Questions:
How do shared ideas drive the behavior of societies?
How do shared ideas effect the communication of an idea?
Observations:
“The network effect is the most powerful force in the world of ideas. (The assertion is based on the fact that culture changes everything about how we live our lives, and culture is driven by the network effect… society works because it’s something we do together.)”
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Louis Menand on Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey:
“They all believed that ideas are not “out there” waiting to be discovered, but are tools—like forks and knives and microchips—that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals—that ideas are social. They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability.” – From The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.
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Edward Bernays:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” – Quoted from Louder Than Words by Todd Henry