March 21st - Where do we get our ideas from?

 I’ve come to see that although the mass media is the most obvious channel through which values and ideas come to us so that they become a reality which is rarely questioned  it is by no means the only channel.

Social institutions like schools, government, churches, businesses, exist within their own framework of values and they send out messages which encourage certain ways of behaving

Tim Jackson[1] in his wonderful book ‘Prosperity After Growth’ sees these messages as crucial in determining the sort of society we create:  

‘What signals do government, schools, the media, religious and community institutions send out to people?  Which behaviours are supported by public investments and infrastructures and which are discouraged?  Do they promote competition or co-operation? Do they reward self-serving behaviour or people who sacrifice their own gain to serve others?' 

There's no doubt that today’s message is that economic growth is good for us whatever the costs  .. people are thrown into abject poverty, green belt is sacrificed, families are uprooted and moved into unknown territory, public services are destroyed ..  all in the name of growth.

Finding out about where we get our ideas from took me nicely to the notion of 'hegemony' which describes the world view – the reality -  which is taken on by a population.  The word ‘hegemony’ came from the Marxist (whoops, don't be put off by that) scholar Antonio Gramsci, who believed that because beliefs, values and cultural tradition maintain the status quo, it follows that for change to occur the task is to create a 'counter-hegemonic' world-view.  These ideas are really helpful in our search for a different path to a better future because Gramsci -and many others after him - saw structural change is dependent on changing the way people see the world and their place in it.
   

  Its not easy to get my head round all this but it feels very close to brainwashing although it is much more subtle and there’s no single dictator and his gang doing it deliberately

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[1] Tim Jackson Prosperity Without Growth 2009