Walter Lippmann the Greatest Man I Have Never Heard of?!

 Drift and Mastery by Walter Lippman

I picked up this book off my partner's shelf of old philosophy books on a night I couldn't sleep. I became entranced with the book and couldn't put it down for the next day. 

The ideas and observations are timeless; even though this book was written in 1912( the year the Titanic sank), its wisdom rings true to this day, especially as we are going through a time where radical ideologies, corrupt institutions(specifically government and media), and people struggle with all that comes with the ever-expanding changes associated with "modernity."  At his time, this may have been the Model T, the radio, and women's rights. We still find a surprising number of similarities in the struggle to incorporate everyday innovations into our interaction with the world and how we imagine our future. 

What should we hold on to from the past? How do we imagine a new and better future? How do we update our ways of thinking? Our institutions? What do we watch out for as these changes occur? Since I cannot properly sum up Lippman's brilliance, I will leave you with a few brief summaries, direct quotes, and some reactions I had along with way. I hope you enjoy it! (future self or whoever decides to read this).

Quotes and summaries from page 17

• the anarchists know what they're against but not what they are for..."If we flounder is not because the old order is strong but the new order is weak"
• Democracy is a productive tool, only if used well; otherwise, it is just "a rusted piece of junk"
• We have freedom now. The question is: what to do with them?
• "The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against the chaos of new freedom" (pg. 17)

On Conspiracy Theories- page 24

• "If business and politics really served American need, you could never induce people to believe so many accusations against them" 
• ...."much racking flared... when the land was no longer freely available and large scale industry had begun to throw vast questions across the horizon. It came when success had ceased to be possible for everyone"----similar to our time(here in the US) where manufacturing has almost completely disappeared, the average person can survive off a job in the service industry(where jobs have shifted to), and the service workers have now with time on expanded unemployment benefits realized how detrimental there sometimes 80-hours-a-week job has on their health and well-being and many are refusing to go back (See "Stories From the Great American Labor Shortage" on The Daily podcast from August 3rd, 2021).

On Advertising- 

• "Advertising, in fact, is the effort of businessmen to take charge of consumption as well as production." (pg. 52)
• We are realizing the effects of advertising as our nation struggles with an obesity epidemic and other forms of addiction or overconsumption use in general (not that all obesity is directly caused by this, but unhealthy eating in general and, of course, can be traced to genetic causes)... our minds from a young age have been fed hundreds of ads per day our entire life(well connected to screens of course!). Today, brands target us directly by purchasing our data and spitting out the products they know we are most likely to consume, as captured by the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. 

On Wages-- 

• Competitive wages are no index of motives: they measure what a man has to take in order to live" (pg. 73).
• Again, this rings true for our time as we realize the importance of our essential workers....who have been downtrodden for decades and have overwhelmingly been the ones (besides the elderly) who have gotten sick from COVID,-19 with many dying.

On Innovating Institutions--

• He believes it depends on the nature of the industry which governmental body should be used to regulate an industry. Sometimes, it will make sense to use a union, sometimes a regulatory commission, and sometimes consumer controls(like alcohol and other drugs).
• He overall believes each institution must respond to the modern world democratically.

On Belief and Ideologues--

• He describes Marxist socialists as fatalists who can't work with anyone and hate reform because it's not enough--there are sects of radicals who haven't envisioned what they want, only what they are against--what will replace our current structures--overall, his point is we need innovative solutions(Still need to read Gehl & Porter's The Politics Industries: How Political Innovation Can Break Political Gridlock and Save Our Democracy where these challenges are dealt with a new solutions are discussed)
• "Virtue can defeat its own ends" (pg. 101)
• "There are thousands today who, out of patience with almost everything, believe passionately that some, one change will set everything right" (pg. 107). 
• "Belief does not live by logic, but by the need, it fills, and absolutism quiets the uncertainties of the soul, finds answers to unsatisfied desire, and endows men with the sense that they are a part of something greater than themselves" (pg. 114). 
• "What a colossal, practical power there is in an untroubled faith. But in liberal thought there is chaos, for it lacks the foundations of certainty"

On Societal Change

• "Nations make their histories to fit their illusions. This is why reformers are so anxious to return to early America. What they know of it comes to them filtered through the golden lies of school books and hallowed by the generous loyalty of their childhood." (pg. 101).
• "Man generally finds in the past what they miss in the present" (pg. 101). 
• "The mother is such a refuge to a bewildered child, and Mother Church has been that to her bewildered children. We are none of us progressives when we are worried or tired; few of us are revolutionists in a personal crisis." (Pg. 115)
• "We need to be very healthy to love variety" (pg. 127)
• "We have to be exuberant and conquering to rejoice in change" (pg. 127).

On Women

• "The effects of the women's movement will accumulate with the generations. The results are bound to be so far-reaching that we can hardly guess them today." (Pg. 133).

On The Scientific Worlds

• "The rationalists obsessed with ordering and classifying everything will fail to realize realities of the world are ever-changing- clings to stiff and solid frames of thought because the subtlety of life is distressing. " (Pg. 160).
• "It is immensely difficult to think about the actual complexity in the relations of men, and that is why eager and active people substitute for the facts for those large abstractions with their rigid simplicity" (Pg. 160). 
• He references Spanish Philosopher George Santayana a few times- points to his quote denouncing the absolutism of the Catholic Church "the gods are demonstrable only as a hypothesis but as hypotheses, they are not gods" (pg. 162). 
• "So long as tradition is a blind command it is for our world as an evil and dangerous thing. But once you see the past merely as a theatre of human effort, it overflows with suggestions." (Pg. 162).