Cultural Marxism and the Dialectic Attitude Change Procedure - 10:20 AM, 11/7/2011 |
Cultural Marxism and the Dialectic Attitude Change Procedure Bernard Pyron The dialectic is a procedure for changing attitudes and beliefs, and not in itself a belief, position, doctrine or attitude. It comes out of a philosophical position, from Hegel, Marx and Freud, which denies there is absolute truth and absolute morality. In other words, the dialectic is a procedure, which can be used to negate morality, so the "facilitator" can end up moving a small group, or one target person, out of his or her morals. To learn to identify the use of the dialectic in discourse, you need verbatim records of conversations illustrating its use. When one person presents an opinion, idea or piece of information, this is the "thesis." Another person may want to change that person's position, which is his "thesis," and/or he wants to change a group's position by using the person who presented the thesis as an example. Usually, with the dialectic, the "facilitator" who tries to change an opinion, perception, idea or bit of information will not immediately challenge the thesis head on. The facilitator may even begin by appearing to agree with the thesis, or will claim he agrees with it in part. Then, the facilitator side steps a head on challenge of the thesis based on fact, and challenges the thesis from the side. Sometimes this is where using one particular point, not the main point, of the thesis comes it. The facilitator will focus on one point and make it the focus of attention, in part, changing the thesis to that one point. Or, the facilitator will bring up a point that appears to be somewhat irrelevant to the thesis. Or, the facilitator will misrepresent the thesis slightly or in big way. There are other methods of using the dialectic. Dean Gotcher emphasizes the role of acceptance by the group which the person who brings up a thesis belongs to. The dialectic works better when the person targeted wants to be accepted by the group. He may be willing to compromise his position in order to gain group acceptance. The facilitator works to crate group coherence and agreement on the issue at hand. This use of group acceptance can work also with an Internet forum, where there tends to be some agreement on positions, but there are factions also in the group, which may be in the minority. The user of the dialectic, the facilitator in the Internet forum situation, may try to appeal to the majority view against the minority view. This assumes the target person, part of the minority, or a minority of one in some cases, wants acceptance by the group, or at least wants some in the group to accept his views. Gotcher talks a lot about the contemporary origins of the dialectic. He especially spends time in talking about the following guys in history: Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770 " 1831) Karl Marx (1818 " 1883) Abraham Maslow Carl Rogers Irvin Yalom Theodor Adorno Erick Fromm Norman O. Brown Herbart Marcuse Adorno and Marcuse were core members of the Frankfurt School. Fromm was similar to them in ideology. Theodor W. Adorno, who was the senior author of the highly influential book, The Authoritian Personality (1950), posed as a social psychologist, and taught that fascism is caused by Christianity and the strong family. The Frankfurt School, which included Wilhelm Reich on its fringes, represented what is called cultural Marxism. They set out to overthrow the major institutions of the West, especially Christianity and the family, by non-violent means, rather than by the violent means of classical Marxism. The dialectic is one important procedure in overthrowing the foundational institutions of the West. But - the dialectic is not limited to cultural Marxism, because its use spread to the institutions of society, including the Christian church, And in the churches, the dialectic is not limited to the Rick Warren type of mega-churches, which emphasize church growth more than adherence to the Gospel. Cultural Marxism, via the Frankfurt School, began to be spread from the major universities, especially the University of California at Berkeley in the early fifties. Those in personality and social psychology became familiar with the Adorno book and the huge number of attitude studies that grew from it. A few years later, the cultural Marxism movement, plus Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers self psychology, spread to higher education and soon to the public school. This is where Dean Gotcher encountered the dialectic since he was in education. |
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