To Pary Gherkins (facebook):
Yes - I didn't have the right name but that is exactly what I'm talking about. Confirmation bias ... hard to claim that I know anything if I'm really just convincing myself of what I want or need to believe - guess my understanding the nuance of this facet of psychology shows I've got a leg up on other people who don't.
I guess voluminous rants (often really wacky if judged by logic) have been going on in cyberspace for a while now - I just never paid attention before.
I'd always thought the internet was going to save the future because a marketplace of ideas could replace the monotheistic media we've had since television (or even newsprint? or since the bible was first collated by the Roman Empire?). Instead, as I sample Six Degrees discussions, I'm horror-struck by the sheer volume of crap-headed thinking and reasoning that goes on here.
I'm glad that enough people respond to Lynn and the others that their crazier ideas don't go unchallenged for others to read. And at the same time I'm almost hopeful, because although they unthinkingly post opinions handed to them by media hacks (like Rush I suppose), at least they aren't just silently believing them - they're discussing them and maybe that increases the odds that they'll begin to critically think about the world. Even Lynn agrees we should get rid of the Fed, and just because he hates Obama doesn't mean he can't admit Bush was an idiot. I agree that all politicians suck and Obama may or may not be a good first step towards taking the country back from industrial powers (I'll go ahead and claim that Socialism must be a deep underground conspiracy indeed to have more power than the pharmaceutical lobby or the defense lobby). I have hope where Lynn has doubt (or paranoia) - but for the grace of god, I'd be right where he is. I just happened to grow up in a liberal town and I happen to think hippies are usually cooler people than non-hippies.
I've studied persuasion and psychology, so I feel like I might be able to somehow get through to these people to say: "I know the world looks a certain way, but read more books and newspapers, read less internet sites and watch less "infotainment", and you'll really be amazed at how ya'll were duped into voting against your own interests all these years." Of course, they think the media is liberally biased. Seriously? Was impeaching Clinton for a blow job a "liberal" or "conservative" thing to do, and didn't the media totally swarm after that? Drumbeats to war, aren't they in every newspaper headline? Advertising being the only reason newspapers don't lose money printing papers (for so many years), that'd make a newspaper more liberal? All the dozens of major U.S. military or U.S. sponsored operations that never got reported and are widely unknown to the public (i.e. East Timor), and that comes from a liberal press? I don't understand the logic, other than many writers become journalists because they are passionate about exposing the truth of things. I guess the truth seems liberal to most people.
I guess I'm asking how you can keep posting and communicating with people who refuse to take their information-source blinders off - isn't it so massively frustrating that you just want to say the hell with it and become a nihilist?
Well, maybe not that last - I do try to include satire or sarcasm sometimes, though it seems these things will be interpreted literally here.
It's such a downer to start getting hope, and then to see that the very changes that are bringing me hope are directing legions of crap-heads to go to war against the ideals I believe in.
I don't think socialism, capitalism or any other -ism has anything to do with solving our problems. I don't think nationalizing the hospitals and health insurance industry would take away any of my individual freedoms or Lynn's (unless he were healthy and wealthy, in which case, he'd be blessed with all the health and opportunity in the free world, and a few extra bucks shouldn't bother him) - and in fact, I'd say taking away the freedom of the health care industry to make profit off of my dying Grandmother who's gone into foreclosure because Safeco hired somebody to stamp denials on insurance claims and she doesn't have the time, money, or life left to fight the claim to get the care she needs; I'd say taking away even ten thousand people's right to profit off of health care is exactly what people who love individualism and freedom would do - even if a million stockholders and CEO's lost their vacation homes and private Jets, every American would enjoy the freedom that comes with being healthy. Every other business except the insurance, drug, and other health care companies would suddenly be richer AND be able to pay their employees a little more through the saving that would come.
To me, Obama may fail because of loud-mouthed rednecks who think the term Socialism is somehow relevant to the modern world (of which they know precisely jack squat, despite all our best efforts to enlighten them about Enlightenment ideas through education that taxes pay for, and yet stupid people seem continually proud of wasting). If it weren't for all the noise they're making, Obama would be much more apt to truly cut out the profit-takers who are killing my Grandmother by making a truly national health care system where the "high achievers" that Lynn cares so much to protect get the same medical care and the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our founding documents talk about, as the crap-heads who wasted their education, got saved, and still cry at the funerals of people to poor to stay well.
Crap-heads think America is great because we have a great military. These people make me sick, because if my neighbor thought he was great because he pointed a gun at my other neighbor, I'd think he was sick.
Crap-heads think America is great because god is on our side. These people have my pity because they're more often than not going to hell even by their own standards - killing in the name of god indeed.
Crap-heads think that if you disagree with American policies that you're against America. The reason the founding fathers were so frightened of the general public ever getting any real power was because even they who were educated formally and spent hours in rigorous debate still made mistakes. People who don't even know how to debate would lead government like a horde of crap-heads managing to idiot their way into a corner in an office shaped like an oval. I'll listen to your opinion, even if it's mal-formed and banal, but you better believe I have a right to tell it like it is when a bank-backed dynasty politician from texas cooks up a war of aggression.
I comfort myself that their way is the old way, built out of the "me" generation that was raised to believe that stuff is the same thing as happiness. Their ignorance of how hollow and contrived that mode of thinking was, literally a consumer demand created through mass psychology to derive profits from post-war surplus, was so obvious once some of them stepped outside the "box" they'd been put in, that the world almost saw a non-violent revolution of consciousness in the 60's. But, in the end, they were still the "me" generation and couldn't stick with John Lennon's vision (Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, nothin' to kill or die for, of brotherhood of man). And those that didn't participate in this movement or were harmed by it (psychologically if not physically) just couldn't help but be mortified at the paradigm shift they sensed around them. Too bad squares are so damn good at getting promotions and being put in charge of everything.
I hope, as part of the " X "/" Y " generation to walk more, dry more clothes for free on the clothes line, grow or hunt for more of my own food, and only buy things that last a long time. I intend to have as much fun for free as possible and so be able to spend my hard earned dollars on locally or sustainably made and traded goods. When unsustainable box stores like Wal-mart fail as they inevitably will, I won't care since I won't buy goods from them and would never work for them. Meanwhile, those of us living with nature's ways (also called god's ways or science's ways, you know, using the brain that the creator blessed you with to make educated guesses about how to save yourself) can only abide, inform and hope that climate change (human caused or not) doesn't kill our crops and our livestock. And, in the end, if humanity can't rise above what we are now, those of us that aren't mired in the stuff that surrounds us won't be all that upset at seeing everything go - we'll know that the earth will go on, life will go on, and maybe in some small way we'll be a part of that.
Keep on Truckin'.
