17breezes wrote:Wombaticus Rex wrote:@17Breezes 100% disagree -- there is nothing easy about the raw naked fact that the majority of the human race is terminally stupid and easily mis-led. Humans are sense-making machines and that is of course our greatest asset and our terrifying weakness, etc. The simple data point of how many humans identify with religious beliefs that are easily torn apart by a curious 5 year old is enough to end the conversation. Every democracy on Earth's track record only proves the case further.
Even when facts are big, obvious and hard to maneuver around, it's still not "Easy" to explain them, and it is most definitely not easy trying to figure out how to improve the collective lot of humanity when we remain our own biggest existential threat. The implications of the human herd are very, very hard. Men like Kissinger and Goebbels and Gingrich and Rubin and Soros and Brzezinski became monsters on the belief they were taking a logical approach to a global problem...Ghandi came up with some great shit, though!!
But see how easily you dismiss the the majority of the human race. Of course you must be ok cause you can see this while they can't. Fortunate you. The implications of such elitist thinking are creepy and have led historically to untold horrors.
It's a willful misreading of WR's post to say that he's dismissing the majority of the human race or indicating that he can see THE TRUTH in a way that makes him superior to those who don't.
And you really don't have to go any farther than his second sentence for an unmistakable and clear demonstration of that:
Humans are sense-making machines and that is of course our greatest asset and our terrifying weakness, etc.
Although as it happens, the word "collective" in the bolded sentence that I assume you're commenting on also underlines the inclusivity and non-elitism of his remarks.
And fwiw, I say that despite my personal (though peacable) disagreement with a few key points in his analysis, btw.
17breezes wrote:Jeff wrote:17breezes wrote:The implications of such elitist thinking are creepy and have led historically to untold horrors.
History is a horror, not its tragic and obvious lessons.
I don't understand what you're saying, and what you don't want to hear.
I don't like to hear a person or persons setting themselves up as being smarter/better than the "majority," of humanity.
Oh, man, neither do I.
In fact, just last week, I made
quite a point of saying that I think doing so is a common but self-defeating coping mechanism for dealing with personal fears and insecurities that are natural to the human condition to 23.
Shortly after which he entirely disappeared from the board.
Funny that you should remind me of it here. Because I was just thinking last night that 23's absence from this thread spoke volumes, given what a die-hard "Dr. Paul" supporter he was/is.
There are no saints; merely people who are better at doing whatever the poster/critic admires. Odds are their IQ's fall into about the same average as the butchers and bad guys. Dislike them, hate them but don't generalize them.
It is, of course, a subjective thing. But there are some saints and heroes, imo. They're very, very rare, though.
Also....Well, never mind. I'll just roll it into the next part of my response.
As nasty as the tea partiers can be it's counterintuitive to suggest that they are stupid, less moral or more racist as a group than the "enlightened." Funny how they and others who piss off the enlightened are an acceptable "other," to be targets now that the traditional "others," are off limits.
Hey, you know what? In a colloquial sense, the word "stupid" is virtually functionally synonymous with the word "nasty."
Look! Here are two conveniently illustrative examples, using sentences written by you and Wombat in posts that are quoted fully in this one:
As stupid as the tea partiers can be it's counterintuitive to suggest that they are nasty, less moral or more racist as a group than the "enlightened."
[T]here is nothing easy about the raw naked fact that the majority of the human race is terminally nasty and easily mis-led.
See? In the first instance, the substitution doesn't change the sense of your assertion by so much as one iota.
And in the second one, it doesn't change it so significantly that the overall meaning of the post would ultimately have been altered at all had WR chosen to write a topic sentence that used "nasty" rather than the "stupid" to characterize his initial and cursory representation of the "terrifying weaknesses" of humankind, the specific (and not generalized) implications and meaning of which the rest of his post goes on to address more substantively.
Which it does in a specific (and not general) politically and philosophically contextualized sense. I should probably add, just to be on the safe side.
In short:
Per a natural reading of the posts in question, no one here is or was seriously calling either the tea partiers or the vast majority of humanity "stupid" in a way that connoted that either group is or was literally a less intelligent or generally lesser class of being than him- or herself.
Is my point.
In fact, you'd pretty much have to have come to the thread with the intention of looking for material that you could distort in order repeatedly to harp senselessly on that exact theme for some reason of your own to think otherwise. IMO.
BREAK FOR LENGTH.
