Happy Hump Day everyone!!! Sorry for the delay on Stephen’s post, but better late than never and we’re already halfway through the work week! Have a great day, everyone!
I apologize about the delay in this weeks post, it appears that those notions and thoughts which so often rattle around in my head have had more than their usual difficulties in coalescing this week due to a rather ambiguous nature of the concepts contained therein and the difficulties in articulating the concepts.
I wanted to discuss something akin to the general state of stupidity which increasingly pervades the socio-political discourse of our modern era, but “stupidity” is not quite the correct word either, but it seems something worse than mere ignorance as well.
“Between true science and false doctrine, ignorance is in the middle.” – Thomas Hobbes. However, while part and parcel of that “false doctrine” of leftist ideology, it is neither the fallacious nature nor the doctrinal nature, but rather the individualistic reactions of an absurd view of reality.
In law there is a concept of “willful ignorance” where someone chooses not to acknowledge or know facts or rules of law which run contrary to their preferred desires and actions, however that willful nature denotes a more active and intentional interpretation of the world than that idea eluding me.
In politics there exists a concept of “plausible deniability” where specific knowledge of facts may be withheld from decision makers to insulate and distance that person from events so as to protect their political viability in the event that things do not work out as favorably as hoped from the anticipated actions of advisers and underlings, but that concept is both too indirect and too deceptive for what I am pondering.
If you look at the tweet above, you get some idea of the problem. The sheer, obvious stupidity that police are confiscating common tools labeling screwdrivers, pliers, files, and scissors as “weapons” just reeks of a parody, but viewing other posts on the same timeline, including a picture of a spoon, butter knives, a letter opener, and bbq skewers as “weapons” implies an unhealthy sincerity. https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/1128259712984735744
However, don’t mistake me, that is merely one of many glaring examples of the concept I am trying so hard to articulate.
We have instances of feminists calling for abstinence in protest of laws restricting abortion, as a way to manipulate with emotional blackmail those men who already support their cause imagining that it will somehow affect those with whom they have little or no physical contact.
There are children’s show hosts setting fire to plastic globes and cursing at children because people choose scientific skepticism rather than religious faith in the climate doomsday cult which claims the world will be beyond repair in ten or twelve years . . . every ten or twelve years as they keep missing those deadlines.
On a more personal level, I am running across an increasing number of young adults who are graduating high school but either partially or completely unable to actually read or comprehend what they have read because they do not know the basics of sentence structure.
There are men pretending to be women so that they can push real women out of women’s sports, breaking “women’s records” and other men screaming at sales clerks because the clerk did not call him “ma’am”.
This would be laughable but for the fact that people have gone to jail for similar stupidity. And it is particularly this collective acceptance of such idiocy, not the idiocy itself, which is the real problem. An idiot alone is mocked, a culture or government which supports that idiocy is an entirely different beast.
Ignorance denotes a lack of knowledge and inability to make distinctions and proper decisions as a result of that lack of knowledge. Stupidity, or more properly idiocy, denotes an inability to think and moreover an inability or difficulty in actually learning. It is not surprising that ignorance so often appears indistinguishable from idiocy.
However, stupidity cannot seize the minds of entire generations of people short of massive lead poisoning, so the phenomena is certainly cultural in nature. Being cultural in nature, the problem must also be solved culturally, or like a cultural forest fire must burn itself out taking most of society with it.
Psychology recognizes a concept of “cognitive dissonance” used to describe the feelings of discomfort that result when your beliefs run counter to new information that is presented to you. What we are seeing appears to be the exact opposite of cognitive dissonance, but rather a “emotive resonance of idiocy”. People are willingly identifying themselves with idiotic ideas for the emotional reinforcement of acceptance with the “politically correct”.
(Note: I am more fond of the words idiocy or foolishness rather than the euphemisms of stupid or dumb as both stupid and dumb denote an inability to articulate words and respond, and as noisome as many of these fools are it would be most inappropriate.)
Once again remember the picture above and think about how a police officer, clearly knowing that a pair of pliers are not a weapon, can be brought to the point where he throws away all of his personal intellectual integrity and honesty and will even publicly accept ridicule as a fool before so many just that he may feel he is doing “good” and protecting people from the dangerous pliers.
Anyone who has even practiced martial arts for a few months knows that just about anything can be used as an improvised weapon. The earliest weapons of man were sticks and stones, which become spears, clubs, maces, and hurled or slung bullets in short order by even the most primitive man.
A five year old can tell the difference between a man and a woman, but grown adults with doctorate and law degrees find the concept difficult? No, they fully recognize the idiocy, but rationalize changing the words to accommodate the emotions of the attention seeking manipulative fools preying upon the leftists’ desire for emotive resonance.
Idiots are so heavily emotionally invested in being part of the leftist herd that they leap to defend any foolishness rather than face exclusion. To the herd animal that is the leftist, the emotional dissonance of being out of the group far outweighs the cognitive dissonance of accepting the most ridiculous of idiocy.
To the emotionally and intellectually strong, independence is a form and source of strength. Such people can see themselves as a powerful animal or warrior standing against adversity, and it is difficult for such people to wrap their heads around the notion that their personal perspective, reasoning, and being belong to the group rather than themselves.
However, to the herd animal, those who oppose them are not actually individuals, just part of the other competing herd.
Ever wonder why after you make what you believe a salient point the other person responds by lumping you into a group of “Trump voters” or “Christian bigots” or “white supremacists” or some other such non-sense label which had nothing whatsoever to do with what you just said?
It’s because you have been identified as part of the other herd, and there are only two herds, their kind and the others. The others are merely an amalgamation of beliefs opposite those which members of their herd believe. That is why they fact being ostracized if they disagree on even one point.
An example of this is a recent rant by “Shoe-on-head” about the fact that she is leftist on every issue except that she opposes feminism means for many people on the left that she is “alt-right” in many of their minds. This is hard for her to understand.
The weak willed, emotionally fragile will seek comfort in acceptance, and are willing for give up their intellectual autonomy, even their political, economic, and social autonomy to feel that emotional resonance with those who are part of their group.
The other side of this same coin are the occasional leftist defector that you see from time to time who publicly go against their fellow leftists on one issue or another feeling that all of their support for leftist causes in the past allow them a certain independence. They never fail to be surprised at how quickly the left turns on one of its own.
I think that finally expresses the idea which I have been trying to define, a general willingness to accept the idiotic in order to just feel emotionally connected for so many people is more important than reason, and that being so foreign to my own nature explains why it is such a struggle for me to understand.
