One of my core values is the necessity of perception. I have toyed with many ways of framing it, but the simplest is the necessity of perceptual “movement”, as I call, which is simply allowing perceptions–opinions, ideas, understandings–to evolve over time. This happens naturally if you allow it to, which is to say if you are not rigid and dogmatic.
One of the core intentions of propaganda is to halt perceptual movement. This fact is typically concealed within an overwhelming volume of seeming change. Propagandees are bombarded daily–hourly–with change, with new ideas, with the “someone said this and someone said that” sort of news cycle.
Manifestly, our media talks constantly, but says, in the end, very little. Very few consumers of news can offer a systematic and coherent understanding of almost any aspect of our contemporary political, economic and social landscape. Deep thinking simply isn’t a part of the process. This point is missed simply because people assume that since so much is being said, that something substantial must be embedded in there somewhere. It isn’t–not in my view at any rate.
The actual effect of being simultaneously overwhelmed with “information” and underfed with respect to actually substantive discussion is to generate perceptual stasis. It is to cause people to cling to one group or another and instinctively defend them as people, and to fail to differentiate the people and the policies. If a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/ACLU/Heritage Foundation/Drudge Report/Glenn Beck/Daily Kos member says it, then it must be true. Woe to those who disagree.
It is my personal opinion that the solution is simply actual dialogue among groups which disagree. If it is done with respect, maturity, and sincerity, it cannot fail to generate progress. Perception is a sort of self organizing system, in which patterns emerge simply from the process of moving around within a conceptual space. Obviously, some of them are wrong, but continued movement will sort this out.
I have said this before, but one of the foundational intents of democracy is to leverage the power of individual perceptions so as to get things most right. This effect is particularly powerful over time, since given sufficient information, democracy is that system which best adapts and uses new data to generate new behaviors.