Existential Ennui

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Existential Ennui

Tag Archives: ignorance

It’s All About What You Know

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Inspirational, Life in the Foothills, Philosophy

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

ignorance, knowledge, shit I learned, stupid

charlie-brown-and-snoopy As a self-described political satirist and all-around commentator on the human condition, I confess to spending an inordinate amount of time talking about stupid people.
Now, let’s define our terms here.

Stupid stands alone as a condition not susceptible of being fixed. One is born stupid, lives stupid and dies stupid. Moreover as John Cleese explained, and actual real serious studies confirm, stupid people are so stupid they don’t know they are stupid. The set of skills needed to assess ones relative “smartness” are sadly lacking.

Ignorance is a quite different thing, though I think most people take offense at being called ignoramuses. They should not, since ignorance is something we all share as to many many things. Ignorance is merely lacking knowledge on a particular subject. Ignorance, therefore, can be cured as to any particular thing, merely by acquiring the necessary information.

But what kind of information?

Ahh, there is the rub, as Shakespeare would say.

Which leads to the focus of this essay–the propensity of us humans to become angry at those who express ideas and act in ways that denote lack of knowledge of a subject. I’m here to tell you that you should not. I should not. No one should.

One can go back to Epictetus for the proposition. Perhaps it was known before him, I am ignorant of knowing before Epictetus.

Epictetus argued, (I would say successfully), that no human acts deliberately for the bad. The bad you say? What is that? Let us begin with the premise that there is good and there is bad. It is generally good to not harm people for instance. The devil is in the details as they say. As it any particular person we might disagree. It might be considered by some people to be “good” to kill a tyrant. Others might disagree. But we all agree that a norm is that people should not be harmed.

So, to a great degree, when we talk about specifics, what is good or bad is somewhat subjective.

Does that mean it is arbitrary?

No, of course not. The decision to define something as good or bad depends on the amount and the quality of information possessed. That’s where all the argument comes in. I say that you have made a poor decision about X because you have received either inaccurate or insufficient information. You might say the same of me.

When you include more and more people, a consensus is arrived at as to whether a particular thing is good or bad. It may not be correct, this consensus, however, since a minority might very well possess the better argument, the better data.

What else is at work?

All the panoply of “stuff” that make up the human condition. Our desires, our experiences, our fears, our goals. All impact how important that “good” is to us and thus how resistant it is to being overcome by newer and better data. The stupid person can probably never overcome his emotional lock on a particular belief as being good or bad, while an ignorant one can be brought to a point of discarding her belief in favor of one truer.

Deepak Chopra said the same thing in one of his books. I recall it as something like, “each person is doing the very best they can given their level of knowledge.” It is of course no different from Epictetus.

You may claim no, some people are born bad, and choose bad because it is their nature.

Are you sure of that? I believe that to be a convenient lie we tell ourselves. It allows us to hate whom we hate, and to kill whom we wish to kill or otherwise put them out of our way. American prisons are chock full of people we have “given up on”.

Let’s take a couple of examples.

A young man slips a gun into his waistband and leaves his home to head for the corner where he will sell drugs for the afternoon. If confronted in the wrong fashion, he may well shoot at someone to defend his “turf”. Is this youngster acting deliberately badly?

I would argue no.

He is making a decision that based on all he knows (limited as that might be), this is the best means to attain his goal–living his life in some acceptable manner. The funds he acquires from his trade of drugs for cash affords him money for food, lodging, clothing, and leisure activities. He acquires, among some subset of humans, “status”. He acquires some modicum of power over unarmed persons he comes upon should he choose to exercise it. He has concluded that either his school offers no real education, and even if it does, there are no jobs suitable that would give him the above in an equal measure. He has reasoned that his neighborhood is dangerous and if he is unarmed he faces the real possibility of death.

He has made all these assessments more unconsciously than not perhaps, but they are hardly unreasonable. Given more information, he might not make these choices, but others that we, who have not his experiences consider more “good.” But he is probably not stupid, just ignorant of a series of truths that can and would alter his calculus.

