Circles, Squares and Triangles
The following is an exerpt from an NPR interview with the recording artist M.I.A. (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam), who is from south Sri Lanka.
In my head, I had sort of justified it all by saying human beings break down to three categories: You've got circles, squares and triangles.
Squares are people that are neutral. They live life by knowledge and logic and scientific approach to finding information and truth, and they build people very practical things. So if you go to a square and say, "I'm homeless," he'll build you a building. He won't think anything past that. Squares give us the tools and shelter and grids and roads and blah, blah, blah.And then you have the triangles, who are people that are led by power and money and ego. These things all work on a pyramid structure: You have one person at the top and billions at the bottom.And then you have the circles, who are just led by love. The concept of the universe is built on circles. I think evolution is built on a circular sort of shape, and any natural organisms have circular things in common: If you cut a tree you get circles, natural disasters happen in circular forms, and the planets are circles, our eyes are circles.So that was my thing; I'd sort of worked it out. I'd said the reason why there's so much imbalance in the world is because human beings can lose touch and become overly developed in one area. When you have that, it's dangerous, and they become led by something that is not in balance.
The trifunctional hypothesis: soldiers, priests and farmers
That resonates with the ‘trifunctional hypothesis’, which argues that there is a common social structure and cultural framework within the societies that speak the Indo-European language group, which stretches from south Asia to Europe (and the Americas).
The trifunctional hypothesis of prehistoric Proto-Indo-European society postulates a tripartite ideology ("idéologie tripartite") reflected in the existence of three classes or castes—priests, warriors, andcommoners (farmers or tradesmen)—corresponding to the three functions of the sacral, the martial and theeconomic, respectively. This thesis is especially associated with the French mythographer Georges Dumézilwho proposed it in 1929 in the book Flamen-Brahman, and later in Mitra-Varuna.According to Dumézil, Proto-Indo-European society comprised three main groups corresponding to three distinct functions:
- the function of sovereignty
- the military function
- the function of productivity
Sovereignty fell into two distinct and complementary sub-parts, one formal, juridical and priestly but worldly, the other powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly but rooted in the supernatural world. The second main social division was connected with force, the military and war while the role of the third, ruled by the other two, was productivity, herding, farming and crafts. Proto-Indo-European mythology was divided in the same way: eachsocial group had its own god or family of gods to represent it and the function of the god or gods matched the function of the group.Many such divisions occur in various contexts of early history.
- One example is the supposed division between the king, nobility and regular freemen in early Germanicsociety
- The three Hindu castes, the Brahmans or priests, the Kshatriya—the warriors and military—and theVaishya—the agriculturalists, cattle rearers and traders—are associated with three philosophical qualities (gunas), Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas respectively. The castes are socio-economic roles filled by members of society.
…
- The three divisions of the ideal society described by Socrates in Plato's The Republic.
- Terje Leiren discerns a grouping of three Norse gods that corresponds to the trifunctional division; Odin as the patron of priests and magicians, Thor of warriors, and Freyr of fertility and farming.
This map illustrates the distribution of Indo-European language speakers (in 1950).
So, in the Indo-European language-culture group (Europe and south Asia), there is a common tripartite division between king, priest and commoner. In contrast, in the semitic cultural groups like Arabs and Jews, there is no clear division between a military-political leader and a religious leader. (For example, the Calif is an inheritor of Mohammad’s domains and rulership, and the Jewish messiah was imagined as a warrior-priest. Jesus broke from this by privatizing Judeo-Christianity – “Render unto Caesar what is his” - and in this way Christianity seems more European than semitic.)
Plato: Rulers, Thinkers, Workers
As referred to above, Plato divided society into Rulers, Thinkers and Workers. The Rulers utilize practical reason (phronesis), Thinkers engage in theoretical reason (theoria), and Workers use craft (techne). Perhaps the Rulers match with triangles,Thinkers with circles, Workers with squares.
Plato divided the human soul into three parts as well. His metaphor for the soul was a chariot pulled by two winged horses. One horse represented Appetite, the other Spirit; the charioteer represented Reason.
Plato paints the picture of a Charioteer (Greek: ἡνίοχος) driving a chariot pulled by two winged horses:"First the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome."The Charioteer represents intellect, reason, or the part of the soul that must guide the soul to truth; one horse represents rational or moral impulse or the positive part of passionate nature (e.g., righteous indignation); while the other represents the soul's irrational passions, appetites, or concupiscent nature. The Charioteer directs the entire chariot/soul, trying to stop the horses from going different ways, and to proceed towards enlightenment.
