william.scherk

William,

There is a passage in the article that is indicative of a mindset. It's like when someone asks you, which do you choose, A or B? And the person scratches his head. It's neither to him. Or, maybe both.

The person asking the question has no mental conception that this is available in reality except in the very young, the mentally impaired and the ignorant (but, of course, the ignorant will come around once they know the score).

Here is the passage:

Quote

A Vlad, she elaborates, “is not kept in the dark. A Vlad is confident that the darkness is the truth. And a Vlad aggressively goes on to assert his ‘truth’: ‘Ukrainians are our brothers, they love us! They ARE us! We’re one big family. There must be someone deceiving them, either Americans or Nazis! So: Remove the Nazis! De-nazify Ukraine! And they’ll be good brothers again…’”

That felt familiar when I read it, so I did a little experiment.

I rewrote it.

A MAGA person is not kept in the dark. A MAGA person is confident that the darkness is the truth. And a MAGA person aggressively goes on to assert his ‘truth’: "Americans are our brothers, they love us! They ARE us! We’re one big family. There must be someone deceiving them, either Marxists or socialists! So: Remove the Marxists! De-Marxify America! And they’ll be good brothers again…"

There are people in the world who do not think like this. They do not look down on another group from such an attitude of epistemological arrogance. Look at them. They think XXXX because they can't help themselves, poor things...

That worldview is only present in those who think of themselves as innately superior to others as a class.

For those who prioritize individuals, their worldview is that we are all equal in terms of our ability to choose how we use our brain. But to the "one class is superior to another" view, they have no notion that this even exists. When they hear it, they think it is rhetoric to gain power, not a metaphysical statement.

And it is true that MAGA people do not like Marx. But the "one class is superior to another" people think the MAGA people are against a Marxist class (probably because they are stupid and even evil). The "one class is superior to another" people do not conceive that they are against Marxist ideas as they relate to individuals and to reason.

I base this on constantly reading and listening to them, just like the quote above.

That is what allows them to mischaracterize whole swaths of people and feel superior to those people about it, and feel superior to all other classes the world over for their ability to see this. Man, it's not easy being so awesome.  

If I thought as such a collectivist (in the superior class, of course) and worried about hierarchy as my main inner concern with life, I would be wondering what we can do about this. That we have to fix this problem and find a way to make people see the light.

But as one who believes each individual has the same power of choice over his brain, I hold that those who believe in such false collective dichotomies will come around to a reality-based way of thinking--individual by individual--if they so choose.

And if they prefer their false dichotomy to reality, it's because they choose this--and they choose it as individuals.

Why would anyone choose that? To me, it's obvious. They like feeling superior. They are addicted to the neurochemical high this worldview provides.

Michael

These are interesting discussion topics, Michael. I made a short clip from the ARFC video where you zero in on some of the same themes.

William,

The main point I want to make with this innately superior business is that this is a narrative. It is not reflected in reality. Every single person has free will.

Granted, we need narratives mainly because that's how humans think, but when something needs to be checked to make sure identification is correct, observable reality must trump narrative for eliminating contradictions and making correct identifications.

"Who what when where and how" we can observe in reality. And we do narrative with them. So when narrative and reality conflict on those things, we have to go with observable reality.

"Why" we mostly infer through narrative.

So is one class of humans superior to another just because that class is innately more awesome?

So long as this question is relegated to non-observable innate things, but ones that can be compared (through story), it's narrative only. It's not reality, although a person may believe it is.

In fact, if you control that narrative, the one the "superior" person agrees with and believes in, you control that superior man and woman. You control them 100% of the time.

Hell, we are all controlled up to a point through narratives. Social media alone proves that.

But free will is not really part of the controlled "superior" person I am talking about. Free will is part of the members of humanity who question things and check them against reality. Notice that all of us can question things and check them against reality if we want. We are all equal in that respect. There is no class of humans that is so superior, it is the only class that can question things.

What's more, there's this. Tell a hayseed that a cow is a bird and no matter how intelligent you are and how stupid he is, no matter what tribes you belong to, you will not get him to agree (unless it is to get rid of you  ). Why? Because he can observe reality, and what he observes from reality is contrary to your narrative.

I'm talking in general terms. I'm not talking about specific psychological experiments held under abnormal controlled conditions. And I'm not talking about changing a person's perception of reality on a basic level through drugs.

Michael