That was a homily. You are definitely a master of the subject having I imagine spent much time reading the comment section of your own postings. Thank you.
All true, and it starts with the track record of the source, their credibility and consistency. Integrity and trust. I have stopped following many sites when I perceived these two values to have been breached. I have my own tagline for a reason, as today's world (at least the West) is filled with dishonesty and deceit. Seeking truth is like climbing a very tall mountain. Will not watch or read MSM. We all make mistakes and are periodically humbled.
I think there is a very deep cultural aspect to this, in our presumptions of objectivity, largely exemplified by monotheism. When the reality is that knowledge is inherently subjective. An objective point of view is an oxymoron. Knowledge is a consolidation of information. The map is the useful information gathered from the territory. If we tried to include all the information in the territory, it would revert back to noise. Bias is a fact of life.
To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, while in nature, it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. There is no good without bad, anymore than there is up without down, or attraction without repulsion.
That's because it's the function of culture to synchronize the community as one larger social organism. A node in the network.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the narratives played out on it.
The history of the West is that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. Basically to validate The Big Guy Rules.
When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required the separation of church and state, culture and civics.
Ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Every village totem is an ideal. When we assume them to be absolute, there can be no error, no shades of grey. Then when there are multitudes of cults and cultures claiming their god is the only one, it is chaos.
The reality is more yin and yang, than God Almighty and the West has yet to understand that.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Heart and head, motor and steering.
Confirmation bias runs strong, we also seek support for our beliefs rather than read what might challenge them. Being shown to be right is more important than being right, our belief in our infallibility seems to support our shaky constructs.
Recall old philosophers saying that a wise man understands that he in reality knows nothing. Still we are all guilty of being right, I suppose the first step to actual knowledge is to realize that, a view unchallenged has never gone through the furnace of credible debate.
This is why I love you brother. You get it better than anyone I have ever read. You use hardcore facts and back them by a ridiculous amount of sourcing but only present as truth if you are concrete certain. At the same time you are not afraid to used critical logic and thinking in the abstract.
As stated the quick zings from both sides is a sign of the times. People have traded knowledge and wisdom for some cheap thrill that gives them a rush. Its everywhere in the body politic. Up until last fall I was exceptionally fearful of how all this would unfold (crumbling of America). I thought it could be avoided if enough people awakened. I believe it was the right instinct and in theory it could have worked. However I found some solace when I realized there's no way to accomplish this. Hard times are on the menu in some fashion and that will play necessary part to getting us back on to the righteous path.
I've only bothered to enter social media zone in the last 12 months and you have very clearly crystallised the behaviours I am seeing. Another tactic I noticed is the demand that you prove your opinion, even though it is obviously only an opinion. A weak gotcha moment for the intruder to your conversation, but their victory.
The inability to say I don't know is spot on. The other element is the inability to ask questions and clarify what they think you have said, but instead immediately attack. It is starting to appear to be a form of sport rather than informative discussion.
Something else you almost seem to be alluding to in this article, is the inability of people to know the difference between knowledge and information.
You write very thought provoking material. Appreciating these reads.
Hello Dark Futura - you must have travelled far and wide and if not physically - although I doubt it - at least mentally - imaginatively. As it happens that you have just described line by line the content of THE BIBLE - "surely" unintentionally. Without noticing that THE ENDING has been written down IN BEGINNING.
Certainly very few HUMAN MINDS are aware of this fact - as this state of THE HUMAN MIND had also been foretold - and are equally BLINDED regarding THE ILLNESS that your as subtle as succinct prose is trying to reveal.
THE TRUTH - REALITY as it were - is coming no matter how much noise THE DEMENTED DOWNTRODDEN HUMAN MIND - THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN - makes, it is simply the (long awaited by those following THE TRUTH) crescendo towards THE END OF THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN.
GOD ALMIGHTY IS RUNNING THE SHOW AND HIS CREATION IS MERELY A TOOL IN HIS PAINTING!
VERY FEW WILL FIND THE SMALL GATE AND NARROW ROAD THAT LEADS TO LIFE!
What I find shocking is the readiness with which people repeat unexamined postulates that are cyclically fed to them on the topics they know nothing or next to nothing, and not only the uneducated people, but highly educated people as well. They throw word "propaganda" in the beginning of the discussion, and that's the minute for me their geopolitical IQ drops to 2 digits, since they cannot honestly ask themselves, "what do I actually know about this topic?" Even people who know that MSM lies about everything else are readily gobbling down whatever the same MSM feeds them about the war in Ukraine (or any other war for this matter).
