Conservative Follies

Liberals imagine a better world that is based on shiny visions of what might be. Conservatives fear that the best world has already passed them by .

Both positions, of course, can be silly, especially in extremes. Liberals tend to optimistic views of people that have little reality in experience. Conservatives dream fondly of a past that never was.

As someone who reads a lot of history and science, the one thing I fully believe is that nothing stays the same for long. Our bodies are seething masses of churning chemical reactions. We age. Life evolves. And yet – it does not do so too quickly, our DNA was billed to be mostly conservative.

Conservatives say they fear change and simply want to return to when things were better. They usually confuse what was actually happening in those olden days with their own visions of what they believe should have been happening .

It’s an old, old story. From first shards of clay texts, there were those predicting disaster (because the stupid younger generation ignored the most important rituals and beliefs.) Age of gold devalued to silver through bronze and iron to maybe sand.

Unfortunately, for all of us, things do keep changing. Even more unfortunately, we have a lot less control over events – especially from beyond our limited circle – then we would like to believe .

Simple-Minded

In nostalgic eras past, unfortunate individuals with low mental capacity were known as “village idiots” or “simple-minded’” folks. Now we inhabit supposedly kinder times, but those “simple-minded” are still with us. However I refer tp people mentally constrained by their own choice.

Some are intellectually lazy, and find it easier to accept or reject anything they hear without troubling to investigate further. Nevertheless, they hold their opinion – whatever it may be – arrogantly. Others reach the same condition simply because there is too much to know and life requires us to focus on what is relevant .

The harm in so many people willingly becoming simple-minded is that in the myth of our society, citizens are supposed to be well informed. About everything. Admitting that one is fully ignorant or confused or even unsure about anything is not rewarded. To admit ignorance (even to yourself) when you are ignorant is quite healthy. But many of the unthinking may label you as stupid .

We have a voting population certain of their shallow beliefs, too involved in other things to care much except when egged on by volatile wannabe leaders .

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. In the land of the simple-minded the wise person remains as unobtrusive as possible .

Magic

When I was a boy, “magic” had been confined to church. After world war II, everyone assumed “Yankee ingenuity” could fix anything, often with little more than “string and bailing wire”. Farm boys were all mechanical geniuses, City kids knew how to outfox anybody. All was – or would soon be – knowable and under control .

As examples, we fixed our own flat tires, changed oil. When a TV or radio didn’t function, I’d take vacuum tubes out to test and buy at Radio Shack. Even later, I knew how transistor “gates” worked and could program in binary (zeros and ones) or assembly. TV or newspaper news was limited, trustworthy, opinion confined to editorial pages .

Now? It’s all magic. Even mechanics can’t fix new cars, God himself couldn’t repair a broken circuit board. I have no idea how quantum computers work, nor how AI is programmed. And all sources of “news” are slanted and suspect .

In fact, once again, we inhabit a world of magic as profound and (possibly) as dark as anything in the Middle Ages. We know how to (mostly) talk and provide services for money, shop, consume, and be entertained. A few “experts” know a lot – or claim they know a lot – about increasingly tiny bits of esoterica .

That makes the residual child in me quite uneasy. Without understanding I still believe real control is impossible .

Flash Tsunami

Earthquakes and tsunamis often strike without warning, many times in places where they occur only every hundred years or so. These days, there are often warnings. But they seem to be more and more a metaphor for the various “flash” events created by an instantly interconnected world

You can, for example, be sitting quietly on a bench in a deserted park and be suddenly surrounded by a crowd. Maybe just having fun, maybe robbing everyone in sight, maybe engaged in gang warfare. The point is, it’s a lot of people suddenly appearing at a small place without warning. Only their social media knows why .

Similarly, there can be flash shortages of almost any good or service as advice or warnings go viral and everyone grabs as much of whatever as possible, paying much more than usual. Frantic hoarding clearing shelves instantly .

And of course there is the mental flash information known as “memes”. Suddenly everyone “knows” something they never knew before. Maybe true, maybe false, usually irrelevant but when thousands or millions of people are affected, even mental illusions have an impact .

It seems that such social flashes are more and more frequent. Almost like the “good old days” of the unexpected earthquake or tsunami .

