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PARTISAN REVIEW
acrobatics which, given their monotonous implausibility, take in fewer
dupes each day. The employment of this double-talk does not affect the
problem of the effectiveness of information. Totalitarian leaders, who try
to control everything, have as much information at their disposal as do
democratic leaders, even if they desperately try to keep it from their sub–
jects, albeit with incomplete success. The economic failures of communist
countries, for example, have not stemmed from the fact that their leaders
were ignorant of the causes. In general, they have known the reasons
well and occasionally, obliquely, they have admitted as much. But they
have not wanted to, and could not, suppress those causes, at least not
completely, and often they have done no more than attack the symp–
toms, fearing to jeopardize a political and social system more precious in
their eyes than economic success. In such cases, the reason for the ineffec–
tiveness of information itself is understandable. One can always refrain
from using what one knows. Frequently in the life of societies, as of in–
dividuals, the truth is ignored because drawing the pertinent conclusions
would be contrary to one's interests.
Nevertheless, the inability of information to influence actions, or
simply convictions, would be a commonplace misfortune were it due
merely
to
censorship, hypocrisy, and falsehood. It would still be compre–
hensible if to those causes were added the mechanisms of intellectual dis–
honesty so pointedly exposed over the ages by moralists and playwrights,
novelists and psychologists. Still, it is surprising to see how all-pervasive
these mechanisms of bad faith have become, in what is now a veritable
global industry of communication. The public's perfunctory opinion of
journalists as well as politicians is usually severe; it tends to regard
dishonesty as a kind of second nature existing in most of those whose
mission it is to inform, to think, to speak, to manage. Could it be that
the very abundance of accessible knowledge and available information
arouses in some minds a desire to bury them rather than use them? Could
it be that the insidious invasion of the truth here and there unleashes re–
sentment rather than satisfaction, a sense of peril rather than of power?
How can we explain the rarity of accurate and precise information in
free societies, where those who are curious have ready access to informa–
tion and where most of the material obstacles to the diffusion of
knowledge have disappeared? Yes, by raising such questions one
approaches the misty banks of the real mystery.
"Open" societies, to adopt the adjective used by Henri Bergson and
Karl Popper, are both the cause and the effect of freedom to inform and
to inform oneself. Yet those who gather information frequently seem
moved by a desire to falsify the evidence, and those who receive to elude
it. In such societies the duty to inform and the public's right to
information are endlessly invoked. But journalists (and of course politi
