On all sides of cultural arguments the proposition will be
put forth that some associated people are trying to effect a long-term
change. For example, that schools are
promoting Marxism; or corporations trying to make us dependent on their
product; government trying to weaken us in order to rescue us; Christians
trying to control what we can and cannot do; activists vetoing what we can and
cannot hear. There is a common counter argument that makes me crazy. There’s no conspiracy, you paranoid
fool. The idea is so ridiculous it does
not require an answer. I recall that in the 1990s when Larry King had a
radio show and a listener called in to complain there was media bias, King cut
him off immediately “There’s no conspiracy, caller,” and hung up. He then ranted for about a minute about how
paranoid these kook conservatives are. Yet the caller had said nothing about a
conspiracy. (We have since learned that
entities like Journolist did exist and informal versions likely still do, but
that’s another story.)
Just because you don’t have meetings, collect dues, and
issue proclamations doesn’t mean a movement does not exist. It is in fact most
powerful when it is vague, when people aren’t so much thinking “The Green Party
platform is…” as “The people who care all say…the people who have looked into
this think…the educated people all know…the decent people in this country…” One does not have to teach cats to catch
mice, the old saying goes. (I’ll bet they may need to be shown once, but
the principle holds.) Cats don’t engage in a conspiracy to catch mice, but a
lot of mouse-catching happens anyway, all over the world. Conspiracy is
irrelevant to the point.
As with many types of non-reasoning, I don’t think that is
always a cynical manipulation on the part of the nonreasoner to divert you from
the obvious. Sometimes people really
believe that’s the point. If college
professors aren’t part of some Marxism club, then they can’t really be putting
forth a Marxist agenda. That they switch sides on the idea when the parties are
reversed is not proof they have thought this through and are being intentional
hypocrites. Choosing up sides usually
precedes reasoning rather than flowing from it. Human nature. Still, it’s
illogical and deserves to be noted.
2 comments:
Cats do not need to be taught to catch mice, but I have read that they need to be taught to eat them. Otherwise they just kill them, by instinct, and then look at them as if wondering why they just killed that thing.
Humans are kind of like that a lot of the time, I think, but that's another conversation.
More to your point, I look at data like this and wonder what's going on if there isn't a conspiracy. Correlation does not prove causation, but the data look a lot like there's probably some causation between being a university student and developing the opinion that speech needs to be controlled. Yet I have spent a lot of time in universities, and I don't think I know a single professor who would argue for repealing the First Amendment. I'm sure I know some -- many! -- who think that hate speech is wrong, but the argument for free speech was never that hateful speech wasn't in some sense wrong. It was that freedom of speech is a virtue for a society in terms of the goods it produces, even though it allows some wrongful conduct.
Something like what you're discussing is going on, where people are drifting to the conclusion without formally working it out.
I've been listening to that book you mentioned the other day, by the way, "The Goodness Paradox." Very, very interesting. The current section is about the physiological mechanisms that may explain why foxes develop things like white socks, white tail tips, and white forehead blazes as they are selected for non-aggression over successive generations. The author thinks it has to do with neural crest cells and slight delays in when they start migrating over the embryo's body. If they start slow, some kinds don't get to the "tip" areas, including some melanocytes. Apparently some also don't do certain things in areas like the hypothalamus that regulate reactive aggression. When a population undergoes selective pressure to mute its reactive aggression, a whole suite of seemingly randomly related physical changes comes along, not all of which have any obvious selective advantage. They may be neutral enough that they're free-riders with the selective value of the change in aggression. The changes include floppy ears (tips again) and curly tails (ditto).
There are closely related species like chimpanzees and bonobos that went down different adaptive paths for reactive aggression, perhaps in reaction to different territorial or food-supply challenges. The idea is that humans muted their reactive aggression and then developed a more cold-blooded style of aggression--basically, justice and communal punishment--in its place, because one way or another if you can't respond to appropriately to aggression you and your gene pool won't survive, no matter how lovely and cooperative your in-group is. The flip-side is that the benefits of low reactive aggression make all kinds of cooperation possible that will strengthen your tribe in competition with others. Always a balance in evolution.
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