OPTIONAL THEME:
KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS
Greta Thunberg leading the 2019 climate strike at the White House, Washington D.C..
Photo: Sarah Silbiger / Getty Images
INTRODUCTION TO CLASS ACTIVITIES
The knowledge and politics class activities proposed below explore the importance and the challenges of becoming an informed citizen, the role of power and truth in politics, and how we can navigate and make sense of the sheer complexity of politics.
There is much cross pollination between the knowledge and politics and the knowledge and technology theme. The global political landscape has been transformed by the advances in digital technology. There have been losses as well as gains. A vast array of political data and information is now freely accessible, but often in the form of oversimplified, emotive, manipulated, and polarized soundbites.
The US Constitution prevails and undertakes swift and apt closure on the Trump era by eminent cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher. Economist, Kal’s Cartoon: December 12, 2020.
CLASS ACTIVITIES
Ten most pressing world problems
Ready, fire… Aim!
World Democracy Index
Democracy and informed citizenship
Worst form of government?
From state of nature to social contract
Informed citizenship
Orwellian Newspeak
Narrowing the range of thought
Power and Truth
Snyder on Tyranny
Scientific fundamentalism Harkness discussion
Jonestown soundbite
Post-truth?
Are we living in a post-truth world?
Propaganda then and now exhibition
Multiple perspectives: a Gadamerian conversation
Politics divides
Analytical Surveys
Where do your political ideas come from?
The narcissism of small differences
Polarization and media bias
Fourth and fifth estates
News personalization
Epistemic justice
Thinking about equity and identity
Rawls rules: Veil of Ignorance
Burkini: competing freedoms
Forced to be free
Going deeper: Laïcité
Pluralism
KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS
The new Theory of Knowledge Guide (2020) provides 385 suggested Knowledge Questions for student exploration. Here are some favorites for knowledge and politics.
SCOPE
In what ways is factual evidence sometimes used, abused, dismissed and ignored in politics?
Is being knowledgeable an important quality in a political leader?
How is the practice of politics distinct from the discipline of political science
PERSPECTIVES
What kinds of knowledge inform our political opinions?
Given access to the same facts, how is it possible that there can be disagreement between experts on a political issue?
Is there ever a neutral position from which to write about politics or from which to judge political opinions?
METHODS AND TOOLS
What impact has social media had on how we acquire and share political knowledge?
How might emotive language and faulty reasoning be used in politics to try to persuade and manipulate?
To what extent can polls provide reliable knowledge and accurate predictions?
Why are referendums sometimes regarded as a contentious decision making tool?
In what ways may statistical evidence be used and misused to justify political actions?
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins...”
ETHICS
Do political leaders and officials have different ethical obligations and responsibilities compared to members of the general public?
When the moral codes of individual nations conflict, can political organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), provide universal criteria that transcend them?
On what criteria could we judge whether an action should be regarded as justifiable civil disobedience?
CONNECTING TO THE CORE THEME
How can we know whether we have sufficient knowledge before voting in an election?
In a democratic system, do we have an ethical obligation to be knowledgeable about political issues and events?
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty...
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
In Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil( 1651) Thomas Hobbes describes an anarchic state of nature that is Bellum omnium contra omnesa; a war of all against all.
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Leviathan, XIII.9
Kadir Nelson’s Say Their Names. The New Yorker Magazine Cover, June 22, 2020
Here is an interactive, closeup examination of the artist’s Say Their Names cover, evoking the Hobbes’ Leviathan frontispiece, in which the murder of George Floyd embodies the history of violence inflicted upon black people in America.