[Coach]

I think it is much simpler...there are knowledgable people one one hand (religious scholars, scientists, innovators of political ideologies etc.) and the average person. The former does the work and the latter have the duty of either accepting or rejecting the ideas (if they have the power to choose/influence that is).

People are under the illusion that life in the west today is totally free and different but it is not. The information age has proven to be the age where people are very easily duped, naturally depending on who controls the media and the "gun". A couple of years ago, many a people were duped to believe that Saddam possessed WMD's and could launch an attack within 45 minutes (this was spectacularly explained using graphics and rhetoric by Colin Powell at the UN). During the same time, over 2/3 of Americans also believed that Saddam was somehow behind 9/11 and that he had connections with Al Qaeda. All of the above were proven to be false but Bush keeps drumming on about Al Qaeda and terrorists (not the ones he wanted to get rid off through the invasion but the ones that he created by invading Iraq).

Opinions and ideologies might have been formed by emperors, monarchies, amirs, cardinals, priests, mullahs etc but the same thing is hapenning in the western civilisation, this role is played by the media. The media tells the people what to eat, what to wear, what to look like (in terms of weight - skinny models with big boobs on every magazine cover, bilboards, runaways, ads), what norms to adopt etc. And just like in the past, a good majority comply.