I’m afraid the political world wasn’t where this intellectual leprosy had originally came from. The political world was only the place where this disease had become ‘viral’. Where this manner of (not) thinking had been weaponized!
Its origin can be traced back to our intellectual arrogance. To our conviction that ‘I can be right on my own’. Without any ‘input’ from the outside… Even in spite of whatever information might reach me from ‘outside’, if that information doesn’t fit my already held convictions. My ideology….
In fact, this belief – ‘I’m entitled to my own convictions’ – is exactly what people on both sides of the divide have in common. Intellectually speaking! A shared disease… a virus infecting indiscriminately…
There is an old ‘rule’ which maintains that even a broken watch may be accurate. From time to time, if it retains its arms… Twice daily, to be precise!
Same thing is valid for people. From time to time, each of us will utter something which actually makes sense!
Sort of, anyway…
The catch being that in order to ‘prove’ the temporary accuracy of the broken watch you need one in good working order. Or, alternatively, you need a good understanding of time.
Same thing with Peterson’s uttering. On the face of it, the phrase is catchy. In fact, it’s just as useful as a broken watch. What solace will be felt by the victim of a tough tyrant when that person realizes that no tyrant, however tough, was ever capable of ‘achieving’ anything without the compliance of the weak? Without the compliance of those who had done, in their weakness, what the tyrant had told them to do…
So yes, broken watches are, sometime, accurate. And yes, Petersen is right to tell us that both tough and weak people can wreak a lot of havoc.
But neither of these two pieces of trivia will be useful to us until we’ll understand it’s up to us to put them to good use. To understand the temporary nature of the accuracy displayed by the broken watch and the fact that no man, however tough, becomes really dangerous unless condoned, or even helped, by ultimately hapless weaklings.
The things we believe are what we have in common with those who promote them.
Well, nobody ‘blindly’ beliefs anything published in the media! We use our cognitive biases in order to do that.
The media publishes the things we like to hear. To sell advertising space, to please their sponsors… While those who actually do this, the journalists, appease their consciences with ‘we have to give them what they want’. ‘Cause we actually do ‘buy’ their stuff…
And we believe the things we read in the kind of press we ‘buy’ because we no longer bother to keep in check our cognitive biases!
Who has anything to gain? From this vicious circle spinning faster and faster?
Nobody, really! But we all have something to lose.
Everything, actually!
When was the last time you met a dead person who regretted anything?
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.“ Adam Smith, The Wealth of NATIONS, 1776
I’m sure you already know that Adam Smith didn’t invent capitalism. As Marx invented communism and Lenin invented bolshevism.
Adam Smith had done nothing more and nothing less but described what was going on around him. How a bunch of people acting according to their ‘moral sentiment’ took care of business. How individual needs – for meat, beer and bread – were met and how the wealth of nations was built in the process.
Do you notice any need being fulfilled, in earnest, in this, new, situation? OK, things were not that rosy in Smith’s times either. Most people had to work hard, a lot harder than today, to make ends meet. But since Smith and until some 40 years ago things went better. Year after year. When Smith was writing his books, Regular Joe-s used to live in crowded shacks, usually rented out from their employers. Nowadays, most of those in their 50-ies and 60-ies own the house they live in. Which house has nothing in common with the afore mentioned shack.
So, is this the new kind of progress? A looking back in anger kind of progress? Are you even aware of the huge number of people pondering whether capitalism is not as good as advertised – by those who have already enjoyed its spoils? For the simple reason that in the current (no longer) free (enough) market so many people can no longer enjoy the kind of economic well being their grand parents took for granted…
As someone who had experienced both communism and capitalism, the situation is clear.
According to Schoppenhauer’s take on the matter, we make sense of the world by carefully (?) ruminating the “pictures in our head”. The information which has already reached our ‘inner forum’. Which means that we should be very careful when letting something ‘in’! When reading a text, for example…
‘You should follow science, not scientists. Because scientists can be sold.’
Logically speaking, the phrase makes a lot of sense. Right?
Practically… not so much.
Do we learn everything about medicine before taking the pill prescribed by the doctor? Simply because the doctor might have been sold to the big pharma? Do we learn everything about microwaves before using a microwave oven? Simply because the physicist who had invented the thing might have been sold to the makers of household appliances? Do we stop using planes because they are used to spray our skies?
Literary speaking, what do you make of “scientists can be sold to the highest bidder”?!? Sold by whom? How can anybody sell a scientist? I might understand the notion of a scientist being bought… of a scientist selling his soul, his scientific soul, to the highest bidder… but selling one… Is there a market for scientists?
only because it happens to resonate with something you are already inclined to believe.
The first ‘virtual’ tool invented by Man, language made it possible for humans to become conscious. By sharing information among them, individual human beings learned to speak to themselves. To think. To evaluate their activity. To evaluate themselves. Their own selves. Speaking to each-other, people have developed self-awareness.
The process is a work in progress.
Words are ‘stamps’. Images. ‘Commodified snapshots’ of the thing we call reality.
Which reality is simultaneously a word and the place we live in.
A word/concept into which – like in all other words – we’ve crammed everything we know about the thing itself. Which everything is nowhere near enough to actually cover the entire thing.
Reality, the word, covers everything we know about the thing but the thing itself, the thing we call reality, is far wider/deeper than that.
Hence the problem we’re stuck with.
We instinctively consider that words are apt representations for the things we attempt to describe using those words. Which, most of the time, isn’t exactly true. We – most of us, most of the time – consider that those of us we talk to understand the words we share in the same way we understand them. Which is never the case!
