I don't listen to the people who believe they think for themselves
much at all. They usually are only choosing one of the major cultural
sides or the other: at work, liberal; at church conservative. They are above it all because they don't pay attention to NASCAR or the Kardashians or the mainstream media or hip-hop or whatever it is they think everyone else is aware of that they aren't.* The
people who actually are different don't usually think about that, or are
only dimly aware that others don't quite understand them, or note it with little interest. They just
think what they think. They are usually wrong. But they are usually the
only source for searing insights. That is, BTW, why I keep the Unz
Review on my sidebar. If you don't go over there, you may not be aware
of how bigoted and crazy some of those people can be, while others are only 30 degrees off and reliably challenging. Most columnists I
routinely ignore, but force myself to read something of them once a
month. In my discussion of experts and David L Hoggan I mentioned that
South Asians did not regard his belief that Hitler was peace-loving as
particularly crazy. (Though it is crazy.) I learned that over at Unz
Review, from one of the craziest anti-Semites there. I would not have
learned it anywhere else. I browsed around to see if it were true, and
it is emphatically so. The analysts and historians from India thought
the British were the most dangerous people in the world, and Hitler
just a put-upon guy who had to go to war to keep from being destroyed by
them.
John Maynard Keynes made the observation
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly
understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men,
who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual
influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from
some academic scribbler of a few years back." And of course, Keynes is
himself a defunct economist who still influences us greatly, and might
have taken a wry pleasure in the idea that he is an example of his own
cynical prophecy. Looking up that quote, I found that many of Keynes' most famous sayings were absolutely brilliant, while only a few were
troubling. Yet those few troubling ones telegraphed all the mischief
that has been done by his disciples.
That's as good a warning to
us all as one could find. To be stunningly brilliant most of the time but wrong in a few
things can result in one having an overall detrimental effect on the
happiness and prosperity of your fellow-creatures.
In
the first "Men In Black" movie, Tommy Lee Jones instructs Will Smith
that he scours the real alt-alt media, not just the slightly unusual
stories, to follow necessary leads. I don't go that far, but I get that
point. I read what I call hypernormal people, mostly conservative, for
solid understanding, almost for relaxation. They have some sense of historical perspective and what has
usually worked for human beings that informs their opinion of current
events. I, unfortunately, can get distracted by some bit of unreason
that is currently ruling the airwaves, but they do at least slightly
better. My sidebar is largely people in the same boat as me, with
historical knowledge but still distracted by the Tyranny of the Now.
But I think one has to take bread with two other groups: the people closest to the ground, who have learned their lessons by trial-and-error if nothing else; and the fanatics, who can force a screw in most of the way even when it is cross-threaded, by dint of persistence alone.
*I understand the sweetness of this attitude, BTW. But it's fleeting.
3 comments:
Just to be perverse: The Gostak and the Doshes
Seriously, though--quite a few people thought Hitler was a good guy, or he'd not have had any power. History can be a good window into other minds--provided you latch onto a good historian, and not somebody who translates everything into modern categories. Literature and song--what do people care about?
The story has that classic old sci-fi feel. The science part highly speculative, using real things as a taking-off point into poorly-understood things. The standard moralising about what fools humans and their institutions are, as contrasted to Men of Science.
Loved it.
Smart guy, Keynes.
"All things in moderation" isn't a bad heuristic. "Most things in moderation, but try to stay aware of the full range of possibilities" might be better.
Post a Comment