The noble white horse that represents Spirit is noble and obedient, but driven by hunger for glory or respectability, the way the unruly black horse is driven by physical hunger. From the text itself:
The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them.
If one were to juxtapose this psychological allegory onto Plato’s political theory, the results are startling. One would assume that the Charioteer would correspond with the Rulers. However, the chariot driver corresponds not with the Rulers, but with the rational Thinkers. The noble white horse corresponds with the Rulers, and the unruly black horse with the Workers. (In a pre-Christian society, nobility is associated with the elites, and the mass of humans are portrayed as jealous, ignorant and dangerous.) But the implication is that society, like the soul, might be best guided by Thinkers, and that Rulers might be surprisingly compliant (at least, compared to the Workers).
Confoundingly, in MIA’s scheme of human types - squares, triangles, circles - the squares, not circles, are rational, and the elitist triangles are not noble. So there is a kind of misfit between Plato and more recent tripartitions.
Freud: Id, ego and superego
A classic divergence between Plato and modern psychological tripartitions is found in Freud’s conceptions of the id, ego and super-ego. In fact, Freud was explicitly inspired by the Platonic metaphor of the chariot.
Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction our mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralising role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.[1] The super-ego can stop one from doing certain things that one's id may want to do.
The id sounds a lot like Plato’s black horse of Appetite and his Workers (and Dumezil’s caste of commoners).
The id (Latin for "it") is the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. It is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. The id contains the libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle"—the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse—defined as, seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure (not 'displeasure') aroused by increases in instinctual tension
The ego is a lot like Plato’s rational charioteer and Thinker (and perhaps Dumezil’s warrior caste, although one would associate this with the noble white horse…).
The ego (Latin "I") acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id's drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bring grief. At the same time, Freud concedes that as the ego "attempts to mediate between id and reality, it is often obliged to cloak the Ucs. [Unconscious] commands of the id with its own Pcs. [Preconscious ] rationalizations, to conceal the id's conflicts with reality, to profess ... to be taking notice of reality even when the id has remained rigid and unyielding." The reality principle that operates the ego is a regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world. An example would be to resist the urge to grab other people's belongings, but instead to purchase those items.
The super-ego, however, is not like the Plato’s aspiring and ambitious noble white horse, although it might correspond with his Thinker (although the ego does, as well). It does correspond to Dumezil’s Priest; indeed, the super-ego sounds more like the Judeo-Christian conscience.
The superego (German: Über-Ich) reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents applying their guidance and influence. Freud developed his concept of the super-ego from an earlier combination of the ego ideal and the "special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured ... what we call our 'conscience'." For him "the installation of the super-ego can be described as a successful instance of identification with the parental agency," while as development proceeds "the super-ego also takes on the influence of those who have stepped into the place of parents — educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models."
While Freud’s theory of the self was modeled after Plato’s, the gulf between the two theories is as fundamental as that between the two societies from which they sprang, an ancient warrior society that valorizes honor, versus a modern, Christian, urban society that values conscience. (Moreover, none of this corresponds with MIA’s typology of squares, circles, triangles, although it does line up somewhat with Dumezil’s kings, priests and commoners.) While the elites in the old societies were violent but brave and generous, today the elites are stingy, opportunistic businessmen and ambitious politicians. From the 1963 movie “The Leopard”:
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina: We [aristocrats] were the leopards, the lions, [while] those [new modern elites] who take our place will be jackals and sheep, and the whole lot of us - leopards, lions, jackals and sheep - will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.
David Icke, conspiracy theorist: alien lizardmen, sheeple and the madmen
Now here’s another interesting tripartition that Don Fabrizio might approve of, from the contemporary British conspiracy theorist David Icke.
David Vaughan Icke (/aɪk/; IKE, born 29 April 1952) is an English writer, public speaker and a former professional footballer and sports broadcaster. He promotes conspiracy theories about global politics and has written extensively about them.…At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood (including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie) controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian. He further proposes that the Moon is an artificial construct — "probably a hollowed-out planetoid" — from which the reptilians broadcast an "artificial sense of self and the world" that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.
Yes, Mr. Icke believes that the global elite are evil, shape-shifting lizardmen from another dimension.
