Status Updates From L'opinione pubblica

THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST

How is Public Opinion crystalized
People do different things for different reasons
Vote for one party for different, sometimes opposing reasons
Concept of "oversoul"

Hughes' first speech after accepting Republican nomination
Method of securing homogeneous vote from heterogeneous opinion
Agreement -> detail
Disagreement -> vague
Lip service to all sides

Idea and response both second hand

Self interest: ideas of self and interest are not instinctive but acquired
Economic position may influence opinion, but exactly how you can't tell, as there are many other factors.
Theories that try to deterministically prevent events fail

Contradiction between Marxian theory and actions (Lenin)
Even in economic equality partial acc. to facts create conflict.
False determinism
Fatalistic view on human nature

SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED

All experiences are unique
Printed record checks each individual's fancy, but rumors can be altered unabated.
Larger audience -> lack of common words -> story more abstract -> individuals give it their own character

The character in which men deal is not fixed even in the same man in different situations. "No one self always at work".

Setting realistic enough for identification, ending romantic enough to be desirable, but not inconceivable.

Pioneering artist's reverence 4 material

Two ideas coming together arousing the same feeling.
Everything good/pleasant collects into a system of all-good, everything painful/unpleasant into a system of all-evil.

Visualization catches the stimulus and result, but the internal is badly caricatured.

The need for the observer to identify oneself with the picture: handles for identification

Motifs of sex & violence

One couple usually appointed original ancestors.

Desire to jump over necessary steps in a sequence.

League of Nations and the concept of "backwardness"

Putting together a public opinion requires picturing more time and space than directly perceivable.
Difficulties in obtaining a representative sample of a class - individuals don't do it.
"It ought to be true"

THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES
Fictional example of 'Ruritanian' war claims

Stereotypes: false absolutism, series of contradictions, inability to take account of space and time.
Demond to "reestablish the Eastern Front" after Russian withdrawal.
Conception of space is complicated: road, flying, available travel, difficulties etc.
Historical vs. personal scale of time
In every problem proper evaluation of time enters

CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES
Differences in assumptions to which moral codes apply - interpreters
Moral code has a picture of human nature, human nature might change to fit the moral code: different natures in different contexts
Myth: truth and error on same plane of credibility

"Of the opposition we make conspiracies"

Uncritical stereotype censors much that is needed, but what is good is also destroyed when the stereotype is shattered.

Example: Bernard Shaw on Free Trade etc.

In all stereotypes there is a point where effort ceases and things become automatic.
Laissez-faire: spontaneously move towards harmony
Collectivism: Socialist officials move towards efficiency and wisdom

Covers up some fact that would check vital movement.

BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE

What operates in history is shifting imitations, counterfeits, analogies and distortions in individual minds.
Marxism, Christianity, Constitution not as conceived, but as interpreted.
Hard to find actual culture vs. commenting on works of genius.
Bit on "Relativismus"

American stereotype of "progress", effects on WWI.
Always a point where stereotypes and facts part company.

The case of Belgian snipers, refuted by Pax, an org. of German Catholic priests.
Fog of war, no check on on imagination. Authorities happy to use myth to their advantage. Gave the myth weight, unpatriotic if not believed.

Stereotypes make us fit in, foundations of self-respect are shaken if attacked.
Stereotypes substitute order for buzzing reality, a guarantee of our self-respect, a sense of our own value and position.

Example: Aristotle's defense of slavery: Anyone who is in fact a slave by nature is destined to be so. Precedes the use of reason: imposes on data before it reaches our intelligence.
Outside stimuli evoke stereotypes.

A man seeing a sunset remembers what the painting taught him to observe.

Seeing things freshly and in detail rather than via stereotypes is exhausting.
"There is a taint on any contact between two people which does not affirm as an axiom the personal inviolability of both."

Notice trait marking a well known type, fill in the rest from stereotypes.
The gullibility in employing stereotypes: "hold them lightly"

STEREOTYPES
Eyewitnesses bring something to the scene which they later take away.

Forming habits of simple apprehension: definiteness, distinction, consistency.
In the buzzing confusion we pick out what our culture defined for us.
Congress of Psychology in Göttingen experiment: 1/40 had <20% of mistakes, 24/40, 10% of details were inventions

Information + mind that filtered it must be appraised.
Melting Pot pageant

Sándor Ferenczi - categories of response: magical hallucinatory omnipotence, by help of magic gestures, then magic thoughts & words.

Distraction flattens the quality of response: "clang" effect.

"Broad appeal" takes into account quality of association, widely distributed susceptibilities.
Environment of public opinions are refracted in many ways at source and destination. Limitations of access, obscurity of facts.

TIME AND ATTENTION

Data on public's newspaper reading habits, could be biased towards what is considered "cultured". Tastes of newspaper readers still largely conform to tastes of newspaper editors.

SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS

How news items are filtered from speech to telegraph to interpretation by editors and journalists. Forwarding its meaning to the masses unbiased is impossible.

Highest Society social set: public/private distinction disappears
Only fluctuating control/interest in government, but very influential in foreign affairs due to cosmopolitanism, itself due to having contact with the wider world most sets do not.

Most social sets: bulk of opinions first hand only about local affairs, global opinions trickle down from Highest Society, for whom these are intimate experiences.

CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY

Social sets, similar to biological clans, there are leaders who are custodians and interpreters of its social pattern.
Most within a set live complacently, as if the set were the world, leaders are concerned with the set's place in the hierarchy of sets.
Hier. bound together by social leaders

Tarde's laws of imitation, "radiant points of conventionality", social superior imitated by inferior

CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY
1916.02.23 French evening communiqué editing
Fort de Douaumont incident
French propaganda line during WWI

Notion of privacy changed over time, privacy insisted upon everywhere, therefore useful to ask where one got information from.

The World outside & Inside, pseudo-environments
Jean de Pierrefeu and General Joffre
Images of public figures change rapidly

Man, Environment & Pseudo-Environment, interpreted through fictions, partly made by man himself
Differences in what men know of the world

Public Opinion is pictures acted upon by groups, or individuals acting in the name of groups, regarding a world they can hardly see or influence.