Ever notice how the average person these days can’t hold two opposing ideas simultaneously in their heads? Always leaning on the crutch of one extreme or the other? You know the famous quote, misattributed to a score of people throughout history: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Love this. Not too long, held my attention, winks. I may, may, have early onset dementia, thus feel free to disregard my “old lady with a cat🐈” no-sence. P is for precious, that you are. Smiles, the sky wide🧡🌅
Apr 16, 2023·edited Apr 16, 2023Liked by Simplicius
The fact is that everything moves at light speed these days and everyone is attention deficient. The way to fight back is to create better sound bites;
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
When the medium enabling markets is privately held, we are all tenant farmers to the banks.
Money is a medium, like roads, air, water, etc. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Should they be confused?
They only job those flunkies have, is creating the debt the banks need to function. What they do with it is irrelevant to those pulling the strings. So we have delinquent children playing cowboys and indians on the other side of the planet, while the country rots.
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 as the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic, basically because The Big Guy Rules.
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 images and narratives played out on it. Ideals are not absolutes and the philosophers should have been all over that centuries ago, but here we are, still obsessed with the totem poles at the center of our own cults and cursing the rest.
Good and bad are not some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. We live in that spectrum and feedback between light and dark.
Assange for President! He looked the Beast in the eye and didn't blink.
Lets get those tee shirts and bumper stickers everywhere.
The faculty at the local highly selective institution of higher education are generally acknowledging that the effect of short-form social media has indeed reached a tipping point. The incoming students are generally less mature, less willing to engage in debate, less willing to relate to other students, less likely to possess contextual knowledge. The incoming students are very diverse, but their intellectual attitudes and training are homogenous.
But don't the incoming students arrive having taken the same kind of A.P. classes students have taken in the past? Yes, they have taken the same courses. But the wiring in the brain does not seem to be the same as it was in the past.
"If complex topics can be reduced to crude binaries, and if enough anger can be injected into people, the rest of the work does itself. What’s left is a simian tableau of ape-like creatures grunting at each other while beating their chests. "
Nice summary. I've been bitching and moaning about people doing "either/or thinking" for some time. And of course, seeing humans as apes is standard in my thought.
There used to be kids' show on TV called "Lancelot Link - Secret Chimp." See the Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Link,_Secret_Chimp It was a spoof of the spy movies back in the 70's. They had chimpanzees dressed up in suits and dresses, driving little cars and motorboats, with dubbed dialogue. It was hilarious. And all the chimps looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. You can find some of the episodes on Youtube.
That's what I see when I look at people in the street: chimpanzees in suits and dresses.
Apr 16, 2023·edited Apr 16, 2023Liked by Simplicius
Brilliant writing. I agree with the main point, that complex ideas need space and time to be expressed and digested. I've been speaking out against the trend towards 'base-ness' in the media and communications for a couple of decades now. I recognized Facebook immediately for what it is - a gossip amplifying device with zero positive elements - and I never joined it. Twitter is an even worse evolution of Facebook. Tik-tok leaves me speechless - that human minds can be so shallow.
However, I am not convinced that all this is a 'planned' outcome. The origin of facebook, twitter, tik-tok was not funded or directed by the ruling class. It looks more like evolution. Unfortunately, we see in nature that more complex ideas lose in the evolutionary race, if one counts by numbers alone. Just as in nature, ants and cockroaches vastly outnumber tigers and eagles... the more primitive will always be more numerous. That does not take away from the power and majesty of the higher forms. Thank you for keeping alive the higher form of writing and discussion.
You are expecting too much. I don't really want to spend a lot of time trying to understand how my PC works, I just want to read the post. I don't want to know how my truck gets me where I want to go (most of the time), I just want to get there. It's the same with politics and social organization. People just want what they want, and they do not have any desire to visit the sausage factory.
I think we are up against Shape Shifter, and Moving Targets, but we're also up against Vagueness...
Words are being used like puppets in a Shadow Play...Specific, yet vague...We know what the words mean but their meanings become elusive on close inspection...
