Some Monday Readings

Into Britain’s angry pulpit steps Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office – to explain why it sent honest people to jail – Marina Hyde at The Guardian.  

Five Instructive Quotes from The Anxious Generation – Chris Martin. 

 

Down the Rabbit Hole: Hunting an Original Letter – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Moral Conservatism of Nathaniel Hawthorne – Russell Kirk at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Privacy – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Jacques Ellul: Prophet for the Information Age – Bronson Long at Current.

 

Higher Education’s Fragmented Morality – Jeffrey Bilbro at The Dispatch.

 

If You Are Stuck – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Photograph: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Saturday Good Reads

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was a French philosopher who started as a Marxist and ended as a Reformed priest. He wrote some 59 books and thousands of articles, including a book about propaganda in which he argued that the more educated you were, the more susceptible you were to propaganda. (The state of America’s universities today may make his point for him.) Ellul is best known for his writings about technology, and David Gill at Comment Magazine has a thoughtful story about his writings.

The New York Times Magazine, of all publications, interviewed a former speechwriter and foreign policy advisor for President Obama, and the man rather gleefully describes how he helped hoodwink America on the Iran nuclear treaty. (Presidential speechwriting surely has changed over the years.)

Good poetry, beautiful photography, an encouraging story about teaching Jane Austen in the classroom, and “The Old New World Project” – an animation of old American photographs that is wonderful.

Life and Culture

What If Learning Stopped? – Jon Mertz at @ThinDifference.

Jacque Ellul and Technology’s Trade-off – David Gill at Comment Magazine.

9 Perspectives on Trump, Clinton, and the Evangelical Christian Voter – Dr. Bob Kellemen at RPM Ministries.

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru – David Samuels at The New York Times Magazine.

Art and Photography

Why We Love Unfinished Art – Philip Henscher at The Spectator.

Beautiful Industry – Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

Spring Rain – Tim Good at National Geographic Your Shot.

The Wounded Hero – Russ Ramsey at The Rabbit Room.

Poetry

Freight – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Bey of Revenge – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

After the romance – Mary Harwell Sayler.

7 Sonnets on the Lord’s Prayer: 3 Thy Kingdom Come – Malcolm Guite.

Faith

Can Biblical Stewardship Save the Nation? – Hugh Whelchel at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

My Depression Story, Part One  and Part Two (videos) – Dena Dyer.

Writing

Jane Austen’s Ivory Cage – Mikita Brottman at The American Scholar.

British Stuff

London During the Blitz – The Atlantic.

The Old New World Project – Alexey Sakharov

Painting: Little Boy Reading a Book, oil on canvas by William Henry Hunt (1790-1864).

Education and Propaganda

A number of years ago, I discovered the writings of Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a French philosopher who had started his adult life as a Marxist but became a devout Christian. He wrote more than 58 books, numerous papers and essays, many of which focused on one of the major themes of his life – the threat of technological society to human freedom and Christian faith. (In some ways, Ellul was like a French version of Wendell Berry, a generation younger than Ellul but who has developed many of the same themes.)

The book by Ellul that made the biggest impression on me was Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. It was published in 1962 in France and translated into English in 1965; I read the 1973 paperback version published by Vintage.

Elul said many important things in that book, but there was one that at first astounded me until I realized its simple truth. It was one of those Chestertonian “take conventional wisdom and turn it on its head” kind of statements. What he said what this: the people who are the most susceptible to propaganda are not the poor and uneducated. The people who are the most susceptible are the educated and intellectual classes, and the more educated you are, the more susceptible you become to propaganda.

And the reason is that more educated people read more, and they read so much that they cannot possibly verify everything they read. Therefore, one’s worldview becomes a critical filter – if something fits your worldview, you tend to believe it; if it doesn’t, you tend to reject it. People who are less educated tend to interpret news and issues with the filter of their everyday experiences and common sense (which might explain a lot about many of the members of our media elite).

That book by Ellul humbled me. It made me question more – question my own views and the things I immediately accepted as true. It also made me highly conscious of one of the ways to “resist enchantment” that Guy Kawasaki discusses in Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Beware of salient points, data and the experts. None of them last forever. All of them can flawed, and seriously so.

And don’t fall for the “example of one,” he says, when one person articulates a point of view that gets lots of media attention, even if it flies in the face of reality. The example Kawasaki cites is actress jenny McCarthy, who has been an articulate spokesperson against vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella because she believed it caused autism. A study in Britain in 1995 came to that conclusion. A few months ago, it was shown that the study was fraudulent. (I pointed that out in a book review of a Karen Kingsbury novel and got taken to the woodshed by a reader who said I should look at the writings and speeches of Jenny McCarthy and that the study was true even if it was fraudulent.) (I’m not making this up.)

Twitter and Facebook exacerbate this problem. If we trust the person who’s tweeting something, we will retweet it as true. We will not stop to question whether we should check the statement out. Serious damage can get done to people and organizations because we automatically accept something as true. It’s one reason why I generally avoid tweeting about politics, news and issues – I can’t verify whether the statements or true or not.

It’s not that education, and more education, is a bad thing. But it needs to be tempered by humility, and the more education we get, the more humility we need.


We’ve been discussing Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment over at The High Calling, led by Laura Boggess. We’re covering the last two chapters – “How to Enchant Your Boss” and “How to Resist Enchantment.” To see more posts, please visit The High Calling.