Most of our posts have wound up decrying the uninformed base and our inability to rescue them from their misconceptions. We have proposed gentler approaches as well as more strident imposition of a “correct” way of thinking. From our perspective, it is a question of defending the truth, the sacrosanct inviolable bastion of the provable and the honest, against the fallacious beliefs of the misguided gullible acolytes of a dear leader, a high priest of egoistic self-promotion at the expense of followers’ fortunes and ultimate sanity. Not pulling any punches there, are we? Taking a step back, maybe we are donning the victim’s coat that we accuse the intellectually unwashed of wearing. What or who exactly is under attack?
It is not about us. We ought not take personally choices made by others about which resource to value or paths to follow, including the path of least resistance. The folks whom we label as resistant to the truth do not deny that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, that it is air that we breathe and water that we drink, or that it is gravity that keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground and our hearts that pump blood through our bodies. Experience is the best teacher. However, most of objective reality does not submit so easily to learning through direct experiences like breathing or drinking. Matters of judgment and opinion are entirely subjective, open to interpretation, and often “protected” from objective reality.
It's therefore understandable how any one individual may well disbelieve what is delivered as fact and may accept opinions based on comfort with the source without skepticism. Some believe the moon landing was faked, the Holocaust never happened, and our Earth is only about 6000 years old. To say evidence is irrelevant is not the whole story because these folks often provide their versions of evidence that are either opinions of pseudo-experts or fictional distortions of studies and reports. In an information vacuum, these can be quite plausible and convincing.
Let’s review
We reprise the various suggestions from past posts about how to fix this. Thirty-seven edited excerpts follow. For those who have committed prior Ruminations to memory, this section may be skipped.
But first, we digress
Fans of television series, viewing successive episodes as broadcast or later as recorded on a DVR, may have noticed how its producers save some production costs from time to time. They instruct their writers to compose episodes that spend half or more of their airtime flashing back to scenes from prior episodes. Somehow, they tie past events to the current plot. In the extreme, only a few new lines of script delivered by one or two characters are used to justify reprising earlier plot points. This money-saving ploy can annoy the inveterate loyal viewer who is already well aware of the happenings in all those past episodes.
By repeating snippets from prior posts here, we may not be saving money, but we are economizing on original thought.
Ruminations rerun
Belief in an overriding purpose unites the factious, the disenchanted, with the rest of us and even with the faux nobility of the day.[1]
Information and its communication are both the lifeblood of democracy and interpersonal understanding and also the power to poison minds and hearts when abused: Education in history, civics, and critical thinking is the answer.[2]
A pause that lowers the temperature and provides the space to reconsider positions is a salubrious tactic; time and space to think and retreat from nonnegotiable positions are necessary conditions for amicable resolution of conflict.[3]
I am all in favor of free speech and capitalism, but when a megaphone drowns out a whisper, free may not be fair.[4]
To judge the “normality” of others implies approval versus disapproval; it leads to discrimination. Drop normal from our thoughts and use exceptional when we describe anyone. It would serve societal health immeasurably.[5]
Use images to focus and constrain verbiage and to avoid tangents and contentious sidebars: Emotion beyond words and pictures controls whether we ever do reason together.[6]
Question one’s own motives and experiences. Pluses and minuses are natural partners; right and wrong answers together are the basis for understanding complexities and reaching the best result.[7]
Humor, satire, and parody offer moments to reset toward rational analysis. Amplify the benefits of change with the long-term return compensated by a shorter-term payoff. Severe penalties on comfort at the insulated top may grow a productive interchange across the divides.[8]
The individual bricks are impotent but working together create potent communication. When signals are supplemented by sincere and compelling verbiage, they reinforce the message.[9]
Mainstream medium’s output will suffice. Accepting accusations of left- or right-leaning bias, those news sources could save us from over-the-top proclivities and ground us in factual realities, be they good or bad.[10]
Conscientious asking not only Why, but What, When, Where, and How while not being misled by plausible but wrong responses is needed. Between the Why and the Because we need an intermediator that filters the believable from the bizarre, assuring access to accurate information.[11]
