The People are too Stupid
On the supposed 'dichotomy' between revolutionary education and speaking like the People
I was scrolling through Instagram recently and came across the below reel.
In it, the poster discussed how organizers have to know their audience & speak at their level. In the context of the United States, the poster spoke on how many Americans do not know certain words that many leftist/socialist organizers use. This is mostly due to a lack of education, but also due to how these organizations isolate themselves from the people. The post ends with the idea of effectively communicating ideas & beliefs in a way an average American could potentially understand.
Overall, I found the video quite useful, as it does speak to an issue that many organizers struggle with — speaking in a clear & succinct way anyone can understand.
But, as per usual, the comments devolved into two sides arguing past each other. One side argued that people can most certainly learn these words, usually ones correlating to theory, because we have the historical examples of people’s far less educated learning said words. These people stated that there is no need to ‘dumb down’ our ideas. On the other end, people argued that we alienate our base from our organizations by becoming too heavy on what people needed to learn. These people stated that ‘regular’ people still do not have the time nor the attention span to learn said vocabulary, let alone become educated on revolutionary rhetoric.
I found this volatile exchange interesting, especially due to the aforementioned arguing past one another; neither side seemed to really sit with what the other was saying, rather they simply believed their side ultimately right & the other wrong.
My question when seeing this argument is, “why can’t both be true?”
This video’s comment section, at that moment, was a microcosm of the western belief in a necessary dichotomy. What do I mean by that? Well, much of western thought operates off of dichotomies — the division into two contradictory forces or ideals — that do not really need to exist. This is not to say that dichotomies do not exist at all, rather it is to say that western thought — which all westerners are inundated in — seems to impulsively move towards the idea that a dichotomy must exist in all situations.