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. 

Quintessential Example of America's Subversives

Below is a quote from a Tea Party email.  You will find the quintessential example of what is wrong with the country.

In one person, Elizabeth Warren, you find the amalgam of the subversives: rich, academic, brand school, elitist, and pandering to the socialistic impulses of the masses. Warren gave up a $600,000 a year job teaching one class to be an operative for President Obama. She is interesting in that her background starts out normally. She studied to be a speech pathologist, then went to Rutgers law school.  Upon graduation, she worked from home writing wills until she got a teaching job at Rutgers.

She kept on teaching bagging FIVE law school jobs and wound up advising Harry Reid on the idiotic bail outs. I am sure she is a knowledgeable bankruptcy lawyer, but that does not mean she is supposed to create bankrupts in the same way a criminal lawyer does not promote crime.

She is somehow (probably waiver in the Obamacare act, see below) a federal employee, now, running for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2012 with leftist endorsements:

EMILY's List, the nation's largest resource for women in politics [who must support abortion,] has endorsed Warren saying, "Elizabeth is a champion for progressive values and a fighter for the middle class".^[35] She has also drawn strong support [from the Democratic fund raising organization] ActBlue.^[36] 

Our major challenge in this era is piercing the veil of corporate stupidity of fellow voters. The academics have done their job in creating a generation of clods.  As I noted previously, the current younger generation is the FIRST in our history where their reading level is lower than their parents.  Rent the old version of the film, The Time Machine and wait for the Eloi. At the left is our hero talking to a future version of a drone of Occupy the City.  (The British "Wall St.")


We should required a simple test before one can be a voter.  Say:

1.  "What happened in the U.S. during the early 1860s?"

2.  "Circle what does not belong:  The President, The House, The Senate, The Federal Reserve, All belong."

3.   True or False: The Constitution established the powers and rights of the states.

You figure, one wrong and you get an expense paid emigration holiday to Greece.

...Elizabeth Warren explained that the rich are people who build factories but aren't grateful enough to pay their fair share...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau refused a Freedom of Information Act request to release her salary, but we do have the salary ranges for two assistant directors of sub-offices at the CFPB.

The Assistant Director at the Office of Financial Empowerment, whose job is "developing and implementing policy and programs that empower low and moderate income and underserved consumers to make better informed financial decisions" has a salary range of 185,000 to 247,000 dollars.

The Assistant Director at the Office of Older Americans, (apparently senior citizens is now politically incorrect) also has a salary range of 160,000 to 235,000 dollars ... and his or her job involves "Working with the Associate Director and Deputy Associate Director of Consumer Education and Engagement, as well as senior leaders from across CFPB."...

Just how many senior leaders, directors, associate directors and deputy associate directors are there at a single consumer agency? When you find out let me know. But the CFPB has offices in four major cities, pays relocation costs and promises "a highly competitive compensation and benefits package."

...Here's a hint, the Dodd-Frank bill didn't just establish the CFPB, it also created the Office of Financial Research with a neat little caveat exempting them from pay schedule limitations

"COMPENSATION- The Director, in consultation with the Chairperson, shall fix, adjust, and administer the pay for all employees of the Office, without regard to chapter 51 or subchapter III of chapter 53 of title 5, United States Code, relating to classification of positions and General Schedule pay rates."

In case you happened to miss that, it was only somewhere around the 1000th page under Section 152 D (2 ) right behind the case reading, "Beware of the Barney." It's an ironic note in a bill that fusses a bit about executive compensation when they're private sector executives, but creates an organization with open ended salaries for government employees.

Oh and if you're still worried whether Elizabeth Warren has enough to eat, her Harvard salary was around 632,000 dollars. Her workload? Teaching a class on contract law twice a week. It's not exactly shoveling coal in a coal mine. Class warfare it turns out is a game for the rich.