“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.”
We just apply our brain power to trivial things
CHOMSKY: When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio
and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion
of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in
and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that
quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that.
People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of
complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion
about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday
and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals,
who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these
areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all
I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people
talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems,
it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.
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