Jean-François Revel (1924–2006)

Vivimos en la era de la comunicación. Nunca la información ha sido tan abundante, tan rápida, tan omnipresente. No nos faltan conocimientos, pero ¿queremos utilizarlos? Jean-François Revel pasa revista, en esta obra, a la sitiuación de la información y plantea el problema del papel de los intelectuales en nuestras sociedades, de la influencia de la ideología o de la manipulación. Construida para funcionar gracias al conocimiento, ¿es viable nuestra civilización si rehúsa utilizarlo? El pensador y politólogo Jean-François Revel analiza en este libro un tema de actualidad y trata de dar respuesta a una bateria de interrogantes:… (more)

Jean Francois-Revel, a pillar of French intellectual life in our time, became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. Twenty-seven years ago, his son, Matthieu Ricard, gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism -- not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters.

Meeting in an inn overlooking Katmandu, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored the questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history. Does life have meaning? What is consciousness? Is man free? What is the value of scientific and material progress? Why is there suffering, war, and hatred? Their conversation is not merely abstract: they ask each other questions about ethics, rights, and responsibilities, about knowledge and belief, and they discuss frankly the differences in the way each has tried to make sense of his life.

Utterly absorbing, inspiring, and accessible, this remarkable dialogue engages East with West, ideas with life, and science with the humanities, providing wisdom on how to enrich the way we live our lives.… (more)

My reactions to reading this book in 1992.

There’s a lot of value in this book, both ideas to ponder and factual information. My major -- and only real -- gripe with this book is the paucity of footnotes. Kind of ironic in a book that emphasizes accurate information. Still, Revel is a journalist and footnotes are not generally part of stories, and he does tell you indirectly where he gets most of his factual information. And he knows a lot of stuff and is very erudite.

Revel is French so a lot of his examples involve France though he throws in stuff from all over the world. It was heartening (in a misery loves company sense) and/or disheartening to see French politics suffering from the same blights as American ones (preferential politics of race, media bias, Third World apologists, Marxist infiltration of education and decreasing standards for the latter.). Revel’s thesis is the opposite of the Enlightenment. They believed with enough information the world would be rational, ordered, better. Only religion, superstition, and ignorance kept man from this better world built by a wealth of information. Revel argues that we have lots of information that we don’t use, particularly information that, if heeded, would stop us from making the same mistakes over again like appeasing totalitarian regimes, destroying our economies and liberties with Marxist notions. Yet, we let idealogy filter our information, fashion dictate our discourse, laziness lull us into incompetence and lassitude in checking facts. As Revel precisely states, the idealogue is not concerned with a fact’s truth but whether it proves or disproves his world view. No one is immune to these tendencies. Not reporters, not scientists, not intellectuals, not professors, not common folk. We refuse, says Revel, to use the information we have, to see the world clearly. We not only lie to others in simple lies, we lie to ourselves with bizarre rationalizations (a favorite game of intellectuals), refuse to see reality (like the writer who refused to believe in the Ukrainian famine even though he saw some of its victims) even when it means our death.

Information, says Revel, is useless unless we use all of it honestly. Revel shows how deceit is done with a lot of examples that make me feel very ignorant. (In my defense, I had arrived at some of these conclusions already, and I also haven’t studied these matters as deeply as Revel. Revel shows how scientists dishonestly trade on their reputation to make political comments on areas they know nothing of (like disarmament or missle defense systems); how the media distor ts info (by ommission, slanted examples, outright lies, innuendo; how idealogy blinds its adherents, how criticism of certain social policies and groups is called racist by the Left (a similarity France has to America); how Third World Marxists concoct blatant lies to explain their enemies, tyrannies, and failures; how the false parity of Right Wing totalitarianism is used to excuse Marxist totalitarianism. He points out, Fascism, as a significant political force in the world, died in 1945 and how Leftists love to cite the bogus threat of resurgent Nazism, love to congratulate themselves for fighting a shadow foe while excusing Marxist atrocities and how no equivalency exists with a place like Pinochet’s regime as oppossed to Khmer Rouge Cambodia. He also talks of how intellecutals hate to admit past mistakes (they evolve, not make mistakes or recant) in supporting tyranny; how weird fashions ripple through academia (Europeans are vastly amused at the resurgence of virulent, widespread Marxism in America at the same time its dying in Europe). I particularly was amused at the bizarre notion practiced in Italian newspapers of assigning jobs on a quota system based on political party affiliation.

Revel has specific complaints about world press behavior: The First Amendment guarantees the right to express opinions not automatic access to info. He takes the American press to task for their whining hyperbole of censorship at being shut out of Grenada for 48 while troops invaded. The First Amendment also does not provide the right to break the law to get that info. Then there is the fallacy of the watchdog/adversary role -- what if the government is telling the truth?, the notion the press should mold opinion not just report facts or base its opinion on facts (allied with this is giving a utterly wrong headed notion a chance to debate a documented, rational position implying both have validity), sloppiness in checking basic facts and allegations.

Revel also has an interesting chapter on the predisposition of intellectuals to support totalitarian regimes. They provide a chance to try and remake man along the theoretical lines of your choice, and there’s no backtalk. People have to just accept your word rather than be convinced by rational arguments. You don’t have to justify yourself.

Revel’s right. We could be a lot more certain, more rational with our “facts”, especially in critical matters. A fascinating book.… (more)

Revel nos muestra en esta obra como nuestra sociedad posee mas conocimiento que cualquiera de las que nos precedieron, pero a pesar de todo, no somos capaces de aprovecharlo, tanto por la manipulación que de la información hacen periodista, políticos, maestros o intelectuales, como por la aceptación indiferente y acrítica de la información que se nos da. Y es que para Revel, como nos dice en la primera frase del libro "la primera de todas las fuerzas que dirigen el mundo es la mentira". Apesar de que en algunos temas se ha quedado algo desfasado, la mayor parte de su mensaje sigue siendo plenamente vigente, y es un libro indispensable para conocer el mundo en el que vivimos.… (more)