Good read. I was taught that everything worthwhile starts out with “I don’t know ...” Without it, no new knowledge is acquired. Only half truths and superficial conjectures that add nothing to the truth.
It begs a sequel wherewith the same points are used to explain the popularity of soapies, especially nonintellectual non-Spanish speakers watching Spanish soapies. That was an "aha" nail in society's coffin. I used to walk into a BAR during the day, in my old town, to find people watching them. If I recall, it was Edward Bernays who got soap manufacturers to advertise on daytime dramas - "Ahafuckingha!"
I dug into idontwanttoknowanythingidontalreadyknowdarkness with politics. When I exposed corruption involving a one-armed man, some people were cross with me because he had one arm. More were cross with me because he was white and a member of a political party most white people voted for. It took me years to break through their mental jelly. When I succeeded, the party destroyed me with propaganda as unbelievable as those soapies. I had been an unwanted interrupter of society's fantasy.
How many know what "longform" is? I knew a third year BA Degree (with English major) student who hated reading and hadn't read any books outside of what she was told to at school. I used to help her with her assignments. She graduated with an A. That was razor blade confusion for me, happiness for her whilst knowing my country's future was doomed.
It was during these experiences that I became bald :)
Simplicius, you're encouraging me to find an old and relevant article I wrote. Then I'll post it on substack just so I can share the link here. Nowhere near as good as yours but I think you'll appreciate it.
To admit not knowing saves time and opens the path to knowing.
I am a huge admirer of your analytical work on the other blog, so it's good to see you stretching here and finding your own voice, even if it is a bit overstuffed with fancy words :) Nonetheless, you built up quite a lovely poetic rhythm in this piece, which I greatly enjoyed.
As for all the talk about how things "today" are different, my only question is - different from when? Because Aristotle and Socrates discussed pretty much every element of this article some two thousand years ago, right down to chiding the Sophists for shouting in the streets about their infallible rhetorical positions.
Lastly, I'll just add that it's a shame that the only language you speak is English. Otherwise, I'd recommend you watch some of the discourses/debates on Russian and Venezuelan and Cuban or even Moldovan television, and then you'd realize that it's pretty much ONLY the western world where attention spans are being relentlessly decimated.
But even with this linguistic handicap, take a look at the length (in time) of a speech by Putin versus a speech by Biden (or Trump, Obama, et al) and you'll instantly see what I'm talking about. Noam Chomsky (before he went insane) once noted that you can tell the health of discourse in a society by measuring how long people are able to speak before getting interrupted.
"I want to tell you, listen to me! What I have seen I will tell” (Job 15:17). It is a characteristic of the proud never to have any sense of righteousness, however small, without bending it in the service of pride. He rises above himself by virtue of his own reason, only to be puffed up with vanity and fall into the trap of pride. He considers himself wiser than the wise and demands respect from those better than himself; he presumes to teach with semblance of authority before one holier than himself. From this attitude comes the statement: "I want to announce to you, listen to me!" [...]
After the saying: “The wicked man is proud all his days”, Job adds: “and the number of the years of his tyranny is uncertain” (cf. Job 15:20 Vulg.). In other words, why should one pride oneself in any certainty when insecurity is the lot of human existence? But for people who lead a depraved life, Almighty God not only has in store the torments of the life to come; already here on earth, in the hour of their failure, he encircles their hearts with punishments: in sinning, they beat themselves, always trembling, always suspicious, for fear of having to suffer from others what they have done to others.
St. Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
Pope and Doctor of the Church
Book XII, SC 212 (Morales sur Job, éd. du Cerf 1974, pp. 205–211, rev.)
The [intellectual] desert [across Europe, where I live] has its mysteries, and also its fascinating sand storms, but there is nothing like an oasis of waters with the stand stillness of words like yours to better appreciate them .
"But the other major ability lost to the generations is the ability to not only admit when one is wrong, but to change one’s mind and beliefs based on new data."
I still remember the day (a long time ago) when I did exactly that (for the first time?). I gave in, adapted the suggestion of the other. He was right after all. But more remarkable: the relationship changed after that. I found we were cooperating more and sparring less, resulting in significant improvements to the project.
Ever since that day I have cultivated this and now call it my secret power. Its really amazing what you can achieve that way.
Terrific article. Havel said something like cling to people who seek the truth, but run from people who are certain they have found the truth. I am on your side, and his, but not too much, of course, and always with a question. Thank you for modelling uncertainty.
That was a homily. You are definitely a master of the subject having I imagine spent much time reading the comment section of your own postings. Thank you.