Let’s look at another example: Sean Hannity

Hannity is one of the more egregious cases of Fox News “journalism”, a form of journalism in which actual truth plays little part, but where a point of view is underpinned  with  weak facts, and assumptions to support one  political ideology over another.

Hannity has been caught selectively editing film to say exactly the opposite from what the taped statement actually said. He twists facts, ignores others, mis-states others, and berates anyone who attempts to introduce other facts that go against his desired meme.

Does he do this deliberately? Probably.

So he is actively pursuing the false? Don’t we agree that that would be a normative “bad?”

Yes, it would, but Hannity I am sure believes he serves a higher purpose. I suspect in his mind, he believes that the average viewer is incapable of understanding and is without the “insider” information he possesses. They must be appealed to viscerally rather than intellectually and led rather than informed. Hannity himself is part of that small cadre who “knows” what must be done, knows what is best for the country and world, and can’t take a chance that you, his viewer will be confused. For after all, you are tuning in for an hour, while he is living this “issue” all day, every day.

A Hannity can’t be convinced by better information, because of these hidden assumptions. He can only be “corrected” if his other assumptions about his own relative insider view of the world is changed. In other words, He would have to lose his arrogant assumptions about his relative worth vis-a-vis the “masses” in the world. Hannity is not a man to be hated, but rather one to be pitied. He lives and is content in his own delusions.

What does all this mean in the end? Not much, other than perhaps a lowering of one’s own blood pressure.

When confronted with the wrong-minded I can relax knowing that:

  1. They might be purely stupid, in which case, there is nothing any mortal can do about it. Move on.
  2. They are ignorant but happy in their ignorance because it satisfies their emotional needs as they view the world, in which case, they are to be pitied. Move on.
  3. They are ignorant because no one has yet provided them with the additional information they need to change their opinion. Step in and offer them what you know and where they might obtain more.
  4. Learn to discern which of the above is applicable. A few conversations should suffice.

There is only one caveat. Even if talking with a stupid person, if you are in a public forum, do continue. Many people are listening, and some of them, perhaps only one, is paying attention. You can change the world, one person at a time.

calvin bliss 1

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Preachin’ and Teachin’ and Face Palming to the Point It Hurts

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Editorials, Essays, Evolution, fundamentalism, Humor, Satire, science, teabaggers

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Americans, body politic, climate change, evolution, ideology, ignorance, science

beatadeadhorseI am singularly aware that I bang a drum slowly, preach to the choir, and will change not one mind. Those minds that need to change, I fear are so atrophied by lack of use at this point as to be irredeemable.

However, why should that stop me?

I preach because in the great unwashed population, I sense a great number of hanger-ons, barely listening, hardly conscious of that which is beyond their own field of vision. They are the “average” person in American, and perhaps in the world. People so busy making ends meet, schedules kept, children raised to do more than gnaw raw bones on the front lawn, that they have little time for other “stuff”.

In other words, what polls show is perhaps hiding the truth rather than exposing it. I speak of yesterdays revelation from the PPP poll, to the question of whom is to blame for Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath? Nearly a third, 29% thought that Obama was to blame, while ONLY 28% thought George Bush was. A full 44% had no clue.

Now, this means but one thing. Twenty-nine percent of the people in Louisiana are dumber than the dirt they stand upon. Or are they? Granted, those that truly believe this, well they are lost to us. They should be kept in locked houses, taken for walks on leashes, and fed a low-fat diet and given a few chew toys for amusement. A car ride once in a while will suffice to keep them happy.

But I reckon those are just a few. I would hope that they are no more than 10% of the fine people of Louisiana (I reserve judgement on say, Alabama, where the number might be much higher however *wink*.) Most, I would argue, are that group from above, that are barely aware of what day of the week it is. Syria is “some place over there” and “the war to end all wars” was that movie with Tom Cruise. Asking them a serious policy question is akin to asking the average three-year-old what they think of Keynesian economics versus those espoused by Friedman and the Chicago school.

See, it really doesn’t matter what “they” think, since thinking is an experience they have had precious little experience with.

