Acculturation without Context

by

Gadfly

Today’s essay is inspired by a short eBook, The #1 Mistake Most Everyone Makes When Reading the Bible, recommended to me by a close friend and mentor.  That mistake is interpreting passages without the proper context for the passage.  This common practice can also explain how acculturation without context substitutes for a system of education in modern America.  As a consequence, we now have at least three generations of Copernican drones.

 

My very first blog article, “Cogito Ergo Sum (‘I Think, Therefore I Am,’ Descartes),” published on August 9, 2012, introduced the notion of a Copernican drone.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

I realize that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection and analysis in these blog entries.  Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the product of a public-school educational system that spends more time prescribing what to think instead of how to think.   These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or critical analysis.  Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a scientific revolution.  In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the solar system.  He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek). 

Unfortunately, today’s Copernican drones are quick to say, “let’s agree to disagree,” either (a) imitating what they have heard from others in similar discussions; or (b) preventing a disruption to their comfort zone.  In their minds, a different view is not simply different but wrong.  Moreover, to a progressive, such as George Lakoff (demonstrated in his book, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservative Think), a different view is not only wrong it is immoral.

   

The Copernican drone effect can be subtle.  For example, we recently watched various news sources on celebrations of the 75^th Anniversary of D-Day.   For some of the sources, the focus was on the incongruity of our current “unfit” President and how out of place he seemed during his European appearances.  Yet, an examination of the most important “optics” would reveal that, at the multiple American cemeteries enshrining hundreds of thousands of American service members buried across the European landscape, their resting places were marked by a Christian Cross or Star of David.  This context should remind us that the devotion and courage of Americans who fought against the tyranny of fascism reflected character firmly rooted in a Judeo-Christian tradition.  I do not recall any recognition of this context from any of the news sources.

How is it that such context can be missed in relation to such an epic time in our history?  The answer is acculturation.  Acculturation is how political elite shape and condition those they wish to rule.  Aldous Huxley prophesied a conditioned society in A Brave New World.  C.S. Lewis cautioned us in his book The Abolition of Man.  George Orwell understood the danger of acculturation and warned us in Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Neil Postman provided evidence in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  Bella Dodd wrote about her experiences as an American communist conditioner in her memoir, School of Darkness.  Dodd credits Archbishop Fulton Sheen for her rescue.  In a radio broadcast on January 26, 1947, Sheen said:

Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis?  Partly because men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation, and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times . . . Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world.  The great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on (cited in an article by Joseph Pronechen, “Did Fulton Sheen Prophesy About These Times?”) .

Acculturation is critical to progressivism.  In this case “progress” is a verb, not a noun.  It involves social justice and other tactics to promote equality, even coercively, in an imagined perfect future—a future created by political elite.  Its idea of the American dream is a future created for others by those who are superior intellectually and morally.  These elite follow in the footsteps of Eve in the Book of Genesis when she defied God by eating fruit from the forbidden tree.  She was deceived by the devil in thinking she could be God’s equal.  The fate of progressivism, as in all former attempts at socialism, is to arrive at a single commandment, as the animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm discovered: “All animals are created equal; some are more equal than others.”  Is it, then, any surprise that some 2020 Presidential contenders extol the merits of socialism while also virtue-signaling about reparations?

Individuality is a threat to progressivism’s acculturated collective system.  This is why equality is more important than liberty.  This is why morality is determined by political elite as opposed to a natural law that is superior to the man-made State.

 

Acculturation without context depends on the imposition of values by political elite.  Tilling the soil of the human mind and heart to be receptive to these imposed values requires the removal of any traditional values that are not congruent with the progressive perfect future.  Hayek made this observation in his book, Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism:

Man is not born wise, rational, and good, but has to be taught to become so.  It is not our intellect that created our morals; rather, human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities associated with it.  Man became intelligent because there was tradition—that which lies between instinct and reason—for him to learn.  This tradition, in turn, originated not from a capacity rationally to interpret observed facts but from habits of responding (pp. 21-22). 

Lee Harris of the Hoover Institute (and gay) wrote an intriguing article, “The Future of Tradition,” which essentially challenges the rationale for same-sex marriage.  By imposing this nontraditional norm on the majority, political elite have artificially changed tradition, even if it is disruptive to the natural order and stability of a civilized society.  Harris also wrote a compelling article about the roots of anti-Americanism—no surprise in that it has its basis in Marxism.

 

In my opinion, Marxism is the dominant ideology driving modern acculturation in America.  Most Americans are completely unaware.  Many of those who actively affiliate with socialism, such as the Communist Party USA (www.cpusa.org), have little to no understanding of socialism’s history and its brutality—they lack context, and they are Copernican drones.

 

Acculturation is the antithesis of education.  The Latin root for education is the verb “educare,” which means “to draw out.”  To educate or draw out, then, means that an educator (i.e., parent, teacher, minister, coach, etc.) facilitates the cognitive and emotional maturation of an individual, enabling the individual to see and understand and then to explain and to anticipate.

 

Education enables an individual to learn to interact with others and to understand how one’s behavior affects others and vice versa.  Over time these interactions become norms and customs, such as manners.  Manners are what we traditionally understood as habits for constructive interactions with others.

 

Education develops an individual capacity to observe and then to process information for sense making.  This is why two individuals can observe the same thing and have different perspectives about it.  This is good.  It represents the diversity that allows these two individuals to respectfully explore the differences in their perspectives.  Hegel called this dialectical reasoning, which enables closer approximations of the truth, the ultimate objective.  The process requires active dialogue.

 

Thomas Kuhn, in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains the challenge in advancing science (essentially the journey “to know”) is the pesky paradigm—the mental frame for observing and processing information.  According to Kuhn, “When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular.  Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense” (p. 94).  It is possible, through respect and active listening, to be unbounded by paradigms.  This can happen by treating the other person with respect and dignity.  Agreeing to disagree is a retreat from science.

How bad is acculturation without context in America?  On Tuesday, riding Denver’s light rail to Coors Stadium for a Rockies game, a 1970 graduate from West Point and retired medical doctor, sitting across from me, made an interesting comment: “I have not personally read the Mueller Report, but I am damn glad the House is conducting hearings to find out what happened in the Trump Russia Scandal.”

 

Really?

 

Mustering as much politeness as I could at the spur of the moment, I responded, “I have read the report.  Mueller’s logic on obstruction was convoluted and, in my opinion, deliberately crafted in a way to give Democrats an opportunity to prosecute the President in the court of public opinion.  A complicit media provides powerful amplification for this purpose.”  (Note:  according to the latest polls, 50% of Americans believe Trump coordinated with Russia—even after the Mueller report found insufficient evidence for this finding).

 

In the privacy of my mind, I thought, “Here we are casually cruising on public transportation on our way to America’s great pastime, complete with hot dogs and beer, while other Americans are working feverishly to remove a duly elected President.”  This spontaneous encounter was a clear example of a comfort zone and effective acculturation without context.

Germany was an intellectual and cultural center of the world until Hitler gained power with the consent of the people.  In It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis wrote about how fascism emerges in America.  The left loves to suggest that Trump is the main character in It Can’t Happen Here.  After all, he lies.  He’s a dictator.  He’s imperialistic.  Yet, ask for a single example and you hear crickets.

 

Fascism (or communism) can happen in America.  It happens through acculturation without context.

 

Bishop Sheen was prescient in asking, “Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis?”  The crisis is not Trump.  Trump is merely the visible symbol of values contrary to the acculturated left.  Unfortunately, the acculturated left controls the public narrative.  The public narrative controls public sentiment.  Public sentiment controls decisions at the ballot box.