Icke argues that humanity was created by a network of secret societies run by an ancient race of interbreeding bloodlines from the Middle and Near East, originally extraterrestrial. Icke calls them the "Babylonian Brotherhood." The Brotherhood is mostly male. Their children are raised from an early age to understand the mission; those who fail to understand it are pushed aside. The spread of the reptilian bloodline encompasses what Norman Simms calls an "odd and ill-matched" group of people, extending to 43 American presidents, three British and two Canadian prime ministers, various Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs, and a small number of celebrities including Bob Hope. Key Brotherhood bloodlines are the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, various European royal and aristocratic families, the establishment families of the Eastern United States, and the British House of Windsor. Icke identified the Queen Mother in 2001 as "seriously reptilian."At the apex of the Brotherhood stands the "Global Elite," identified throughout history as the Illuminati, and at the top of the Global Elite stand the "Prison Wardens." The goal of the Brotherhood – their "Great Work of Ages" – is world domination and a micro-chipped population.Icke introduced the reptoid hypothesis in The Biggest Secret (1999), which identified the Brotherhood as descendants of reptilians from the constellation Draco, who walk on two legs and appear human, and who live in tunnels and caverns inside the earth. He argues that the reptilians are the race of gods known as the Anunnaki in the Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš. According to Barkun, Icke's idea of "inner-earth reptilians" is not new, though he has done more than most to expand it.In Children of the Matrix (2001), he added that the Anunnaki bred with another extraterrestrial race called the "Nordics," who had blond hair and blue eyes, to produce a race of human slave masters, the Aryans. The Aryans retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes, a desire for top-down control, and an obsession with ritual, lending them a tendency toward fascism, rationalism and racism.
Actually, the so-called ‘Aryans’ were Indo-European speakers who migrated out of southern Russia six thousand years ago into Europe and Asia. The idea that they were noble conquerors became part of German Nazi myth. Interestingly, George Dumezil was basically a Nazi, and his trifunctional hypothesis might be an attempt to suggest that there is some kind of common cultural essence shared by ‘Aryan’ peoples. (So, David Icke is actually the normal guy by comparison, although not as intelligent as Dumezil.)
For Icke, society is comprised of three factions, with the reptilian elite as leaders.
In Infinite Love is the Only Truth (2005), Icke introduces the idea of "reptilian software." He says that there are three kinds of people. The highest level of the Brotherhood are the "Red Dresses." These are "software people," elsewhere called "reptilian software," or "constructs of mind." They lack consciousness and free will, and their human bodies are holographic veils.A second group, the so-called "sheeple" – the vast majority of humanity – have what Icke calls "back seat consciousness." They are conscious, but they do whatever they are told and are the main source of energy for the Brotherhood. They include the "repeaters," the people in positions of influence who simply repeat what other people have told them. Doctors repeat what they are told in medical school and by drug companies, teachers repeat what they learned at teacher training college, and journalists are the greatest repeaters of all.The third group, by far the smallest, are those who see through the illusion; they are usually dubbed dangerous or mad.
Icke’s ideas are ... unorthodox and ... interesting. But they are nevertheless consistent with the various tripartitions discussed above. Metaphorically, it accords with a ‘conflict theory’ critique of society, like that of the sociologist C. Wright Mill’s 1956 book “The Power Elite”.
Don Fabrizio and David Icke describe the majority of people as passive “sheep”, whereas, in an earlier period of history, for Plato (and, by implication, in Freud), the majority seems to be more dangerous (e.g., the black horse of Appetite, the Id). For example, in traditional philosophy, the most important moment in history is not some war or grand event, but the trial and death of Socrates. Athenian politicians blamed their country’s problems on Socrate’s method of teaching, which systematically questioned authority; the Athenian public - for no good reason - agreed to put Socrates to death. (To some extent, Socrates himself manipulated the situation in order to produce this tragic outcome in order to teach his disciples about human nature.) Remarkably, this pattern of event finds a parallel in the trial and death of Jesus. The elites are corrupt and obsessed with power and status; the common people are fickle and irrational and will go along with anything.
One can find something like the formation of this attitude in the life of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was always a very good writer, but at some point he suddenly became a great writer. But this transformation also saw him take on a critical attitude, although it was subtle and disguised. This turning point supposedly happened just after the murder of his friend, the playwrite Christopher Marlowe (in 1593), who was rumored to be involved in political intrigue. Being a critical intellectual means having a healthy wariness of the elite, but it also involves a certain apprehension toward the general populace. But not everyone can contain their feelings about the fickle mob. Such was the case with the Roman general, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, in Shakespeare’s telling of his tale.
His tragic flaw is that he cannot stand to be dishonest, and must always tell the truth (much like Jim Carrey in the comedy “Liar Liar”, only not funny). He assumes that his status as a Roman war hero entitles him to be undiplomatic in public. Unpopular and vulnerable, the elites plot against him and the easily swayed public turns against him. Is the play really about the likes of Marlowe? Is it a cautionary tale to other writers?