Sowing Confusion is a tactic employed by the Dis-information Experts...
Vagueness has been weaponised, is also included in their armory...
Try pinning down a definition of 'dis-information', it remains elusive...
The quotation given at the outset of the piece probably derives ultimately from the statement of Archimedes; ie " .. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without ( necessarily ) accepting it.”
― Aristotle, Metaphysics.
( My parentheses. )
But it seems obvious that no intelligent person would admit that both of two contradictory ideas carry equal weight - he is intelligent, after all, and therefore would have come down to a preference for one of them only; and therefore would reflect that viewpoint in his discourse.
So in fact the more he leans to one of the ideas, the more he is able to reject the other, or grant it only limited applicability, and thus the more clearly the contrast between the two ideas can be made; although it is then beholden on the auditor to decide whether he is right or not.
But as a stylistic observation, the couplet "run concurrently" is a solecism, as the word "concurrent" comes from the Latin concurro, ie "I run with", so the use of both words together is otiose.
As is the Americanism "Off of" which is used here.
The writer should work on reducing the number of words he uses to get his point across; and probably also should use simpler words when they are equally as good; as it stands, it frequently looks as if he is trying to impress us rather than simply trying get a message across to the reader; by doing this, he sometimes uses words that are incorrect in the context, so the opposite impression is gained.
"Ever notice how the average person these days can’t hold two opposing ideas simultaneously in their heads? Always leaning on the crutch of one extreme or the other?"
On the contrary, I'm noticing more and more doublethink. E.g. "If it saves one life then it's worth it. Also, we must protect Democracy™ to the last Ukrainian, if needed.". Or "Otherwise, Putin and his incompetent army which cannot take a village in Donbas will only stop at La Manche".
"Anti-intellectualism has long been the fashion of the day" - indeed, but only in the Anglosphere where 'intellectuals' were ridiculed since the middle ages ('egg-heads', 'boffins') and where 'book-learning' was later regarded as something only 'for 'the rich', never for proper working class people. The odd thing is that one of the strong points of the old socialists was making learning and 'book learning' acceessible, for example in 'Workers Educational Associations' where people could learn what they were unable to because they had to leave school at age 14 and go to work.
Historical note n the margins: the Welsh, parts of the UK, have had a long tradition of paying respect to learning. It's not by accident that one of the old Labour Party heroes, Aneurin Bevan, educated himself by using the library in his local WEA.
Of course, as any ruling class knows: stupid and unlearned people are easier to govern. Unsurprisingly, one of the 'plans' of the rulers of the 3rd Reich for the 'slavic' countries they'd occupied was to allow schooling only until age 10 for those children, so that they could do simple arithmetic and be able to sign their name and read government proclamations.
And now, thanks to social media, this is precisely where the West has got to, albeit with the chimera of 'sophistication' because kids, students and what is now 'the elite' can use PCs and smartphones and those shiny apps. From proper maths and physics to biology, from literature and proper writing to philosophical discourse 'Culture' has now become infantile where reading is unnecessary because all that's needed are looking at images or click on icons. There are more and more 'black boxes', now hidden behind shiny piccies which fewer and fewer of us even recognise as such. Long gone are the days where intellectual prowess was displayed by asking 'haven't you read this book? Oh dear ....', thus restricting one to listen-and-learn before one was graciously permitted to open one's mouth.
2nd historical side note: funny how in yon days people weren't offended by words, demanded 'safe spaces' or cried about 'hate speech' ...
Thanks for yet another profound essay, Simplicius, making me think and engage rather than just skim and file under 'TL:DR"!
And yet, I am not sure the historical "revenge" of the Morlocks is not already upon us. Sometimes, I wonder, are the Eloi still the rulers? Or else, am I not an eloi, brainwashed by the media and the grey eminences behind, not to think of myself like the one who should fear the dark of the night, just feast on the "gardens" under the light of the sun...?
Before i say anything else, "You give The Ruling Class an intelligence it never had, or has !"
