[Air-L] Fake News

[David Stodolsky]

There are at least six different theories of “social construction”.
The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory by Richard J. Bernstein from 1976 precedes the post-modern version and doesn’t make the same profound errors.

The best understanding of these processes can be derived by other sources:

http://cosmism.blogspot.dk/2010/05/existentialism-today-terror-management.html


dss

> On 9 Dec 2016, at 22.17, Yosem Companys <companys at tmp.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> 
> Social construction just means that people build common beliefs as they engage in a collective enterprise. People then construct a series of legitimations to support and validate their enterprise. As an example, the founding fathers used ideas of the enlightenment to construct American democracy.
> 
> Social constructivism is not relativism. In other words, social constructivism doesn't mean that there is no truth in the world. It just means that the truth held by a group of people holds until proven otherwise to them (sometimes by force). And it also means, as W.I. Thomas wrote, "If men (sic) define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."
> 
> Regarding how objectivism could somehow be a cure for fascism, read Rubenstein's The Cunning of History: Hitler used science, rationality, and objectivity to exterminate people. Rubenstein's argument is that hyperrational bureaucratic social systems inexorably drive to total domination and the extermination of its target victims. See also Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.
> 
> On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 12:53 PM, David Stodolsky <dss at secureid.net> wrote:
> 
> > On 9 Dec 2016, at 17.59, Bobo <the.bobo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The alternative is fawning adoration for a strongman figure that
> > accomplishes the magical, saying nothing while simultaneously "telling it
> > like it really is" on the right, and impotent "I told you so's" about
> > perspectivalism on the left ("it's constructed! How dare you arbitrate
> > between fake and real! Who are you to judge!"). All the while the material
> > conditions for brown, black, poor, female, queer, neurodiverse, Native, and
> > especially non-American lives are subject to real and lasting effects as a
> > consequence of the interpretive lenses we choose for politics and living.
> 
> The threat of post-modern social constructivism was identified long ago in the European J. of Social Psychology.
> This recent book is more comprehensive:
> 
> http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2004/10/crowder.html <http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2004/10/crowder.html>
> 
> "Postmodernism opens the door to fascism, and is unable to close it again.”
> 
> 
> dss
> 
> 
> David Stodolsky, PhD                   Institute for Social Informatics
> Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
> dss at socialinformatics.org          Skype/Twitter: davidstodolsky
> 
> 
> 
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David Stodolsky, PhD                   Institute for Social Informatics
Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
dss at socialinformatics.org          Skype/Twitter: davidstodolsky