Triumphant Ignorance

Lately, everyone seems to love ignorance. “I didn’t know”, “I wasn’t aware”, “I haven’t seen” are all played as “get out of jail free cards” when anyone is caught in a lie. Ignorance is truly bliss .

Of course, ignorance is hardly ever used in the present. “I don’t know” is certain doom. One must be confident and strident even when making up lies out of whole cloth. No matter if later you are proved wrong, because you were either “misinformed” or “misunderstood.”

Once upon a time, as in all good fairy tales, there was a standard of truth, and a test of past truthfulness applied to congenital liars. Now we simply accept them as entertaining orators, making up tall tales to enliven our dull lives .

There is a pervading zeitgeist that ignorance doesn’t matter. We can always learn the truth later and correct any mistakes “inadvertently” made by not learning the truth ahead of time .

As bridge builders still know, that’s a dangerous philosophy in a lot of areas. Apparently, government is no longer one of them .

Vox Populi

“The voice of the people is the voice of God.” Perhaps. But the wealthy, the bureaucrats, and the lawyers actually run things. It is claimed that if “vox populi” selects the rulers, they will keep all the others in line with what people want .

The problem, of course, is that “the people” can be defined in many ways and aggregated differently. Majority does not equal unanimity. Two thousand voting yes against two thousand one voting no is a muffled mutter from god at best. But winners of an election like that will nevertheless declare a “mandate” to do what they want .

And rulers – elected or not – are clever folks, or they would not be rulers. They can easily manipulate the shouts of a mob for one thing or another to camouflage what they really want to do .

Finally, “the people” tend to be many “peoples” in different places and situations. Federalism just disguises the problem – there will still be minorities everywhere. Sure, constitutions can guarantee “rights” to keep vox populi in check, but that has historically been a very weak reed, especially if times get difficult .

All that is why I cringe every time a politician claims “the people have spoken.” I think democracy may be the “least bad” form of government, but we should never pretend that it is actually close to “god“.

Analog Tradition

Law is binary. You are either guilty or not. Lawyers make lots of money “proving” one thing or another. In general, you can push right up against the line (and even tiptoe a little over it) and still be completely “innocent” .

Tradition, on the other hand, is analog. It is also where we spend most of our lives. There is rarely, for example, a thin line dividing rude behavior from acceptable, but it is certainly possible to act more and more rudely .

When we interact with society, we expect rules based on law to be in place, but those are almost invisible most of the time. We are buffeted by tradition and its expectations – how far to stand apart, how loudly to express opinions, what to wear, general demeanor and behavior .

It is therefore far more jarring when traditions change dramatically then when most laws do. Old people especially can be blindsided and upset by all the terrible erosion of “normal” behavior as the young sweep away the “olden days”.

Everyone eventually settles into the “new normal” and adjusts their expectations accordingly. Traditional change – lacking enforcement apparatus – is often less jarring than law change.

The old people do occasionally try to get their revenge by passing laws to formalize those old traditions .

Grandpa’s Keys

In a patriarchal society, Grandpa can be revered or feared, cherished or abandoned. By virtue of years, he has often accumulated property, power, and moral leadership. Arguing with the paterfamilias usually brings trouble.

These days, Grandpa is increasingly elderly. Folks used to die off before their late ’60s. Now they may hang on indefinitely. Their brains can be sharp but more rigid, their various bodily functions less youthful, agility impaired. Desires remain, reflexes deteriorate, judgments are suspect . And technology multiplies their power.

At some point, the car keys that Grandpa has used to drive everywhere all his life must be – sometimes forcibly – taken away. Hopefully before a terrible accident.

That is right, logical, even compassionate. But the old guy resents it. Maybe screams. Maybe sulks. Maybe uses his property and power to punish. There is often no easy or happy way to do so.

There are worse consequences of longer lifespan. Our geriatric leaders are a good example. In many ways, they have come to resemble a decrepit superhero, full of old power, confused and dangerous. Our society however, is unable to restrain his impulsive behavior as he cruises along in the batmobile .

Rural

Since antiquity, common sense and solid values were supposed to reside in country folk. Not the unwashed peasants (of course) so much as a virtuous landowner. Cincinnatus returning overnight to his plow. Western Europe – the English in particular – made a fetish of the landed aristocracy .

In the US, Thomas Jefferson created the myth of a country-filled with yeoman farmers, who lived on small self-sufficient farms and in their spare time discussed philosophy and engaged in politics. The countryside contained value, cities were filled with vice. That has congealed into a nostalgic view of “olden” days when (“real”) men were men, and everyone else knew their place and stayed in it .

These days, of course, most people live in suburban situations, neither quite rural nor quite urban. Suburbs contain few of the virtues and most of the vices of each. The global Internet further scrambles the mix .

