V for Victory — How Fitting . . .
A world where you can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about. How people behave in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
— Attributed to Mark Twain
Imagine America as an engine and you come along with a cross-section of it to explain why it’s not working. Since your audience shares your concerns, you’d think they’d be interested in understanding the internals of the problem. But they spend all their time talking about parts made by people they don’t like:
Never considering the defects in their own parts.
And even though you’ve got a rock-solid idea for how to fix the engine (or at least make it run on reason): They’d rather spend the rest of their lives complaining about problems than take responsibility for their part in creating them. The image above is for my 15-part series on factions acting as force fields of fallacy for the Left & Right: Shielding you from the whole truth while you’re pursuing part of it believing you’re after all of it.
Across these communities are people taking endless delight in flooding the internet with ceaseless claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills:
But don’t do any of this . . .
Following facts going the direction you desire doesn’t count — anybody can do that. At the helm of these cesspools of certitude — are influencers who peddle repeatedly rehashed insight their followers praise like they split the atom. To be sure, some of it is insightful. But these “geniuses” are so full of wisdom that they’re oblivious to how they’re feeding the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to solve.
You know what they say: Fail, fail again, fail better, succeed
They say other things too – like “work smarter, not harder.” By all means, keep trying — but examine the efficacy of your efforts and adjust accordingly.
This nation has no such notion . . .
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman
Unschooled in Adjustment
Speaking of vacuums
Vacuum tubes have a finite limit for what they can achieve — so not in a million years could you make something do what it cannot. This business about “Fail, fail again, fail better, succeed” — is pure fantasy when the result is predictable. But “business” is the operative word:
Building on his enormously successful first edition. Tom Nichols confirms his thesis and proves that the assault on expertise has only intensified.
So, outside of selling books and building a following, you didn’t succeed — at all. But who cares about the efficacy of efforts when failure is a pretty profitable enterprise these days. When a deservingly popular book didn’t make a dent in 7 years (and everything’s gotten worse to boot): I fail to understand the excitement for an expanded edition doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a dent either.
Such questions do not compute with this crowd or any other:
Congratulating yourselves for ordering a book and broadcasting it for Likes: It’s all so goddamn pointless (as there’s no purpose beyond pretending you’re part of some glorious pursuit of the truth and what’s right). Never mind you all refuse to listen to any expertise that challenges you — which flies in the face of the whole fu@%ing point!
That cat is so fitting for the folly of our times:
“And now, even now” . . .
The cat . . . TOTALLY out of the BAG!
When I saw Tom Nichols touting his upcoming book in a Tweet, I had to laugh — as the tragedy of it all is so comical anymore.
Looking forward to this, Tom. Like Serling, you were definitely ahead of the curve. I’ve referred to this book repeatedly since it first came out, so the idea of an updated version sounds very appealing.
No, he wasn’t — I was
Six years ahead of Social Dilemma and three ahead of his book that accomplished exactly what that doc did and everything else: Nothing! In fact, it’s far worse — because you never learn anything from your failures, mistakes, and what doesn’t work. But what do I know? I’m just the guy with an impeccable track record for the truth and seeing the lay of the land in ways no one else did and still doesn’t.
Alas, everyone seems more interested in talking about problems than solving them. In The unconscious is not what you think it is TEDx Talk, Dr. Joel Weinberger proudly proclaimed the following on being right about Trump’s 2016 win:
How did we get it right and everyone else get it wrong?
By miserably failing to ask the right questions years before — you unwittingly created the conditions to “get it right.” And now look where you are — outraged over Roe v. Wade and Trump on the rise once again (oblivious to how you brought it all on yourselves). I know what the Right is, but not they’re always wrong. And the smart move is to agree with them when they’re making sense.
It’s also the right thing to do!
The right thing tends to be the demanding thing — the difficult that can’t be captured in slogans, kneeling, and knocking down monuments. I don’t care if Kaepernick kneels — I care that you can’t solve multidimensional problems with one-dimensional gestures.
A rare response of reasonableness on Twitter (or anywhere, for that matter):
Your documentary was ahead of its time
I may be a nobody, but this nobody was way ahead of everybody. If I came across this and hadn’t done my homework, on the title alone — my first thought would be, “I must be missing something pretty big.”
you have other ideas:
Button your lip and don’t let the shield slip
Take a fresh grip on your bulletproof mask
And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions
You can hide hide hide behind Paranoid Eyes
Funny thing about information: It can seem incoherent when you don’t take any of it into account. Would you browse a textbook then blame the teacher for your failure to understand the material? If you’re not gonna watch clips at the crux of the story, what’s the point? That the decline of America over the last 30 years in the Gutter Games of Government — doesn’t unfold for standard scrolling with ease, is not a flaw in my argument and array of illustrations:
It’s a flaw in your willingness to work through it — absorbing each building block of information your brain is well-equipped to handle.