Don’t sweat the trivia. Focus on the larger issues that surround us.[12]
Devise outlandish scenarios that debunk the establishment but also debunk claims from Earth Two. Adopt their method without the conclusions they draw. Invoke a theater of misdirection that pierces propaganda bubbles, replacing the toxic hot air with nonfungible truths.[13]
One needs recognition by potential partners of how each of their talents and tools will advance toward a mutual and rewarding goal. The essence of the successful process is openness to communication between residents of one stovepipe and another.[14]
We are a heterogeneous species susceptible to being labeled by some distinguishing features. Disparate pieces underlying our labels sum in pairs to things familiar to us all, if only the opportunity for that addition is nurtured.[15]
What of that old-time face-to-face person-to-person communication? If the tech goes up, must the natural go down? Whenever the occasion demands, we can resist being swamped by the impersonal.[16]
It is not sufficient to warn against drawing evidence-free conclusions. Many base them on what they believe is evidence. Questions are easy to ask. Answers are hard to come by. Intentionally created confusion is the disease for which a cure is needed. Multiple reliable sources of information is the only cure.[17]
Is it too late to wean adherents from their radicalism? What bitter taste would jar them back to reality? Maybe the sweet pill of positive change to long-festering grievances is what’s needed. [It] could be as influential as the salve of outlandish promises.[18]
Some truths are hard to swallow. The comfortable path is to accept easier answers that don’t require effort to confirm. Those appeal to our tribal instincts where logic has no home. They blind us to all rational argument. We do not see a way out beyond recognizing the phenomenon.[19]
Tear-jerking, heart-throbbing, or adrenaline-boosting storylines attract some. Free stuff and prizes motivate some. Personal experience trumps preconceptions. The challenge is mapping the one-to-one comfort onto the many-to-many.[20]
[…] listen to a few different presumably neutral summarizers and identify the outliers. Dig a bit deeper into why an outlier is beyond “three sigma” as a statistician would put it […]. We need a consolidator. Some method that provides an honest accurate summary of all relevant available information without the bias introduced by competing parties and their half-truth pronouncements. We need not succumb to the sales pitches and hyperbole. We are endowed with a healthy serving of common sense. That’s all we need to fix what is already and what is about to be broken.[21]
[…] if public figures applied the tools of consensus that have kept their own families on track to their relationship with colleagues and voters, acrimonious divisions would heal. Such a utopia is far away […]. Even the slightest trend in that direction would have a salutary effect on the body politic.[22]
“How is the big apparently altruistic but also self-serving picture communicated effectively to those now in authority and to the long-frustrated public?” A well-funded multiyear information campaign is the only mechanism I can see. The pressure applied to the status quo must come from both sides.[23]
The presumed objective of the listener learning something useful, actionable, and close to the reality of whatever the topic may be is defeated by communication obstacles. Some complex concepts must be glossed over thus opening cracks where faux and charlatan experts misinform.[24]
Beautify the message and use psychological packaging.[25]
We could try […] figuratively force-feeding it to our friends. We need […] to connect under-informed people to sources of facts and figures. Plaster posters to show the Hammer and Sickle or unsmiling children in drab uniforms taught to recite the oath to the Dear Leader.[26]
We [need] some positive force that melts resistance to change. Strongly held beliefs will not be changed. The product at best is mutual understanding and a reduction in tensions. Support a solution that may garner the support of former ‘anti’ protagonists. Enunciation of where help is needed will calm dissent and lead to a positive outcome. Prayer may help.[27]
Focusing on our primary purpose may be efficient and lend itself to fewer errors whether at work or play, but an occasional 360-degree survey of what’s happening around us is also a valuable use of our downtime.[28]
That means reaching folks where they live, where they work, where they indulge in leisure activities, and where they are free to express their opinions and digest alternatives to the extant negative mantras of the day.[29]
Events experienced live or documented through unedited recordings, evidence distilled from a mixture of fact and opinions of both validated experts and their corresponding naysayers, and a wealth of historical precedent from which to draw analogies are the objective input that leads subjectively to a prediction that can only await its affirmation.[30]
