Desiring Machine

I always liked the phrase “conventional wisdom zombie” that Arianna Huffington and other bloggers have used to attack the mindlessness of the MSM. I recently stumbled across a related quote from the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Of course there are others in the past who looked with great skepticism on the idea of “public opinion” which is a relatively modern invention. The philosopher Kierkegaard for example had a very negative view of the press and its role in shaping this notion of public opinion. He viewed it as a leveling force in society.

In order that everything should be reduced to the same level, it is first of all necessary to produce a phantom, its spirit a monstrous abstraction…and that phantom is the Public.