Love this. Not too long, held my attention, winks. I may, may, have early onset dementia, thus feel free to disregard my “old lady with a cat🐈” no-sence. P is for precious, that you are. Smiles, the sky wide🧡🌅
The fact is that everything moves at light speed these days and everyone is attention deficient. The way to fight back is to create better sound bites;
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
When the medium enabling markets is privately held, we are all tenant farmers to the banks.
Money is a medium, like roads, air, water, etc. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Should they be confused?
They only job those flunkies have, is creating the debt the banks need to function. What they do with it is irrelevant to those pulling the strings. So we have delinquent children playing cowboys and indians on the other side of the planet, while the country rots.
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 as the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic, basically because The Big Guy Rules.
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 images and narratives played out on it. Ideals are not absolutes and the philosophers should have been all over that centuries ago, but here we are, still obsessed with the totem poles at the center of our own cults and cursing the rest.
Good and bad are not some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. We live in that spectrum and feedback between light and dark.
Assange for President! He looked the Beast in the eye and didn't blink.
Lets get those tee shirts and bumper stickers everywhere.
Contest! Everyone come up with more!
This forced abbreviation of expression is why I initially rejected the Twitter platform for the first eight years of its existence.
The faculty at the local highly selective institution of higher education are generally acknowledging that the effect of short-form social media has indeed reached a tipping point. The incoming students are generally less mature, less willing to engage in debate, less willing to relate to other students, less likely to possess contextual knowledge. The incoming students are very diverse, but their intellectual attitudes and training are homogenous.
But don't the incoming students arrive having taken the same kind of A.P. classes students have taken in the past? Yes, they have taken the same courses. But the wiring in the brain does not seem to be the same as it was in the past.
"If complex topics can be reduced to crude binaries, and if enough anger can be injected into people, the rest of the work does itself. What’s left is a simian tableau of ape-like creatures grunting at each other while beating their chests. "
Nice summary. I've been bitching and moaning about people doing "either/or thinking" for some time. And of course, seeing humans as apes is standard in my thought.
There used to be kids' show on TV called "Lancelot Link - Secret Chimp." See the Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Link,_Secret_Chimp It was a spoof of the spy movies back in the 70's. They had chimpanzees dressed up in suits and dresses, driving little cars and motorboats, with dubbed dialogue. It was hilarious. And all the chimps looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. You can find some of the episodes on Youtube.
That's what I see when I look at people in the street: chimpanzees in suits and dresses.
Brilliant writing. I agree with the main point, that complex ideas need space and time to be expressed and digested. I've been speaking out against the trend towards 'base-ness' in the media and communications for a couple of decades now. I recognized Facebook immediately for what it is - a gossip amplifying device with zero positive elements - and I never joined it. Twitter is an even worse evolution of Facebook. Tik-tok leaves me speechless - that human minds can be so shallow.
However, I am not convinced that all this is a 'planned' outcome. The origin of facebook, twitter, tik-tok was not funded or directed by the ruling class. It looks more like evolution. Unfortunately, we see in nature that more complex ideas lose in the evolutionary race, if one counts by numbers alone. Just as in nature, ants and cockroaches vastly outnumber tigers and eagles... the more primitive will always be more numerous. That does not take away from the power and majesty of the higher forms. Thank you for keeping alive the higher form of writing and discussion.
You are expecting too much. I don't really want to spend a lot of time trying to understand how my PC works, I just want to read the post. I don't want to know how my truck gets me where I want to go (most of the time), I just want to get there. It's the same with politics and social organization. People just want what they want, and they do not have any desire to visit the sausage factory.
If you think tik-tok is killing america, consider this: Tik-tok is the most popular app in China too.
I think we are up against Shape Shifter, and Moving Targets, but we're also up against Vagueness...
Words are being used like puppets in a Shadow Play...Specific, yet vague...We know what the words mean but their meanings become elusive on close inspection...
Sowing Confusion is a tactic employed by the Dis-information Experts...
Vagueness has been weaponised, is also included in their armory...