Near-term amelioration and adjustment is the best we can do while an accepting fatalistic attitude is probably best for maintaining sanity and the quality of life our “age” generously provides.[31]
It is as though a message arrives in two languages simultaneously. The nuances in each are equally valid, but to be appreciated, they must be disentangled and heard separately.[32]
Are the goals of protest ever accomplished? Sometimes yes, depending on the political environment and how well the specifics are defined in actionable form.[33]
A non-confrontive conversation asking about thoughts concerning factors not yet discussed is the only path I envision to open a perspective on and appreciation for a broader frame of reference. An excellent point to remember has been enunciated […], “…a good way to make facts matter is to remind people that who they are and what they believe are two separate things.”[34]
When we rely on qualified experts, we’re probably on the best track. It’s nevertheless best to listen to multiple experts, especially on unsettled topics. Care is required. Self-appointed experts are worse than none at all. Although some details are often lost in translation, an expert’s opinion arriving through a third trusted party is also a good option. In whichever way information arrives, it’s better to have some than none. […] Of course, our ability and desire to listen is closely connected to our acquiring the information that we may need when searching for ways to accomplish our goals.[35]
Bureaucratic inertia that resists change is the tendency to do nothing and requires a concomitant figurative force to get things moving.[36]
Although the rampant elevation of personalities through the Internet will continue and likely increase, the same online tools will make seeing the phony baloney, the fiction and foibles, easier and faster.[37]
Common thread
That was an exhaustive and exhausting review. It reflects frustration. The image below of many strangers holding hands to form a “peace circle” epitomizes the overall intended message.
Why do so many fellow citizens remain unreceptive to information that differs from their current understanding? Perhaps the nature of education in lower grades and unearned trust placed in sketchy sources of information explains it. Education affects understanding how our society and its politics are supposed to function as well as the ability to think critically and objectively. Then, once opinions have taken hold, resistance is fortified by a need to preserve self-respect. It is hard to accept and acknowledge being taken in by one-sided, misleading, and false messaging.
Testaments
There is another side to this whole conundrum. Blind faith of the religious variety is not uncommon despite an absence of the types of proof and validation that I want to be demanded by followers of political cults. Why do I distinguish with prejudice between these two? Because in theory, the religious beliefs of fellow citizens under a non-theocratic system have not affected my secular freedoms until now.
I suspect that the fabric protecting me from the imposition of religious dogma is now frayed. There remains a chance to repair the open seams and tears in the curtain that is supposed to separate spiritual faith from civil freedoms. We can push back, supporting the freedom to worship while guarding against a missionary-like imposition of a faith’s tenets on the rest of us. It is fair to note that our laws and traditions in the West derive from a Judeo-Christian system of ethics and morality. Therefore, to divine a tall and impenetrable wall between the purely secular and the purely religious is folly. Even within a single faith, beliefs range from the liberal to the conservative interpretations of scripture. Where does one draw the line?
As additional religious prohibitions creep into the laws that govern us, as enforcement moves from minister, priest, imam, and rabbi to the state legislatures, the Congress, and the local constabulary, then those believers of liberal bent and those of little or no faith at all are bound to chafe under the yoke of new constraints. Access to women’s health services and teaching a factual history of the nation in our schools are just two areas under current attack. Gender identity, DEI*, and kneeling on an American football field are a few more. When several years ago purple-colored characters on children’s TV were condemned as being gay, the writing was on the wall, the wall that separates us from the tyranny of judgmental piety.
More exemplars
The proponents of restrictions in these areas are extrapolating. Literal scripture does not require many or the extent of the new strictures. Loose biblical interpretations and melding personal prejudices with manufactured piety result in acts and laws that disadvantage the “other,” the presumed nonbeliever. As this post was being written, an example arose of the tensions across the fuzzy boundary between conservative faith and liberal secularism. A professional football athlete delivered a commencement address at a private Catholic college espousing a very conservative outlook on the roles of women and their healthcare options, on gender identity and LGBTQIA+** rights, and generally blaming current societal directions on “degenerate cultural values.”