Or at least it used to be before information became so funneled in a fashion to your liking — you don’t even know what to do with anything that isn’t. It astounds me that wading through unfamiliar territory on this site is somehow seen as complicated as quantum physics. I assure you: What it took to acquire this information was infinitely more demanding than anything you face here — let alone the complexities in exposing systematic deception at the core of our country’s ills.
What I do takes work — time & effort to think it through.
This — is entertainment
A bit about work
Work is a Journey on Which You Welcome Challenge
Work does not instantly respond — work digs to discover and inquires to clarify. Work is difficult and demands discernment. Work wonders, pauses, listens, absorbs, and reflects. Work does not rest on who’s right and who’s wrong: Work wants to know if there’s something more to see, something to learn, something that sharpens the mind. Work never stops building on the foundation of your own work and what you learn from the work of others.
Work works its way through material that is not easy.
Work recognizes complexity and the demands of in-depth explanation. Work will go on a trip to ideas that take time and effort to understand. Work knows that you can’t see your way through to a solution without understanding the different dimensions of a problem.
Work does not defend before you consider
Work does not race to conclusions — work arrives at them through careful consideration. Work is willing is rethink what you think you know. Work takes integrity, courtesy, curiosity, courage, and decency. Work comes with the willingness to be wrong. Work is not self-satisfied.
Work does not sling snippets of certitude — work crafts argument on the merits:
Work is an exchange where each party takes information into account. Work does not issue childish insults — work demands that you act your age.
You’ll find that work is far more fruitful and fulfilling than ease.
Work rises & falls
As this is the prism through which we work:
How we weigh what we see and measure our response. We’ll fall short from time to time — but those willing to work will keep each other in check.
Work respects your intelligence by using it . . .
And shows respect to others as we work our way to mutual respect. Work won’t be pretty and might even get ugly — but work will do what it takes to work it out.
And if you wanna start solving problems — work is what it’s gonna take.
3 minutes and 33 seconds into the Prologue — the parallel in the Profile Principle is revealed (an exemplary example of applying the same rules to both sides). On that issue of world-altering consequence, half the country took the word of professional know-it-alls over nuclear scientists. And therein lies the doc’s premise about expertise.
But rather spend even a few minutes digesting what someone’s saying, you gotta get back to broadcasting beliefs you just abandoned.
3 minutes and 33 seconds:
Ahhh . . .now I see where he’s going with this
Imagine!
There are powerful forces that make damn sure you don’t — and shows!
“Wut?”
In a culture where even a PhD acts like an imbecile in the face of overtures he doesn’t instantly understand: Conventional methods aren’t gonna make a dent in the envelope of intransigence encasing hermetically sealed minds of our times. “Wut?” — reflects a society tuning in to people who perpetuate problems under the pretense of seeking to solve them.
To be sure, some are sincere (or at least started out that way). But they all lose their way in the adulation and rewards from feeding the frenzy. Activity becomes the measure of progress — where success is the glory of the perpetual pursuit itself.
And cashing in on another edition, of course.
I’m essentially coming along with the transistor and saying, “There’s a better way. Just hear me out — as this will work and here’s why.” And right on cue, America counters, “Nah, we like the world within our vacuum.” And why not — when it allows you to forever assail others for their actions and never reflect on your own.
The truth is that you don’t have any original ideas and you’re too intellectually lazy to listen to anyone who does:
Intellectual laziness is simply not choosing ways to become better in terms of your skills and knowledge but rather, you stay in your comfort zone. You don’t bother engaging in a conversation with people who are wiser and more in-depth about things than you because talking about concepts and ideas you aren’t familiar with don’t interest you.
— Intellectual Laziness: Definition And Common Causes
That’s a plague across America and I imagine much of the world.
But this crowd takes the cake:
And that — is an opportunity
Shallow thinkers do not think beyond the immediate and the observable. They usually take information at face value and only look at immediate consequences. They are not capable of looking at all sides of an issue or think deeply about the issue before making decisions or drawing conclusions . . .
They also believe that their opinion is based on deep thinking because they genuinely believe that their opinion is based on truth and facts. Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
When we dig deeper, we understand better. We can compare different outcomes, examine, tear apart, and make cognizant judgments that are derived from different mental models.
Left and Right, I’ve yet to find a single person who digs beyond the depth of their immediate domain of interest. In our entirely transactional times, America endlessly rehashes topics of today — never once considering the totality of events that created them (or even having a notion of the need to).
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
One Voice Became Two 