Brave New Blog

There is a theme to this blog. I think of it from time to time. 

My current interests are related to the theme tangentially, but an appearance, here, straight out, would disturb the Force.  It is beneficial to back up and begin thoughts afresh. Rather than continually pointing at the obvious, figuring people would figure out they ought to stop listening to the messenger, it is useful task to look into why people do not care about the logic of any message; they simply follow the messenger that seems most agreeable to their views. 

Tom Stoppard wrote, twice I recall, in Rosenzcranz and Guildenstern are Dead: 

“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.”

This play or movie is required, by the way, and there will be questions at the end.  In fact, see this play before or after watching Hamlet. 

Anyway, the actor, literally the actor, offers the above observation. It is a perfect observation. Write it on a sticky pad and put it on your refrigerator.

When you have a “serious” discussion with someone, you will find a limited number of responses. All responses flow from the reaction Stoppard noted.

First, those who agree with you will add on to the point. This is generally not satisfying as you are not sure they really agree or suffer from the same malady as I describe, below. That is, their agreement is not based upon reason, but their reaction to taboo. One should look for an agreement in how to reason to a conclusion, not be happy when someone agrees with a conclusion. An unreasoned agreement is tomorrow's hangman.

Those who disagree, but  are ostensibly objective and claim the position of being open-minded, listen without bluster, but they look for a place to disagree.  They look to small parts of the argument, ignoring the point of the syllogism. They never address their own assumptions other than to pronounce them as a way to stop a discussion. 

Even a cursory discussion of an assumption with the supposed open-minded person soon gives way to a non-sequitur, such as the famous: “Bush did it”reflex. This reaction has achieved joke status among many thoughtful people, but most of them have equally reactive responses.  

There are also reactions from "true believers" who do not for a moment consider your words, arguments, purported facts and struggle to reach a conclusion. They get the feeling you are saying something bad, so they turn you off.  It is hard to say, but subjectively the percentage of these true believers seems to have grossly increased. Likely the result of public schools and our mass university system. The inability to form or discuss an argument has become dangerous; we now have crowds of serfs moving from one fear to the next. 

I once wrote an essay positing Governor Jindal and Senator Rubio were ineligible to be vice president because of the Constitutional requirement that  a candidate must be a natural born citizen. This is a defense of the Constitution, not an attack on two good men, but self-proclaimed conservatives dismissed me, never reading the essay, accusing me of being an epithet or two. One retiree said I am a pot smoker.  This was his response, seriously. The ignorance and ferocity of stupidity cannot be dismissed or ignored. There is no virtue in tolerance. (I did send his email back corrected).

You cannot argue with trees, but we should figure out how it is the trees accept what they believe in.  Understanding what their beliefs are is only marginally useful because the beliefs are not part of an intellectual system. They are emotional, religious beliefs.  People are programmed. You can never discuss these beliefs with the Ents precisely because they are "beliefs."  If you have the same beliefs, you are OK; if you believe the opposite, you are the enemy. So, most of us go about in a non-committal way which encourages the opinionated.

In the Time Machine, the protagonist goes to the future and finds the Eloi. They are simpletons who think of nothing. Rather, they eat the food provided for them so they can be fattened up to eat. You could not talk to the Eloi. They had no interest beyond their beliefs.

I am of the opinion all of us, but for a few of us with short circuits, can apply reason to a set of assumptions and are fully capable of reaching a conclusion after understanding the assumptions - but few of us do that. We get nowhere near a syllogism as the correct answer is announced. The belief is stated and reinforced.  On the other hand, we can sit with a book and figure out why an engine does not work or why a program is not running. 

It is critical we understand why people do not reason with respect to matters philosophical and, ultimately, political; if we do not encourage critical thinking, then we are lost. It is that simple. We will be swept up in the audience of puppets afraid to say anything that would appear taboo. We are not so far from NAZI Germany and Stalin's Russia that we cannot see this. Look around, today. Nothing is new and nothing disappears.

 What is your reaction to:

Nothing is better than heaven

Half a loaf of bread is better than nothing

Therefore, half a loaf of bread is better than heaven.

There are several immediate reactions, here. Very few of us react in the correct manner. Think about it. Yes, this is on the test, too. 

I amaze myself by  stopping at this point.  I remind myself this is a blog!  Something to be read over half a cup of coffee, i.e. heaven.  The take-away (great phrase) is that most people do no apply critical thinking to their core beliefs, though they can.  This failure is at the heart of most of our problems in the modern world. This is not an abstract philosophic idea. Our unhappiness, poverty, sense of hopelessness. and so on directly relate to our being self-righteous in our ignorance.

Buddhists do not go on and on, like this, they just say we live in delusion and each of us has to figure it out for himself. This is good advice, but the modern mind will dismiss that belief and never accept the premise.

Two major considerations arise, at this point. One is we never review our own beliefs, knowing they are correct, and we react to threats to our intellectual beliefs in the same way an animal reacts to a noise in the forest: flight or fight. Thus, we react, without reason, to any confrontation to what we know is truth. We react. There is no arrival at a conclusion. As demigods, our reactions are proper.

In the end, pride is the greatest of all sins.