Try pinning down a definition of 'dis-information', it remains elusive...
And that suits Them...
To be fair, podcasts and substack are successful because there is a huge appetite for long form.
Short form has a market because the majority of the population cant be bothered. Its more even than I would have thought though
The quotation given at the outset of the piece probably derives ultimately from the statement of Archimedes; ie " .. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without ( necessarily ) accepting it.”
― Aristotle, Metaphysics.
( My parentheses. )
But it seems obvious that no intelligent person would admit that both of two contradictory ideas carry equal weight - he is intelligent, after all, and therefore would have come down to a preference for one of them only; and therefore would reflect that viewpoint in his discourse.
So in fact the more he leans to one of the ideas, the more he is able to reject the other, or grant it only limited applicability, and thus the more clearly the contrast between the two ideas can be made; although it is then beholden on the auditor to decide whether he is right or not.
But as a stylistic observation, the couplet "run concurrently" is a solecism, as the word "concurrent" comes from the Latin concurro, ie "I run with", so the use of both words together is otiose.
As is the Americanism "Off of" which is used here.
The writer should work on reducing the number of words he uses to get his point across; and probably also should use simpler words when they are equally as good; as it stands, it frequently looks as if he is trying to impress us rather than simply trying get a message across to the reader; by doing this, he sometimes uses words that are incorrect in the context, so the opposite impression is gained.
"Ever notice how the average person these days can’t hold two opposing ideas simultaneously in their heads? Always leaning on the crutch of one extreme or the other?"
On the contrary, I'm noticing more and more doublethink. E.g. "If it saves one life then it's worth it. Also, we must protect Democracy™ to the last Ukrainian, if needed.". Or "Otherwise, Putin and his incompetent army which cannot take a village in Donbas will only stop at La Manche".
"Anti-intellectualism has long been the fashion of the day" - indeed, but only in the Anglosphere where 'intellectuals' were ridiculed since the middle ages ('egg-heads', 'boffins') and where 'book-learning' was later regarded as something only 'for 'the rich', never for proper working class people. The odd thing is that one of the strong points of the old socialists was making learning and 'book learning' acceessible, for example in 'Workers Educational Associations' where people could learn what they were unable to because they had to leave school at age 14 and go to work.
Historical note n the margins: the Welsh, parts of the UK, have had a long tradition of paying respect to learning. It's not by accident that one of the old Labour Party heroes, Aneurin Bevan, educated himself by using the library in his local WEA.
Of course, as any ruling class knows: stupid and unlearned people are easier to govern. Unsurprisingly, one of the 'plans' of the rulers of the 3rd Reich for the 'slavic' countries they'd occupied was to allow schooling only until age 10 for those children, so that they could do simple arithmetic and be able to sign their name and read government proclamations.
And now, thanks to social media, this is precisely where the West has got to, albeit with the chimera of 'sophistication' because kids, students and what is now 'the elite' can use PCs and smartphones and those shiny apps. From proper maths and physics to biology, from literature and proper writing to philosophical discourse 'Culture' has now become infantile where reading is unnecessary because all that's needed are looking at images or click on icons. There are more and more 'black boxes', now hidden behind shiny piccies which fewer and fewer of us even recognise as such. Long gone are the days where intellectual prowess was displayed by asking 'haven't you read this book? Oh dear ....', thus restricting one to listen-and-learn before one was graciously permitted to open one's mouth.
2nd historical side note: funny how in yon days people weren't offended by words, demanded 'safe spaces' or cried about 'hate speech' ...
Thanks for yet another profound essay, Simplicius, making me think and engage rather than just skim and file under 'TL:DR"!
Clairvoyant. Thank you. Definitely worth sharing.
And yet, I am not sure the historical "revenge" of the Morlocks is not already upon us. Sometimes, I wonder, are the Eloi still the rulers? Or else, am I not an eloi, brainwashed by the media and the grey eminences behind, not to think of myself like the one who should fear the dark of the night, just feast on the "gardens" under the light of the sun...?