All true, and it starts with the track record of the source, their credibility and consistency. Integrity and trust. I have stopped following many sites when I perceived these two values to have been breached. I have my own tagline for a reason, as today's world (at least the West) is filled with dishonesty and deceit. Seeking truth is like climbing a very tall mountain. Will not watch or read MSM. We all make mistakes and are periodically humbled.
I think there is a very deep cultural aspect to this, in our presumptions of objectivity, largely exemplified by monotheism. When the reality is that knowledge is inherently subjective. An objective point of view is an oxymoron. Knowledge is a consolidation of information. The map is the useful information gathered from the territory. If we tried to include all the information in the territory, it would revert back to noise. Bias is a fact of life.
To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, while in nature, it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. There is no good without bad, anymore than there is up without down, or attraction without repulsion.
That's because it's the function of culture to synchronize the community as one larger social organism. A node in the network.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the narratives played out on it.
The history of the West is that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. Basically to validate The Big Guy Rules.
When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required the separation of church and state, culture and civics.
Ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Every village totem is an ideal. When we assume them to be absolute, there can be no error, no shades of grey. Then when there are multitudes of cults and cultures claiming their god is the only one, it is chaos.
The reality is more yin and yang, than God Almighty and the West has yet to understand that.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Heart and head, motor and steering.
Confirmation bias runs strong, we also seek support for our beliefs rather than read what might challenge them. Being shown to be right is more important than being right, our belief in our infallibility seems to support our shaky constructs.
Recall old philosophers saying that a wise man understands that he in reality knows nothing. Still we are all guilty of being right, I suppose the first step to actual knowledge is to realize that, a view unchallenged has never gone through the furnace of credible debate.
This is why I love you brother. You get it better than anyone I have ever read. You use hardcore facts and back them by a ridiculous amount of sourcing but only present as truth if you are concrete certain. At the same time you are not afraid to used critical logic and thinking in the abstract.
As stated the quick zings from both sides is a sign of the times. People have traded knowledge and wisdom for some cheap thrill that gives them a rush. Its everywhere in the body politic. Up until last fall I was exceptionally fearful of how all this would unfold (crumbling of America). I thought it could be avoided if enough people awakened. I believe it was the right instinct and in theory it could have worked. However I found some solace when I realized there's no way to accomplish this. Hard times are on the menu in some fashion and that will play necessary part to getting us back on to the righteous path.
I've only bothered to enter social media zone in the last 12 months and you have very clearly crystallised the behaviours I am seeing. Another tactic I noticed is the demand that you prove your opinion, even though it is obviously only an opinion. A weak gotcha moment for the intruder to your conversation, but their victory.
The inability to say I don't know is spot on. The other element is the inability to ask questions and clarify what they think you have said, but instead immediately attack. It is starting to appear to be a form of sport rather than informative discussion.
Something else you almost seem to be alluding to in this article, is the inability of people to know the difference between knowledge and information.
You write very thought provoking material. Appreciating these reads.
Hello Dark Futura - you must have travelled far and wide and if not physically - although I doubt it - at least mentally - imaginatively. As it happens that you have just described line by line the content of THE BIBLE - "surely" unintentionally. Without noticing that THE ENDING has been written down IN BEGINNING.
Certainly very few HUMAN MINDS are aware of this fact - as this state of THE HUMAN MIND had also been foretold - and are equally BLINDED regarding THE ILLNESS that your as subtle as succinct prose is trying to reveal.
THE TRUTH - REALITY as it were - is coming no matter how much noise THE DEMENTED DOWNTRODDEN HUMAN MIND - THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN - makes, it is simply the (long awaited by those following THE TRUTH) crescendo towards THE END OF THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN.
GOD ALMIGHTY IS RUNNING THE SHOW AND HIS CREATION IS MERELY A TOOL IN HIS PAINTING!
VERY FEW WILL FIND THE SMALL GATE AND NARROW ROAD THAT LEADS TO LIFE!
What I find shocking is the readiness with which people repeat unexamined postulates that are cyclically fed to them on the topics they know nothing or next to nothing, and not only the uneducated people, but highly educated people as well. They throw word "propaganda" in the beginning of the discussion, and that's the minute for me their geopolitical IQ drops to 2 digits, since they cannot honestly ask themselves, "what do I actually know about this topic?" Even people who know that MSM lies about everything else are readily gobbling down whatever the same MSM feeds them about the war in Ukraine (or any other war for this matter).