Ah, but we continue to be told how solid rural living is. No matter that farming is done with huge complicated machines produced elsewhere. It suits the ruling oligarchs to fan the embers of this mythology, since the actual potential power of this constituency is so small .

All harmless enough. Unless, of course, the ruling class becomes ignorant and stupid enough to take it seriously .

Infanticide!

There, that got your attention! And such is the real purpose of shock words these days – to condense a slur, rally a slogan, and sometimes promote a hidden message. I remember when students would shout “hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today .”

Some issues are tangled, mysterious, insoluble. Abortion and women’s rights _ or potentially crippled-child rights _ is one of the toughest. Definitions are almost impossible. The world refuses to be solved .

For the record, I am in favor of all children, everywhere, being born normal, healthy, and into circumstances where they are well cared for until their late teens. For the record, in our real world, even if babies are born normal and healthy, society often lets them die or suffer from neglect, starvation, war, disease, or other violence. And genetic luck guarantees that many embryos do not produce normally healthy babies. It used to be far worse – nature was never kind .

But “baby killer” is an effective slur. Nobody wants to be so labeled. The problem is that those who use it are – like those anti-war demonstrators – really pursuing a deeper agenda One in which it is the duty of women to produce and raise children and leave the rest of the stuff to men.

I dislike such people and their agenda. Perhaps one day I too will have to find something simplistic to shout back. Isn’t that really the true problem with our civilization? Not stupidity, not evil, just fatigue at complex, seemingly insoluble, issues .

Business Visionary

We generally admire the extraordinary individuals who through intelligence, drive, or structured vision lead their companies to heights and influence. In the old days Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt. In modern times, Gates, Murdoch, Musk .

They are generally saluted as less evil embodiments of human ambition – helpful to society rather than disruptive politicians like Napoleon or Hitler .

No doubt there is some truth in that. Corporations are often a force for good, producing wealth which eventually trickles down to all. A cornerstone of our affluent modern world. Almost forgotten are the days when they were labeled (with some justification) “merchants of death.”

Remember, however, that all of those leaders were human. No matter how ruthless, they were constrained to mortal existence and secondary desires. I believe that, increasingly, AI driven business will become ruthless in ways we cannot imagine, completely morally bankrupt from a social point of view .

The dangers of treating employees like machines has long been luridly documented in literature. AI goes a step further, since it cannot understand any fundamental difference between flesh and metal, nor any obligation to consciousness versus obedience .

Today’s specialized titans of industry, unfortunately, are already well down the road to AI sterility.

Exaggeration and Lies

Exaggeration is often welcome in conversation. We love to claim we caught the biggest fish, had the worst day of our lives. Casual talks with friends are lighter if we stretch the truth, or even invent things out of whole cloth .

But that is entertainment. Serious discussions are not aided by stretching facts to fit desires. Unless, I suppose, you are a lawyer … Seriously, using exaggeration to win an argument is a time honored practice .

The problem is when exaggeration turns to lies. If someone says the water tastes bad, fine. If they say it is dangerous to drink, that should require proof. Lies and truth require more than merely saying something is so .

Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment or when trying to achieve power, exaggerations slide easily to lies taken as facts, for exaggerated goals without foundation or nuance. So we get orations, such as “gypsies are ignorant dirty thieving people and should all be run off or shot on sight.” No proof, no nuance, but unfortunately effective especially when combined with other equally shaky statements like “we would all be better off if there were no gypsies.”

We used to think “lying” politicians were bad, but now we seem to believe “exaggerating” ones are merely cute .

Jonestown

There are many examples of “the madness of crowds.” Somehow most of us can temporarily lose our own rationality in a mass action. More permanently we can narrow and harden our logic and belief into a small cult, or a larger “movement.” Some are mindless and temporary such as mobs; others have deep underpinnings supported by leaders and philosophers, like the Nazis .

The prime modern example to my mind was Jonestown, where a large group of “normal” people gave up their ordinary life. Believing in a charismatic leader, they cut ties, liquidated assets, followed him into a jungle community. When times got tough they followed him into mass suicide.

Although Americans are prone to fads, for the most part citizens here have been saved from massive indoctrination by an inborn cynicism. No matter the cause, we often ask “who profits?” “follow the money”, and “what’s in it for you?” This streak of skepticism may not protect us from momentary enthusiasms, but it does tend to make our allegiances quite fragile. For most of us, true belief can flip overnight, with or without external cause .

Not always, of course. Hence Jonestown. The cautionary note there was that apparently more than a few of the “suicides” were “murders”. Crazy powerful leaders are a lot more dangerous than any neighbor following an influencer primrose path.

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 .