Geronimo
Member
- Joined
- May 11, 2020
- Messages
- 346
I'm starting to write opinion pieces in the hopes of them getting picked up by an independent news source, even if they don't pay me. The following post is something I typed up on my phone tonight. I only put like 2 hours into it, so it's very far from being done. I was hoping to get some notes or things I could add to it. Much appreciated by a proud member of the forum.
The Danger of Intellectual Rigidity (first rough draft)
Your world view does not define you. It does not define your quality of character or your value to the world. It defines your own conceptions and your attribution of qualities to the world and its inhabitants. Your actions, based on those conceptions, are what define your value to society. As such, one's world views should always be flexible and, most importantly, completely disposable.
A rigid lens offers only a rigid perspective. A rigid perspective offers little information and consequently little chance of learning and growing. Intellectual rigidity reduces your value to society and inhibits the collective progress of society. Where would we be today if we held the same beliefs our ancestors held 300 years ago? The same negative consequences of intellectual regression apply to beliefs we held as children, and even beliefs we held in our recent past that we have since shed. Adults who believe in Santa Claus are going to live a very difficult life.
Collective self-awareness and willing acknowledgement of our own intellectual rigidity and subsequent topic-specific ignorance is paramount to a free and prosperous society. The forceful external imposition of extricating our own rigidity (E.g. civil rights movements), or the collective culmination of the effects of said rigidity (E.g. starting unjustified wars) is a much more painful process than self-adjustment. Self-awareness and adjustment is our duty to our fellow humans. It even holds therapeutic value: we find it much more tolerable than others telling us how wrong we are.
Some of the most corrupt and destructive events in human history were made possible only through the collective approval of an intellectually rigid society. The American "babies in incubators" and "WMD's" stories about Iraq were widely propagated and accepted throughout American society in their respective times. People who openly voiced doubts were shamed for their dissent and for the perception of a dangerous lack of morality that seemed so obvious to the people who believed these stories.
There was a very obvious moral hazard to this public shaming of those with doubts, unbeknownst until after the consequences were wrought. The widespread acceptance of these stories led to public approval of wars that led to more than a million foreign deaths. Both of these stories were later proven to be not only completely false, but purposefully fabricated and propagated to garner the desired public acceptance of the ultimate results. A million unjust deaths can be directly attributed to the intellectual rigidity of the American public in this instance.
A quote of disappointingly low notoriety carries particular significance in this regard:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany.
Goebbels is well-known for having had profound influence on the German public's perception that led to Germany's public acceptance of the Jewish Holocaust. This was accomplished through systematic and deliberate propaganda. Doubters and "race defilers" were publicly shamed. This example, and the aforementioned examples, took hold because of the intellectual rigidity of the propagandized public. The intellectual rigidity of these people led to six million innocent deaths.
The public perception of the Covid-19 disease is a uniquely challenging example. There is an obvious fundamental divide between the public views of "we need to do our part to protect each other" and "you don't have the right to take away my rights". Both views are correct. Both are wrong. Both are fundamental to American society functioning well in the future. As is most often the case, a widespread binary societal disagreement indicates simultaneous appropriateness and inappropriateness of both views. This is also clearly expressed through America's two-party political system.
When such disparate dichotomies exist, the application of thorough contextual analysis of all available relevant data must take supreme precedence. Intellectual rigidity must be shed. Both groups must engage in open and honest debate without defensive emotions. Exclusively trusting authority structures is especially dangerous in these situations, as evidenced by the previous examples of authoritative propaganda's consequences in the form of millions of human deaths.
It is okay to be unsure. I feel the need to repeat that. IT IS OKAY TO BE UNSURE. There is no moral obligation to make up your mind on any topic at any time. Nobody has the legal or moral right to force you to think anything. If what you've seen and heard leaves doubt in your mind, leave the doubt there. Uncertainty is the only thing driving us to learn more. It leads us to educate ourselves. Uncertainty is not the enemy of knowledge. Uncertainty is the mother of knowledge.
It's even okay to be wrong, if it's temporary. What is most perilous is to remain certain that you're correct in the face of conflicting evidence. All perspectives have value. How much value we extract is up to us. To willfully suppress a perspective is an intellectual and moral hazard. You could be silencing the voices of the people who are right. You could be doing your part to endanger millions.
Lies are fundamentally tied to their motives. Why take the risk if you envision no potential reward? To examine the well-established lies about babies in incubators and WMD's, we must look to the actual outcomes to establish the motives, considering the profound success of the lies:
The Danger of Intellectual Rigidity (first rough draft)
Your world view does not define you. It does not define your quality of character or your value to the world. It defines your own conceptions and your attribution of qualities to the world and its inhabitants. Your actions, based on those conceptions, are what define your value to society. As such, one's world views should always be flexible and, most importantly, completely disposable.
