THE INTENTIONAL SHAPING OF HUMAN OPINION 6o I 



communiques of a state department can still be counted 

 upon to turn a freedom-loving people into oppressors of the 

 weak. Both parties, in short, the hberal and the reactionary, 

 have equal access to swiftness and universahty of com- 

 munication. What bearing is this hkely to have upon the 

 progress of ideas? 



As a matter of fact, in the past centuries, the chief agencies 

 for the communication of ideas have invariably been in the 

 control of those who, to say the least, have not been eager 

 for a departure from the estabhshed ways. The priesthood 

 and the pohtical state have been guardians of the status quo, 

 not explorers of the new. Doubtless it will always be so. 

 Certainly, in the present day, the chief agencies, newspaper, 

 school, church, and state, are, as often as not, opponents of 

 new ideas. Or, to express it in positive terms, they are dehber- 

 ate propagandists for the estabhshed thought-systems. 

 With the swift and wide-reaching devices of communication 

 at their command, they have a power which was never 

 before possessed by governing groups. 



This must halt us in our first thought that with swift 

 communication the rate of progress in human opinion will 

 be more rapid. As a matter of fact, the greater the power 

 that progressive ideas now have to move over the face of the 

 earth, the greater is the power of reactionary ideas to outstrip 

 them and neutrahze their effects. 



Is there any hope of breaking the preponderant power of 

 the neutrahzing influences? There would seem to be one, 

 perhaps only one: namely, the development among the 

 citizenry of the world of an increasing abihty to be critical- 

 minded, to think for themselves instead of taking their ideas 

 predigested. Is that development possible? There are three 

 ways in which it is already taking place. The first has to do 

 with advertising. A generation ago, advertising was unblush- 

 ingly the art of more or less clever deception. It had unhin- 

 dered scope to deceive a people too naively uncritical to 

 know that they were being deceived. Today, however, a 

 widespread critical scepticism has developed with the 

 result that advertising, in the main, has been compelled 

 to be honest, in accordance with the old adage, "honesty 

 is the best pohcy." 



