Main points of lecture about polarizing political speech, part 6

[nancylebov]

Kathryn Ruud Lecture, part 6

She expects that proganda will become more visual.

[:45] Poster showing Hitler, Obama, Lenin as parallel. She points out that it's presented as a political spectrum.

She mentions an anti-Ground Zero Mosque ad which uses people falling from the two towers, even though the families of the dead asked that the image not be used.

Quote from Martin Luther King: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that".

We are moving into the era of the citizen because the usual gatekeepers are falling away.

George Washington, model citizen-- he didn't want to become king, he retired. He wanted to be a model citizen. [I'm not sure what she's got in mind about Washington.]

Assertive civility: emphasis on common decency and common respect

Free speech: no censorship-- more speech is needed instead

Resist semiotic territorialization: Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use and interpretation. It's normal for words to have their meanings scooped out and new meanings substituted, but some changes are dangerous, in particular those which move words like "parasite" from science into political discourse. Changes in word use can become pervasive changes in thinking.

Limbaugh said, "Words have consequences." This is true.

******
Kathryn Rudd mentions teaching counter-strategies, I hope she goes public about the details.

Comments

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

This makes me wonder what happened to Korzybski's General Semantics. Some of the techniques got weaponized and absorbed into Scientology, NLP, maybe other schools of modern black magick, but you never hear about it from the good guys any more, not since RAW died anyway.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Behold!

General semantics has survived most profoundly in the cognitive therapies that emerged in the 1950's and 1960s. Albert Ellis (1913-2007), who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1991. The Bruges (Belgium) center for Solution Focused Therapy operates under the name Korzybski Institute Training and Research Center.[40] George Kelly, founder of Personal Construct Psychology, was influence by general semantics. [41] Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been influenced by Korzybski [42] Wendell Johnson wrote "People in Quandries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment" in 1946, which stands as the first attempt to form a therapy from general semantics.