Star Trek: Kirk, Spock and Bones
Everybody’s favorite tripartition is perhaps from Star Trek. It’s the ‘trinity’ of Kirk, Spock and Bones.
MIA might say that Captain James Tiberius Kirk is a triangle; Mr. Spock is kind of a square; Dr. McCoy is a humanitarian circle.
Dumezil might say that Kirk is a warrior, Spock is a priest and McCoy is kind of a farmer.
Plato might say that Kirk is a Ruler, Spock is a Thinker, and Bones is a Worker; therefore, Spock corresponds with the charioteer, Kirk with the noble white horse of ambition, and Bones with the dark horse of appetite. Freud might identify Kirk as the id, Spock with the ego and Bones with the superego.
David Icke might claim that Kirk is a lizardman, Spock is enlightened, and Bones is a sheeple.
Dumezil might say that Kirk is a warrior, Spock is a priest and McCoy is kind of a farmer.
Plato might say that Kirk is a Ruler, Spock is a Thinker, and Bones is a Worker; therefore, Spock corresponds with the charioteer, Kirk with the noble white horse of ambition, and Bones with the dark horse of appetite. Freud might identify Kirk as the id, Spock with the ego and Bones with the superego.
David Icke might claim that Kirk is a lizardman, Spock is enlightened, and Bones is a sheeple.
But none of that makes much sense. The categories don’t fit.
[[[[[Star Trek, Liberal Internationalism (paradox of quantum mechanics: mere observation creates changes
[[[Starship Trooper, fascism
[[[the reaction to this is the counterculture radicalism: Star Wars
[[[but the rebelliousness of Star Wars is adopted in Silicon Valley ("disruption") and by neo-conservatives who disparage tradition and convention, but who themselves represent the technocratic establishment
[[[the British realism of Dr. Who (Newtonian: every action creates an opposite and equal reaction)
[[[National Geographic used to be Star Trek, or even Starship Trooper, but it has become Star Wars and Dr. Who
[[[Starship Trooper, fascism
[[[the reaction to this is the counterculture radicalism: Star Wars
[[[but the rebelliousness of Star Wars is adopted in Silicon Valley ("disruption") and by neo-conservatives who disparage tradition and convention, but who themselves represent the technocratic establishment
[[[the British realism of Dr. Who (Newtonian: every action creates an opposite and equal reaction)
[[[National Geographic used to be Star Trek, or even Starship Trooper, but it has become Star Wars and Dr. Who
[[[[[harry potter, elite boarding school for freaks, Jews
[[[holy trinity is Gnostic, not Christian (also, St. Augustine's determinism in Protestantism)
[[[[memes evolve like genes
Journalists as passive-aggressive priests
Passive-aggressive behavior defined:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior
Passive-aggressive behavior is the indirect expression of hostility, such as through procrastination, stubbornness, sullen behavior, or deliberate or repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.
For research purposes, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) revision IV describes passive-aggressive personality disorder as a "pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in social and occupational situations."
This is somewhat different from a popular conception of passive-aggressive behavior, which could be better described as thinly veiled hostility. But the basic idea -- aggression indirectly expressed -- is shared.
There is one theory that religion is a kind of indirectly expressed aggression. Humans have aggression, like all animals. But humans are more sophisticated in dealing with their aggression, so they find scapegoats (outsiders) onto whom they can channel their anger and maintain group harmony and cohesion. Religion provides rules and structure and order that people crave, but religion also provides outlets for the very disorderly impulses that religions repress.
This is particularly true of Christianity, which is a remarkably passive religion. In fact, the Christ figure in Christianity is a role model of passive stoicism AND simultaneously the scapegoat targeted for abuse. (The Hebrews used to have a ritual in which a goat -- the 'escape-goat' -- would be touch by the people, transferring their sins to the goat, and the goat released into the wilderness. Christianity is a psychologically sophisticated version of this.)
Fairly or not, there is now in Western popular culture an image of a Christianity (especially the Catholic Church) that is simultaneously heavily pushing a guilt trip over sinfulness, but secretly fascinated with sin itself.
In fact, the feelings of guilt that are amplified by religious authorities serve to enhance the excitement of being transgressive; and it is religious authorities in particular who engage in the most sinful and transgressive behaviors possible (short of murder). That's not just hypocritical, it's pathological. Moreover, in propagating a sense of guiltiness, religious authorities thereby channel their own aggressive impulses -- sadism, essentially -- against a subdued population. So guilt serves multiple covert functions for the Church hierarchy. At least, this is the image one now gets of religion in popular entertainment.