Do we stop there and just go on about grown-up business therefore? Do we just ignore the vast array of childlike innocence portrayed by much of the hard right?

Unfortunately not. I say unfortunately, because gosh darn, lots of people flourish in relative happiness in their ignorance. Some say (Thomas Gray to be specific–go look it up) ignorance is bliss. They might well be right. It’s all fine if everyone has an opinion on everything under the sun and above it for that matter, with one tiny proviso:

THOSE WITH AN ELFIN MIND HAVE NO BUSINESS IN THE PUBLIC’S BUSINESS, I.E., THEY SHOULD NOT BE VOTING ON ANYTHING BEYOND WHAT COLOR TO PAINT THE NEW SWING SET AT THE TOWN PARK!

That said, the rub is, who decides, and what are the standards. I leave it there, for I admittedly have no answers. Feel free to mingle and talk among yourselves.

That the issue is however reaching critical proportions is evident by a few of the following statistics:

  1. Forty-six percent of Americans would agree that God made humans pretty much as they are today.
  2. Only 58% of Americans see climate change as a problem, DOWN from 63% in 1989.
  3. Eighteen percent believe that the sun revolves around the earth.
  4. Twenty-five percent believe that vaccines cause autism.
  5. Seventeen percent believe Obama is a secret Muslim.

I could go on with a list that would run to several pages of idiotic things that Americans believe. One can find lists of urban legends that denote the belief that Obama is gay, lost his license to practice law in Illinois from some mysterious illegal thing. There are plenty of folks who don’t believe we ever landed on the moon, plenty believe that aliens walk among us, and so on and on.

Most of it doesn’t matter.

But it matters a great deal when it has to do with evolution and our need for continued funding in medicine, geology, and many other disciplines that help us understand disease and how we can stop it. It matters a great deal when it has to do with our response to the increasing danger of man-made climate change, something that 95% of all scientists engaged in this study now believe. (Ninety-seven percent believe in that we are in a time of global warming man-made or otherwise.) It matters because in North Carolina, scientists and their predictions about increased sea levels are PREVENTED from being used by state planners in determining the future allocation of funds to protect the shore lines. DID YOU READ THAT? They are prevented from considering SCIENCE in making decisions about the future of their coastline!

As to evolution and climate change, millions upon millions have been spent in order to convince people that these things are untrue. The evolution deniers write books, create museums, and prepare homeschooling material for profit. They have a great desire to increase the number of people who “don’t believe in science”. The same is true of fossil fuel producers. They are almost the sole funders of the “science” that passes for anti-climate change. They have everything to lose by a weaning of American off of fossil fuels and a turn toward green energies.

We, on the other hand, present the evidence, but we don’t spend a lot of money to spread the word. We have been content mostly to giggle at the “stupid” people and pay no further attention. But they are voting, and they are electing people who are prepared, through either their own dumbness or because it’s lucrative to them, to speak for them, and against truth.

We can no longer remain quiet. We must beat the drum, loudly, rapidly, and continuously, until we break through the thick shell of “I don’t have time for that” mentality that affects probably 80% of our people.

I learned a new term today. Lysenkoism. It happened in Russia, or more properly the Soviet Union, when it attempted to veer off the evolution track into their own sort of biology that gave the results they wanted rather than where the science drove them.

It means:

the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.

This is what we face in America. And we cannot assume or wait for our ignorant friends to “learn from history”, they won’t because they won’t expend the time to learn anything. Fox with its few seconds of sound bites is the most they can absorb, and only that when it is repeated continuously all day and all week long.

We, who can and do think. We, who do read, and do so critically,  and across the board of left to right, must be the voice that repeats the message again and again until we drown out those voices of personal gain who would lead our society to ruin for their own benefit, who would teach our children ideologies rather than science and truth.

This is why we beat the dead horse.

 

Related articles
  • New Poll Shows Louisiana Republicans Blame Obama For How Bush Handled Hurricane Katrina (addictinginfo.org)
  • And You Know That Whole Pearl Harbor Thing? Obama’s Fault. (juanitajean.com)

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