For some time now the media conglomerates of all sorts have been introducing us to persons that they describe as “experts” who come from this or that “think tank”. In fact, there are now several sources that provide us with a listing of the most prominent of “think tanks” and they are even categorized by the perspective that they offer.

Foreign Policy magazine, that is part of the Washington Post media conglomerate, has its categorized “Think Tank Index” that lists what they describe as the “Top 30 U.S. Think Tanks” (1). The online Wikipedia has its “List of Think Tanks” (2) from all over the world with the greatest number occurring in the United States, England and several European countries. Wikipedia categorizes them by perspective in a separate index. The proliferation of “think tanks” makes it difficult to maintain a complete listing so as we browse through the various media we may occasionally come across some “think tank” that has not been listed. “Think tanks” are generally tax exempt corporations of one sort or another.

It is not my intention here to respond to any of the perspectives being promulgated by the one or the other of the “think tanks” but to write about them from a much broader aspect as a category of human functioning. As much as I would like to get to the point immediately, it requires that I give some introduction to such an approach.

For years the anthropologists essentially categorized us as a “tool-using” species. The category carried with it certain reservations prompted by the fact that there are a variety of species that engage in some form of tool-using activities.

Kenneth Burke categorized us as a “symbol-using” species. (3) It is a categorization that carries with it the same kind of reservations that are expressed with regard to the “tool-using” category since there are a number of species that engage in some form of symbolizing activity. Jane Goodall’s seminal study of chimpanzees is most prominent in supporting such reservations.

The term “symbol-using” as it is used by Burke goes beyond the use of words, beyond language, beyond Noam Chomsky’s linguistics, since it includes such as art, music, theater, and the various communicating media of all kinds like television, motion pictures, and including, now, the internet.

Karl Marx wrote that we distinguish ourselves from other species when we begin to produce our means of subsistence, a step that is conditioned by our physical organization into societies This has also been met by reservations since there is evidence that there are other species that engage in some form of producing their means of subsistence and social organization.

Each of these premises contains its own validity in our experiences so that combining them we can arrive at categorizing ourselves as a tool-using, symbol-using species that become distinguished from other species when we begin to produce our means of subsistence. We can also add the caveats that (1) our activity is conditioned by our physical organization into societies that evolve into the division of mental and material labor and that (2) we are separated, according to Burke, from our natural condition by the products of our work and that (3) that we are the inventors of the negative, again by Burke, since it does not exist in the rest of nature and (4) we are rotten with perfection. The evidence for this last caveat is in such things as our genetic modification of food; as our specialized breeding and feeding of the animals we consume and make as pets and work animals; as our hot-house tomatoes; and last, but not least, our beauty contests and advertising models.

Thinking, consciousness, cognition are simply impotent potentials unless they are expressed in some form of action. Symbol--using and tool–using is the characteristic form of action in our species. These constitute the identity of our species. The word “identity” in this sense is somewhat like the “unity of opposites” expression used in dialectical materialism; somewhat more like the expression “polarity” used to describe magnetism since they are both ever present in our activity even though one or the other may be the dominant aspect of the activity. In this sense, “private property” is an identical expression since it derives from the individual ownership of a social product; division of labor is also an identical expression since it derives from a separation of a form of activity from a socially created activity; political economy is also an identical expression since it derives from the symbolic expression and the material activity.

Having written all of this we arrive at the point now that we can begin to discuss the “think tanks” that are the inspiration for writing this essay.

The people involved in “think tanks” may spend a lot of time thinking but in doing so they might just as well be a lump of brain matter since so long as they just think that is what they are—a lump of brain matter. The think tankers are engaged in symbol-using. Their thinking, their consciousness. their cognition is transformed into symbols and since it emanates from their thinking, their consciousness, their cognition, their symbols act on our thinking, our consciousness, our cognition.

Their work, however, is not devoid of tool-using since it requires the use of some instrument, except in the case of person to person activity, such as a pencil, pen or typewriter but it multiplies exponentially with the use of a variety of instruments from the computer to the printing press to the television etc., etc.

The principal aspect of their activity, however, is their symbol-using that is transformed into symbolic-action when their product is seen, heard by others.

What is also apparent is the fact that these symbol-users are engaged in a particular form of activity. It is an activity, however, that produces nothing---not even the books they write or the pens, pencils, typewriters, computers they use to write them.

Why then is there this proliferation of tax exempt think tanks and think tankers?

They exist for the purpose of producing us.

That is what they produce and if you don’t believe it revisit the television production of General Colin Powell making the case for the slaughter of innocents in Iraq at the United Nations.

(1)THINK TANK INDEX

(2)LIST OF THINK TANKS

(3)KENNETH BURKE