A rigid lens offers only a rigid perspective. A rigid perspective offers little information and consequently little chance of learning and growing. Intellectual rigidity reduces your value to society and inhibits the collective progress of society. Where would we be today if we held the same beliefs our ancestors held 300 years ago? The same negative consequences of intellectual regression apply to beliefs we held as children, and even beliefs we held in our recent past that we have since shed. Adults who believe in Santa Claus are going to live a very difficult life.
Collective self-awareness and willing acknowledgement of our own intellectual rigidity and subsequent topic-specific ignorance is paramount to a free and prosperous society. The forceful external imposition of extricating our own rigidity (E.g. civil rights movements), or the collective culmination of the effects of said rigidity (E.g. starting unjustified wars) is a much more painful process than self-adjustment. Self-awareness and adjustment is our duty to our fellow humans. It even holds therapeutic value: we find it much more tolerable than others telling us how wrong we are.
Some of the most corrupt and destructive events in human history were made possible only through the collective approval of an intellectually rigid society. The American "babies in incubators" and "WMD's" stories about Iraq were widely propagated and accepted throughout American society in their respective times. People who openly voiced doubts were shamed for their dissent and for the perception of a dangerous lack of morality that seemed so obvious to the people who believed these stories.
There was a very obvious moral hazard to this public shaming of those with doubts, unbeknownst until after the consequences were wrought. The widespread acceptance of these stories led to public approval of wars that led to more than a million foreign deaths. Both of these stories were later proven to be not only completely false, but purposefully fabricated and propagated to garner the desired public acceptance of the ultimate results. A million unjust deaths can be directly attributed to the intellectual rigidity of the American public in this instance.
A quote of disappointingly low notoriety carries particular significance in this regard:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany.
Goebbels is well-known for having had profound influence on the German public's perception that led to Germany's public acceptance of the Jewish Holocaust. This was accomplished through systematic and deliberate propaganda. Doubters and "race defilers" were publicly shamed. This example, and the aforementioned examples, took hold because of the intellectual rigidity of the propagandized public. The intellectual rigidity of these people led to six million innocent deaths.
The public perception of the Covid-19 disease is a uniquely challenging example. There is an obvious fundamental divide between the public views of "we need to do our part to protect each other" and "you don't have the right to take away my rights". Both views are correct. Both are wrong. Both are fundamental to American society functioning well in the future. As is most often the case, a widespread binary societal disagreement indicates simultaneous appropriateness and inappropriateness of both views. This is also clearly expressed through America's two-party political system.
When such disparate dichotomies exist, the application of thorough contextual analysis of all available relevant data must take supreme precedence. Intellectual rigidity must be shed. Both groups must engage in open and honest debate without defensive emotions. Exclusively trusting authority structures is especially dangerous in these situations, as evidenced by the previous examples of authoritative propaganda's consequences in the form of millions of human deaths.
It is okay to be unsure. I feel the need to repeat that. IT IS OKAY TO BE UNSURE. There is no moral obligation to make up your mind on any topic at any time. Nobody has the legal or moral right to force you to think anything. If what you've seen and heard leaves doubt in your mind, leave the doubt there. Uncertainty is the only thing driving us to learn more. It leads us to educate ourselves. Uncertainty is not the enemy of knowledge. Uncertainty is the mother of knowledge.
It's even okay to be wrong, if it's temporary. What is most perilous is to remain certain that you're correct in the face of conflicting evidence. All perspectives have value. How much value we extract is up to us. To willfully suppress a perspective is an intellectual and moral hazard. You could be silencing the voices of the people who are right. You could be doing your part to endanger millions.
Lies are fundamentally tied to their motives. Why take the risk if you envision no potential reward? To examine the well-established lies about babies in incubators and WMD's, we must look to the actual outcomes to establish the motives, considering the profound success of the lies:
- Well over $1T spent on the combined wars. It is well-established that defense contractors and high-ranking politicians have very close ties.
- Protection of the U.S. Petrodollar's dominance throughout the middle east. This is another multi-trillion-dollar interest.
- Possible control of natural oil reserves in the region: No public admissions by or indictments of high-ranking officials took place regarding this, but there is a substantial amount of conflicting info and eyewitness testimony to make it necessary to fully investigate before coming to a conclusion.
- "Unkown unknowns" - Donald Rumsfeld. This is obviously an ideological concept, but it must always be considered if we are to thoroughly investigate any topic.
Last edited:
