or townsmen apparently). Just like the pre-modern British parliament, they did not always sit. In fact, before the years leading up to the French revolution, the Estates-General that called up on the estates to sit was constituted in 1614. See William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Short Introduction, (1st edn.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Thomas Carlyle in 19th century England referred to the press as the fourth estate; that is, a body in addition to the three estates mentioned above that serves an important function in a democracy. https://www.reference.com/world-view/press-called-fourth-estate-d9eee0cb98632d05.
Someone once told me—after I shared this story with them in the context of quite another essay—that this is similar to Good Samaritan, a parable that Jesus told. I read this story in Balarama as a child. The priest can be of any religion.
Democracy is probably built on a few false premises.
1. Majority is right . Majority has seldom been right . It's the selected few who thought up things . And finally got the majority stamp to implement it .
2. Media influences public. Rarely , if at all . Those who care have learnt to sift the chaff from lies . (Truth is never an element in the media. What they sell is a product and value addition is the most important factor . To enhance the business prospect of the owners.)
3. Belief is a great thing. That's the premise on which the entire system is built , whether it's politics , religion or any such social grouping. That's the biggest threat to the system. Inherent urge to believe can easily be manipulated , and is being done relentlessly.
There are a few more . But the core issue covered in the article is how to protect our democracy. Not easy . But then everything has a life cycle . Democracy too many live its life and start decaying only at the end. Meaning we the people have almost nothing to do to save or influence democracy .
Thank you. My first news source merely tells me what to look for on other sources. Sometimes the coverage, or lack thereof, is most informative.