Strategies of Social Control and Scientific Revolutions
Noam Chomsky: Strategies of Social Control
1. The Strategy of Distraction: The basic element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites through the technique of flooding or a continuous flood of distractions and trivial information. This strategy is also essential to keep the public interested in essential knowledge in the areas of science, economics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics.
2. Create Problems, Then Offer Solutions: This involves creating a problem, a “situation” expected to cause a certain reaction in the audience so that this is the principal of the actions you want to accept. For example: let urban violence unfold and intensify, or organize bloody attacks to which the public is the applicant for security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom.
3. The Gradual Strategy: To make an unacceptable degree acceptable, just apply it gradually, in dribs and drabs, for consecutive years. That is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, etc. These are many changes that would have caused a revolution if they had been applied at once.
4. The Different Strategy: Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as painful and necessary, obtaining public acceptance at the time for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate one. First, because the effort is not used immediately, then because the public always has the tendency to expect that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and to accept it with resignation when the time comes.
6. Use the Emotional Aspect Much More Than Reflection: To use the emotional aspect is a classic technique to cause a short-circuit on rational analysis and, finally, to the critical sense of the individual. Moreover, the use of emotional register opens the door to the unconscious for implanting or grafting ideas, desires, fears, etc.
9. Strengthen Self-Blame: To make the individual believe that he alone is to blame for his own misfortune because of a failure of intelligence, their abilities, or effort. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual self-devalues and feels guilt, which creates depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit action. And, without action, there is no revolution!
Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Once it has reached the status of a paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only when there is an alternative candidate to take its place. No process discovered so far by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by means of direct comparison with observation. This does not mean that scientists do not reject scientific theories or that experience and experimentation are not essential in the process. However, paradigm shifts cause scientists to see the world of research differently. Paradigm shifts, also known as changes in form (Gestalt), are very suggestive visual basic prototypes for these transformations of the scientific world. What before the revolution were ducks in the scientist’s world become rabbits later.