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MICHEL DEGRAFF: Talking
about students at MIT.
So some of you are
graduating soon,
and this might be
your last chance
to ask Noam Chomsky a question.
So anyone who hasn't
spoken yet would
like to ask a question
before you graduate?
AUDIENCE: We've talked in this
class a bit about silencing
and how that kind of leads
into the whole system.
Sorry, I can speak up.
So we've talked about silencing.
NOAM CHOMSKY: About?
MICHEL DEGRAFF: Silencing.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Silencing.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And how stories are hidden,
like you talked about--
what can we do about that?
NOAM CHOMSKY: About silencing?
AUDIENCE: What
measurable steps can we
take towards
uncovering the stories
and actually making
change happen?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, what you
do about silencing is speak up.
We have a lot of
freedom if we use it.
In fact, a lot more
than in the past.
Take the last thing I mentioned.
For women, the opportunity is
to speak up and become active
and have an impact is way beyond
what it was, say, 50 years ago.
In fact, I was talking to
Michel about this before.
I got a ton of email.
And a lot of it is
from young people.
And one question that keeps
coming up over and over
again is, everything's awful.
What can we do?
But if you look closely
over many years,
I've noticed that the
kinds of questions you get
depend on where the
people are coming from.
So if people are coming from--
say when I go down to give talks
in immigrant slums in South
Boston, nobody ever
asks what they can do.
They tell me what they're doing.
When I go to a remote
village in Southern Colombia
where people are being
murdered by paramilitaries
and there's a chemical
company trying to--
a gold mining company trying
to destroy the water supply.
They don't ask me,
what should they do?
They tell me what they're doing.
When people are
privileged and have
every opportunity in front of
them, they ask, what can we do?
And the fact is almost anything.
There's all sorts of
opportunities open.
Way more than there
were in the past
because we do enjoy the legacy
of people who have struggled
in the past under much
harsher conditions
and have provided us with the
opportunities we now have.
Like, say, the opportunities
to be a student at MIT.
That's an opportunity.
It gives you all
sorts of things.
It was closed to half the
population 50 years ago.
It was closed, of course, to
minorities almost entirely.
Well, it just illustrates what's
gone on all over the society.
I mean, take, say,
the Sanders campaign,
which I think was the most
important aspect of the 2016
election, by far.
Out of that, there are groups
developing that are really
trying to do things.
You can be part of that.
Make new ones.
All sorts of opportunities.
And I think the
prospects for the future
are not too bad when you think
of people's actual attitudes.
And the way those
attitudes could
be melded into activist and
political and other programs
to bring about
changes in society.
So I don't think there's a
real shortage of opportunity.
I mean, there are all sorts
of efforts to atomize people,
keep you alone.
That's one of the functions
of social media incidentally.
You sit alone with--
whatever it is--
your device and
you think you have
friends in Indonesia and so on.
But you're really separated
from the people around you.
Atomization is a very important
way of controlling people,
because you can only do
things if you work together.
So when you're all
separated, that's great.
Then, those who really run
things, they do get together.
They don't sit around
looking at iPads, and so on.
So you can keep the population--
In fact, that's one of the main
things consumerism is about.
You take a look at the history
of the advertising industry.
It's quite interesting.
The huge advertising and
public relations industry
developed in the freest
countries in the world,
in Britain and the United
States about a century ago.
And the reason was pretty clear.
It was often stated.
People had won enough
freedom, so that you
couldn't control them by force.
So you had to control
them in other ways.
And the best way
of controlling them
is what was called
convincing them
to be concerned with the
superficial things of life,
like consumption.
So if you can get
to a stage where--
thinking of my granddaughter.
Teenage girls on a
Saturday afternoon.
The best thing they can think of
doing is walking through a mall
and looking at things
they can't buy.
That's great.
When you get to a
society like that,
you've got people under control.
And there's some
pretty obvious things
that are never discussed,
like you've all
heard 10 million times about
the wonders of free market
societies.
But almost no one tells
you that the business world
hates free market society.
And in fact, they spend hundreds
of billion dollars a year
to undermine markets.
It's called advertising.
Anyone who has studied
economics knows that markets--
the marvels of markets are based
on informed consumers making
rational choices.
Then, you study the mathematics
and you make up the models,
and so on.
Take a look at the real world.
Hundreds of billions of
dollars are spent every year
to ensure that uninformed
people make irrational choices.
It's called advertising.
If you had a market society.
If, say, Ford Motor
Company has cars to sell,
what they would do is say,
here are the characteristics
of our cars.
Small ad on television.
Here's the characteristics.
Here's what Consumer
Reports says about it.
That's not what they do.
What they do is try
to create illusions,
so you will be uninformed and
make an irrational choice.
In fact, while the
economics department
is talking about
rational choice models
and so on, with
informed consumers,
the business world is trying
to make sure it doesn't happen.
Of course, that's the
thing that has the effect.
Speaking of silencing,
how much do you
hear about this in
economics courses?
Or in the general discussion?
It's not deep.
It's not profound.
It's not quantum physics.
We all know it.
It's right in front of our
eyes, but it's kept silent.
And those are the kind of things
you have to break through with.
MICHEL DEGRAFF: Thank
you so much, Noam.
That was wonderful.
[applause]
