I'm sorry Rick, but I don't understand your argument.
If a family planning clinic in a third-world country provides a woman
with information about how she can avoid unwanted pregnancies by having
an IUD inserted, is there some other "accurate" argument that having an
IUD inserted won't prevent pregnancies?
-----Original Message-----
From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu] On
Behalf Of Strickert, Rick
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 1:44 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: Re: Basic Choices and Constraints on Long-Term Energy Supplies
I appreciate the subsequent clarifications on "population control" and
"social engineering", particularly since these phrases have had
pejorative meanings associated with them. Such pejorative meanings
have arisen in part because of Hollywood films or television shows
featuring mass propaganda schemes as part of the plot ("Wag the Dog"
comes to mind). Despite, or maybe because of, this, David Marx and
Rick Tarara advocate such "tried and true methods of propaganda."
However, people who intend to use the media "to encourage (glorify)
certain behavior" must realize the media will at the same time
profitably encourage and glorify alternative behaviors including exactly
the opposite behavior. Television stations run slick PSAs against
smoking, drugs, dropping out of school, promiscious sex, drinking, etc.,
but by the time most of us return from the mayor's office, they are back
to the show's characters reveling in the "coolness" of these same
activities.
As for Mark Shapiro's promotion of "educational programs that provide
accurate information" (which sounds more refined than "propaganda"), the
same problem will occur when different programs provide accurate
information that conflicts with accurate information provided by other
educational groups. If some of the public side with one group, and
others side with another, who decides which education program will be
permitted (or not)?
Rick Tarara gives us a clue when he suggested such social engineering
techniques as "oppressive parking fees" and "tax incentives" that just
skip education and go right to the use of force by government
bureaucracies.