WS writes: >they experience cognitive dissonance between their concept of Amerika as #1 democracy in the world and their unfavorable experience of life in it.<
The theory of cognitive dissonance makes sense to me: for example, if John Doe is gently induced to publicly advocate something like banning flag burning (a position they're somewhat ambivalent about to start), afterwards he would be likely to lean more heavily toward favoring the ban. The standard story is that most people see themselves as good (etc.) and the only way to reconcile this self-image with what John said is for him to change his opinion. But the quote above has real problems. Most importantly, it doesn't explain why people see "Amerika" as "#1 democracy in the world." If we had a class-conscious proletariat, almost no workers would start with that position. So WS is trying to explain the lack of class consciousness by the lack of class consciousness. That's not totally off-base, because we are in a vicious circle here. Second, it doesn't explain why people adjust their views of reality to the ideology rather than vice-versa. I think that WS is referring to "mixed consciousness," the mixture of class-consciousness and other views (nationalism, opportunism, etc.) and then using the phrase "cognitive dissonance" because it sounds cool. There's an interesting book by Joe Bageant about this stuff called _Deer Hunting with Jesus_. One of his main points is that there's a class divide (of sorts) between urban liberals and the working class. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