Cowboys and Indians

Little boys have always enjoyed, I suppose, playing war games of one side against another, often based on historic conflicts. In my youth it was Allies versus Nazis. In other places and times it could have been North versus South, Gauls versus Romans, or that constant favorite, cowboys versus Indians .

The games were usually harmless enough, anyone willing to take any side for an afternoon. Not at all like the real horrors of war. Kids didn’t much care about historic realism, and happily evoked stereotypes .

In real life, “cowboys versus Indians” had nothing to do with cowboys. It was the full military of an industrializing giant civilization pushing out a “primitive” culture. At best, it wanted to turn “Indians” into “white people.” At worst, it judged that impossible and tried to exterminate them or place them in isolated zoos .

In spite of modern romanticism, there was a lot purely awful and nasty about “native American” culture, as any honest reading of historic sources will quickly discover. And that lifestyle was fully incompatible with the onrushing pioneers.

There were no easy answers. And no solutions .

I fear the current Mideast is now turning into such a conflict. Only extermination or zoo preserves will be acceptable. A sad moment in a world not nearly so “enlightened” as we had hoped.

Egomorphism

Anthropomorphism shapes everything into a kind of human, with feelings, desires, and powers similar to us. Not only “hard” nouns like trees, the sun, or buffalo, but also “concept” nouns like luck or evil. Many take it so far as to include imaginary ideas like family, government, or conspiracy.

I would coin an equivalent “egomorphism” for those who narrowly believe everything (including all other people) are exactly like them. They evaluate every part of the universe as if they were in control. Their desires, hopes, and fears become those of everyone and everything .

Unfortunately, it seems that such mentalities also see themselves as essentially rotten. They only survive by suppressing their inner worst tendencies. They assume that everyone else maliciously applies full power as they would do if they had no inhibitions .

That includes what is known as “projection” but it goes far beyond. It includes a basic hostility and paranoia as if fighting inner demons. It assigns agency to illusions such as conspiracies and secret societies all trying to destroy them .

A sad mental state for them .

A dangerous mental state to everyone else .

Ozymandias

We read Shelly’s Ozymandias as a distillation of the illusions of power. A cruel despot forcing subjects to erect a massive statue to his glory, all crumbled and forgotten over the millenia. But there are other interpretations.

For one thing, that king of kings probably could care less what we see in the desert today. Assuming it was a vanity project, it was more to impress his present than anyone after he died. And for all we know it could have been a public works project to keep folks employed.

More to the point, Ozymandias was not a god, but a human. That means he had to eat, defecate, sleep. He was bored and worried at times. If he grew old there were toothaches and various pains, wounds, and diseases. He may have been good or evil to his subjects, but he was subject to all the ills that flesh is heir to, like everyone else, then and now .

Besides, he was more constrained to his locality than anyone today. He could not know science, visit other continents, talk to people a world away. His direct sphere of influence was limited to a tiny immediate environment. His powers were in some way less godlike than those of anyone with access to a cell phone or automobile .

Power, yes. Cruelty, perhaps. But not to be pitied because his colossus and kingdoms did not survive the ages. Never to be envied because most of us are more godlike than he could ever dream .

Supermarket

I am enchanted by the miracle of supermarkets. Others complain of high prices, spot shortages. They dream of olden days when “heritage vegetables” had more taste, or “Paleolithic diets” fortified our ancestors, or …

Until recently, most people ate spare, monotonous diets and famine was always lurking right around the corner. I never envy those ancient times .

Four unrelated inventions have been necessary, along with all the other ignored benefits of modern times. Rapid reliable bulk transportation, refrigeration, manufacture of fertilizer from air, mechanized grain farming. Without all these, food would be limited, expensive, and supermarkets could not exist .

Some pine for old street markets and the local baker and butcher. Those indeed have their charms. And yet _ well, at almost any time I can go to a supermarket, shop for all kinds of fresh or packaged or “ready to eat” food, and be out very quickly with all I could possibly want at a price which in the grand scheme of modern life is almost negligible .

I try to see it as a medieval peasant would. I love to be astonished at the possibilities and displays. It is almost a vision of the garden of Eden or heaven itself. But I admit that like a lot of folks I often take it all too much for granted and even complain when I should be rejoicing .