When we go through life, we feel a schizophrenic disconnect between what we think we’re doing and the results we see in reality. Think about the political programs you read about in the news. Almost none of them achieve their desired effect; some do, “on paper,” meaning that they meet some arbitrary targets but don’t [...]
Posts Tagged ‘crowdism’
“Educated” people
Let’s talk about the word “educated.” It’s a snotty little word, when you think about it. It’s a way we can both insist that we are all equal, and still be elitist. In the past, people were chosen for an elite based on who their parents were (which makes sense, given that most traits are [...]
Occupy irrelevance
All revolutions are bunk. Honest people see a broken system, and find a way to get ahead in it, and then change it from a position of power. A revolution is the contrary impulse: throwing out the whole thing and starting from scratch. This would make sense if all of it were bad, but for [...]
Undoing modernity
As mentioned here several times, the founding illusion of modernity occurred in 1789 when people decided that they could do without specialized leaders. Instead, it was declared that we are all equal. This means that we pick leaders from among us by voting. 222 years on, it seems this has not worked out so well. [...]
Pirates
Pirates are interesting people. Interesting in the way they live, not inasmuch as you would actually want to meet them. Unless, of course, you were a pirate too. Even then, you might be less than enthusiastic. For pirates are dangerous. Not because they are particularly strong, but because they operate by no civilized code of [...]
Pass it on
Emotion is a powerful aspect of the human mind — There’s no denying it. It’s a very necessary force that should never be ignored, but understood in the context of healthy, rational thought. A lot of issues that people have with emotion often involve an inability to understand why it is felt or whether or [...]
Junk science
Given sufficient time, any intelligent individual will eventually reach the conclusion that reading about science is generally useless. Scientific research is supposed to be self explanatory. Any attempt to write about it is merely a barrier or middle man. Why take a secondary account, when a primary one is available? The original, raw, experimental data [...]
Underdog
Our society will always be divided into two groups: those who are dissatisfied, and everyone else. Among the dissatisfied, a small minority — like one in ten thousand — will be ideologues working to fix a problem that no one else understands. Your classic mad scientist, convinced that Godzilla will attack and so laboring late [...]
Equality kills hope
The past 70 years of history in the West have consisted of us re-living WWII propaganda. It’s the freedom fighters versus the bad guys, and wherever we go we bring equality and democracy, and thus everything is going to be OK. We partner that with a Rosie the Riveter style attitude that we’re going to [...]
Empathy versus sympathy
Empathy and sympathy overlap, but I will use “sympathy” here to mean “blind compassion,” or feeling something that you shouldn’t be feeling in the first place, just because you weren’t even a part of the circumstances or situation that affected the party in suffering, but by golly, you feel bad for some reason! Good old [...]
