Back in the 1980s, before memes were memes, a popular meme circulated on mimeographed sheets called “All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It later became a best-selling book. It was a list of a dozen or more rules based on the teachings of kindergarten classrooms. The gist of these were that you [...]
Posts Tagged ‘crowdism’
Scapegoat ritual
Modern politics forces people into polarity. This is not an issue of left-right, but really a question of “what issue will decide the election?” We tend to pick politicians, and vote for plans, based on a single consideration at a time. This is part of the way group dynamics work: in order to get change, [...]
How Crowdism destroys all good things
The first secret of Crowdism is that it is never unique. It is a universal human tendency that ruins things, like laziness or narcissism. It does not require anyone to invent it, because it is invented in all of us. It is an inherent pitfall to intelligence. Some might call it hubris. Crowdism is what [...]
We are the robots
Our ancient societies evolved much like a species does. Over time, they tested out their hypotheses about how the wide world out there operated. They kept the ideas that worked, and pitched out the rest. From that came culture, wisdom and even religion. Part of this original culture was that we had social castes, which [...]
War between galaxies commences, April 2013
The day was winding down in futuristic America. As I write this (April 28, 1953) I can’t imagine what the future must be like. People probably travel by levitating platform, take nutrition from the sun and spend their days immersed in a great microfiche library, learning all of humanity’s past so they can make its [...]
Homogeneity and the blank slate
In this topsy-turvy world, the fools are sure they are geniuses. Some may even be very intelligent and even genius by the IQ test marker, because intelligence generates such a flood of information it makes people easier to mislead. Ultimately what makes someone a fool is their will to mislead themselves. Even very smart fools [...]
For the sake of humans, replace the humans
About a decade ago, I identified the phenomenon of Crowdism whereby individuals demand to be freed from consequences of their actions, and band together into groups as a sort of mutual aid society that will attack anyone who doesn’t agree. This forms a hive mind that snowballs and soon creates a monolithic, paranoid Utopian groupthink. [...]
A flat plastic world
Life has many paradoxes, and many of those are caused by a simple principle: whenever you pass over any kind of border, all values become inverted. This is because context has changed, and you are now looking for the antithesis of what defined whatever was on the other side of the border. The paradox of [...]
The end of the age of binaries
What do we really expect from our news media? They are people who ask questions. Others answer those questions, as they see fit. These answers often have nothing to do with reality. News media also must sell their news-entertainment product, so they chase after the biggest stories they can find. They are rewarded for getting [...]
Mass mania versus the careful analysis
Some of the most exciting parts of a discipline occur near the edges where, in intersecting with other modes of thought, it produces an interference pattern that shows its essence. If you can imagine the collision of bodies of water, the scattering of light through a prism, or the small gusts of wind that whisk [...]
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