When these remarks went public, it attracted both criticism and praise. Therein lies the quandary and it plays into the larger complaint, actually the fear, that our democracy is at risk. Our democratic form of government protects everyone’s right to express such views. But when those views are the basis for like-minded leaders imposing that “moral code” on the rest of us, the protections of that same democracy are weakened. Guaranteeing the rights of the minority does not mean permitting rule of the minority.
Now what? Accept the blur and call a truce!
Somewhere between the hedonistic society feared by the pious right and the dogma-driven pseudo-theocratic straitjacket feared by the irreverent left is a fuzzy region where live and let live and moral rectitude meet, overlap, and accommodate each other. Returning to the premise that facts and truth are under attack, this buffer zone is a demilitarized zone where lies and misinformation must go to die. Within this neutral territory, there need not be winners and losers. Matters of philosophy, belief, and opinion may be acknowledged without rancor or the need for validation. Matters of public policy may be referred to legislatures where officials’ jobs depend on a voting public.
We humans are a heterogeneous bunch. We are influenced by myriad factors from the early days of childhood to the euphemistic “senior” years. Those factors are liable to breed preconceptions. Along the way we must therefore also breed skepticism and humility so that the zone of blurred boundaries is a most comfortable place to be. If it’s a choice between a glum outlook justified by a history of conflict as well as today’s less-than-ideal events and a potentially unrealistic positive outlook that requires discovery of our better angels,[38] I prefer the latter.
* DEI = Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
** LGBTQIA+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer/Questioning, Asexual, Plus other identities not explicitly named
Credits: List review cartoon modified from https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/1220195-woman-reviewing-a-list
Church-State cartoon lifted from: https://theimpactnews.com/columnists/the-kings-opinion/2022/11/30/the-crumbling-wall-between-church-and-state/
[1] From An Iconoclast’s Happiness Over the Universality of Purposelessness (29 March 2023)
[2] From From thirty-thousand feet… (3 April 2023)
[3] From SPACE (14 April 2023)
[4] From Print Run (20 April 2023)
[5] From The Definition of Normal (27 April 2023)
[6] From One Thousand Words (12 May 2023)
[7] From The Dichotomy of Being Simultaneously Right and Wrong (27 May 2023)
[8] From Cracks (29 May 2023)
[9] From The Impotence of Words (09 June 2023)
[10] From Superlatives (16 June 2023)
[11] From A Word to the Whys (03 July 2023)
[12] From The Fourth Corner (17 July 2023)
[13] From Critical Thinking (24 July 2023)
[14] From Boundaries and Stovepipes (07 August 2023)
[15] From Colorblindness (14 August 2023)
[16] From Cinco-pationΩ Nation (11 September 2023)
[17] From Cause and Effect (26 September 2023)
[18] From Is a bad taste better than no taste at all? (11 December 2023)
[19] From Relativism (18 December 2023)
[20] From Good Bias (1 January 2024)
[21] From An Open Message to Voters, Go Vote (8 January 2024)
[22] From U-turns (15 January 2024)
[23] From Unnecessary Migration, Tomorrow? (22 January 2024)
[24] From What did you say!? (29 January 2024)
[25] From This area is beautiful (19 February 2024)
[26] From FINE! (4 March 2024)
[27] From Grace under pressure (11 March 2024)
[28] From Our Bollards and Lines (18 March 2024)
[29] From Déjà vu (25 March 2024)
[30] From If a tree falls… (8 April 2024)
[31] From Car Park (15 April 2024)
[32] From The color of color (22 April 2024)
[33] From Conflict Zones (6 May 2024)
[34] From The Last Resort (20 May 2024)
[35] From Let me count the ways (27 May 2024)
[36] From No More Mass XXXs, No Más XXXs Masivos (3 June 2024)
[37] From Celebrity (10 June 2024)
[38] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/better_angels
Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times ruminations have veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
Labor
…Tote that barge. Lift that bale.
Sched 7/15/2024
Incongruities
…Framing inharmonious juxtapositions
Sched 7/22/2024