WOW so many big words .. some I didn’t know ;)
Good read. I was taught that everything worthwhile starts out with “I don’t know ...” Without it, no new knowledge is acquired. Only half truths and superficial conjectures that add nothing to the truth.
Fab read!
It begs a sequel wherewith the same points are used to explain the popularity of soapies, especially nonintellectual non-Spanish speakers watching Spanish soapies. That was an "aha" nail in society's coffin. I used to walk into a BAR during the day, in my old town, to find people watching them. If I recall, it was Edward Bernays who got soap manufacturers to advertise on daytime dramas - "Ahafuckingha!"
I dug into idontwanttoknowanythingidontalreadyknowdarkness with politics. When I exposed corruption involving a one-armed man, some people were cross with me because he had one arm. More were cross with me because he was white and a member of a political party most white people voted for. It took me years to break through their mental jelly. When I succeeded, the party destroyed me with propaganda as unbelievable as those soapies. I had been an unwanted interrupter of society's fantasy.
How many know what "longform" is? I knew a third year BA Degree (with English major) student who hated reading and hadn't read any books outside of what she was told to at school. I used to help her with her assignments. She graduated with an A. That was razor blade confusion for me, happiness for her whilst knowing my country's future was doomed.
It was during these experiences that I became bald :)
Simplicius, you're encouraging me to find an old and relevant article I wrote. Then I'll post it on substack just so I can share the link here. Nowhere near as good as yours but I think you'll appreciate it.
To admit not knowing saves time and opens the path to knowing.
I am a huge admirer of your analytical work on the other blog, so it's good to see you stretching here and finding your own voice, even if it is a bit overstuffed with fancy words :) Nonetheless, you built up quite a lovely poetic rhythm in this piece, which I greatly enjoyed.
As for all the talk about how things "today" are different, my only question is - different from when? Because Aristotle and Socrates discussed pretty much every element of this article some two thousand years ago, right down to chiding the Sophists for shouting in the streets about their infallible rhetorical positions.
Lastly, I'll just add that it's a shame that the only language you speak is English. Otherwise, I'd recommend you watch some of the discourses/debates on Russian and Venezuelan and Cuban or even Moldovan television, and then you'd realize that it's pretty much ONLY the western world where attention spans are being relentlessly decimated.
But even with this linguistic handicap, take a look at the length (in time) of a speech by Putin versus a speech by Biden (or Trump, Obama, et al) and you'll instantly see what I'm talking about. Noam Chomsky (before he went insane) once noted that you can tell the health of discourse in a society by measuring how long people are able to speak before getting interrupted.
OLD WISDOM FOR "MODERN" TIMES
The trap of pride
"I want to tell you, listen to me! What I have seen I will tell” (Job 15:17). It is a characteristic of the proud never to have any sense of righteousness, however small, without bending it in the service of pride. He rises above himself by virtue of his own reason, only to be puffed up with vanity and fall into the trap of pride. He considers himself wiser than the wise and demands respect from those better than himself; he presumes to teach with semblance of authority before one holier than himself. From this attitude comes the statement: "I want to announce to you, listen to me!" [...]
After the saying: “The wicked man is proud all his days”, Job adds: “and the number of the years of his tyranny is uncertain” (cf. Job 15:20 Vulg.). In other words, why should one pride oneself in any certainty when insecurity is the lot of human existence? But for people who lead a depraved life, Almighty God not only has in store the torments of the life to come; already here on earth, in the hour of their failure, he encircles their hearts with punishments: in sinning, they beat themselves, always trembling, always suspicious, for fear of having to suffer from others what they have done to others.
St. Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
Pope and Doctor of the Church
Book XII, SC 212 (Morales sur Job, éd. du Cerf 1974, pp. 205–211, rev.)
The [intellectual] desert [across Europe, where I live] has its mysteries, and also its fascinating sand storms, but there is nothing like an oasis of waters with the stand stillness of words like yours to better appreciate them .
"But the other major ability lost to the generations is the ability to not only admit when one is wrong, but to change one’s mind and beliefs based on new data."
I still remember the day (a long time ago) when I did exactly that (for the first time?). I gave in, adapted the suggestion of the other. He was right after all. But more remarkable: the relationship changed after that. I found we were cooperating more and sparring less, resulting in significant improvements to the project.
Ever since that day I have cultivated this and now call it my secret power. Its really amazing what you can achieve that way.
Terrific article. Havel said something like cling to people who seek the truth, but run from people who are certain they have found the truth. I am on your side, and his, but not too much, of course, and always with a question. Thank you for modelling uncertainty.