[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Boris Sidis -“If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible.”
Rick Rosner: Okay, William Sidis is slightly famous for having the highest IQ in history. He was teaching at Harvard by age 16 and then died early of a brain bleed while I think he was working at the post office. So people like to say he’s a famous example of genius being wasted or gone wrong but really not. That’s just not the complete story because he was doing a lot of other stuff besides working at the post office. He was a social activist I guess like his dad. His dad was one of those guys who saw intellectual talent in his kid and just went to extremes to nurture it. Who’s the earlier guy? I want to say William James but it’s not William James.
Jacobsen: John Stuart Mill.
Rosner: John Stuart Mill, like 150 years before Sidis, I don’t know if my dates are exactly right but had a dad who did the same thing, who raised his kid to be a super genius like knowing eight languages before age five and crap like that. So anyway you got Boris Sidis himself probably in response to being asked about his genius kid saying that we need to make everybody as smart as possible to resist pernicious social influences… Is that what he’s saying?
Jacobsen: I’ll re-read it. “If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible.”
Rosner: That is what he’s saying. He was saying that people should be made resistant to the madness of the masses and let’s takes a wild guess that he was saying this around World War I, I don’t know. Do you have his birth and death dates or a date on the quote? I know that he didn’t make it to World War II, I think he died.
Jacobsen: Born October 12, 1867 Berdychiv, Russian Empire. Died October 24, 1923 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the United States in 1856.
Rosner: Okay, so without a date for the quote I’m going to venture that the madness that he was talking about was maybe World War One. But in any case he anticipated the madness we’re dealing with now by a hundred years because if people weren’t being driven crazy by propaganda and just the madness of the masses then, we certainly are now, especially in America via social media. So he makes a good point.
I remember in sixth grade that we were taught in school to lookout for seven ways that advertising influences you and that seems like just a long gone. I mean it is, like I was in sixth grade; 50 years ago. But that seems that like the type of education that doesn’t occur in the schools anymore. Maybe it does but the bullshit is more powerful than ever and more and more people fall for bullshit than ever before. Case in point, our president tried to overthrow the election nearly a year and a half ago and the congresses is holding public televised hearings into what happened that start two nights from now. And Fox News; our most propagandistic major news network isn’t even showing the hearings because really Fox doesn’t want to run the risk that their viewers will see something that will change their minds about being on the side of Trump.
During Sidis’ time they had yellow journalism.
Jacobsen: What is yellow journalism?
Rosner: Yellow journalism is tabloid newspapers. 100 years ago major cities like New York City probably had close to two dozen newspapers ranging from at the high end The New York Times to at the low end Tabloids made for barely literate people. Yellow journalism was called that because there was a comic strip called the yellow kid that they would run in color, I don’t know if every day, but at least on the weekends. It was the lower newspapers that ran comic strips. So there you go, from the yellow kid to yellow journalism which is wildly propagandistic writing for barely literate people.
Jacobsen: Is propagandistic simply staying biased and forcefully agenda driven?
Rosner: Yeah, even now you’ve got that. The New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox News and so it’s got a lot of sensational news for not the smartest people. The Daily News I think is the Tabloid that leans liberal.
Jacobsen: Or natural news or something like this.
Rosner: Are you saying national news?
Jacobsen: Natural news.
Rosner: What do you mean by natural news?
Jacobsen: I think it’s an outlet, it’s similarly, it’s sort of proposing particularly left-wing oriented news; so biased in that way. It’s similar to RT news being propagandistic for the Russians.
Rosner: I mean the post is definitely conservative propaganda. I think it’s the daily news that leans liberal and the New York Times tries to remain somewhat objective but fails. I believe Murdoch also owns The Wall Street Journal which has fairly objective reporting but right leaning editorials. Bullshit’s always been around; it’s just gotten supercharged lately. You got about a quarter billion American adults and close to a quarter of those adults believe right wing bullshit.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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