Art is internationally nurtured and exchanged.
Rhetoric and politics
Political programs, very much like hamburgers, cars, alcohol,
sports events, artworks, and financial services, are marketed.
Success in politics is valued in market terms rather than in the
increasingly elusive political impact. The expression "People
vote their pocketbooks" bluntly expresses this fact. But are they
voting? Poll after poll reveals that they are not. Illiterates
used to be excluded from voting, along with women, Blacks in
America and South Africa, and foreigners in a large number of
European countries.
In an ideal world, the best qualified would compete for a
political position, all would vote, and the result would make
everyone happy. How would such an ideal world function? Words
would correspond to facts. The reward of political practical
experience would be the experience itself, satisfying the need
to best serve others, and thus oneself as a member of the larger
social family. This is a Utopian world of perfect citizens whose
reason, expressed in the language of literacy, i.e., made
available to everyone and implicitly guaranteed to be a
permanent medium for interaction, is the guardian of politics.
We see here how authority, of the thinking human being, is
established and almost automatically equated with freedom.
Indeed, the doctrine of individual conformity to rational
necessity was expressed in many pragmatic contexts, but never as
forcefully as in the context that appropriated literacy as one of
its guiding forces.
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