In literature, the mix of extreme conformity and scapegoating is found in the recent "Hunger Games" trilogy. The novels and movies describe a dystopian futuristic society where involuntary gladiatorial combat among teenagers is used both as a vent for popular anger and frustration, and also as a display of absolute state power.
The ancestor of "Hunger Games" might be the short story "The Lottery".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery#1996_TV_film
"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, written in the month of its first publication, in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker.
The story describes a fictional small town which observes—as do many
other communities, both large and small, throughout contemporary
America—an annual ritual known as "the lottery." It has been described
as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American
literature."
The initially negative response to the story surprised both Jackson and The New Yorker. Readers canceled subscriptions and sent hate mail throughout the summer. The Union of South Africa banned the story.
In
the story, one person is selected by lot to be stoned to death.
Apparently, the story cut a little too close to home back in 1948.Does journalism sometimes serve a kind of passive-aggressive, scapegoating function of redirecting aggressive impulses toward officially sanctioned targets?
Here is an interview in the NY Times Magazine by Anna Marie Cox with the actress Melissa Gilbert, who is now running for Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/melissa-gilbert-never-saw-congress-in-her-future.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-2&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region
According to 90% of the comments, this interview is both hostile and trivial. The comments also state that this is typical for the interviewer (Cox) and for the Magazine, which is somewhat distinct from the NY Times.
Perhaps celebrity gossip in venues like People Magazine or the National Enquirer specialize in this function. These publications are a manifestation of the urge to 1) punish pseudo-"elites" who transgress moral boundaries, 2) luxuriate in the fame and wealth of celebrities, and 3) fantasize about the alleged transgressions. (These magazines also provide a venue where disgraced celebrities can prostrate themselves with apologies to a flattered public.)
The pseudo-elite is a prime target for scapegoating because they have wealth and status but no real power. The Jews are the classic case of this. Prior to WW2, two-thirds of the physicians, attorneys and journalists in Hungary were Jews. The professional class is magnet for jealousy. This is amplified if it is a religious minority (e.g., Protestants in Catholic countries in Europe) or there is a foreign background (e.g., ethnic Chinese in southeast Asia). But the real decision-making elites remain off-limits to criticism. But wealthy celebrities like top athletes and entertainers are even less entrenched in the power structure than professionals are, making them even more vulnerable to the tabloids. Indeed, some celebrities derive their wealth solely from their celebrity status (e.g., the Kardashians), so they court controversy and sympathy simultaneously (they want to be vulnerable).
At the local level, journalism is still collapsing. The collapse continues, and local journalism is beginning to look more like blogging, in terms of quality but also in terms of financial compensation. But will the nature of journalism at the local level alter to look like tabloid journalism, with an increasing personalization of issues and a moralization of tone?
Journalists are not critical intellectuals at odds with the status quo, despite what they may think. Journalists tend to be orthodox in outlook, and reflect the political orthodoxy. In the 1950s, almost all journalists were conservatives, just as the status quo was conservative. It has been said that in the 1950s, there were only three voices of social criticism to be found in the mainstream:
1) The journalist Edward R. Murrow, of CBS.
2) The sociologist C. Wright Mills, of Columbia.
3) Mad Magazine.
Social criticism emerged later in journalism and academia and the media, but in some ways it derived from these three small sources. (Notably, Rolling Stone magazine and Playboy magazine engaged in serious journalism that was a challenge to the mainstream.) By the 1970s, there was a cultural revolution, where the prior criticism by outsiders was now the dominant orthodoxy, and journalists were now generally liberal.
But, again, that early social criticism from the likes of Mills and Murrow (and Mad Magazine) had the quality of the kind of critique one expects from intellectuals in Europe. They were the exception in their fields. Most mainstream journalists generally don't go for critique, they go for the dominant orthodoxy. If journalists have so uniformly become liberal, it's because the society itself has changed. Journalists have simply conformed to the new status quo.
In this sense, journalists are more like priests than they are like philosophers. (This is also true of politically correct conformist professors who follow in the wake of C. Wright Mills, who was himself always anti-orthodox and a non-conformist.) Journalists are enforcers of the dominant, orthodox morality, and at an unconscious level they engage in the passive-aggressive dynamic of channeling aggression toward acceptable scapegoats. This is what social media and blogs now do more overtly, and it may be what in the future local journalism will specialize in. Character is destiny.
