Does consent hold any meaning when there is influence at every corner?

Question

After seeing some videos of Michael Foucault on Power, and also on Noham Chomsky, particularly on the Propoganda machine, on how the state manufactures the consent of public people, and, after hearing all this, one burning question is in my mind. What meaning/substance does consent have, if anything, if we are influenced (maybe coerced) at every step? Would it just be an acceptance of submission?

Answer 1

To say so, would imply slavery is meaningless, and coercive-control.

In this answer I make the case that wisdom is the skill of pursuing relative autonomy, liberated from habit, cognitive biases, and from pursuasion-without-regard-for-truth: Wisdom and John Vervaeke's awakening from the meaning crises?

Foucault and Chomsky aren't comparing ideological capture to actual physical coercion. But I do think they fit into the ongoing and one of the original focuses of philosophy: how we cultivate autonomy, and the consequences of failure to do so. I'd relate Socrates railing against the Sophists, in modern terms to railing against advertising executives, lawyers, lobbyists, and bought-off politicians: intelligent people who by failing to listen to their 'daimon' and pursue eudaimonia, which is to sat ignoring their conscience, become enablers and tools for stupider and (even) greedier people, reducing the scope of the community to pursue the good of all.

We need to develop the skill, of listening to our 'still quiet voice', which speaks from the the integrated centre our competing concerns. The part which knows how things are, but hopes for better. And with the deep conviction of Socrates, is able to face all the coercive power of state and religion, and say I will not be coerced to ignore my conscience. To create and sustain a culture of this is the only sustainable route to resist genocide, autocracy, cults-of-personality, oligarchy, nationalism, militarism, and all the political atavisms we know are ever waiting in the wings. We must know at our core, up with what we will not put.

It may seem like places don't have this, like Washington, or Beijing. But if you look carefully, you will find examples. And I think by finding and celebrating them, we exactly help build cultures which move such behaviour to the centre. Find your heroes, try to be like them, and tell others.

Answer 2

Philosophically yes, obviously. If consent can be manufactured, manufactured consent would hold a lot of meaning to those with the power to manufacture it. It would become quite a prominent part of decision making.

Free, independent, informed consent would also still hold meaning as an alternative possibility, and a purpose of independent media and nonprofit organizations.

Even the total absence of free, independent consent would be meaningful in itself as a situation requiring change.

Probably what the OP wants to ask is whether manufactured consent of the population for political decisions in democracy legitimizes those decisions, that's a better question.

As an obvious example, elections and votes are said to at least be influenced by large and social media. Of course this reduces the legitimacy of the outcome. But legitimacy is not binary anyway, it comes in degrees. So consent remains a meaningful aspect of political legitimacy even when it is weakened by propaganda effects.

Answer 3

What meaning/substance does consent have, if anything, if we are influenced (maybe coerced) at every step? Is it just an acceptance of submission?

The meaning of consent is just what we think it is. You signal in some way you agreement to a course of actions. Nothing mysterious and much too fundamental to lose its meaning.

If we are influenced? We are, no question about it. This is the price of social life. If you don't want to be influenced by other people, you need to live outside the society of other humans.

Civilisation has its inconveniencies. We lose a big chunk of our autonomy. Society works by a degree of infantilisation of its members: We come to depend on other people not for everything, but for very many things and some very essential things, our food, our clothes our home etc. Nobody is immune, but we are free to opt out and some do, but we don't learn the necessary skills. Colombian children survived in the Amazon forest where few people in developed countries would. But we still remain free. It is our choice.

Answer 4

There seem to be three levels of power-relations. Coercion, influence, and absence (which is the equivalent of freedom). Coercion means lack of consent and Absence/freedom means full consent. Influence is not the same as either, so I suppose it means partial consent (though it would not be easy to articulate exactly what that means).

A complicating factor is the question of resistance. Absence of resistance is acquiescence, which is not the same as consent, but not the same as coercion, either.

Plato identified rhetoric as the technology of persuasion, and in these days, we have enhanced that technology enormously. Plato excoriated it because it mimicked truth and deceived its audience. We might have more complicated ideas about that, but the basics are the same.

Plato thought that philosophy and reason was the answer. He doesn't, so far as I know, worry about consent, but it seems reasonable to suppose that he thought that to be persuaded by reason is not coercion. Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems to me that, in essence, he was right about that.

If rational persuasion is influence, it is a good kind of influence. Our problem is how to identify it by seeing through the fakes and mistakes. Not an easy task, but there are grounds to thinking that it is possible. Foucault and Chomsky clearly thought so, or they wouldn't have written those influential books.