I’m not going to discuss the veracity of the above. Which is true, in the sense that this is how we determine whether an organism is alive or not. My point being that in order to perform this, the organisms – each and every one of them – need to act as if they are able to make the difference between ‘in’ and ‘out’. Besides the fact that they need to discern between ‘food’ – which is to be ‘imported’ and everything else. Which everything else must be kept on the outside.
See what I mean when I speak about the difference between ‘in’ and ‘out’?
In this sense, organisms – from the very beginning – have a certain ‘dimensional awareness’ of the world. Of their environment, more exactly. And, as things have become more and more ‘complicated’, the dimensional awareness has become more and more sophisticated. Plants act as if they know the difference between up and down, animals are indeed able to find their way when foraging.
The advent of consciousness has added a new layer to that awareness. Now we speak about ‘self-awareness’. We, conscious beings, are not only aware of the difference between our own ‘inside’ and the rest of the world but we’re also aware of our consciousness. We are aware of our selves. Our selves are aware about themselves. Our selves are able to think. To consider things.
Previous organisms have been able to react – according to ‘ingrained procedures’ which have been, in variable degrees, honed by ‘learning’ – while we are able, on top of our own reactivity, of careful consideration. Of making the difference between ‘fight’ and ‘flight’. Not only to choose one on occasion – all other ‘competitive’ animals do that on a regular basis – but also able to actively consider the difference between the two concepts. Previous organisms have been able to choose between when to fight and when to flee in an ‘instinctive’ manner. For some, granted, those instincts have been honed by ‘learning’, but their decision making process has continued to remain ‘procedural’. Very little, if any, ‘active consideration’. Very little, if any, ‘originality’.
Consciousness – our ability to actively observe and then examine/discuss our own observations – has opened a vast field of opportunity. Being able to actively observe a situation and to actively consider the circumstances/consequences before making a decision adds a fourth dimension to the already ‘three dimensional space’.
Life, per se, has no direction. Evolution only helps life to survive. To adapt itself to adaptable changes in the environment. Life, per se, has no direction. No direction and no meaning. Life, simple life, takes place in a space with three dimensions. Three parameters. In/out, abundance/scarcity, food/poison. An organism, any organism, continues to live for as long as there is ‘enough’ ‘food’ ‘inside’ it. And not enough ‘poison’ to kill it. But ‘simple’ organisms have no plans. No ‘future’. The more sophisticated among them display a behaviour we associate with ‘feelings’ – which apparently help them, evolution wise – but still no ‘future’.
Biological time is as bland as physical time. It flows according to rules ingrained in the already-existent. A star will ‘function’ according to pre-existent rules, a microbe will live according to the information inscribed in its DNA, in the context of all other ‘natural laws’, while an orangutan will be able to add very little to the above. If you consider things dispassionately, there is a continuous chain of events from the shiny stars in the sky to the orangutans roaming the Indonesian jungle. And no individual agent was needed in order to successively latch causes into the chain which led to the present set of circumstances. According to what we presently know, anyway…
Until a short hundred of years ago… When Man ‘invented’ the palm oil. When Man had purposely invented the industrial process through which palm is transformed into edible oil. When Man had used his agency to ‘improve’ his lot. And carelessly destroyed the habitat of the orangutan.
In this sense we may consider that the orangutan continue to live along a linear time – individually and/or collectively the orangutan remain unable to pro-actively determine their fate – but time itself is no longer linear. Since the advent of Man, time no longer flows according to ‘objective’ rules. According to rules contained into the very fabric of things. Currently, and ‘locally’, the flow of time is increasingly influenced by the agency of Man.
Self-conscious organisms, in order to satisfy their need for meaning, attempt to make sense of what they are living. To lead a meaningful life, they need to ingest not only portions of where they live but also as much information as possible about where they live. As much information as humanly possible…
I’ve been watching this, on and off, for three days now. And I still can’t make up my mind. Whom to admire more.
The one who performs what he believes to be normal. And somehow manages to include, into that normalcy, the negative feedback he is been dished out by the most powerful agent in his world. Or the other one. Who pursues his side of normal. Who finds in him to investigate when he realizes the two normals don’t fit. And the courage to make amends.
Thank you Elvis Naçi for this conundrum. I’m a better person now. Now that I’ve stated my impotence.
Regardless of our individual beliefs, it would be rather naive to consider there’s nothing but the here and now. Internet wisdom
What have you done since graduating into awareness?
Worrying about tomorrow?
Welcome to being a human. And how do you assuage your fear?
Put your faith into an exterior agent? Trust your fellow humans to bail you out if necessary? Make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else but you?
Each of these three strategies presumes differently about what happens outside yourself.
The more responsibility you transfer to the outside agent – currently known as God in certain circles – the more serene your life. You don’t have to change anything except putting your faith in the outside agent of your choice. If that works for you. Only by transferring the ultimate responsibility to ‘the outside’, no matter how hard you continue to do whatever you were doing before the epiphany, you embrace the fact that your fate is determined outside of you. If you expect your mates to do ‘the right’ thing, you must prime them first. You have to behave in a manner conducive to ‘community’. You and those around you. The community itself has to behave as a community. To make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else, you need to know everything that might happen to you. In fact, you have to know everything.
Each of these three strategies, or any combination thereof, mandates that there are things happening beyond here and now. Beyond what each of us might know and control.
nicichiarasa 