Jim Hougan Peter Levenda Quote
It was Lippmann who gave us the concept of the stereotype (1922), which was basically a continuation of the Jungian concept of the archetype (1919) by other means. To Lippmann, the world outside our borders exists in a different space, consciously, from our own. We develop notions about life in those countries, their cultures, attitudes, and values, without ever going there. Yet, their political situation affects our own; they exert a political influence—either through trade, communications, or transportation—on life in our own country even though we live in a constant state of unawareness of those countries, cultures, politics. The effect of these forces on us is invisible, but real. We then develop mental images—stereotypes—of the citizens of these countries, and it is upon the stereotypes that we act. The stereotypes determine our actions and reactions; like the stereotypes of the Islamic fundamentalist, the Vietcong revolutionary, the Red Peril, they are easy targets, and the stereotype communicates a specific message, is, in terms familiar to the deconstructionism of Derrida, a text. Stereotypes can be created, and manipulated, by the gurus of mass communication and psychological warfare. Stereotypes are culturally-loaded and therefore not value neutral. We make snap judgments based on the nature of the stereotype; in the hands of the psy-war expert, a stereotype does not contain much complexity or depth. The idea is not to make the target think too clearly or too profoundly about the text but instead to react, in a Pavlovian manner, to the stimulus it provides.
It was Lippmann who gave us the concept of the stereotype (1922), which was basically a continuation of the Jungian concept of the archetype (1919) by other means. To Lippmann, the world outside our borders exists in a different space, consciously, from our own. We develop notions about life in those countries, their cultures, attitudes, and values, without ever going there. Yet, their political situation affects our own; they exert a political influence—either through trade, communications, or transportation—on life in our own country even though we live in a constant state of unawareness of those countries, cultures, politics. The effect of these forces on us is invisible, but real. We then develop mental images—stereotypes—of the citizens of these countries, and it is upon the stereotypes that we act. The stereotypes determine our actions and reactions; like the stereotypes of the Islamic fundamentalist, the Vietcong revolutionary, the Red Peril, they are easy targets, and the stereotype communicates a specific message, is, in terms familiar to the deconstructionism of Derrida, a text. Stereotypes can be created, and manipulated, by the gurus of mass communication and psychological warfare. Stereotypes are culturally-loaded and therefore not value neutral. We make snap judgments based on the nature of the stereotype; in the hands of the psy-war expert, a stereotype does not contain much complexity or depth. The idea is not to make the target think too clearly or too profoundly about the text but instead to react, in a Pavlovian manner, to the stimulus it provides.